I've just had to stop posting to FFN. Many of their policies are really just completely stupid, and the quality of the works on the site as a whole has taken a nose dive in recent years. I don't understand a lot of their TOS decisions (no author's notes, nothing above M, no links allowed, offsite websites can't automatically archive the stories. Like AO3, for example, can't pull the text from FFN). It's all just really weird and petty.
I don't think further complaints about FFN are really on-topic here, but I would like to say that "offsite websites can't automatically archive the stories" is in my book a GOOD thing--I emphatically do not want random websites pulling my story text and wouldn't sign up on a website that permitted that kind of scraping by default. I archive deliberately and in places where I have control over the text.
Unless you're talking about the ability to import your own stories yourself from one site to the other, but even then, I think to avoid making plagiarism super-easy you'd have to have a system set up so the accounts on AO3 and FFN would have to link to each other, and that would require a lot of inter-site cooperation.
What's so difficult to understand about their TOS. There were authors writing longer author notes than stories and authors 'updating' their stories with nothing but apologise on why they haven't uploaded or how they need x reviews before updating or other non-story blabla, so FFN updated their TOS to explicitly state that they are fanfiction archive and not a blather on archive since the authors apparently didn't twig to that by default.
Nothing above M means nobody can come after them for exposing minors to porn. There was a time when NC-17 stories were allowed and they had a pop-up question of 'are you over 18' on them. I guess then someone did come after them, and it's cheaper for them to ban NC-17 instead of getting the infrastructure so they are protected if someone wants to come after them.
No links offsite means that they are unattractive to RUssian, Vi@gra, Penis enhancement and other kinds of spam and advertising, they are also not liable for people linking to problematic sites and someone coming after them, because 'think of the children'.)
FFN is an extremely big and for profit site, their actions can be explained by looking at their actions from that angle.
Same goes for why they don't have an 'view entire work' button, means they get to load the ads that pay them on each chapter instead of only once.
In my experience the fic quality is the same it has been for the last more than ten years on FFN and is the same as on AO3. 90% of everything isn't of interest to me and of the remaining 10% 90% is shit. With AO3 it's just that more annoying to find the fic of potential interest, since they are encouraging to tag for every character and their original male dog and for every fandom even if there's only a throw away mention. Unlike with FFN, where also need less scrolling, cause blurbs are shorter, where if I search for fic about fandom ABC, they fic will primarily be about ABC and if I search for characters Z, Y, X and U, the fic will primarily be about Z, Y, X, and U.
Comment on OTW Board response to concerns about the meta decision
Tyloric Sun 17 Mar 2013 02:52AM UTC
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Carmarthen Sun 17 Mar 2013 03:53AM UTC
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anon (Guest) Sun 17 Mar 2013 09:39AM UTC
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