Leaderboard

I’ll disagree to the auto-fill disclaimer too. Simply because the authors should THINK about it, that it’s fanfiction (or not), and what the copyright position is in their work. (Not sure if the field enforces a minimum length, but it ought to… say, at least 16 characters?) Second, I concur some distinction on the tags would be nice, whether the tag is considered more of a warning (ie scat CYA) vs an advertisement (ie exhibition tag due to persistent nudity). Custom tags would be nice, from an author’s POV. However, it’s also a bit frustrating on AO3 to know if I’ve got *EVERY* applicable tag for my story, so I clicked the “author chooses not to use tags” and proceeded to tag the heck out of it, along with “maybe I missed some?”. Databases – combining them might be advantageous, along with a single (new) URL; though you’d have to preserve old URLs for a while, if not forever. If combined, then it’s resolve the category issue for crossovers, letting them show up under both, without having duplicates in the database. Other improvements could also be had, but even switching to another software (commercial or otherwise) requires having people & time to execute it. Volunteering?

I actually am following what you’re saying. The only and only copy of the story cannot be found in Anime, Books, AND Celebrity as your scenario states. It can be found in exactly ONE of those subdomains/discrete databases. We do not allow a story to be posted in three subdomains, which is what would have to happen to make your scenario work. I’ll also point out that, due to the sheer volume of content, Harry Potter has its own subdomain, and does not get included in Books. Creating all those input lists is also a great deal of work, and would require continuous updating as new fandoms emerge, new celebrities become of interest, and new pairings catch the attention of authors. And yes, pairings are of paramount importance in certain fandoms, based on the flame wars that can erupt if a story appears in the wrong pairing category. And I will continue to beg to differ on the validity of a single disclaimer format. Fandom-based stories require a far different disclaimer than Original works, which should have something akin to what you see at the beginning of a published novel. Original works CAN be written for profit, do NOT require and copyright demurral, and must clearly state that they are a work of fiction, whereas a fandom-based work must clearly state that the author does not own the copyright of the fandom, and therefore cannot make any profit from the work. Celebrity fiction must clearly state that the work is fiction, that the author does not KNOW the celebrity or celebrities, who must be named in the disclaimer, and that no profit is made. Stories based on titles in the public domain must use the name of the book in the disclaimer, but otherwise use the same disclaimer as Original fiction. There is no one-size-fits-all disclaimer for all of AFF. I don’t have enough staff to preview stories before they are posted. So, in essence, under the scenario you’ve proposed, stories will appear based on tags that have to be continuously moderated to answer calls for new fandoms, in subdomains multiple times since I am assuming the Franchise tag(s) would replace the existing choice of subdomain and subcategory, and we still have to review the story after it’s published for content tags, which are of more importance to me than the disclaimer, to be honest. The author will get sued for copyright infringement. I get the hysterical emails from readers who are blindsided by untagged content that they would have preferred not to encounter. As a personal illustration, I do not read for pleasure stories tagged with Minor1, Scat, WS, FF, or ABDL. As a moderator, I am required to review those stories, but when I read for my own enjoyment, I will skip anything with those tags. I also avoid certain subdomains altogether, either because I have no interest in the fandom or, in the case of Celebrity Fiction, I find the entire genre unpleasant since I tend to think about the families and friends of the real persons being depicted, and it quite puts me off. (My apologies to the authors who write for Celebrity, but I’ve never been reticent about my distaste for real person fiction.) We would need to rewrite the entire code, or purchase a prewritten package to set up what you’re suggesting, and I don’t see that happening in the near future, if ever. Would I like to work with a more up to date archive? Absolutely. I’d be lying if I said things were perfect. But I’m not capable of writing the code we would need, and I don’t have the wherewithal to purchase it for the site as a donation. Trust me, if I could buy a package, I would. It would be lovely to have the ability to have the updates written for us as the software evolves. I do think, despite our limitations, we are still a viable site. All things considered, we’re nearly 20 years old, which is quite an achievement for a fiction archive.

Sure we do, same reason we used to need hangings to be done in front of the courthouse in the public square… “deterrence”

I love the idea of franchise tags, but I’m pretty sure we wouldn’t be able to implement those due to the physical structure of the archive. It’s actually 23 separate databases. Each subdomain is a unique entity. When I’m moderating in a subdomain, I can (and do) move stories to the correct subcategory. I’m not able to move stories from one subdomain to another. We also have a clear rule about not allowing authors to crosspost stories in multiple subdomains, unless the crosspost is a translation. That rule was implemented to conserve bandwidth. We do actually have a separate subdomain for non-English stories, and that tends to eliminate the issue of English speakers being confronted by stories in another language, and vice versa. If you want stories in another language, we have subcategories there for French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and the catch-all Misc subcategory. There are further divisions within those subcategories for the more popular fandoms as well as for original works. Disclaimers will always be an issue, I fear. We have certain subdomains and subcategories with unique disclaimer requirements. Original works require a much different disclaimer than a fan fiction would, and the disclaimer will also differ for original works of non-fiction. Fan fiction involving celebrities is another unique circumstance, as is fan fiction based on titles in the public domain. There really is no single template that would cover every situation. Now, if we were able to apply the franchise tags concept to the individual databases, that might help, but in the case of the Celebrity subdomain, it would require adding a separate database to cover the names of every possible famous person who might conceivably generate a story. That’s a great deal more bandwidth that would be expended, as opposed to saved, and would require constant tag wrangling as celebrities under 18 came of age (we do not ever allow real-person fiction involving anyone under 18), or new bands/wrestlers/actors/Youtube personalities became popular. I fear we’ll have to agree to disagree about the Hall of Shame. We don’t expect users to check there all the time to see if their stories were stolen. Far from it, actually. AFF believes fan fiction authors, who write for nothing more than reviews and the joy of writing, deserve some advocacy, much like any published author whose agent, publisher, and lawyer would be quick to pursue anyone plagiarizing the author. What we want is to make public the pen names of the plagiarists. If every fiction archive were to maintain a list of verified plagiarists, it would be far easier to remove stolen works, especially across platforms. And believe me, we do verify any alleged plagiarism before we act. Plagiarism is a serious offense in any form in which it occurs.

Publicly shaming plagiarism isn’t needed it just feels really good.

Hi, Let me start by thanking you for a very thoughtful post. You’ve put a good bit of time into this, and it’s appreciated. I’m not a coder, so I can’t respond to the Prettier and Easier suggestions, although I will admit that I miss the left side navigation bar, which was sacrificed in favor of making the site easier for mobile device users. I’m an unrepentant PC user, and don’t read or write on my phone, so the mobile-user adaptations did little for me. I’m also hugely fond of dark mode options myself, but again, since I’m not a coder, I have no idea how easily that could be implemented. I do know our site code is largely proprietary, and that does make certain options available on commercial packages harder to implement. I am, however, qualified to comment on the Quality Control issues as the lead Archive Moderator. We are governed, in our moderation, by the owner’s decisions as to what is or is not allowed. Sadly, the wall-of-text submissions fall under the owner’s no-censorship guidelines for the staff, so as much as I’d love to reject those, I’m not able to. The same applies to story titles. We’re not permitted to exercise quality control on those, either, although I sigh deeply every time I see a title that’s nothing more than a sentence. I’m a slave to my own prejudices, I’m sure, but titles have an accepted format in my ever so humble opinion, which includes capital letters for more than the first word. Tags and disclaimers are something we do strive to enforce. Every new story and update is reviewed, and we require tags for content as defined in our Story Codes list. If tags aren’t included as needed, we will warn the author via email about the missing tags, hide the story if it’s not corrected within the stated time period, and eventually, if the tags still aren’t added, we do delete the story. The same applies to disclaimers, the most common Terms of Service violation. We leave a review board message, email the author upon hiding the story, and we will indeed delete a story that doesn’t have a proper disclaimer. I find some authors don’t even bother to put a story in the proper subcategory, so an auto-generated disclaimer function would still not be a perfect solution. On a personal level, I don’t mind a slightly creative disclaimer, but I appreciate your call for a consistent format. It would certainly make moderating that area easier. The Hall of Shame was established to highlight not bad content, but to showcase people who have outright plagiarized stories for the most part. We do think those plagiarists need to be called out, if only to alert authors whose stories might have been stolen, and who were unaware of the theft of their intellectual property. It’s not meant to be a bullying tactic. We are one of the only fiction archives in my experience to actually take action when we are alerted to an instance of plagiarism. We have a zero tolerance policy for theft. What we do not so, however, is publicly call out the many people who troll other authors, who flame other members, or who behave in a manner generally unbecoming. Those discussions take place well behind the scenes, as is appropriate. I’m always very happy when someone takes the time to let us know what can be made better when it comes to AFF. I’ve been moderating here for over ten years now, so I can safely say I love this site, and think of it as my virtual family. I’d love to see some of the changes you’ve outlined be implemented, in all honesty. So again, thank you for a very well written post, and for taking the time to let us know what you think about AFF.