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Date Posted: 17:09:13 09/15/02 Sun
Author: Lara
Subject: Re: For the love of it - one reader's view
In reply to: andrewsfan 's message, "For the love of it - one reader's view" on 13:08:14 09/15/02 Sun

When I "left" writing Xena fanfic, repositories had been created. So I bequeathed my XWP fic to one.

There isn't such a place in the Voyager-verse (yet, though that seems to be the direction this thread is heading), so an author leaves and since a site, even a small free one, takes effort and maintenance, they close it down. A repository is a major monetary (and time) undertaking; no less than a coalition of fans -- certainly never just one fan -- could maintain such a site for long. Webrings suffice for a time... linking small, free site space willing to house fic along certain themes... But those die away. Creating a repository, and publicizing it throughout the fandom, seems to preserve the movement.

It is a testament to the strength of the Xena fandom that they thought about this question early and a group got together and have dedicated themselves to the preservation of XWP fic.

The Royal Academy of Bards (www.academyofbards.org) contains ALL willingly submitted XWP fic, general, alternative, uber, poetry. It even maintains artwork stores, has an authors' "playplace" called The Sandbox, where themes in the fanfic are discussed among chosen authors.

It's been a year since Xena went off the air in the US, and three years since the inception of the Bard Academy. Longevity this isn't, but it was formed with the hopes of still being around in 20 years.

If "we" (determining who "we" comprises later) have been as vastly impacted by Voyager, do we have a vision of what we'd want to preserve? Do we just preserve J/7... or include J/T, T/7, only same sex, only mature stories? Do we have an open submission policy, or a board of selectors?

There was/is "Infinity Complex" but the organizer didn't always ask permission to archive stories, and got a bad rep among the writer population. I was cautioned when one of my stories showed up there that I might want to write and tell them to take it down, linking only.

I'd rather, if we started an anthology site, that we be as public as possible, pass the word, take all the precautions, get permission. And that still leaves the question of WHAT to preserve, as I've begun to list above.

Well, that was a little more than my two cents... Call it a nickel's worth of input,

--Lara

PS...
I have no talent for webmastering, but I'd be willing to be a member of the board of selectors/editors, so that what we preserve really is good and representative of what we'd want people to remember about "Voyager".

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Replies:

[> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: For the love of it - one reader's view -- andrewsfan, 22:25:37 09/15/02 Sun


Lara, that's interesting. I was thinking about how the fandom could preserve the stories. I hadn't thought about how the stories could be used to preserve and perpetuate the fandom.

Just for the sake of conversation here - If an archive existed for J/7 only what should the criteria be for stories to qualify for possible archiving. (I'm asking everyone.)

With regard to the closing of individual sites -

For those who do run websites on "free space" - if you decide to close up shop, is it that hard to just leave the stories up and say that the site has closed. Once you close it, what is there to maintain? Eventually, it may disappear but until then the stories are available. Any techie types who can explain the logistics of abandoned websites.

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[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: For the love of it - one reader's view -- Lara, 06:05:11 09/16/02 Mon

In the beginning... abandoned sites remained for quite some time, but if a person concludes service, changes their web address, ISP, etc, these days, then a lot of those free site spaces are "swept" within a month automatically by the host company's computer program.

I had space on AOL when I was a member there several years ago. My site was still up a year later, but AOL has now cracked down so much that a member's webspace is deleted within three weeks of the end of subscription.

Of the public webspace companies: Yahoo deletes as soon as you delete your email address. Geocities is now a member of the Yahoo family, so same goes. Tripod I'm not certain has gotten quite so fanatical.

Lara

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[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: For the love of it - one reader's view -- Lara, 19:23:18 09/20/02 Fri

AF wrote:
>>Just for the sake of conversation here - If an archive existed for J/7 only what should the criteria be for stories to qualify for possible archiving. (I'm asking everyone.) <<

The criteria should be anyone who wants to submit to the "library" -- if they are willing to submit to some simple editing. I'd suggest that the site create a categorization scheme and edit then post by category.

That there be a search engine for searching by keywords and author. That way people who frequently post to lists "I seem to remember a story that had X and Y and Z" would have a way to search the database for that story they can't remember.

PS - OBB, I *really* like being able to see the whole thread at once. My Palm even likes it as I can grab a whole thread and read it at my leisure away from the computer. Just like a good J/7 story. *bg*

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