Let's say Fanfiction.net crashes and is rebooted, with all it's millions (and millions) of fanfics erased from the database. No incredibly massive Harry Potter fanfiction repository, no massive manga/anime writing locale, etc...

What would your response be?

 

Pointless discussion aside...

Jubilation.

All the crap filler would be gone and 99.99% of the good stuff would be back up in days due to request from readers to authors (I'm assuming the authors have it saved to their computers- if not.. well that's just silly).

In fact, why don't we do that?

 

...hmmm.

Well, I have all of my fics backed up in triplicate on three external hard drives and posted on at least two other sites, so I'd be most pissed at my ~600,000 hits on all of my fics going out the window. And I have all of the fics that I enjoy reading downloaded elsewhere, so I'm otherwise good on this front.

But on the other hand, while this would really, REALLY suck in terms of losing some old classics and for all us writers losing some of our statistics we worked our asses off for, I really can't say this would be that terrible of a thing, tbh. I mean, let's consider the upsides of this:

1. Millions of shitty slash and all around garbage fics will be purged, and hundreds of thousands of fangirls will cry sweet, sweet tears.

2. It allows the old pros and more experienced writers - the ones who backed up their fics and more importantly, likely still care about the fandom they're writing in - to gain fresh publicity when they repost. And since a visible plurality of HP writers today are from DLP... I can't see this being a bad thing. Hell, a repost might give some authors pause for thought as they go back over their old work, perhaps even polishing off old errors when they come back. Joe might be able to steer the Hero trilogy back on track, Pers might be able to keep Dagger & Rose from going off the rails... there are genuine chances for good things to happen here.

3. Perfect Lionheart and lesswrong will probably commit seppuku (think I spelt that right) as they watch all the work of their fanbases vanish to ash.

So yeah, while I wouldn't want it to happen because, let's face it, I worked hard to get ~600,000 views, I objectively can't consider this a bad thing.

 

Honestly? It would be some time before I even knew it had happened. In fact, until it was the title of a new thread on DLP, I'd be blissfully ignorant of it.

 

My response?

You do not talk about Project: Fan Mayhem.

 

LOL. I spent a full week reading that thing only to find out at the end that Harry ends up meeting the creator himself(Joe). There is no going back!

OT: It might not be a bad thing if we consider the amount of crap on the site, but I'd argue that the fan fiction community is pretty much built on that site. If all of that is suddenly gone, and we can safely assume it'll take some time to get it all back(and most of it won't be coming back), I'd say it'll do more damage than good.

I remembers there were discussions about what is more for HP fans now that all the books and movies are out. Obviously fanfiction. And FF.net is the biggest of them all. Many sites will certainly serve as alternate, but I doubt anyone can truly replace FF.net.

 

How would this be good? I doubt this would improve the quality of fanfiction. Fanfiction simply attracts crappy authors. The good thing about ff.net is that the sheer size of the site means that most of the quality fics will end up on there. This also means that I basically only need one account to keep track of updates.

And I think fics would get reuploaded based not on quality, but based on last update time. All the good old completed fics by inactive authors would be lost and the great fics that have been abandoned would also be lost. Plus, all those crappy, but popular fics that crowd the site would also get quickly reuploaded.

 

I disagree. More than half of the shitstorm on there wouldn't be reloaded. And the good works would find a way back up. If old classics vanished over night it would be a shame but still... the more slash/fangirl hysteria that is decimated at once, the better.

 

The fatal flaw in your thoughts is that you think only the good stuff would be re-uploaded.

Which is akin to assuming only good stuff will be uploaded from now on. And that's just silly.

 

Ah but how much of the filth will be reloaded as apposed to the actual good stuff? The opportunity gain will favor the decent writing. I'm not saying such a holocaust will rid us of hp/dm but it will purify the now diluted fic section. Give it another couple years and it will be right back to where it is now.

Or I'm just underestimating the zeal of shitty writers and their desire to re-post dead stories for their own pleasure. There's always that.

 

See, most people think the shitty stories are good stuff. Don't expect any difference to what there would be today.

 

In that case, we should occupy FF.net and demand anti-slash and anti-faggotry laws.

 

Here is another Random Thought If we started to flame those shitty authors in a cordinated manner can we drove them to suicide? I mean they are mostly useless fan girls right? they are more emotinal than normal so it should be possible if we get enough people to do that.

 

I agree with tasoli. At the very least we could kill off their inspiration.

Edit: Though now that I think about it, it may very well make us seem like (not my words) homophobic creeps who lives in their mothers' basements.

 

...
:facepalm

 

QFMFT.

Some of the better authors may end up just saying 'fuck it' and retiring, especially since if it happened once, it may very well happen again. Aside from that, the only downside I can think of is that I would lose the stuff I posted, since due to multiple reformats, my only backup is on a flashdrive also containing viruses/spyware.

 

Besides the fact that this would never happen due to the several backup strategies FF.net probably has, all that would really happen is that the work of inactive authors would largely disappear. Authors who are currently active would re-upload their stories in short order.

 

Inb4 Hashasheen terrorist bombs FF.net

 

Simple: all we need is a dataworm that eliminates anything with certain...pairings, and keywords in the summary, such as 'Slash'.

Bam - 80% of ff.net cleaned up overnight.