How Other People Wreck Up Your Favorite FanFiction Archive
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| Title: | How Other People Wreck Up Your Favorite FanFiction Archive |
| Creator: | Randi DuMois |
| Date(s): | March 20, 2001 |
| Medium: | online |
| Fandom: | |
| Topic: | fanfiction, archives |
| External Links: | the site: The Less Than Legendary Journeys: Guide to Writing in the HtLJ Universe, Archived version, link to the post: The Less Than Legendary Journeys: How Other People Wreck Your Favorite FanFiction Archive by Randi DuMois, Archived version |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
How Other People Wreck Up Your Favorite FanFiction Archive is an essay by Randi DuMois.
It was posted in 2001 and addressed one fanfiction archivist's frustrations with fan demands. It illustrates, among other things, that regarding fan expectation and "entitlement," that the more things change...
Excerpts
This rant doesn't apply to 99.9% of the people online, and the people to whom it does apply won't read it. (None of the people who do the things we rant about ever read rants. It's like a law of nature. Even if they say they do, they really don't, they just go along, la la la, content that everyone loves and cherishes their every word despite their bizarre aberrant behavior.)But over the past few years of reading online archives, I've noticed this, and now you'll notice it too:
There are a small number of readers out there who seriously think that the people who maintain online fanfiction archives get paid an exorbitant salary, have at least 12 free hours a day to work on it, and a large staff of minions to hand them things, take notes, and fetch tea.
If the archive isn't updated every time they hit it, they get mad. They feel they are being cheated. They email.
They email things like this:
"i have read every story on this sight and u need to put more up u are lazy. it has been two days sinse you updated!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
None of them can spell. And they like exclamation points.
What archivists should really do is ignore people like this. I mean who cares if some bozo is too dumb to realize you work a real job 8 hours a day, have a family to take care of, and only about half an hour a week to work on your site. The hundreds of other people who enjoy the site wait patiently (and silently) and bounce with delight in front of their monitors when they see you've posted new stories. But this does bother some people and I've seen several fanfiction archives (in different fandoms) taken down because the archivist was getting these kind of complaints. Even if the complaints were just from one person (or one person and her equally bozoid buddy, or one person and her other screen names).