sholio: sun on winter trees (Default)
Sholio ([personal profile] sholio) wrote2008-03-26 07:54 pm
Entry tags:

... WHAT.

Hat tip from [livejournal.com profile] tipper_green -- ff.net (as of March 22nd) has apparently removed all of the "---" and other special characters that people (including me) used to use for scene breaks. (I noticed that my "<hr>" scene breaks are still in there, though.)

Which means that right now, we look like idiots because our stories are just giant blocks of text without transitions between scenes. And those of us who write long stories, or a lot of stories, are in the worst boat ...I'm not sure if it's even worth going back to edit stories that I wrote 6 and 7 years ago, but the alternative is leaving them up in "giant block of text" format.

Grrrrrrrrr.
naye: A cartoon of a woman with red hair and glasses in front of a progressive pride flag. (morning light (sga))

[personal profile] naye 2008-03-27 08:04 am (UTC)(link)
Well, in a way, that really is sad, because ff.net was so good when it first started. At the same time, mailing lists were awesome back in the day when people were coming in from analog fandom, and I remember a time when everyone had a Geocities page, and Geocities was awesome.

Things change. On the internet, they change very fast. Some services manage to get better (or at least not get any worse) - others fail. Hard and fast or slow and over time... With a bit of luck, this process leads to better services being developed, places that are built so solidly that they will last longer than their predecessors, and suck less.

I haven't been following exactly what the OTW are doing, and I'm not involved in any of their projects, but this sort of thing makes me really excited about their proposed archive. Enough that I'll be there to sign up for it on day one! (To nab my username, if nothing else.) I don't think it'll be the archive to end all archives, or that it will be perfect or anything like that. But looking back at the evolution of the internet in general and fandom in particular, I think it will be better. And while that might not be a very cheering thought now that you're faced with having to look like an idiot to your readers because FF.net have decided dashes are a tool of evil... Well. It'll be interesting to see what happens this summer?

(Also, I find your tag for this post to be ridiculously funny!)
naye: A cartoon of a woman with red hair and glasses in front of a progressive pride flag. (atlantis - laughing with you)

[personal profile] naye 2008-03-27 08:38 am (UTC)(link)
...oh, that. Sorry. Clicked on the link, and now I'm trying very hard to clear my head of the batshit insane that's running rampant in that post and its comments. (Eww, insane. It's sticky, I swear! It's like trying to get your hands unsticky after you've gotten sap all over them, except it doesn't smell as good.)

I think the fact that I'm not up to date on anything the OTW are saying, or what people are saying about the OTW is making it easier to be all hopeful. It's like with spoilers! XD No expectations - no disappointment. (Hey, it makes sense to me!)

There will never be a centralized Fandom Archive. It doesn't work that way. Fandom doesn't - people don't. That's why we've got individual LJs and webpages and whatnot, even with FF.net and official forums and everything else that's been developed for fans, if not always by fans. (Official forums. I've never actually participated in one of those!)

Hee. My Geocities page is long, long gone. I almost wish I'd kept it around, just so that I could see what passed for good webdesign back then. On the other hand... it was home to the fic I'm glad has been erased from existence, and I used Comic Sans for it. *shudder* I don't know what I was thinking. About the fic or the font!

You're not going to link to yours, are you? *g*