FanLib Fandom Fakery

[stewardess]

Fandoms at FanLib are listed in order of "popularity," meaning fandoms represented by the most fanfiction appear first.

Browsing the fandoms this morning, I noticed something very interesting has happened.

As recently as July, only the first and second pages of fandoms (between 75 and 150 fandoms) had stories. There were about two thousand

Comments

[stewardess]

They must have a lot of time on their hands. :D

[elfwreck]

Is there any way to know how many *fics* are on the site, rather than adding up how many stories are tagged in each category? IIRC, ff.net avoids this problem by not allowing crossover listings.

Generic weirdness: I just logged in, and it looks like my account there may have been hacked. My list of stories I've rated includes several rated on June 05 (I don't think I was there), and gave 3-4 stars to stories in several fandoms I'm completely unfamiliar with. Including a haiku.

I fixed the ratings (which mostly means I dropped them by two stars each); I'm not sure I'll do anything else.

I've been considering commenting on fics, but since finding out that they allow authors to remove comments they don't like, it's probably not worth it.

[stewardess]

I wondered that myself: how are they counting the "number" of fics? Does listing a story in multiple fandoms artificially bump up the total? It would if they are adding up the total number of fics for each fandom. I'm not sure how to find out.

[jedinic]

Let us know what you find out!

[quicksilvereyes]

That is so low. Just when you think they can't sink any further... They need to just give up. Also, the other day and just now, I went over there to delete my account, but I couldn't figure out how to do that. It seems like you can't delete them, just abandon them. O.o

[stewardess]

You know what is weird? I am sure I deleted my account, but it's there! WTF?

[msilverstar]

Oh that's interesting. Didn't they clarify their TOS about that?

[stewardess]

I will try removing it today.

[becky_black]

To pad fandom representation, FanLib volunteers or employees apparently have examined each story and re-categorized it in as many fandoms as possible.
My god, I hope they got paid a lot of money for that! Imagine, those fics that you would instantly back button they had to check in detail.

This is lower than a snake's belly.

[stewardess]

It may have been done by volunteers, sadly, who were paid nothing. Heck, there even could have been a plea to the authors to do it, some balderdash about "improve your search results!"