Resurfacing, unlike Sarah, from a vat of gravy to say

[lunabee34]

Rock on AO3.

Were there bugs? Yea, verily.

Were there high traffic induced waitages early on? Indubitably.

But, and oh is this a mighty but my friends, but did it function better than the original archive which is broken and dying a very sad yet strongly hopeful death (much like Yoda on his stained pillow)?

HELLS YES.

Last year was my first Yuletide, and I must have uploaded my fic about four million times because I had dared to, I dunno, HIT FREAKING RETURN WHEN I STARTED A NEW PARAGRAPH. Or maybe it was that I had people talk to each other. In words. That required quotation marks. I'm unclear. All I know is that the default word processing system used by most of America rendered an un-uploadable product to the archive. Someone suggested using Notepad. Wow. All you Notepad users deserve some sort of medal. It just goes on and on all the way to Atlanta, each line. *shakes head* I managed to cobble together a story the archive would accept, but I still couldn't format it quite the way I wanted to. Thank Willow I didn't have a typo to correct. *shudders in complete horror*

On AO3, my story is my own. I can add author's notes after the fact (which I plan to in order to properly thank my ariadne83) and fix typos with NOBODY ELSE'S INTERVENTION and see my fic as a contribution to a collection and reply to the comments on my fic ON THE FREAKING INTERFACE ITSELF!!!!!!!!!!!! *gleeeeeee* Please do not allow me to elaborate on the tagging system. It's possible I will have an orgasm on your reading page.

What it really boils down to for me is that this system is easier for the mods. I have no idea what complicated chicken dances were required to make the original archive funcational, and I have no illusions that everybody's all lounging on divans and drinking Cristal while the archive fills now that it has moved to AO3. But this is better and easier for the people that do an unpaid and often quite thankless job for the rest of fandom.

So all I can say is thank you, Yuletide mods, and thank you AO3 for a stellar job.

Next year (when all the attendant kinks have been worked out)--the moon!!

Comments

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

If you need to use Notepad again in the future, all you need to do is go to "format" and you'll see an option for word wrap. Just click that and it will wrap the text. :)

[havocthecat]

YES. THIS.

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

Yay! I am friends with smart people. :) Thanks for the heads up.

[lyr]

I like the new interface, too. It was awesome being able to go back and edit for myself, instead of glaring at the typos in frustrated mortification forever afterwards...and certainly better than last year, when I had to get a mod to take my story back off the archive so I could fix the broken formatting. Yay, progress!

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

I am so glad that I didn't have a typo or some kind of mistake in mine. Whew!! And I didn't even mention the hit counters which I love or the bookmark function which is also awesome.

[havocthecat]

Writing everything in either rich or plain text format and then opening up the file in Notepad just before you post for your copy/paste job? TOTALLY worth it. As is turning off smart quotes and all the other autoformatting bits in MS Word, if you want to stick with that. It helps a LOT.

Why, no, I'm not a veteran of accidentally posting unreadable gibberish to a listserv (ah, the joys of back when we all sent out our fanfic via e-mail instead of self-uploading to an archive) and getting both helpful and annoyed messages from dozens of people on why not turning off smart quotes is really a stupid thing to do, not at all. Why would you ask? ;)

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

Heeeeee. I was on the Unconventional Shippers Yahoo listserv for like five minutes before I found lj and I've never done any other kind of online fannishness except for lj or the automated archives like I Need a Parrot. It's so interesting to me how people's skill sets and practices vary widely depending on when and how they joined fandom. I didn't even know what smart quotes were before last Yuletide.

[havocthecat]

Hey, was that the Buffy Unconventional Shippers list? I think I remember that from before Yahoo. And listservs are even older than Yahoogroups. (You damn fannish kids! Get off my lawn!)

I'm trying not to think how long I've been in fandom. Thankfully, there's always someone who's been around longer than me!

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

It was indeed the Buffy listserv. UCSL or something like that. :)

Oh, I know the listservs predate Yahoo, but I am really quite the internet newbie in addition to the relative fannish newbie. We had a computer growing up but not internet and I never used the internet for anything until I was a freshman in college and one of our teachers made us conduct a discussion on a listserv so I had to get an email. I don't remember using the computer to research or find anything out until well after that, probably pretty close to the end of my undergraduate years and I didn't chat or IM until my sophomore or junior year and then only as a novelty. My husband was a serious internet chatter who met people who have been decades or more long friends with him. We have to have a calling plan that allows him to call Vietnam because one of his friends is from there.

But I don't think I started really using the internet in a concerted way until around 2000.

[havocthecat]

HAH. I was on that list! I wasn't going by havocthecat at that point in time, though. I remember rolling my eyes at all the really awful Willow/Angel fanfic that was posted back then. (This was in first and second season.)

Yeah, I pretty much dove into active fandom and the internet about five or six years before you did, because FINALLY there were people out there who were LIKE ME about tv series. OK, I had fannish friends IRL too, but none of them wrote fanfic.

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

*nods*

I didn't find internet fandom until 2004. I wish I had found it sooner. I always have fannish envy of those who were around to see the beginnings of things. I fear, though, that it really is for the best because if I'd have discovered internet fandom any sooner it's quite possible I would still be working on my undergraduate degree. LOL

[crazydiamondsue.livejournal.com]

It just goes on and on all the way to Atlanta, each line. Hee. I feel you. Also, rewatched Jedi this week, so hee the second to Yoda's stained pillow.

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

Heeeee.

Did you notice that I wrote "funcational" in this post? I think that's a working vacation.