We’re celebrating the birthday of our shiny shiny servers! One of the most important and most exciting things about the Archive is the fact it represents the amazing achievement of fandom pulling together to generate the investment and expertise needed to create a true home of our own. Since September 2009, fandom has owned the servers, and the OTW is committed to making those servers a safe space for the fannish community.
Owning the servers is awesome, but just as important is what we use those servers for! We aim to make the Archive a welcoming place for fans not just because fandom owns the servers, but because the Archive is built by fans, for fans and has lots of awesome features which make a better experience for readers and creators. During our birthday party, Archive staffers and users have been talking about our favourite features – check out our list below and comment at the Archive to let us know you what you love the most!
Here are a few of our favourite things!
Zooey, AD&T Chair: I LOVE the History feature! It keeps track of everything you view on the Archive, and records the date you viewed it and whether it has changed since. I am incredibly lazy about bookmarking fic, so this is totally a killer feature for me – when I think ‘what was that awesome fic I read?’ I can look back and find it. We’re planning more features for this in future – I can’t WAIT till we add the filtering option so it’s easy for me to find a specific work without browsing through the whole list.
Astolat, coder: OMG advanced search! It is a little bit tricksy and we are still working on the GUI for it, but there is nothing not awesome about just being able to do: “tag: merlin/arthur (explicit|mature) words: >1000” and suddenly you have JUST THE STORIES you want.
Sidra, coder: Download as epub! You can browse the archive inside stanza on your iPhone and when you find something *poof* it’s offline and ready to read. And when you get to the end, there’s a link which takes you right back to comment. Super cool!
Enigel, coder: Tags! (Also known as “wuzzles”.) Tags and the way they tie into browsing: I’ll be reading a John/Sherlock fic and then I can use the tags to hop to the Sherlock (TV) listing, and then follow the Crossover tag and maybe pick up a new fandom… It’s a never-ending link-hopping dance. đ
Yueix, user: Favorite feature so far is being able to read whole works (multi-chapters) as one continuous story.
bingeling, designer: I love the Archive simply for being multi-fandom. Whenever I’m in the mood to read something that’s not my main fandom I simply check what the Archive has to offer and most of the time I’ll find something. Pre-Archive it was always quite a bit of work to actually find the fic. If it wasn’t your fandom, you didn’t know its infrastructure. Thanks to the Archive I now always know where to start looking. ♥
Helka, kÀÀntÀjÀ: Minusta on hauskaa, ettÀ niin moni pieni fandom on edustettuna Arkistossa. Yli 5500 fandomia! Joissakin fandomeissa on tuhansia tarinoita, joissakin vain yksi ainokainen, mutta jokainen tarina on arvokas. Voin mennÀ fandom-listaukseen ja selata vaikkapa kaikkia kirja-fandomeita, tai sitten voin etsiÀ jotain tiettyÀ fandomia etsintÀ-toiminnolla. Ja joka pÀivÀ Arkistoon tulee lisÀÀ tarinoita! \o/
lorax, user: Favorite archive feature by FAR is the challenge sign up features. I did remix through the auto sign up this year, and it’s fantastic and keeps everything so easy to find. I’m really looking forward to seeing how yuletide uses the challenge sign up through the site this year, if they do.
Julia, Ăbersetzerin: Ich halte das Eigene Archiv jetzt schon fĂŒr eine wunderschöne, nĂŒtzliche Sache, aber was es fĂŒr mich auszeichnet ist dieses GefĂŒhl, dass nach oben hin alles offen ist. Dass durch die VorschlĂ€ge der Nutzer gepaart mit der Reaktionsfreudigkeit der Programmiererinnen zusammen StĂŒck fĂŒr StĂŒck ein Archiv entsteht, das in der Summe seiner Teile dann doch verdammt revolutionĂ€r ist — besonders, weil es im Moment erst einen Bruchteil seines Potentials zeigt.
mlle, user: My favorite feature is the little symbol box next to each work. It tells me at a glance whether or not a fic has anything in it I want to avoid. Priceless.
X-parrot, tag wrangler: As a hopelessly pedantic author, I love that whilst replying to a comment, I happen to notice I’m missing yet another “the” in my latest chapter’s final paragraph, I can hit “edit” and instantly put that to rights!
Christie, user: I love the freedom to post anything and the great search đ
Anne-Li, Support staffer: I love that it is central, you don’t have to look at a gazillion places to find (good) fic.
Derry, user: My favourite feature is the ebook download! I can stuff my PRS full of juicy, glorious fanfic with just one click!
Tai, tester: My favourite thing is the Reading history – I don’t have to muck around bookmarking stuff I want to read and then wondering where I put it, just open the page and come back to it at leisure.
theliterator, user: Here’s what I love the most, which is what I’m using right now. The importer.
zelempa, coder: I am still discovering new features so what I love in advance is this blog post.
mlle, user: My favorite feature is the little symbol box next to each work. It tells me at a glance whether or not a fic has anything in it I want to avoid. Priceless.
Alison, tag wrangling committee: My favourite is ALL the features.
Share some of yours!
We currently have nearly 9000 users on the Archive, who between them have posted more than 100,000 works, in over 5500 different fandoms. We figure this means we are making lots of people happy! Let us know in the comments to the master version of this post what you enjoy about the Archive!
Mirrored from an original post on the Archive of Our Own, where you can comment with or without an Archive account.