Thursday 25 November 2010

Forums Purged on FanFiciton.Net

FanFiction.Net purged all forums on 25th November, 2010.

All unpinned forum threads that nobody posted in for at least 9 months have been deleted. The filter was moving up by forum creation date.

Despite the front page announcement made on the same day being: "To reduce clutter in many of the larger forums, we will begin to clear out forum threads with last posting date of older than 6 months. Pinned threads are excluded from the periodic purge." FFN decimated all forums with the last posting date over 9 months ago.

EDIT: On 26th November, 2010, FanFiction.Net changed the announcement to 9 months, solving the mystery why February 25 was the oldest date not deleted.

The result is that all historic value is lost, any useful guides, fun conversations and fandom information are lost. The process was automated, and it happened while America was sleeping (FFN is registered in America). Over a few hours from 7 AM GMT till 2 PM GMT forums made in 2005 and 2006 were purged, leaving their subscribers hanging. In fact, nobody will find out what happened till they wake up.

Why FFN decided to cull forums instead of poking trollfics is beyond me. If you want to save resources, reduce the amount of memory wasted by your servers, pay more attention to plagiarists, real-person fics and other things that can get you sued. What did forums have to go first is beyond me. Most importantly, why did they have to go overnight?

It's a sad day, very sad. With Fan History's closure just two days ago, the future of fan fiction does not look bright.

Edit of December 31st, 2010: FFN approved its claims on the purge being periodical, and did it again on Christmas Day.

Tuesday 23 November 2010

Fan History

Fan History has long been a favourite wiki of mine. As the biggest non-Wikimedia project that managed to stay alive and grow over time, it was a valuable source of fandom information. Without it, I would have been unable to meet the people I've met and get to the source, the very ones responsible for making fan fiction a world-wide phenomenon.

I have a few drafts on this blog, waiting to be published, but this one is more important now that I think of it. Thing is, today Fan History is closing to public edits. For a wiki, this is pretty much a death sentence. Unless you get special permission from the admin, you won't be able to edit anything, with or without an account. I really love the site and hope the people running it somehow find time and motivation to make things as they used to one day. The hope is not a reasonable one because the site is up to change owners. Judging by closure of other fandom resources, I can only assume the concept of textual fan fiction is getting old.

Though, as long as some people don't go demanding fanfics to become a profitable and legal business, I'm sure sites like fanfiction.net will remain open. When the lawyers come, you might as well find a different hobby.

http://www.fanhistory.com/wiki/Main_Page

Have a nice, abuse-free day.