Talk:FanFiction.Net

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Songfic ban

"It was when German intellectual property organizations demanded from $1000 to $5000 renumeration per lyric they owned rights to found on unlicensed domains" Is there a reference for this? That would be great! As far as I remember this first became an issue when a German Buffy archive was contacted by lawyers. My impression was that FF.net was reacting to the problems the Buffy archive had but that's just from looking at it from a distance and I wasn't aware that they were contacted too. (German law can be annoying when it comes to fanfic archives. FanFiktion.de had a run-in with trademark lawyers earlier this year and they had to remove all Avatar: The Last Airbender fanfic that included the Word "Lichtbändiger", the German word for "light bender", which seems to be a popular trope in fanfic and also a company that produces glasses.) --Doro 14:25, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

question about Twilighted

Was there a specific post or incident with Twilighted that led to the comparison with FF.NET? It seemed odd to me to single out this site on the FF.Net page since there are lots of archives that vet fanfic before allowing it in; the comparison would probably fit better on a Twilighted page unless there's some particular Twilighted vs. FF.NET incident that should be mentioned here.--æthel 16:36, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Oh, and I edited out elitist since it seemed to refer only to Twilighted, but if ff.net users characterize their archive as "non-elitist" or describe other archives generally as "elitist", that should go back in somewhere....--æthel 16:47, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Formatting Issues

Added content to the formatting part, but couldn't get to any sources other than my own memory. Would be nice to have someone with better references. --Dasgoogle 18:04, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

When did FF.Net change URL style and never implement redirects?

I'd like to document when FF.Net changed their URL style but have no idea when exactly it happened. It broke a lot of recs pages back in the day, and some (especially Geocities ones I've archived) never recovered. Also, they disallow the Internet Archive scraper, which is annoying because there were never any redirects for the old type of URL. --Awils1 10:41, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

From the Tekkaman Blade Forum on FFN: "Hey dude, edit the link to your story. The link you gave won't work because FanFiction.net had recently changed the URLs to stories." That was posted Sep 23, 2004. I see plenty of references to the old style of URL in spring of 2004, so I'd say it was that summer or early September. That's the best I've found so far. Franzeska 14:15, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

And just for future reference in case that page goes away, the two types of URL look like this:

A post from Potions and Snitches, dated July 18, 2004: "Fanfiction.net just posted that they are going to change the url format so I guess I have 2 weeks to change them all. >.< If you get any broken links to stories, just make sure that you have them in the right format which is now www.fanfiction.net/s/#storyid/#chapter/ and don't forget that last backspace. :)" So I guess FFN notified people in July and made the changeover by early August? Other messages in the thread mention author profile URLs also changing (in early September?) Franzeska 14:22, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Do the Purges need their own page(s)?

I've been documenting this week's M-Rated Purge and wonder if the purges deserve a separate page, or even multiple pages? --msilverstar 03:54, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

I think just one page is probably ok. If individual purges had a lot of specific fallout we can write about, some of them could eventually get their own page, but I'd wait until an all-purges subpage was growing too large. Franzeska 18:14, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

nonstandard ways people use ff.net features

Buried in this discussion of why ff.net sucks and whether AO3 is starting to suck is some commentary on how people use ff.net's subscription function as a private bookmark tool: Eh, it's a pretty common thing for people to use their subscription list, which isn't publicly viewable, as a hidden bookmarks for fics we're embarrassed for people to know we liked. [1] I've never had an account at ff.net, but this looked like an interesting tidbit to document.--æþel (talk) 00:28, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

P.S. also some comments on useful features that ff.net has and ao3 doesn't: [2] I've seen complaints before that ao3 doesn't have a way to filter out crossovers, but I've also seen complaints about ff.net's sequestration of crossovers.--æþel (talk) 00:55, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

I used the ffa quote on Searching_for_Fanworks_on_the_Internet#Keeping_Track_of_Fanworks_Once_You_Find_Them.--æþel (talk) 13:01, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

October 2013 site changes

Looks like there were some recent site changes that have fans upset. [3] [4] [5] [6] ff.net may also have finally implemented pairings. [7][8]--æþel (talk) 18:45, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

NC17 Ban

I took out this line, because I don't think it's true: "On September 12, 2002, FF.Net announced that it would disallow NC-17 rated stories beginning in April 2003, giving users time to prepare archiving those stories elsewhere." They just outright banned and removed on September 12, 2002, right? --MPH (talk) 21:20, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

Membership Size

Membership Size and Statistics sections overlap. Membership Size is somewhat misleading in that it only covers the first few months. Was the goal of the Membership Size section to show the history, or was it intended to include current stats?--aethel (talk) 02:10, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

Good point, aethel. I moved the first part of that info to statistics, and noted that it was anecdotal. I like having small picture of the site when it was only three months old, but that could just be the way my brain works. If you don't think it fits there either, we can remove it entirely. --MPH (talk) 13:18, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

Organization

I had to do kind of a drive-by expanding of the Features section so I could link to the communities section from another page, but I think this could use a lot of neatening up. I'll try to come back and do it, but opinions would be appreciated! This is really long and not very clear.

I don't think there's enough nesting of topics (eg, "Initial costs and funding" should be a subsection of "history" right?) and also general disorganization causing things like "Its Creator" and "Founders" being two separate sections, very far apart... I also think that much of the information about Xing Li should have its own page. In order to delve more deeply into the topics at hand, we might also want separate pages for:

the history of the site in general
history of features
content policies
controversies

Plus I'm not sure that "Pit of Voles" is the first subsection we should have on this page, as that probably establishes a very negative point of view for the article. Thoughts? Hoopla (talk) 21:05, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

Alright I reorganized everything so that all the history is under the 'history' section, at least, and there's an expanded section for 'fan comments' although I'm not pleased with that title.

Looking at all the history stuff now that it's all together I think it's not so much that it needs less (except for Xing Li, maybe, he has his own article) but that it needs more summary and context. The quotes 'are' interesting but I think they make the page a little daunting and they jump around quite a bit. I certainly don't know enough about the time or context to fill in the blanks without more research as I don't think I even had internet access when this all happened, and that's likely true for many people viewing this page. - Hoopla (talk) 21:54, 13 July 2018 (UTC)

On removal of the Founder section

I just deleted the founder section because all the info there was word for word what's on Xing Li's fanlore page. There were two paragraphs that were not on his fan page, and I've reincorporated them in other sections. Just to be clear in case folks don't see the edit summaries, the info was not deleted. It was just moved to the most relevant page/section. --Auntags (talk) 00:03, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

Linking to the article within the article

Could someone remove the examples of the page linking back to itself? I was removing them, but a couple of them are in quotations. Thank you.JKFAN (talk) 01:01, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

I think I got all of them. I'm leaving in FanFic.net though, since that's different. -- Ununseti (talk) 19:58, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

fix ref?

Could someone fix the cite that was just added? It's too complicated for me. --MPH (talk) 14:11, 28 December 2020 (UTC)

Fixed. I do have a question about the reference though, and the claim that FFN is arguably the largest archive. Surely if wattpad has the most fics, then its the largest archive. Would it be better to frame the intro around FFN's influence on fandom in the 2000s? I'd personally like to remove the "arguably the largest fanfic archive" bit, and point out instead that it was the largest fanfic archive at one time. I'd also like to add info about FFN been the first really big pan-fandom dedicated archive for fanfiction. Thoughts?--Auntags (talk) 21:49, 28 December 2020 (UTC)

Both those suggestions are excellent, saying that FFN was the first really big pan-fandom dedicated archive for fanfiction, and that for many, many years, it was the largest. Perhaps the the Wattpad mention can be a footnote. --MPH (talk) 22:46, 28 December 2020 (UTC)

time period when blocking function added?

This sentence doesn't indicate when "now" is. Any idea when user blocking was implemented on ff.net? Users are now able to report signed reviews for abuse and block unwanted users from contacting them.--aethel (talk) 22:38, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

website blocked in Malaysia?

ff.net was banned in Malaysia in 2017[9][10][11] Was it ever unblocked? Seems like information that should be added somewhere.--aethel (talk) 12:59, 17 August 2022 (UTC)

I just asked around my mutuals. I have been told that yes it is still banned, that it can be accessed via VPN and that for some reason, sometimes the app works without VPN and sometimes it doesn't. Also, that trying to upload or edit with VPN is a pain because the page blanks out most of the time. --Alpha (talk) 14:58, 17 August 2022 (UTC)