[FFML] Fic archiving and FF.net

[June Geraci]

While I do agree that you DO get feedback on FFN, much of it is pretty 
useless.  For example:

"Great fic, can't wait for the next chapter!"

"I love it"

"It stinks!"

Comments like this are common, whether the story is well written, or one 
full of cliches, plot holes, and atrocious grammar and spelling.   One thing 
I always appreciated about this list (and RAAC) is the USEFUL feedback I 
would see coming in, and the back and forth conversations it would generate.

Oh, and as long as I have your attention, can anyone tell me what happened 
to anifics.com?

June


  ----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ryan Smith" <obliviane at hotmail.com>
To: <ffml at chez-vrolet.net>
Sent: Wednesday, May 13, 2009 6:41 AM
Subject: Re: [FFML] Fic archiving and FF.net



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feedback quality is often superceded by the fact that FFN – and other 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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