Why We Need Small Archives

[dawn_felagund]

I posted some data yesterday on my tumblr about commenting rates during the first two weeks of B2MeM versus on AO3 and the SWG. You can read the post for the full data and analysis, but the short version is that commenting on B2MeM is much better than on the other two sites (and commenting on the SWG is slightly better than on AO3). Based on my research on commenting behavior to this point, I believe this is due to community, namely that when there is a strong sense of community on a site, commenting is more frequent.

This opened a discussion on the value of large versus small archives. And I'm wearying of trying to have a conversation in the tiny comment boxes Tumblr allows us (although I'm grateful that comments are at least a universal option now! this is a major reason why I have been able to enjoy Tumblr more lately). Let me start by saying what my ideal fandom would look like.

I have supported AO3 since the idea was first proposed on LiveJournal all those years ago. I think that a large multifandom archive is an essential part of the fandom, and all the better if it is a nonprofit like AO3. However, I do not think that this should be the only option. In the Tolkien fandom especially, a big part of our culture has always been building independent sites and archives. At one point, there were more than sixty Tolkien-specific archives, and this does not count communities established on social media sites like LiveJournal and Yahoo! Groups, nor does it count sites for resources, author's personal websites, etc. And I continue to believe that Tolkien-specific sites run by Tolkien fans should be a part of our fandom.

So I suppose this post becomes my manifesto about why I think small archives are important to fandom, particularly the Tolkienfic fandom.

Community
A biggest reason is community. AO3 is not a community anymore than New York City is a community. There may be communities within those larger entities, but the entity itself does not function as a community and in fact has few characteristics that promote community-building and social interaction. Aside from comments, on AO3, it is nearly impossible to communicate with another person. However, if you look at the Tolkien archives that existed in the mid-2000s, nearly all of them provided means for social interaction in more informal settings than public comments. Multiple sites had discussion forums, and nearly every site had a mailing list or journal community associated with it. These became ways to not only talk with each other but also to organize events and gatherings. I remember the Henneth-Annun mailing list being used to promote official events and challenges and informal gatherings like insta-drabbling sessions, as well as impromptu on-list challenges ("lobbing plotbunnies"). Even though I was not particularly active on the HASA archive, I made a lot of friends through these more informal social channels.

AO3 is not providing these features, and it is not fair to expect them to. AO3 is an archive, not a social site, and they are meeting their stated mission just fine. But they were never intended to be the only show in town. I remember early conversations, when the OTW was just getting off the ground and owners of small archives were worried about AO3 dominating the landscape, and reassurances from those working on the project that not only was that not their intent, but they planned to facilitate independent archives by making their codebase open-source (which they have indeed done, although last I checked, it is nothing that can be used out of the box and so is in fact of limited use to a fan wanting to start their own site).

I think it's important to keep in mind the historical context in which the OTW was founded and AO3 was built. This was a time when "fic fandom" occupied both large multifandom sites (usually Fanfiction.net) in addition to a wealth of smaller, fan-built options, often located on social media sites (like LiveJournal). The idea that AO3 was supposed to evolve us away from smaller, fan-run sites onto a single multifandom archive and that this was the intent of the founders or would have been construed by them as a positive development--much less an ideal--is not accurate, based on what I observed of the discussions around establishing the OTW (as well as having been active and a site owner myself at this period in time). I think that, had those founders been provided with a time machine to overhear some of the conversations I have where I essentially defend the right of my Silmarillion archive to even exist now that there is AO3, then that would have given them a big moment of pause in considering how best to go about the establishment of AO3.

Because lately there has been a movement that I can describe only as anti-small archive. Not "I'm not interested in using a site other than AO3"--there have always been authors in the Tolkienfic fandom who use only multifandom archives and are quite happy there, and if you can't follow your happiness in fandom, then where can you really?--but an attempt to devalue the worth of existing small archives and discourage fans who might want to build their own. In my own experience, this has taken the shape in protests against my hope of financing a Drupal module for a fiction archive. At the moment, it is difficult to build a small archive, since the only open-source option available (eFiction) is outdated and, as far as I can tell, not being actively developed anymore. My hope--which I have mentioned a few times on Tumblr--is to raise money across fandom to pay a Drupal developer to build an archive module. Since Russa has already modified the Book module to function as an archive on our Drupal test site, I have no reason to believe that this is an unattainable goal, and it would once again allow fans to set up an archive with almost no web design experience, in addition to having at their fingertips the hundreds of open-source Drupal modules that already exist (e.g., blogs, image galleries, video and multimedia capability, forums). Like AO3, eFiction was archive software; Drupal would allow fans to build archives that also have features that facilitate community.

Diversification
Perhaps foremost after community is diversification. I am not even talking about fandom cultures at this point--although I think this is important too and will discuss this later--but the same reason that stockbrokers tell their clients to diversify their investments. Or (because I'm scaring myself a little right now), to put it in my socialist hillbilly terms, "Don't put all your eggs in one basket." (Seriously, I dropped a basket of eggs in the chicken pen the other week and it was a nasty mess.)

There is lately a sense that I find frankly disturbing that the OTW--and therefore AO3--are invincible. They're not. The irony is that one of the arguments trotted out against small archives is that they can fail. I remember when HASA closed and, on Tumblr, someone tagged one of the announcements about it along the lines of "this is the problem with small archives."

No, this is a risk for any and all--yes ALL--sites on the Internet. Since I first started using the Internet in the early 2000s, how many big sites have I seen collapse, close, or become graveyards? Let's see ... MySpace. Geocities. Remember when AOL was the service everyone used? Multiple LiveJournal clones (GreatestJournal, JournalFen, InsaneJournal) have closed or become obsolete. LiveJournal itself is a graveyard. Yahoo! Groups is a graveyard. These were once fandom hubs; ten years ago, imagining them desolate would have been unthinkable. Yahoo! itself is failing.

For that matter, let's go back even further into fandom history. How many people enthusiastically stapling zines at parties in the '70s and '80s would have imagined a fandom where zines were virtually nonexistent?

If I have learned anything in my years in fandom, it is that we have to proceed with the assumption that what is the center of our fannish world at any given moment might not be a decade from now--and might not even exist anymore.

AO3 is in no way immune to this. In fact, I fear it is more prone to failure than a smaller site. Look at how many small sites linger after going dead when a larger site would have folded long before ... because it costs a lot to run a large site. In 2016, AO3 cost just under $95,000 to run. When I renewed the SWG's hosting at the beginning of the year, it cost me a little over $150. I have been through spells of near-poverty in the decade of the SWG archive's existence and never not been able to pay that bill. Sometimes I haven't been able to pay for the full year at once! But the lights have been kept on for more than ten years by one person.

Were I not able to afford it? Donations equaling 40¢ a day would do the trick. In comparison, using the 2016 figures, AO3 needs $260 a day to stay open.

How many of you can drop $260 right now to save a site you love from closing? How many of you can dig out 40¢ to give me, probably from the cushions on your couch?

For a site as popular as AO3, $260 a day is not a large lift. But look again at that list of sites above that have become obsolete or disappeared altogether. Many of them were live, beating hearts in fandom not very long ago. Some of them, like LiveJournal, were mismanaged into obsolescence, but others, including the zines, were simply victims of rapidly evolving technology that they couldn't keep up with. That the SWG is outdated gets brought up often in these discussions of AO3's superiority, again with a puzzling lack of awareness that, in ten years, AO3 will also be outdated. Where will fandom have moved in that time? What technology that we can't even imagine in this moment will have become commonplace and supplanted what are the live beating hearts of our fandom right now? Will AO3 be able to keep up with these changes? If not, if fans decide they'd rather exist elsewhere or doing something other than writing fic online, that near-six-figure annual bill becomes a bit more problematic.

Remember those eggs I dropped in the chicken run the other week and the mess they made? If the lights go out on a small site archiving a few hundred or thousand fanworks, that is a loss, don't get me wrong. As a fandom historian, I grieve the sites that have gone dark without warning (not least of all because they could have been saved with minimal expense and effort). But if we have chosen to put all of our fanworks on a single site and the lights go off? That is a loss of art, fan cultures, and fan history that is nothing short of tragic. Do you ever stop to think that, just like we study the Romantics and the Harlem Renaissance and the beat poets, literature students two hundred years from now well may study us? What we do matters; it deserves to have every possible chance to survive. This is why we diversify: Why we crosspost, even when it is a pain in the ass, even on sites where we don't get feedback. It is essential that we do not trust all of our fandom history in one place. It matters too much.

Staff and Policies
The point is sometimes made that AO3 has a larger staff and policies that guide use of the archive. I have to admit that this puzzles me because small archives also have policies and usually have staffs as well. I cannot think of a single Tolkien-specific archive that was run by a single person. The SWG currently has four moderators who have full access to the archive and server, as well as several volunteers who help out with other aspects of running the site.

We also have policies. Again, I cannot think of a single small group--I'm going to go beyond sites and even include groups like LJ communities and Yahoo! mailing lists--that do not have policies guiding what is acceptable on that group. Having been part of the building and management of multiple fandom groups, great care is taken in writing these policies and in making sure they are justly enacted for all participants. When, on occasion, there is a perception of unfairness, that group tends to go down in flames: witness the Tolkienfic fandom's Mithril Awards. The idea that small archives and groups are run solely on the whims of one person is patently false.

Now a site or group's policies may not be to your liking. As shocking as it may be to those for whom AO3 is their happy space, AO3's policies are not to everyone's liking. This is, again, an argument for diversification, not against it.

Putting my fandom historian hat on again, I'd make the case that our fandom's history shows that much of our fandom's progress away from gatekeeping and intolerance was facilitated in a large part by its fandom-specific sites. The first archives established in the era of the LotR film trilogy often had restrictive policies around what could be posted and gatekeeping measures, often aimed at keeping out film fans. Some of these policies were troubling: bans on slash or "Mary Sue" (which often equal bans on OFCs, which given the dearth of women in the legendarium, translates to a ban on women as characters). Gatekeeping policies were sometimes used to keep out interpretations of the text that were disfavored. (This is where my blog's name The Heretic Loremaster comes from, after a vocal group of us who self-styled as "heretics" for promoting in our stories and meta what were then divergent readings of the books.) I think it's important to note that these characteristics were not due to small archives, however, but a long-standing part of the Tolkien fandom when it was walloped by the simultaneous rise of home Internet use and the Jackson LotR films. The Tolkien fandom, until relatively recently (see below), has always had a conservative, exclusionary attitude, especially toward new fans and fans who bring atypical readings of the texts. (heartofoshun has done research on this; see our New York Tolkien Conference presentation Borders of the Fictional World for more on this.) The early-mid-2000s were the fandom behaving as it always had, magnified by the Internet and the demographic boom brought about by the LotR films.

But if you look at the archives that were built in 2004 onward, they represent a perceptible backlash against these kinds of policies. LotRFanfiction.com was the first and was established as a place that would accept what was either against the rules on other archives or unlikely to make it past the gatekeepers. Faerie--which was built as a reaction to LotRFF being sold--maintains this culture of openness. The SWG was also founded on policies of openness and "don't like, don't read" that gave it the teeth to crack down on the bullying of authors that was happening on other sites. Many Paths to Tread (MPTT) positioned itself as a genfic site actively trying to avoid the whiff of homophobia present on other genfic and het sites that were anti-slash. None of these sites used gatekeeping practices, and all of them were to varying degrees responding to the policies on other sites that their founders found problematic to the extent that they wanted to work to change them.

With the exception of LotRFF, all of these sites are among the few Tolkienfic archives still active today.

The reason the rush of fans who came into the fandom with the Hobbit films found a fandom that wasn't mean-minded, canatic, and intolerant--which is what the fandom was often like when it was found by LotR film fans like me--is in a large part because of these sites and their leadership in believing in and showing a different way that the fandom could operate. There was a long history of intolerance and exclusivity, but we shook that off by building sites that showed a better way. With the exception of the founder of LotRFF, I know all of the founders and mods on those post-2004 sites, and all of them are committed to a fandom that is welcoming and open to all, even when the "all" are bringing ideas and fanworks that are contrary to their own personal tastes and beliefs. But this is the power of owning and controlling your own spaces: You build to your ideals and members choose based on their own ideals. An an archive owner myself, my research into Tolkienfic archives has been humbling in this regard. It is the members of sites who determine the site's culture more than its admins (who determine its policies). The dystopian vision of a Tolkien fandom fragmented into a bunch of quibbling cliques would come to pass only if we allowed it to. And if it did? If we returned to earlier attitudes of intolerance and exclusivity? Then we have a bigger problem than where to archive our work.

Accountability
The Tolkienfic fandom is one of the oldest fandoms in existence. Tolkienfic existed before Star Trek "invented" fanfic. The Tolkienfic fandom is also unique in many ways from the media fandoms that scholars are usually talking about when they discuss fanfiction and fandom. Part of this is because we are not only a book-based fandom but one that is driven by an extraordinarily complex canon in the way that media fandoms and even most other book-based fandoms are not.

We have unique fan cultures, and we also have unique needs. We deserve to have those cultures respected and needs met.

Accountability ties in somewhat with the issues surrounding policies and, in particular, the mistaken idea that small archives are run like mad power-hungry monarchies at the whim of a single owner. This ties in too to my humbling discovery in my research that my site is more driven by its members than it is by me. All of this--our culture and needs and the power of a site's members--ties together into accountability.

As a small archive owner, I am extremely accountable to my members because the SWG does not exist without them. If I mess up, if I fail to respond to their needs, then they will take their stories and their community elsewhere. I have no delusions that they need me; rather, I need them.

The problem with larger sites is that this power dynamic is reversed. AO3 does not need any one of us, or even any single fandom. Therefore, they have little compelling reason to respond to our needs. However, I would say that there are definitely fans who are at the point where they would say they have a need for AO3. Their fannish experience would be significantly diminished without it. They will put up with less than ideal conditions or decisions they don't agree with because they lose more by leaving AO3 than they do by settling.

This is similar to the present situation with Facebook and the revelations of how much user data they have sold for skeevy purposes. How many people are utterly disgusted and enraged with Facebook right now ... but continue to use Facebook because the loss they would experience if they left is unthinkable?

Again, this is to be expected with large sites. I do not think it is a liability of AO3 in particular, and I certainly don't think that it is anything that they would use nefariously. However, when you have a fandom with a culture as deep and unique as ours, we stand to suffer losses if we consolidate onto a single site that can't respond to our culture, history, and needs. And AO3 sometimes simply can't. There are thousands of other fandoms on that site, and its governance cannot be guided by the needs of one.

As far as I can tell, the Silmarillion fandom asked AO3 to respect our autonomy just once, in considering how characters would be tagged, or the infamous piped tag controversy. Not only are the tags almost impossible to read, but they were unfriendly to newcomers to the legendarium, and as I touch on above, our fandom has an ugly history where our behavior toward newcomers is concerned. But AO3 either ignored or was ignorant of that history. They did what they wanted, which they would ostensibly defend as the best choice for the site. It was not, however, the best choice for our fandom. But we could do nothing about it. What we wanted simply didn't matter to them.

I think this is where it comes down, for me, to a key philosophical difference. Some people feel comfy and safe when they think of massive entities. I just don't get this. I like having a voice. I like being part of decisions made in communities that matter to me. I know I won't always get my way, but I want to know that I have a chance to be heard. I like to know that what I value has a chance to shape my community, if others feel the way I do. This simply cannot be accomplished in large organizations, in all but the rarest of instances. Certainly, as a member of a small fandom, I don't expect that I matter to AO3. Even larger multifandom initiatives, like Long Live Feedback, have struggled to effect meaningful change with the AO3 admins. Again, this is not to denigrate AO3, but they are a massive site trying to serve and keep happy tens of thousands of users. Simply put, they are not accountable to us, and I can't imagine why anyone would want to hand over the entirety our fandom's culture and history to them.

Empowerment
Here, I need to take a brief moment to acknowledge also that the ability to build and manage your own fandom space is empowering. As noted above, many of us in the Tolkienfic community did just that to protest and eventually overcome aspects of the fandom culture with which we disagreed. I sometimes remark, only half-joking, that there was a period in time where every Tolkien fandom group was created at least partly to respond to the shortcomings of another Tolkien fandom group.

The impact on my own life of having the privilege to build and own my own site cannot be understated. I was underconfident and shy when I started the SWG. I probably should have never started the SWG--I was ridiculously unqualified in so many ways--but I did, and in the past twelve years of running it, I have learned so much about leadership, innovation, and collaboration. I have ultimately gained confidence enough to bring those skills into my real life work, where I have made a real difference in the lives of the children and families I serve. Participating in fandom has given much to me, but it is building and running the SWG that has allowed me to become the person I am today.

There is something empowering--almost magical--about being able to stand up and say, "What I do matters. It matters so much that I and my community deserve our own space and self-governance to make our community what we imagine and hope it to be." This is why, even though we solved the archive problem on Drupal for the SWG, I want to see a specific Drupal fiction archive module built: because I want others to have that same opportunity to build something that shows that what they do matters.

Culture
And speaking of culture ... that is the last point in my manifesto, for now anyway.

heartofoshun and I did a presentation two years ago at the New York Tolkien Conference about the cultures on Tolkienfic archives. Earlier in the year, while working on survey data for my article "Attainable Vistas," I'd had a true moment of serendipity. No, it wasn't quite the importance of discovering penicillin, but it did start me down a new path of inquiry that I might otherwise have never taken. In short, when running data where I thought I knew the outcome, I discovered that the outcome varied quite a bit based on the archive a participant used. When Oshun and I did our presentation, I explored this more fully and discovered that nearly all of the major Tolkienfic archives (defined as a site used by 5% or more of participating authors, fifteen sites in total) had unique cultural characteristics.

This research quantified what I'd always felt as a member of and visitor to those sites. Some places were a good fit for me and others weren't, for reasons that I couldn't always put my finger on why. MPTT, for example, was a site where I heartily approved of its mission. I was the tech mod there for years and considered my comods and many of the other members there to be friends. But I never felt like my work fit there.

Even as I knew different sites "felt" different, I never expected to quantify that. That has been the biggest surprise and delight of my research to date.

I also strongly believe that all of those different cultures matter. They deserve to be honored and preserved, allowed spaces where fans can totally geek out and squee with other fans who love what they love. I hear concerns over fragmentation, but as a Tolkien fan who has always had a niche interest (The Silmarillion), the joy and relief at being able to create and write freely about what interests me, without worrying that I am boring almost everyone around me or making a nuisance of myself with something that doesn't interest most people, is impossible to understate. Nor do I think that fragmentation is an unsurpassable obstacle. The Tolkien fandom was "fragmented" for most of its existence and, to an extent, still is. You visited and read and chatted on sites that matched your interests and where you felt comfortable with the culture.

I don't think anyone reading this would agree that diverse cultural groups should be thrown together in a setting where that culture cannot survive. Yet that is precisely what some would like to see happen in our fandom, to our distinct cultural groups. Who benefits from that?

And furthermore, something that may come as a surprise to those who see AO3 as a neutral space that equally welcomes everyone: It's not. In my research, AO3 had its own culture, just like the Tolkien-specific sites did. If you're comfortable in that culture, you probably don't see it, just like I don't see the culture in the SWG in the same way that many others do. AO3's policies may welcome everyone, but remember too that humbling lesson from my research: Policy only does so much. It is the members of a site who ultimately determine its culture.

This brings me back to my vision at the beginning of this manifesto. Fandom needs both the large and small. I appreciate the need for a centralized multifandom archive. We have always had that, since fanfic moved online, and I think it is very important that it continue to exist. And I think it is even more important that it continue to exist via the OTW, as a nonprofit entity. I absolutely understand why people like and need AO3. They have my wholehearted support.

But we need our small archives too, and I would ask, if not for their support, then at least their respect in understanding why we want to continue to exist. Small archives meet needs that AO3 does not and frankly cannot. And just as an ecosystem is healthiest when diverse and not a monoculture, our fandom is healthiest when we have diverse options, even if everyone will not utilize them. (That's okay!) For this reason, I will continue to fight for the recognition of the value and survival of the Tolkienfic fandom's independent sites and archives, and I will continue to work to make it possible for people who want to build fandom sites and archives to have the tools available to do so.

Comments

[heartofoshun]

It's all about what users want. One can explain why it would be better to have multiple small archives, but users will use them or not and that is not necessarily based upon true self-interest. The people who most like Tumblr as a discussion venue also primarily use AO3. I use AO3 because the traffic is there not because I find it cozy.

[raiyana]

I admit, one of my guilty pleasures is keeping an eye on my stats page... I give myself treats for milestones and whatnot xD

[dawn_felagund]

I think the potential I see in small archives is the community aspect that is currently lacking on AO3. I think there is/will be appeal there.

But yeah ... it is ultimately interest/participation that drives anything. That is as true for AO3--which I don't think is nearly as immortal as people tend to think it is--as well as smaller endeavors.

[raiyana]

I well remember my utter terror of posting anything to FF.net in the heyday of LotR film fanfics, simply because of the toxicity of the comments made on some of the fics I absolutely adored (I was a lurker, lurking my way around lurkily, that's how stealthy I felt). It took me about 3 years even to write my first comment - and nothing whatsoever happened to that comment, which was both a blessing and a curse, in a way. By then, I had grown a somewhat tougher skin by my participation in MMORPGs re: online interactions with the aspect of anonymity a user-name affords, but I still had 0 interest in posting any of my own work.

Granted, at the time it was... teenage shite, really, looking back at it, but still, to me, finding AO3 was like a breath of clean air. Iadmit that early teen me didn't even know small archives existed - I do believe that if I had known, I might have felt somewhat happier about participating in a less lurkery fashion... ;)

This being said, I have adored using AO3 for the things it can give, although since my journey as a writer began (it seems to go in the opposite direction of the common one, namely large archive->social sites->small archives) with the addition of my Tumblr that I had not really intended to use at all opening a pathway for me to discover that smaller archives not only exist but they actually invoke a sense of security to me, personally.

I think it is this elusive sense of community that seems to permeate these smaller archives (because trying to converse with someone through AO3 comments is only slightly more comfortable than wisdom tooth extraction) which is so very important to perpetuate.

If I look at my fandom experience, even just since the New Year, I'm certainly far more involved now than I was, and I think I owe much of that to this 'community spirit' within the fandom - both writing and commenting seem a lot less like screaming into thin air somehow - just because it's so much easier to find someone who will join you in your *squeee* mood.

I agree that cross-posting is sometimes a hassle, but, to me, at least, with my work in the B2MEM on here and the SWG fics I've moved over, the rewards are worth it; I get vastly different feedback in a place like the SWG than I do for the exact same fic on AO3, and I can only kick myself for not discovering the joy of this type of archiving sooner (maybe not when I was 13-14, but when I was 18? 20?) I think I'd have 'dared' dip my toe in with publication of my own works much sooner if I had.

[heartofoshun]

I am thrilled to see someone who appreciates the effort which goes into maintaining a smaller archive and trying to make it relevant and comfortable.

(because trying to converse with someone through AO3 comments is only slightly more comfortable than wisdom tooth extraction)

Hear! Hear!

[dawn_felagund]

OMG toxicity on Fanfiction.net was totally A Thing. It's why I stopped posting there--not because I was subject to much (the Silm fandom was much calmer than the LotR side, where based on the reaction of some reviewers, Mary Sue was going to prove the end of humankind) but because the administration refused to take bullying seriously. Especially of young authors.

I mean, I used to have fun with the occasional rude comment on one of my stories there--the Silm section trolls were delightfully easy to bait--but grown-ass adults telling teenagers to kill themselves? I can't hang with that.

There are things I really love about AO3. Namely that we have a centralized multifandom archive that is not FFN! :D (Or Fanlib, if you remember that travesty.) In a way, I feel like some of the discussion around decline in feedback hasn't been entirely fair to AO3. AO3 is doing what is was built to do; it was just built under the assumption that communities would be thriving in other places. So I sometimes see people saying, "Why doesn't AO3 ...?" But what they want isn't the purview of an archive.

On the same page, a small archive doesn't necessarily have community. What we do have on the SWG comes more from the peripheral stuff we do, I think, than the archive itself. But my hope is that a Drupal module will make it easier to add those community-oriented features. With eFiction, you had to bridge them into the code, which we talked about from time to time, then got scared and ran away. XD A web developer I am not!

Probably part of my love for small archives--aside from owning one, of course!--is feeling more comfortable there. I also live in a small town, teach in a tiny school ... I generally prefer to know a few people well than to have surface contact with lots of people. I was really encouraged in my own work by people I met through sites like HASA and the Open Scrolls Archive. I hope the SWG can give that to people who are looking for it.

[spiced_wine]

I think it is this elusive sense of community that seems to permeate these smaller archives (because trying to converse with someone through AO3 comments is only slightly more comfortable than wisdom tooth extraction) which is so very important to perpetuate.

Absolutely :)

[narya_flame]

It's community all the way for me. I love SWG for the depth of knowledge there and how willing people are to share that knowledge, and I love Faerie for its welcoming "Tolkien coffee shop" feel. I avoided posting at AO3 for ages and now I do, because of the traffic there, but I don't love it.

[dawn_felagund]

I can totally get why people enjoy AO3. If I was multifandom, I'd probably enjoy it more. There are parts of it (the tagging system ...) that I find off-putting, but I know there are parts of the SWG that are off-putting to some people too.

But I definitely am more comfortable on smaller, niche sites. My early fandom experience had me as often one of the only Silm people in the virtual room; part of what motivated me to start the SWG was so that we Silmgeeks could have a space to hang out with each other so we didn't have to worry about boring everyone else! :D I get a repeat of that on Tumblr these days, where I often fear that what I'm posting about isn't of interest to anyone but me ...

[rhapsody]

Wow what a long read and frankly, while reading the comments on Tumblr, everything feels like it happened in a galaxy once upon a time, far far away

Community cultural feeling, not feeling comfy or at your place at MPTT: I can imagine that some would feel like that when they browse through a site like SWG. Or how I never could be bothered to sign up at Faerie/ You either feel the click or not. And that's fine, there is a place in the huge sandbox for everyone.

One thing that made my eybrows rise while reading the Tumblr comments was this:
and when small communities work, they’re great, but when they go bad, they can be really toxic.

Errr, then you never have encountered the toxic nature of a big common place when the shit hits the fan there. FFnet has proven itself to be a toxic place and I am willing to bet that even Ao3 has its toxic corners that do a deeper damage than a small archive ever could. There is always dark stuff going on on huge sites, simply because management cannot control it all. It was like this during the usenet days (geez, I feel old now) and it will always be the same. Medium sites just have to do the balancing, but a smaller archive is (usually) run by a small team where usually the mods know who is active, know the ins and outs, know when to discuss matters or even defend a member (who might go through a rough time) and to give them the benefit of the doubt. That is my years of, err, let's say 17 years of fandom experience. Now that I am out, I shrug off trolls and block them on a huge internet medium like Twitter. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt. I very rarely get a review or a kudo these days, it makes me smile.

I think that there is more empowerment to be had in smaller archives: all you have to do is step up the plate more. You can learn much from it, what you gain from it differs a lot. Some do, some invest years of energy and ah well, let's not go there.

If you still prefer big places above that, then you are simply looking for something else. Ao3 for me was a back up place, but not to find a sense of community, Tumblr the same, basically. Each to their own right?

Sleepy time now, first a quick check with a peregrine female on a webcam (will she finally brood her egg, oh my, such a soap ;), where is Celegorm when you need him huh)).

[independence1776]

I am willing to bet that even Ao3 has its toxic corners that do a deeper damage than a small archive ever could. There is always dark stuff going on on huge sites, simply because management cannot control it all.

There are-- and in one instance, management refused to do anything. There's a villian/heroine pairing in the new Star Wars trilogy fandom and people abhor it. So someone wrote a fic to troll the fans of that pairing (it literally consists of the heroine dumping the villian into a trash can) and put it in the pairing's AO3 tag. The management refused to do anything about it because it's a fic and therefore has a legitimate place on the archive even though it was literally written to hurt fans of the pairing.

[dawn_felagund]

Rhapsy! *hugs*

It is so good to see you. ^_^

You either feel the click or not.

Yep. And ... I think I communicate that? I don't know. If someone can see what I'm doing wrong in communicating with people that makes them blow up and call me names over which fic archive to use, I'd appreciate the feedback. Perhaps having started in fandom, as you did, during a time when there were SO many sites (and some were perceived as actively competing with each other), I don't assume that my site or any site will be a good fit for everyone. This is part of why I'd like people to be able to build their own place, where they do feel their corner of the fandom is welcomed and honored as it should be.

I totally agree with your point about the toxicity on large sites. The site that intimidates me the most: Tumblr! Because I have seen how something said poorly (or even taken the wrong way) can spiral out of control and never go away. And people seem to be on a hair trigger in a way that I'm not accustomed to. I'm used to being able to debate topics where people are passionate--even angry--but manage to not drop to the level of personal attacks.

And for all that I am critical of sites "back in the day" that phrased their policies to exclude certain people/fanworks and practiced active gatekeeping, the site that I think did the most damage wasn't a small archive. It was Fanfiction.net.

Oh, what's up with the falcon? Is she local?

[independence1776]

And I'm wearying of trying to have a conversation in the tiny comment boxes Tumblr allows us

There is a way to respond not in the comment boxes, but it makes a new post for every comment. Though I’ve also seen people have multiple comments in one post, which I don’t know how to do, nor do I know how to have a conversation like in the post you linked to.

At the risk of preaching to the choir and alienating those who disagree: I hear you about the value of small archives versus AO3. I fully expect AO3 to not become the archive in a decade. That’s just how online ecosystems work, including (and possibly especially) fandom ones.

There is also the possibility that I’ve never seen mentioned anywhere about what will happen if a lawsuit is brought and the OTW loses the case. AO3 might potentially vanish; smaller archives have the ability to fly under the radar. They did in early and mid 2000s fandom when copyright holders would actively go after fandom.

Yes, I absolutely agree that AO3 has a place in fandom and should exist! There is enormous value in a multi-fandom archive built by fans for fans. But that is also what small archives do— it’s just a matter of scale.

And I do have my problems with AO3. I’ve seen many people:

~ praise the tagging system. I can barely use it and I’ve been actively participating on AO3 since 2012. That there is no list of canonical freeform tags makes it incredibly difficult for me to know what to tag to reach anyone. I generally stick with genre and a couple of odds and ends because I literally don’t know what to put. On the finding-fic side, the tagging system is also detrimental because of how exact the tags are (emotional hurt/comfort is an entirely different tag than hurt/comfort!).

~ think it has a good search. You have to know how to exclude things; it’s not (yet) an automatic option and it’s not an easy process.

~ the relationship categories. Clicking on the “gen” category will still bring up romantic/sexual fics because people mistag them or deliberately tag them to reach both the & and / people under the assumption people don’t care about the type of relationship. I’m a mostly gen reader and writer; it’s hard for me to exist on AO3 because it feels like the only fics that matter are the ones with pairings.

Now, I do have to say this is one thing I wish SWG did have: an option in the story data for exactly what pairings are in the fic.

~ adore kudos. You know my feelings about them, so I won’t elaborate much. But they make me feel like a fic-producing machine and not a human who spent time writing and sharing.

~ everyone posts there, so why read elsewhere? Because there are writers who don’t post there even now! Not everything is on AO3 and the vast majority of older fics in the fandom aren’t there. For a current fandom, sure, I’d bet most of them are. But not Tolkien fandom. Not Star Wars. Not Harry Potter. Not any of the pre-AO3 fandoms.

Now, of course, AO3 works for many, many people. But it doesn’t for me.

You know me; you know I’ve participated on multifandom archives and don’t have a problem using them. But they’re archives to me, not a community. I posted on ff.net and yeah, it was decent. But I rarely found friends through it—once or twice and nothing that lasted. And that is ignoring the still-toxic community and it was worse back post-LotR-movies. When I found SWG and fandom LJ, I jumped in. Sure, I was— and remain— shy. But the community around B2MeM and SWG drew me in and made me feel welcome and accepted in a way I hadn’t found on the multifandom archives.

I still haven’t found that on AO3. Maybe it’s because I don’t often read Silmfic there (that was my MCU home, where I was a krill in the ocean), maybe it’s because I still find Tumblr difficult and often unfriendly so I haven’t really met people there. Maybe it’s because I truly haven’t done what I can to find a community there. But to me, the former’s just an archive and the latter is shouting into the void.

But SWG… I’ve never felt unwelcome. Even as a new-to-the-community writer, even when my sandbox was taken over by another fandom, even though I’m nowhere near as prolific as some people or even as I was years ago.

I post at AO3 because it’s 1) a back-up archive and 2) I know that’s where many— if not most— of the Silm fandom is now. But it’s not my fandom home. I’ve contemplated posting first to SWG and waiting a day before crossposting to make my point about that.

I know that small archives are not going to be everyone’s cups of tea. I know that people come to fandom for various things and have differing needs. I just want people to respect that across the board! Because one thing that royally pisses me off is people telling others that their work is pointless and meaningless.

[heartofoshun]

I agree with most of these points.

It makes me sad that I know there is an entire Tolkien fandom out there that I cannot figure out how to access through Tumblr or AO3, but I should stop moaning--in the hey day of the post--LotR film explosion it was nearly impossible to be noticed on ff net. People used to discuss what time of day was the best time to post to be noticed. When there were lots of Tolkien-only smaller archives, I actually used to post of my fics at one of two archives (usually HASA and ff.net--later the SWG) and then chose to post some at other sites depending upon whether any given story's content, tone, style, etc., fit that particular site's aesthetic.

I love AO3 for its tiny (rare lit) fandom presence. I would go there for those no matter what existed for the Tolkien fandom. But at the moment I post there as a backup with the ever-present hope I might get noticed!

[dawn_felagund]

I also struggle with the tagging and search. It may be nondemocratic of me, but I don't like user-generated tagging for precisely the reason of what it has become on AO3. I don't mind users being able to suggest tags, but I value an archive as more of a traditional library, where you can go wanting to find something very specific and are able to find it. I see a distinction between taxonomic fields (characters, tags) and more free-form fields (summary and notes) where much of what is being put in tags belongs.

I almost never tag because I cannot figure out what to include. People who think that AO3 is all open, welcoming arms to everyone might want to consider that not being able to figure out a basic system on the archive is in fact a huge barrier to entry and feeling like one fully belongs somewhere.

The search is dysfunctional. I discovered the other day that there are stories of mine on the HASA import that are not under my username. It took me three searches in order to pull up a list of stories that included my pen name (as in my stories were among a bunch of other stuff entirely unrelated to me). I don't see how I can search my pen name on a collection that I'm in and come up with nothing. So I believe the search is broken beyond it just being difficult/counterintuitive to use.

Incidentally, this is probably precisely why those stories are still unclaimed. I've been wondering for years why all of my HASA stories did not port over; I dug a little deeper this weekend (being on Spring Break vs in the middle of working on my Masters, as I was when HASA was imported) and found that, lo, I am in fact there! That is not a functional system and is in fact troubling that my work has been archived there for years, unknown to me.

(Now we will see how long it will take for the mod of that collection to respond to my email. If they ever do.)

Now, I do have to say this is one thing I wish SWG did have: an option in the story data for exactly what pairings are in the fic.

We can add that once we move to Drupal! In fact, we were trying for years to add this on eFiction, so much that if I reply to Rhapsody's comment up-thread with the words "pairing field," she will probably throw rotten produce at me. :D But neither she nor I are web developers and we couldn't make it work.

Anyway, once we start discussing new site features, please bring this up if I forget! On Drupal, it is a matter of a half-dozen keystrokes to add, and I agree that it would be valuable to have.

The funny thing about this debate is that it's really not new. There have always been people who exclusively use big multifandom archives, as you know. There were people "back when" who posted only to FFN and had their communities there and had no interest in Tolkien-specific archives. I keep saying--and am apparently not being heard, or not being believed--that I recognize this as a perfectly legit way to participate, and I'm not trying to change people who are happy from doing exactly what makes them happy. I know my site will not be a good fit for everyone. What the AO3 crowd doesn't seem to get is that AO3 is not a great fit for everyone either. It is not a neutral zone; it also has its own culture that is, in many ways, contrary to what the dominant "Tolkienfic culture" has been for 50+ years. When you love a place and are comfortable there, it is hard to see why others cannot be. It's hard to see why the world can't come with you and do what you do and love what you love. Left to my own devices, I don't see the SWG's flaws either. I love it there and am comfortable. But I know the flaws are there. People have told me about them over the years. I hear and believe them. (And am willing to help make the site better, if they want to help me with that, but also respect their right to say "not a good fit" and go wherever they find happiness.)

I don't know. I'm rambling and ranting a little at this point. I've just found this discuss so frustrating because I feel like I've been willing to listen and believe people but feel I am not being heard or believed about my own experiences, that I'm being constantly talked out of my own reality, to say nothing of the things I love. I don't know what I'm doing wrong in communicating here.

[keiliss]

Something very intolerant about suggesting there SHOULDN'T be room for small archives and the people who like using them. That must be someone who has no idea how anything other than Ao3 works and can't imagine an actual community of writers.

I'm again reminded of how lucky I was to fall into the LotR slash corner of the fandom back in 2004. We were a big, live-and-let-live crowd (usually, though there were some memorable fights), I posted on small archives, most of which no longer exist, avoided HASA after it was ridiculous to a friend, didn't bother much with ff.net because I came in just before they banned nc-17 fiction and on principle I wouldn't post there (which is a shame, because I don't upset easily and would have had fun with the flames). I use Ao3 of course, everything goes on there now -- it's not my home, I don't have an emotional attachment to it, but it's convenient and most of my readers seem to be there. I used to put the first copy on LJ because it was 'home', but now just post a link there and here, although I sometimes think it's not ideal. Then I pick either MPTT or SWG, whichever fits the timeline and rating of the fic, and load it on there too (eventually). Also, I still have my website so a copy gets on there -- no, I don't trust Ao3 to live forever either, too many other things haven't made it.

The one thing I do miss is having a fandom gathering of some kind, like an awards system, which for me was the antidote to fragmentation. Once a year the MEFAs would come around and I would see all those people from last year that I never ran into otherwise because we moved in different fandom circles.. There was a great sense of the true size of the Tolkienverse (as in hey, there's almost 700 fics this time!!) and the diversity. It wasn't perfect, but it gave a context that is missing for me on Ao3 (and I cannot force myself to keep trying to understand Tumblr, so if it's there, I won't find it).

[heartofoshun]

The one thing I do miss is having a fandom gathering of some kind, like an awards system, which for me was the antidote to fragmentation. Once a year the MEFAs would come around and I would see all those people from last year that I never ran into otherwise because we moved in different fandom circles.

I loved that too--a chance to see what others in the fandom were doing! I also loved the encouragement to read outside of my comfort zone. So sad, that it was basically those who wanted censorship and child-proofing of the MEFAs that broke it--also the years of accretion of evermore complicated rules and regulations. A cautionary tale of how pleasing everyone is virtually impossible.

People who do not know their history are bound to repeat it. Bullying and censorship were the banes of the Old Tolkien Fandom and Tumblr seems determined to repeat that pattern, simply using different prohibited categories. How difficult is it to see that censorship and prohibitions, enforced by bullying are never a good thing?

[la_samtyr]

I much prefer smaller archives like SWG and Faerie, though I am very poor at posting there. (As for Tumblr, I have enough going on that I have no interest in it. Honestly, I consider it to be a time sink.) I feel I have friends; I feel at home.

I never trusted ffnet because it was (maybe still is) too tolerant of bullying and there were 'clean-up' groups who would manage to delete fics for being "improper", usually without any advance warning. Still not sure how they did that but it didn't leave me with a good impression. And yet, there were a few really good, clever fics there that I was able to enjoy and yes, I saved those.

As for A03, I see it as something of a catch-all. Every once in awhile I manage to run across fics & authors that I used to know before I returned to Tolkien. One of my favorite features is that it is so easy to download fics! But for the most part, I haven't really found a good community as such there.

Hope this makes some kind of sense, as I am writing much later than usual.

[dawn_felagund]

The was essentially my experience of FFN as well. It was--still is!--clunky as hell to use and had its dubious ads (I remember always being assailed by one that inquired of me, "Wanna Hook a Hottie?" with a picture of a young man I would be arrested if I actually "hooked"!), but the reason I stopped posting there was the bullying. I cannot tolerate grown-ass adults telling children to kill themselves over fanfiction. The administration's complete unwillingness to clean up those kinds of interactions (but you are right! they were all over any reports of rule violations and didn't even need to read a story before chucking it or its author!) meant I no longer wanted my work on that site. I kept the stories I'd already posted out of respect for those who had taken the time to comment on them but, until a few months ago, didn't post anything new there. (And I posted those stories so I could--why else??--harvest the data! :D)

I'm honestly surprised they're still around. For all this conversation of fandom spaces that comes down to "everything ends!!1!" it would be FFN of all places that would be the cockroach of fansites. We'll be downloading fic directly into our brains, the Internet will be a wasteland, but FFN will still be scurrying around underfoot!

[alexcat]

Small archives like mine are dead. EVERYONE wanted more fandoms and a self upload so we work hundreds if not thousands of man hours and no one posts or goes there anymore. I've had to remove it from search engines because our host is crappy and keeps wanting to shut us down for too much traffic (spammers mostly). I hate to close but I'm not moving it again. I don't know squat about doing a website. I am thinking after one more year, I'll just use the domain for myself and let the rest go.

[dawn_felagund]

Oh Alex ... I'm so sorry. This breaks my heart to read.

If I can help in some way, please let me know? I know you don't want to move again, but I have room on the SWG server (which would maybe help with hosting issues?) and would be glad to share. I don't want to see any more Tolkien archives gone, especially one that's been around as long as OEAM.

[grundyscribbling]

I'm dreadfully behind today, so I haven't caught up on all the comments yet, but I wanted to say that for all its flaws, one virtue of AO3 is that it makes it easy to find stories in a new or unfamiliar fandom. When I tumbled sideways into Silmarillion fandom, I found SWG by word of mouth, and it didn't occur to me that I could post there until someone suggested it. (This is not an argument against the ecosystem of small archives so much as pointing out that it's not as simple for someone entering the fandom to navigate that ecosystem as it is to just type something in the AO3 search box and hit enter or go through their list of fandoms. And yes, you can Google, but Google doesn't tell you anything about the culture of the smaller websites, or how welcoming they may be. I felt ok coming to SWG once someone who had commented on my fics fairly consistently for a while suggested it. I don't know if I'd have done more than lurk otherwise.)

On the other hand, I completely agree that putting all fandom's collective eggs in one rather large basket seems like asking for trouble. Not only does a large multifandom site require more money to run and not respond to particular needs of individual fandoms, having one large site means having one large target for anyone looking to clip fandom's wings for whatever reason. (Surely I can't be the only one thinking of a certain corporate behemoth who holds the rights to multiple large fandoms as a sleeping dragon?)

[raiyana]

I actually followed you to the SWG (or at least a post of yours on tumblr), haha, so consider yourself a torch-passer ;)

[spiced_wine]

I absolutely and completely prefer smaller Tolkien-only archives. I use AO3 as back-up. I do get more comments on my fic there, but I don’t like it. Large archives remind me of howling, noisy, unfriendly malls, and I want a cosy little library to read and write in. Faerie is so friendly, so supportive and accepting. Loved LOTRFF.com before Mander nixed it.

I rarely read on Ao3 wouldn’t use if I was not worried about only using one site for my work. I am pleased it’s there, as it’s made by fans, unlike FF.net, but for me it’s simply somewhere to put another copy of my fic, not my fandom home. I have more of a ‘home’ just on the Faerie shout-box than on AO3, or indeed anywhere, including Tumblr.

For me, it’s all about feeling part of a group, and Faerie is that group. It goes beyond comments to Christmas cards, emails, gifts, etc, and genuine friendship.

[narya_flame]

<3 <3 <3

This. (Sorry, not a helpful or constructive response - but I absolutely agree.)

[(Anonymous)]

I hope you'll forgive a lurker commenting - I'm coming back to fandom, particularly Tolkien, after a long hiatus and have spent the past month or two creeping in the background trying to get the lay of the land. (Ok, and gorging on fic. Mostly gorging on fic =D). So I came across the discussion on your tumblr and followed you here - hope I'm not intruding.

~~

So this is really interesting to me, because my experience of fandom seems to be quite different from yours. I was very active in fandom from around 2000 to 2010 or so: my own fandom experience revolved around livejournal, and, to a much lesser extent, forums. I did read fic in small archives (or the sites of individual authors - ha, that seems to have completely gone away), but only when it was linked on LJ. It was too time-consuming to monitor a dozen different small archives (ok, I was in HP for a while, so also a dozen large archives, but.)

So, from a different perspective, as a non-fanfic author:

I wrote meta. I squeed too, and commented on fic, but as a non-fic writer, I never felt I was a part any archive's community. All my fandom friends I made on LJ. In fact, the idea of a community evolving on a fic archive is non-intuitive to me - how do people talk to each other without a forum or the like? I really, really don't mean to invalidate people's experiences - you and many of the other commenters here clearly find community on small fandom archives and that's fantastic and wonderful! But that's not my experience: personally, I never made any friends on such sites - and I did leave plenty of comments. As a non-author, I never felt I belonged in such places. It wasn't a problem since I already had a fandom home.

With smaller sites/archives/forums, it felt like I was coming into someone else's home. Which I didn't, and don't, have a problem with. But had LJ not been there, had there been only sites like SWG or Henneth-Annun, I would have been adrift. I wonder if fanartists feel the same way - and fans who just want to squee need a home too! It doesn't seem to me that small archives, etc, provides that home for the fans who don't write fic, even when such sites have a forum or mailing list.

Interacting on whatever the big platform of the moment is strikes me as more inclusive: I think a more atomized fandom creates larger barriers for entry, if for no other reason than sites are harder to find! In my experience - which granted, is almost a decade old - the smaller sites (forums, in my case) I tried to join were intimidating and also tended towards the cliquey. Cliques will develop anywhere, of course, but on the larger sites, it's much easier to avoid them (or find your own clique ><), simply because there are more people. I ended up leaving the forums that I tried to participate in because I could never break in - they weren't welcoming to newbies. I agree that it's best for fandom to not be a monoculture, but I don't think using the major platform du jour necessarily creates a monoculture - because the barriers for entry are lower, more people will join up and that alone allows many fandom subcultures to flourish. It also allows fans to *find* those other subcultures, because they're all on one site.

I really hope I don't come across as attacking SWG or your community - from what people have said it seems to be very welcoming! I have no experience with it - my engagement with Tolkien back in the day was linguistics-based: I read fic but never actively participated in the fandom aside from the TolkLang mailing list (also an intimidating place as a new fan, but it was the only place to talk about his languages). And it's incredibly admirable that you created and administer a community many enjoy. Personally though, when and I de-lurk and start actively engaging in fandom again, I don't think it's a community that I would be able to join or contribute to. I have some meta-ish thoughts in my head and when work hell ends I'll create a tumblr and write them out, but tbh, SWG gives me the impression of being a place for fic writers only and my thoughts on, say, Noldorin technology, will fit more easily on tumblr. Which is not at all to say that SWG shouldn't exist - it's not meant to cater to fans like me and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that! But it does mean that other places that aren't fic archives need to exist too. Even archives that have forums and the like built in aren't always welcoming to fans who aren't writers. And I think fandom should welcome all fans.

~~

Re: AO3 comments: unlike some in this thread, I *love* the way AO3 handles comments - as an LJ veteran, I'm all about threaded comments, and I enjoy reading comment threads where a real conversation springs up between a reader and the author. It's something I haven't seen in any other fanfic archive, and it facilitates great discussions that other readers can appreciate as well. I preferred having long discussions with a few people rather than many people leaving short comments that didn't invite further discussion, and I recall most of my author friends feeling the same way. But of course, ymmv - if writers prefer the commenting system on SWG, or ff.net, or wherever, then that is fantastic: what writers want from comments does strike me as more important than what readers want.

BTW, I saw some of your (very interesting!) posts on comment numbers across archives, and I'm curious if you've ever analyzed length and quality of comments across sites (though I can't imagine how you'd track them unless you had an army of (under-)grad slaves students to go through and analyze them by hand). Just from the very quick look I took, AO3 comments often seem to be longer and more detailed than the ones at SWG, or what I remember the ones on ff.net being.

~~

As for AO3 as an archive otherwise:

AO3 is a great aggregate site for the tiny, Yuletide-eligible fandoms. In that alone it provides a fantastic service.

The sorting and search functions do suck. In the Silm fandom, it's rather annoying to have to scroll through mis-tagged Hobbit fic, not to mention the two biggest pairings are not my cuppa: I would love to be able to hide and I suspect many people feel the same. I can't imagine how horrible it is in the megafandoms. But eh, every archive has its downsides and I've never seen an archive that was great at sorting - it's just not as big a problem in the smaller archives because there's less fic to scroll through. At least AO3 is better than ff.net?

Tags - I think the tagging culture on AO3 may have evolved from/together with hashtags, so for twitter/instagram users it's a normal way to communicate which probably partly explains why some authors tag the way they do (language evolution in action =D). Personally I like the flavorish tags - it gives additional information on what the fic will be like - but again ymmv. And even if sorting by tags is ... less than perfect, it does allow people to sort. You may have to scroll through plenty of fic that's not what you're looking for, but it's better than typing something in a search box.

Like some of the other commenters mention, god forbid Disney or another major media property owner go after them. Ofc, there's always moving the servers overseas, etc.

As for AO3 eventually becoming obsolete, *shrug*. Of course it will. I don't see that as a problem though? As you point out, fandom platforms change. Fandom endures. It is sad when fic disappears, but I don't think there's any way to prevent that. And I don't think AO3 will disappear without warning, which will give people time to move, just as apparently some (most?) of the Henneth-Annun fic was saved when the site closed. (And tbh, I learned my lesson long ago about saving fic that I love to my computer and trusty backup HDD. Archive.org doesn't archive everything :( )

And, selfishly, I prefer using the big archive to read fic - it's *easier* for me as a reader to have one site to check rather than having 10 different ones bookmarked.

~~

Finally, I am curious as to what features you want to add to SWG if/when you switch the backend to drupal. It seems like a very interesting project.

~~

Wow, sorry that got so verbose ><

-mummy.penguin

[dawn_felagund]

Ohmygoodness, I'm on vacation and haven't answered everyone here, but I'm jumping to your spot in the line to say, yes, you are most welcome to comment here and thank you. Really. For such a thoughtful comment that is so respectful of other perspectives, and for coming over from Tumblr. Thank you.

You are totally write that the SWG is primarily, at this point in time, a fiction writers' group. We are working to change that, but when I started it, my intent wasn't even to start an archive. It was to start a Silm-focused writers workshop and discussion group. Hence the group's name. I got talked into trying the archive bit by group members. :) Over the years, we've tried to open up to other fanworks, but we've been hobbled by our software, which is fiction archive software and very difficult to bridge to other open-source software. (We were on the verge of opening an art gallery some years ago, for example, but the prospect of bridging two open-source projects was daunting for a team of people who aren't web developers.) We did manage to tinker with an eFiction module to add podfic/audio. But usually we end up in the non-ideal situation of asking anyone posting anything other than writing or audio to do so on our DW, LJ, or Tumblr. Which does not create the impression that we value these fanworks as much as we do fiction.

I do hope the Drupal site will change this. I don't know how much you know about it, so forgive me if I'm explaining something you already know, but one can add unlimited modules onto a core software base. And ... there are modules for many of the things we have been wanting (and struggling) to add for years: image galleries, audio, video. It is also possible to create custom content types, so we can make space for fanworks like playlists ... or meta. ;) There are also modules with a more social function, like forums. Even things that we do now, like our newsletter and Reference Library, will be more streamlined and easier to handle from behind the scenes. (Right now I spend way too much time hand-coding things ...)

(It will also allow the SWG to have threaded comments. The people here criticizing AO3 comments are not, I don't think--unless I've missed something, which is totally possible as I'm operating off sketchy hotel wifi at the moment--criticizing threaded comments. In bringing this up in the past, it's been a popular idea, and it's something I really look forward to as we move away from eFiction because of the potential to truly discuss a story. I love AO3's commenting system.)

I agree that archives--even small archives--on their own do not create community. I think people who find community on the SWG do so less because of the archive on its own and more through branching out into social media where we also have a presence, or participating in the various events/challenges that we run throughout the year that create a sense of camaraderie. As it stands now, though, I do not think we do enough to foster interaction and community. I want to change that.

Anyway, as someone who creates primarily meta, if you have thoughts on what we can do to make the site friendlier to meta writers as we rebuild, please be in touch. Oshun mentioned up-thread wanting a section of the site for essays and meta aside from the fiction archive (where we do currently accept meta), and I think this would be something I'd really like to do. (We also have a peer-reviewed reference library right now and a monthly newsletter. If either is ever of interest, please let me know! :)

[hhimring]

I've come to like AO3 much more than I expected to (when I first signed up there, I saw it as a way to back up my fic and not much more). I'm not even bothered all that much by some things that seem to worry others, like the piped tagging (personally, I mean, I know it's much more inconvenient to others). I was more worried by that leadership kerfuffle a while ago, because it suggested to me that the OTW might be really quite vulnerable, in some ways. (And that doesn't even factor in legal trouble from without, which is definitely a worry, too.)
But all that is predicated on AO3 not being the only game in town. I think I would start being bothered a lot more by some features of AO3 if that were the case and if there weren't SWG, MPTT and Faerie as well.

[dawn_felagund]

I agree--I like AO3 as well for what it is. I don't get a lot of feedback there, but I enjoy what I do get and have gotten some comments from readers that are nothing short of amazing.

I was less bothered by the piped tags themselves--although I think they're atrocious to read--than I was by AO3's reaction to the Silm fandom essentially asking them to do something different. This bothered me because it seemed so blatant an example of not respecting a fandom's stated preference and history, especially since that decision impacted exactly no one outside the Silm fandom, which seemed contrary to what the OTW was set up to do.

But all that is predicated on AO3 not being the only game in town.

Yes. I think that's something that baffles me most in the opposition to small archives like the SWG that have a number of existing features that do not have an equivalent on AO3. The suggestion seems to be that those things should be just ... given up?

[jenni_blog]

Thank Eru for small archives. My favourites to hang out in are B2MEM and SWG, although I don't have time these days to hang out much at all.

I remember the pre-SWG days of our Yahoo Group and LJ when we had so much fun and that's also where I met most of the people who guided me so warmly through the Tolkien fandom.

I still feel like a neophyte sometimes. If I had time to spend researching the many archive sites I think I'd still prefer the small ones, where there is certainly an awesome sense of community. Whenever March rolls around I feel the warmth and excitement that comes from all the B2MEM participants and their works. It's a pleasure to give and receive comments and get the feedback.

I feel the SWG is the same - I wish I could participate in all of the monthly offerings, which are awesome - I just need to find the time.

I feel that people like you who run these fandom archives and care so deeply about them are one in a million. And as you pointed out it wasn't all a sacrifice for you either - because owning and managing the SWG has taught you so much and contributed greatly to your self-esteem.

I too, feel there is place for both large and small archives, but my preference is for the small ones.

[keiliss]

There's nothing quite like those old Yahoo and LJ days, is there?

[conuly]

Do you mind if I link to this?

[dawn_felagund]

Not at all!