in case anyone’s interested, here’s where I am on other social media:
twitter: Linnelle
instagram: twocandles_
ao3: twocandles
pillowfort: twocandles (I think… but haven’t used it yet)
dreamwidth: I’ll add it if I ever remember it, haven’t used it in ages either
I don’t have a backup blog here yet. I have some sideblogs but I assume they will all be gone once my main gets deleted? I assume that might happen at some point with tumblr being dumb af these days.
I have reached out to all artists if I found a flagged piece in my archives. Only found 31 flagged works in 4 years of using my fanart tag. However none of them were actually NSFW. Many more posts to get through though.
So I’ve been here for a while and have 15,000+ posts. I’ve never posted adult content, but a quick scroll of recent posts showed a friggin’ post about the official Sherlock calendar was flagged. I can’t afford to take the time scrolling literally thousands of other posts to see what else has been incorrectly flagged, but statistically I’m sure more posts have been.
I also don’t have the time to really think about my fandom social media future right now, much less move all my junk somewhere else. So bleh.
What I’ve done for the moment is set up a Twitter: https://twitter.com/finalproblemo. Odds are it will mostly mirror things from over here for now, but maybe that will be helpful for you if are fully abandoning Tumblr but still want to know about new watchalong schedules & such.
I’m not going anywhere right now, but in the event Tumblr totally implodes, know you can find me on that Twitter (or if tweeting aIso becomes not an option somehow I will maybe finally update the page at http://holmes.dreamhosters.com/ to say real words).
I’m not deleting. But just in case anyone needs an alternate way to find me, here are the other places where I am:
email: silentauror@yahoo.com. I’ve had this one since about 2003 and I’m not about to change it. This is also, just for any curious, the email I use for PayPal. Lol.
livejournal: I’m here. This isn’t an active page anymore, but I still have it and would happily go back to it if the fandom decides to migrate back that way.
I also started a pillowfort page today but I have no idea how it works or how to find anyone and they haven’t asked me to pay so I don’t think I have a real page yet and they’re not answering my questions, so I’m 1000% confused on that score. But just in case you can find me, I’m here.
2009 – GeoCities shuts down, taking old fannish websites
2010 – FFN forums deleted
2011 – Delicious destroyed by Yahoo’s incompetence
2012 – major FFN crackdown on porn
2014 – Quizilla shuts down
2015 – Journalfen’s servers become fully robust, deleting Fandom Wank
Didn’t quizilla have purges before finally shutting down? And I know basically every vidding home hot destroyed, repeatedly taking out the entire history of vidding online.
… they deleted Fandom Wank???
Well, not specifically. Journalfen failed completely and has never come back. FW was on Journalfen, so while you can see some entries on the Wayback machine, I think (?), the long comment threads aren’t archived.
2007 – Youtube starts using its “content ID” system to identify (and block) works that include copyrighted material in their database.
2009 – Greatestjournal shuts down, taking down fandom’s biggest collection of blog-style RPGs
2012 – Megaupload shut down by FBI; some (many?) fanvid archives lost
I thought there was also some kind of purge at Deviantart, but I don’t recall the details.
I’d like to remind folks that there was literally wank last month about why do we need the OTW.
Well, this would be why: we sincerely believed in the internet values of a decade or two ago, which involved owning our own servers if we wanted to see our projects remain stable, in the long term, online.
Worth mentioning: Yahoo purchased GeoCities, and was behind the decision to shut all those sites down.
Yahoo’s incompetence destroyed Delicious.
Yahoo owns Tumblr.
1356: 50% of monks.
People just… completely forget. I was there for all of the bans on fanfiction.net. You don’t know panic until you go to log in one morning and find out a bunch of your works have been deleted, gone forever, because some asshole arbitrarily decided that they wanted to ban something.
AO3 IS IMPORTANT. IT MATTERS.
I really hope this BS never touches AO3. Jfc the internet is slowly rotting away as far as fandom communities are concerned.
More is more. Keep your own backups. Post to multiple sites.
But AO3 was set up by fandom olds who were tired of shit getting deleted. It’s about as safe as anything can be.
I recently started a list of Mystrade peoples, if you’re looking for a collection of us there. Also I know I’m missing people so PLEASE let me know if you’re not on this list and want to be (or if I should remove you)
From someone who’s survived MySpace, livejournal, deviantart, and fanfiction.nets’ content purges and bad policy updates, here’s some advice on how to get through tumblr’s recent bullshit:
– don’t knee jerk delete. I know it’s tempting to peace out immediately but hang on and do the other steps first. Out right ghosting and erasing everything is how fandoms die.
– archive everything on your blog you want to keep
– tell your followers how they can archive and keep your work too. A lot of fic and art were only saved from ff.net and lj because other people saved it first. If you’re cool with other people saving your work for them to personally keep, let them know this. You can absolutely discourage reposting but I really do highly recommend you allow people to personally save fic and art they like and are worried will disappear forever. Digital Dark Ages are a real thing.
– tell people where you’re jumping ship to. Give links. Keep that info up, even if you’ve left the site.
– go through who you follow and find out where else you can follow them. Save their work if they’ll allow it. It’s tedious as hell but if you want to keep up with people on here clicking on their page to check in is the best way to do it.
– support places like ao3. This is exactly why ao3 asks for donations a few times a year. They are a 100% anti-purging, judgement free, ad free non profit run by an elected board and protected by lawyers. Places like ao3 literally save fandom so please continue to support them and other similar archives. This is exactly why ao3 is so important.
Also, go read the source policies and official Tumblr statements in addition to user analyses and reactions. It’s important to keep abreast of developments over time; staying informed is your power in this situation. Memes and reaction posts are funny and are a useful way to vent / provide commentary, but some of them create an inaccurate picture of what’s happening and should not be taken as evidence on their own of what developments have happened.
Sherlock Fandom Archive 