When I was first in fandom, around 1998-ish, I was a teenager on a shared computer, and I actually don't think I tracked anything
Teenagers first in fandom around 1998 on a shared computer, represent! \o/
I mainly relied on browser bookmarks, though I did end up making a page for reccing genfics that I also used to keep track of fics I liked. I started using Delicious around 2007; I think the idea was to make it easier to find other fics, since I was getting into different fandoms, but unfortunately most of the fandoms I've been in since then haven't been very Delicious-heavy, so it hasn't been that helpful in that regard.
I almost forgot to include browser bookmarks as an option, but they seem to be relatively popular! That's an interesting point about "delicious-heavy" fandoms. It's the central paradox of social bookmarking, isn't it? It's only social if other people are there using it (the way you want to be using it too). And fandoms have been very uneven about adopting delicious. It's inconsistent even among active fandoms, and of course older fandoms are severely underrepresented.
The other thing I've been using, since about 2004, is the favorites feature at FFN. The way I usually find fic on that site is by surfing through the favorites lists of writers I like, and that's a lot easier to do using their interface. Plus all the header information is automatically included, and it's sortable, which was a big advantage in the pre-Delicious days.
That sounds really cool and really useful. I read at ff.net whenever something's recced, but I never got into the site as a community. Hopefully this is the kind of thing the AO3 will eventually fully implement, but with off-site stories as well (see upthread).
I only save fic to my hard drive occasionally. The main barrier to saving fic to my hard drive is probably keeping track of all of it; if I knew of an easy way to save fics to my hard drive and tag them with fandom/characters/pairings, I'd probably do it more often.
Well, what I do is save the fic from my browser as an html document, name the file Author - Title, and put it in the relevant fandom folder inside my fic folder on my hard drive. Multi-part fics go in a folder named Author - Title, and the individual parts are named Author - Title (Part X). Here's a screenshot for reference. This is what I did for years. These days, I also tag each story with the same tags I use in delicious (or most of them, anyway: fandom, author, pairing, trope) via the Spotlight comments (I'm running Mac OSX). Screenshot of that. I use a third-party app that lets me tag at the same time I save, which is convenient; but no matter what, it's nowhere near as useful or robust as the delicious infrastructure.
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Teenagers first in fandom around 1998 on a shared computer, represent! \o/
I mainly relied on browser bookmarks, though I did end up making a page for reccing genfics that I also used to keep track of fics I liked. I started using Delicious around 2007; I think the idea was to make it easier to find other fics, since I was getting into different fandoms, but unfortunately most of the fandoms I've been in since then haven't been very Delicious-heavy, so it hasn't been that helpful in that regard.
I almost forgot to include browser bookmarks as an option, but they seem to be relatively popular! That's an interesting point about "delicious-heavy" fandoms. It's the central paradox of social bookmarking, isn't it? It's only social if other people are there using it (the way you want to be using it too). And fandoms have been very uneven about adopting delicious. It's inconsistent even among active fandoms, and of course older fandoms are severely underrepresented.
The other thing I've been using, since about 2004, is the favorites feature at FFN. The way I usually find fic on that site is by surfing through the favorites lists of writers I like, and that's a lot easier to do using their interface. Plus all the header information is automatically included, and it's sortable, which was a big advantage in the pre-Delicious days.
That sounds really cool and really useful. I read at ff.net whenever something's recced, but I never got into the site as a community. Hopefully this is the kind of thing the AO3 will eventually fully implement, but with off-site stories as well (see upthread).
I only save fic to my hard drive occasionally. The main barrier to saving fic to my hard drive is probably keeping track of all of it; if I knew of an easy way to save fics to my hard drive and tag them with fandom/characters/pairings, I'd probably do it more often.
Well, what I do is save the fic from my browser as an html document, name the file Author - Title, and put it in the relevant fandom folder inside my fic folder on my hard drive. Multi-part fics go in a folder named Author - Title, and the individual parts are named Author - Title (Part X). Here's a screenshot for reference. This is what I did for years. These days, I also tag each story with the same tags I use in delicious (or most of them, anyway: fandom, author, pairing, trope) via the Spotlight comments (I'm running Mac OSX). Screenshot of that. I use a third-party app that lets me tag at the same time I save, which is convenient; but no matter what, it's nowhere near as useful or robust as the delicious infrastructure.