Announcement: 852 prospect is under new management

[magician113]

As some of you may remember from last year, the 852 Prospect archivist was looking for someone else to manage 852 and came to an agreement with Archive of Our Own (aka AO3)to do the job.  AO3 is a massive, multi-fandom archive which can be found here

Comments

[snailbones]

YaY!

Congratulations, and thank you for taking on such a huge job - I can't imagine it could be in better hands than yours.

[magician113]

Thanks sweetie. I don't think it will be all that huge a job, since the Open Door people automated the move and make it really easy to understand going forward. I'm just so happy that we don't have to worry that 852 will one day disappear. Having it in the hands of a group of dedicated fans is so great. Yay!!!

[agt_spooky]

Thanks so much for your work with this, Merlin. I received my invite yesterday and was thrilled to see all my stories transferred over nearly flawlessly (my two part story only had the first chapter). I love being able to edit them with the very easy interface. I also unlocked all of them so more folks could read them.

All in all I'm very happy with my new home at AO3!

Barb (AgtSpooky at AO3)

[magician113]

Barb;

When I first came to TS, your stories were among the first I read and you have been such a helpful resource and contributor to our lovely fandom. Thank you for such a ringing endorsement. \0/\0/

[agt_spooky]

My pleasure! I know there was so much negativity when this was first announced many months ago and I wanted to reserve judgement until the move actually happened. Now that it has, I honestly don't understand why so many people were against this. AO3 is actually much easier to use as a writer and as reader than 852 was.

[vamysteryfan]

Thanks so much for stepping up to this! Itcouldn't be in betterhands. I'm so happy we won't be losing all these wonderful stories.

[magician113]

Thank you so much for the kind comment. I'm also so happy that we'll have them as well, and that they found a cool way to keep them together. Brava/bravo to all those wonderful people at OTW/Open Door/AO3.

[caarianna]

I don't know if you guys ever get enough thanks for the terrific work you're doing -- and taking on the 852 Archivist role? Wow, huge job! I've been amazed at some of the negative comments I've seen about 'having to register'. Okay, so there's some delay but no one's refused. How hard is it to register so you can actually be idenfied as someone leaving kudos or comments, if moved to do so. Anyway, I'm just so incredibly grateful to all of you for protecting our collective work and keeping it available for everyone. When I think about how many fandoms the team safeguards and houses I'm ... well, gobsmacked is the only adequate term that comes to mind! You guys are wonderful.

[magician113]

Thanks so much for your comments. You are always so positive and supporting! I'll pass along your good wishes and comments to the Open Door staff, since they are the ones who made this thing happen.

Cheers, dearie!

[garettgal]

Thanks for the heads up.

I do not like the elitist idea of having to join a group to read stories that were freely available before and this has always been something that bugs me about AO3.

However as I recently commented in another post on this very subject I am glad that the stories are being preserved. I am happier still to realise that you will be the archivist for the newly relocated stories. That at least is something to celebrate.

[magician113]

Thank you for the vote of support. That means a lot to me!

As to whether requiring a membership is elitist, I'm not sure how to answer. I know they give the memberships out freely--you don't have to pay dues, etc. It sounds as if, because they are in their baby stage, that they don't want to tip over the servers, so they control how many people they add. I think it's probably more important at times like these when a whole new slew of fans discover the site that it doesn't crash for everyone. I do know that last year they added more servers and temporarily turned off some features that were slowing things down in order to accommodate their readership.

Dreamwidth does the same thing--in fact, I feel it was more restrictive because only a member could give you an invite and each member was only given one or two at a time. Now, it's pretty easy to get a DW invite, but I think you still need one. I also think, although it's before my time, that LJ was the same, starting out. Yahoo groups, which pre-date all of this have

[garettgal]

Thank you for the very nice (and detailed) reply.

I do of course agree absolutely that authors have the right to do as they wish with their stories. It is nice to see so many TS authors taking it in their stride and being willing to share their work.

I don't wish to come across as some kind of "moaning Minnie" so I do appreciate you taking the time to respond.

I will make sure that my misgivings do not get in the way of my enjoyment as I would not want to miss out on being able to read the wonderful stories both old and new, and will use the link you kindly provided to register my interest.

Thank you again for all you do.

[magician113]

It's my pleasure to do it for such a wonderful fandom. Cheers.