MiningCo

Name:	MiningCo
Date(s):
Profit/Nonprofit:
Country based in:
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MiningCo is what "About.com" used to be called.

It apparently had fannish content.

See The Miningco Saga (The X-Files) as well as Anne Rice.

When money and TPTB got involved, at least some of this content was deleted. See What happened to the Mining Co?.

From a fan in 1999:

Hi all,

I heard people were wondering what happened to my Anne Rice MiningCo site and what will happen with Anne Rice and the MiningCo (now About.com) in the future and I thought I should say a few words just to help cut down on the rumormill.

As has been already stated my working relationship with About.com ended because of their policy regarding Anne Rice fanfiction. To be completely accurate this was at the end of a six-month struggle I'd been having with my editor regarding what would and would not make a good Anne Rice fan site. Not being a fan herself she had no idea what fans were interested in and our arguments about this had already caused the site to stagnate and start to be, in my opinion, useless. However without her editorial approval I was powerless to change that so I continued to fight the good fight for those six months.

The argument over fanfiction was the final straw. For reasons I still do not understand she wanted to make Anne Rice fanfiction directly available from the site. The reasons why I couldn't understand this decision was because 1. she did not care whether or not I had permission from the original fanfic authors in order to do this and 2. she did not care that by doing so the fanfic would be moving out of the "non- profit" arena. In other words: TMC/About.com is a for-profit site. They gain their profit from people viewing their site and I, in turn, profit from helping them to get those pageviews. Her idea was to use the fanfic to increase pageviews and, therefore, make more money from the site.

Put frankly I found this completely unethical. This was going beyond About.com's original intention to be a personalized search engine and was instead taking advantage of other people's hard work for their own personal gain. And, moreover, was doing that with no regard for whether or not that got anyone into trouble. Perhaps I was biased about this because I am a spec author myself, but my feelings about it were firm.

I tried to appeal this policy to the higher-ups at TMC/About.com but there was no help to be had there. Which is why, after six months of feeling that they truly did not care anymore about trying to put together a quality site for Anne Rice fans, I told them that if that was the way things were going to be then I preferred being an ex-employee of theirs. Which is where we stand today.

Because I retained the copyright to everything I did for them all of the articles I wrote for them are available on my web page (http://dangerousgames.simplenet.com/talset) as well as the Anne Rice FAQ. Both the articles and the FAQ shall be available from my site always although the FAQ is, as of right now, the only one of them I will continue to update and maintain.

The link library that I put together is still in my possession, however I must confess that unless I am being paid to keep on top of something that big I do not have it in me to keep that updated, which is why it is not available from my site. However, if anyone would like to make use of the links for their own pages they are more than welcome to have copies of those files. You need only write me at [email protected] to ask.

Finally, I do not know if About.com will get themselves another Anne Rice guide. The position is certainly open should anyone care to apply for it. However bear in mind that, as of my writing this, their policy regarding fanfic has not changed so you would be expected to profit from the work of others. Moreover they made so many enemies with key members of the online AR community I don't think the ability exists right now for anyone to create a useful Anne Rice related site for them. I certainly don't envy anyone who'd care to try.

If anyone has any further questions by all means feel free to write to me at [email protected] Having just moved cross-country my online time is very limited right now so I'm afraid I wouldn't be able to see any questions posted here. Also if you want further details on the editorial problems that were had in the six months before the fanfic problem reared its ugly head, that information is available on my web page (http://dangerousgames.simplenet.com/talset) should anyone care to read it.

Sorry it had to end this way. Laura Ann http://dangerousgames.simplenet.com/talset