Guide Posts

From Fanlore
(Redirected from Guideposts)
Jump to navigation Jump to search
Archive
Name: Guide Posts
Date(s): 1997-2004
Archivist: The Elves - aka Kareila, Meredith and Tanya (as of May 2003)
Founder: Daenea
Type: gen
Fandom: The Sentinel
URL: http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Academy/5307/ (defunct; can be accessed on the Internet Archive here)
Click here for related articles on Fanlore.

The original Sentinel gen fanfic archive, Guide Posts accepted submissions by email as well as archiving fic posted to Senfic and the Sentinel-L mailing lists. Fics were archived by the archivists a few times a week.

Though a gen archive, Guide Posts did accept non-explicit het pairing fic[1], though it had no romance category, and the vast majority of the stories were non-pairing gen.

On January 6, 2002, the archive stopped accepted submissions, [2] and Guide Posts was replaced by the Cascade Library as the primary gen-fic archive.

In mid-2004 the Guide Posts site went down and was never restored, and is now only available on the Internet Archive.

A fan said that when she "first discovered Guide Posts, there were about 20 stories on it, most of them by Laura Schomberg and Kris Williams." [3] At its peak, it had over 3000 stories.

Guide Posts.jpg

Story Guidelines

Welcome Post (roughly 2001)

Welcome to Guide Posts! If this is your first time, you might have a few questions; don't worry, we promise to be gentle. We hope you'll spend a little of your time (okay, a lot of your time. Okay, no, really, all of your time, let's be perfectly honest) browsing through the fiction offered by the Sentinel writers who've taken time out of their extremely complex and busy (okay, not really all that busy -- frankly, kind of hum-drum) lives to bring you more of the Sentinel Universe than you could possibly consume at one sitting. Or even a hundred. Face it -- if you start reading here, you're going to be sitting a lot.)

To make the journey through these uncharted lands easier for you, the Elves (yes, there are elves) (no, not that kind -- snarky ones. We'll get to it in a minute) have put together a short list of Frequently Asked Questions about ourselves and about the archive. We hope we've covered all the bases; if you can think of anything we might have left out, that might be helpful for other weary travellers, please let us know at [email protected].

Q:Who are you and who are the Archive Elves?

A: Daenea was our original Archive Elf. Unfortunately, life (in the form of college and boyfriends and such) tore her away from us. Not before she started this silly Elf business, however, to which we are doomed for all eternity. No, don't pity us -- we're strong, we persevere. We endure. The lot of an Archive Elf is not to be envied. (Envy us anyway, though -- it makes us feel better.)

The current Archive elves are:

Kareila -- The UnderElf (who rules supreme, and don't let anybody tell you any different!)

Meredith -- The Dark OverElf (who actually has no power whatsoever and works mainly as a drudge)

Tanya -- The Sucker Elf (who sings) (she shouldn't, but she does) [4]

A 1999 Move

The subject line pretty much says it: Guide Posts has moved to a new location! Our new home is at: http://b-b-t.mit.edu/Guideposts

Please update your links and bookmarks!

This post is being sent to alt.tv.sentinel, Senad, SXF, The Raft, and Senfic. Please pass it along to any other list for which it might be on-topic, or to any individual you think would be interested.

This is a move that has been a very long time in coming; we've been preparing for it for almost a year now. The reasons are many and varied, but the most important ones involve the general instability of Geocities, the banners, the pop-up windows, the watermarks inserted into pages, and the myriad other evil little java script annoyances they've seen fit to throw at us over the years.

You could call this GP3 -- the third incarnation of Guide Posts since its original creation. The vast number of stories forced Daenea (ye olde original Archive Elf) to move to a site with more space a few years ago. Now the volume (for which we're extremely grateful!) has led us to much greener pastures. =)

To make a very long story short, Guide Posts has been moved, redesigned, and upgraded. We're sorry for the delay in updating these past two weeks, but you'll find that the new site is up to date. We've added a search engine that many of you bifictional folk will recognize from the Sentinel Adult Archive -- a search form that allows you to search all of Guide Posts for any author or story or category of story imaginable. For those who aren't sure about the search form, we've included a list of automated searches in the form of clickable links for the most common categories on the Story Search Engine page. For those who use Lynx or other text browsers, we've created a Text Only access page linked from the front page of the archive (see URL above).

You'll note that some categories are incomplete. This is because not all stories come to us with category information. We're in the process of gathering more info, and will be updating the category pages frequently.

So many people helped with this move that it would be impossible to list them all -- but we're willing to give it a shot. Seah helped extensively with graphics and advice; Nita and lady of shallot were our script design team; Sis and Pumpkin and Renae and Paulette and several other roadsters checked out the various functions and reported back to help us streamline. If we've overlooked anyone, please forgive us -- it's a comment on our exhaustion only! =)

We hope you'll like the new design, and we welcome any comments! The Elves acknowledge the fact that after archiving over 1700 stories over the last few weeks, some of us may have been archiving while we were asleep. (Don't try that at home, kids.) Let us know if you find any bugs or problems, and we'll make the neccesary adjustments. You can still reach us at the usual address: [email protected].

Here's the URL one more time:

http://b-b-t.mit.edu/Guideposts

Thank you -- enjoy the new site!

-- Merry and Kareila and Tanya -- Guide Posts Archive Elves [5]

References

  1. ^ The archives drama section lists three Megan/Jim stories by M Edison, in the summary described as "Category: Umm..Romance." (accessed 1/2009)
  2. ^ "Regretfully, after tonight's update, Guide Posts will be closing. I won't be taking the site down [...] I simply won't be updating anymore. The archive has been taking a great deal of my spare time and I haven't been able to write as much as I'd like to. It was a difficult decision, and I spent a long time coming to it. I hope everyone will understand." --Kareila, What's New at Guide Posts, January 6, 2002 (accessed 1/2009)
  3. ^ comment by Bonnie at Cascade Times Mailing List (October 9, 2003)
  4. ^ FAQ, WebCite, around 2001
  5. ^ post at alt.tv.sentinel Guide Posts has Moved!, July 2, 1999