[FFML] Fic archiving and FF.net

[Ryan Smith]

Time for my 'once in a blue moon' message to the FFML. :-)

> Karl wrote:
> Say what you will, but this list (with probably less than 50 active posters) and 
> the RAAC are probably the last remnants of the 90's anime boom era fanfiction 
> writer community. The vast majority of the current community doesn't even know 
> they exist, and even if they did they wouldn't care. The only big group of 
> people (other than old school fanfic writers) who still use mailing lists and 
> Usenet are open source developers, and I'd wager there aren't too many of those 
> who are interested in reading or writing fanfiction.

There are several reasons why this is the case. The biggest, from what I have seen in the past decade, is the feedback that one can receive from a large-scale archive like FFN. What the FFML and RAAC can offer in terms of feedback quality is often superceded by the fact that FFN – and other archives like it – can offer feedback quantity, and it is often quantity that matters most to incoming generations of 'ficcers. IMO, you are correct to say, from this point of view, that those of us who appeared during the '90s boom remain here, though the argument can be made that many of us have also migrated to the new sites, regardless of their flaws. I have done this; at the old stomping grounds, I received very, very little feedback of any kind, so I tried FFN, and ... boom! Of course, a lot of that has to do with the 'right fandom, right time' factor, but it bears noting that the FFML and RAAC, to use the given examples, only started catering to a broader base of 'ficcers in the very recent past.

> Personal web hosting with personal traffic demands is cheap, yes. Running a 
> large scale archive with a lot of traffic is not, and it has already been 
> pointed out that a personal site is not particularly useful for archiving purposes.

The traffic is a key concern. I am a moderator / owner at one of these archives. (Since I am not here to advertise, there is no need to mention which one.) Operating capital from the owners can cover the basic fees, but we have long accepted the necessity of ads and donations once the archive grows to a certain size. As other posters have noted, I cannot see such revenues as a copyright violation, not when they are necessary for the archive to survive. Further, to build on a point one poster made, since the web site relies heavily on modern widgets like Java applets and the like, mirroring would be quite difficult, if not impossible. That, if anything, is the major advantage that older formats like RAAC offer.

Hmm, got more thoughts out of that than I suspected. Thank you for the brain food, Mr. Karl. :-)

– I Abibde / Samuraiter (AKA Big Samurai)

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