Thank you for the link to the Fanlore listing. I guess I'll have to go through them at some point and see how many I need to add to my Wayback list (or figure out if I even want to bother).
Stories of Arda being the only other active archives scares me as well; it has at least one known tech weakness, though I don't know if it's been fixed (spammers can access the backend enough to edit summaries to include links). I suspect it will be around for a while longer, if only because of it standing firm against the bulk of fic the owner disapproves of. I remain firm in thinking that the fandom should have a space like SOA, if only so people can self-select. Though it would be more useful as a self-select if it was open to new writers.
But it is worth thinking about what we lose when most of our fanworks exist on AO3 and whether we are content to let there be just two active Tolkien-specific archives out there‐or whether the next hypothetical wave of archive-building should restore our community archives.
I think most people don't want to bother. There's even people wishing AO3 gets a recommendation algorithm because actively searching for fics is too much work. It leads into the phrasing/attitude I well and truly despise: the whole "we write content to be consumed" a lot of people use. It feels like fic is free entertainment to be used and tossed aside without much community-building.
I kind-of want a chart just of the Tolkien-specific archives and how many of them are active, inactive, on AO3, or simply gone so we can really see in a glance just how has been lost. But that's something I can play with on my own. Maybe I'll do it based on my archive listings, just for my own edification. I don't know if it's something you're going to cover.
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rosecarmine
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Date: 2022-10-09 10:31 pm (UTC)Stories of Arda being the only other active archives scares me as well; it has at least one known tech weakness, though I don't know if it's been fixed (spammers can access the backend enough to edit summaries to include links). I suspect it will be around for a while longer, if only because of it standing firm against the bulk of fic the owner disapproves of. I remain firm in thinking that the fandom should have a space like SOA, if only so people can self-select. Though it would be more useful as a self-select if it was open to new writers.
But it is worth thinking about what we lose when most of our fanworks exist on AO3 and whether we are content to let there be just two active Tolkien-specific archives out there‐or whether the next hypothetical wave of archive-building should restore our community archives.
I think most people don't want to bother. There's even people wishing AO3 gets a recommendation algorithm because actively searching for fics is too much work. It leads into the phrasing/attitude I well and truly despise: the whole "we write content to be consumed" a lot of people use. It feels like fic is free entertainment to be used and tossed aside without much community-building.
I kind-of want a chart just of the Tolkien-specific archives and how many of them are active, inactive, on AO3, or simply gone so we can really see in a glance just how has been lost. But that's something I can play with on my own. Maybe I'll do it based on my archive listings, just for my own edification. I don't know if it's something you're going to cover.