Gen Fic Crit Mailing List

Mailing List
Name:	Gen Fic Crit Mailing List
Date(s):	2001-2009
Moderated:
Moderators/List Maintainers:	Kathryn Andersen
Founder(s):	Kathryn Andersen
Type:	discussion of fanfic
Fandom:	Multiple Fandoms
Scope:	gen
URL:	[lists.katspace.org/pipermail/gen_fic_crit/2005-July/002313.html [gen_fic_crit] AutoPost: GenFicCrit List Rules], Archived version
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The Gen Fic Crit Mailing List was a mailing list where fans could review and discuss gen fan fiction. Both fanzine fiction and netfic were welcomed. The mailing list was publicly archived.

While the list remained open until 2009, activity declined beginning in 2005 with media fandom's migration to Livejournal and other blogging communities.

From the mailing list FAQ:

... In the interests of fairness, stories which have been posted to private mailing lists whose archives are not open to the public, should not be discussed. These stories are not "out in the wild" and it wouldn't be fair to discuss them. However, any story which is public (published on a web page, to a public mailing list, or in a fanzine) is fair game, and free to be discussed.

Period Of Activity

While the archives preserved on the wayback machine only go so far as 2007, the mailing list did continue through to 2009, when a server crash wiped all the archives and subscriber information:

(expletive deleted) (expletive deleted) (expletive deleted)

I have lost ALL the archives and setup and subscription information for my mailing lists. It wasn't backed up because it was stored, not under /etc (where I assumed all configuration would normally be stored) but under /var/lib/mailman (which is NOT a place one expects configurations or archives to be stored). Everything is gone. Every single post to gen_fic_crit from 2001 onwards. I checked the wayback machine, but they've only got a couple of indexes, no actual content. It's all GONE. Lost. Forever. Because I had to wipe the disk of my desktop as part of my fix-the-meltdown problem, and I blithely assumed that my backups had covered everything.

(expletive, expletive, expletive) (EXPLETIVE!)

I give up. GenFicCrit has been a ruddy joke for the past several years anyway. Only a handful of people post there besides me, and there hasn't been a full-on discussion in years. Sure, I was happy enough to let it go on fulfilling its minimal function (a place to post my reviews), but now that the whole archive is trashed and the whole subscription list is gone, it is not worth the heartache of trying to rebuild it from scratch. Not. Worth. It.