Talk:The Gossamer Project

Different versions about same history

There are differing versions of the article below on differing wiki sites across the web. This article does not contain the "notable" information required for inclusions in wikipedia (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gossamer_Project -- the media discussions, online discussions, academic discussion subsections). They can be brought over if considered important.

Wow, what a great article!! Thank you! Fanlore isn't Wikipedia so the "notable" information isn't required, but as a fan of the show I would love to see something about the influence Gossamer had on other fandoms, experiences, opinions, some context, online discussions, academia, etc. :) If you want to expand on what you already did, I would say add whatever you find important. I don't think anyone would object. I searched my own links and found a few that you probably already know because they are mentioned in the Wikipedia article, even if they aren't linked, but maybe you can use some of it anyway: The X-Files phenomenon, Mania: If Fans Wrote the X-Files ... and Fans take control of TV...On-Line. --Doro 20:12, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

The article has been under development for several years, kind of as a modular article we've maintained for various uses. There are some subsections I've written that aren't online anywhere that I need to check at home (later) to see if they're useful to incorporate here. I find the media-stuff over at Wikipedia kind of pompous. I wrote it because I wanted people to stop deleting/recreating that article and figured that if I hit them with a whole scad of media references the entire cycle would finally stop. I may just include a link over to the Wikipedia article so not to overload this one.--Deirdre 20:42, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Congratulations

I just wanted to congratulate everyone involved in Gossamer and its article here on Fanlore. A brilliant job collecting so much information, cataloging and archiving. It inspires me, motivates me to keep editing and archiving -- Ellakbhesse (talk) 19:21, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

The other two?

"In the mid to late 1990s, the Gossamer Archives/Project was one of the "big three" single media fandom-focused archives on the Internet." -- What were the other two? I'm thinking 852 Prospect was one, but what was the other one? MPH 00:20, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

I did some research and found the same statement on various pages including Wikipedia. Wikipedia gives the following source for the information: De Kosnik, Abigail (September 2016). Rogue Archives. Digital Cultural Memory and Media Fandom. The MIT Press. p. 91. ISBN 9780262034661. I found a copy at https://www.academia.edu/40961891/Rogue_Archives and downloaded the PDF. The other two archives mentioned on page 91 are Trekiverse and the Due South Archive:

'Trekiverse (figures 2.3 and 2.4), an archive of Star Trek–related fic covering all television series and film installations of the Trek franchise (Constable Katie and Stephen Ratliff serve as its lead archivists today), and the Due South Archive (Figure 2.5), which contains stories by fans of the Canadian Mountie-in-Chicago detective show Due South, are two other famous central fic archives that launched in the mid-1990s and are still active as of this writing (Speranza is the current lead archivist of the Due South Archive).'

Do you think those archives could be the other two? SecurityBreach (talk) 03:35, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

I suggest the following footnote: 'See: De Kosnik, Abigail (September 2016). Rogue Archives. Digital Cultural Memory and Media Fandom. The MIT Press. p. 91. The other two archives mentioned by De Kosnik are Trekiverse and the Due South Archive, both of which were still active in 2016 when the book was published.' I wonder if we should rephrase the statement in the intro though, but I'm currently out of ideas. SecurityBreach (talk) 04:23, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

There are two statements at Due South Archive that state there were "over 1000 fanworks" in what looks like 1999? Surely, Gossamer had more? MPH 16:07, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I think that Gossamer had much more, Trekiverse probably too. That's why I'd like to change the sentence, maybe to, 'In the mid to late 1990s, the Gossamer Archives/Project was amongst the biggest single media fandom-focused archives on the Internet, and remained the largest single fandom fan fiction archive until the emergence of various Harry Potter archives in the early 2000s.' Then we could leave the footnote, too (or just add two or three examples of huge and popular 1990s archives). Another reason why I'd like to change the sentence is that it seems to be one of those phrases that appear to be copied & pasted to other pages (see: https://wikimili.com/en/The_Gossamer_Project, https://wikizero.com/www///The_Gossamer_Project & others) without quoting the source or giving examples. SecurityBreach (talk) 16:29, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

As far as that goes, www.fkfanfic.com had over 2000 stories in 1999. (I should know: I did a fair amount of research into its history when I wrote the article on it.) Since it stopped adding fic shortly thereafter, it clearly never got as large as Gossamer; but, at the time, it was often cited as a "large" single-fandom archive in rec lists on GeoCities. Greer Watson (talk) 08:16, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

I guess which archives were the 'other two' will always be debatable. I did my best to find the source of the statement and hope my rephrasing of the sentence is acceptable. Thank you so much for pointing out www.fkfanfic.com! It looks great and I'll take my time to read it this week. SecurityBreach (talk) 17:46, 16 January 2023 (UTC)