Yuletide Treasure

Archive
Name:	Yuletide Treasure
Date(s):	2003–2009
Archivist:	Mods of Yuletide
Founder:	astolat
Type:	Exchange collection
Fandom:	Multifandom
URL:	www.yuletidetreasure.org/ (archive)
Yuletide banner
Click here for related articles on Fanlore.

Yuletide Treasure was the fanfiction archive for the annual Yuletide gift exchange from 2003 to October of 2009, as well as being used to run astolat's matching algorithm for the 2003-2009 Yuletide rounds. Though the exchange switched to posting works on Archive of Our Own for the 2009 round and running matching on Archive of Our Own for the 2019 round, the fic archived on Yuletide Treasure wasn't moved to Archive of Our Own until 2014.

Because of the nature of the challenge, the archive opened and closed at different points during the year. For most of the year, though, it was open for browsing by anyone (and uploading for New Year's Resolution stories).

With a wide range of fans participating, the archive was fairly evenly balanced in terms of ratings and between gen, het, femslash, and slash. Stories were posted with ratings and summaries attached, but that's it: since every story on the archive was written with a specific person in mind, most don't have warnings attached. Unless indicated in the summary, readers might not have been able to tell whether stories are gen, het, femslash, or slash, or what the central pairing is (if there is a pairing.)

Comments were very much encouraged, but with the caveat that every story was written as a gift for someone else, catering to their tastes.

Timeline of the Archive

RivkaT wrote a brief, outsider's-eye view of the various technical difficulties historically suffered by the database end of the archive that made a move to the AO3 helpful, if not vital, to the long-term sustainability of the challenge:

We begin with 300+ participants! Yuletide was huge in 2003! Too bad the software couldn’t handle smart quotes. .txt only to be sure it was right, no takebacks!

In 2004, with over 500 participants, the site was hacked due to the host's failure, despite astolat's warning, to correct a security vulnerability. Result: server move mid-uploading crunch, with extra fun propagating a new domain name, and resulting comment glitches.

2005: Growth continues apace, with ~850 participants. Still no editing without modly intervention.

2006: Delays due to server load; incrementally backing up after every single story was uploaded, necessary because of creakiness of database, took time. There were bizarre uploading database issues, the kind of things it takes a computer to screw up. Last minute archive lockdown! Still no editing without modly intervention. And who else recalls the spam comments flood of 2006?

2007, with over 1200 signups: Remember having to save your emailed comments, because otherwise you couldn’t respond after the author reveal? Heavy server load issues are scary. Yes, modly intervention still required for edits. This one’s just a well-titled post: We’re working on the problem! (At one point, a couple hundred stories were stranded in database hell.) I wrote you a story but the server ated it. Strangely prolific author, whose name just happens to be the first on the list. The archive goes down Dec. 28, and not in the good way.

2008, 1599 signups: Pre-Dec. 25: Various small but nerve-wracking bugs, heavy server loads, representative database crashes, including one when astolat herself had crashed, leading to database nervous breakdown, and up and down again (note that these aren't even all the instances, just a representative sample: something needed to change). Post-Dec. 25, server load still heavy, links still wonky due to size of database, server load so heavy that the quick-search links couldn’t even be fully generated. Slowness due to heavy server load continues through the author reveal.