Directory of Fanfic Archives

This is the suggestions post while I get everything up and running -- if you spot any major holes or issues before I do, please let me know; I'd appreciate it very much.


CONTENT AND MECHANICS SO FAR:

What this community is for:
- Indexing and promoting little-known fic archives, personal fic archives, and other fanwork directories.

What this community is NOT for:
- Promoting individual users on larger fic sites.
- Promoting individual users on platforms where you can directly share other people's content via retweeting/reblogging (e.g. tumblr, twitter, mastodon, etc)
- Promoting any site where content is/can be paywalled (e.g. patreon).
- Promoting archives where content is inaccessible without an account or invite.
- Promoting personal blogs, even if they're fandom-related. Archives must be fic-only and property of the poster.
- Promoting individual rec lists.
- Promoting live action porn, traditionally or self-published writing, art -- anything that's not a fic archive.

Grey areas:
- I'm unfamiliar with forum-based fanfic communities, but might be willing to index those if someone could explain them to me
- Original work is included under the condition that it's free to access in full on the archive, and not a single user on a bigger platform as outlined by the rules.
- If there's an easily-found corner of an unexpected site that's posting concentrated/archive amounts of fic, I can put those down as honorary mentions.

(If you know of directories/promotion comms for any of the disallowed content, let me know and I'll link them here.)



Tagging and categorizing:

Tags so far are divided into fandoms categories, content rating, and posting access.

For posting access, I was going to divide it into:
- personal archive (one person posts only)
- private archive (posting is invitation-only)
- moderated posting (posting is submission-based)
- public posting (anyone is free to post).

For content rating, I was going to divide it into:
- SFW (no porn or gore or anything you'd be in trouble for looking at during work)
- NSFW content (warned) (there may be porn or gore but there'll be an 'agree to view adult work' type screen)
- NSFW content (no warning) (there may be porn or gore and you won't be stopped before accessing it).

I'm unsure about the fandom categories, but that seems like it'd give some semblance of organization without making a new tag for every individual fandom, which... while I don't really expect this to take off so hard it'll hit DW's limit, I would prefer to have a system that doesn't run the risk of it. Also, new tags for everything sounds exhausting.

The categories would be how the index of promotion posts was organized, with individual fandoms listed under each category, and the archives under each fandom, according to the fandoms they list in their promo post. Everything in one post until individual sections grow too big to be contained and then get to move to their own post.

Under each fandom, archives would be separated between those with 5+ fics for the fandom, and those with less than 5. If the archive has so many fandoms it would be ridiculous to try to list it everywhere (especially if anyone with an account can post), there will be a section for 'multifandom'.

This is the list of all the categories I can moderately remember from my time in exchanges and browsing AO3 -- if you have corrections, additions or anything, please let me know! Also if anyone could explain MCYT canons/categorizations, I'd super appreciate it.

- Anime, Manga, Light Novels, Jdramas
- Books
- Cartoons
- Cnovels and Cdramas*
- Comics
- Korean Webtoons, Manhua, and Kdramas**
- Kpop***
- Live Action TV
- Minecraft Youtube****
- Roleplay Fandoms (MCYT, TTRPG podcasts, etc)
- Movies
- Musicals and Theater
- Podcasts
- RPF
- Video Games
- Webcomics
- Multimedia (things that would fit in more than one category)
- Multifandom (divided between personal/private archives and moderated/public archives)
- Original Work
- Recursive Fic (fic of other people's fics)
- Other

*Does it make sense to group these two? I grouped the J-media the way I did because ime most franchises will have at least two of the four, and I know at least a couple of cnovels got turned into dramas.

**Same question as the first note.

***Yes, I know K-Pop is RPF, it's just unbelievably massive. If there are other subsets of RPF I should separate out, let me know.

****Help. 😭

Links to other directories would go in a separate post (possibly in the rules post). No promo posts for those, just drop a link and a short description into the comments of that post and I'll add it.


This was the format I was going to get people to use for promo posts. No images allowed. Queue would be moderated and small html fails would be fixed before posting.

ONLY replace and remove the stuff inside the square brackets ("[ ]"). The rest is important lol.

<center><h1>[Archive Title]</h1></center> <center><h3><a href="[URL of your archive]">LINK</a></h3></center> <p><center>[Personal/Private/Moderated/Public] Archive, [SFW/NSFW content (warned)/NSFW content (no warning)]</center><p> </p> <p><b>Fandoms:</b> [List ALL fandoms you'd like people to know it has and BOLD all the fandoms which have more than 5 works posted, or is the only fandom that has been posted. This will decide where you're listed on the index page. IF THE ARCHIVE IS TOO LARGE and it would be ridiculous to list them all, especially if it has public posting access, call it multifandom or name the theme.]</p> <p><b>Additional Notes:</b> [This is where you put archive mirrors, submission criteria, ship focuses, interaction rules, other places of contact, notices, thoughts, reasoning, anything. Mention how many fics there are for each fandom, or what kinds of original works feature, or if there's a solid amount of one ship or gen genre content, or if it contains a bit of everything.]</p>



So that was a whole lot of words. If any of this seems like it could be simplified or clarified or needs tweaking or would crash and burn pretty quick or there are big holes, let me know.