I started bookmarking links, but lost some and have some only in back-up due to a few browser re-installs, before I learned to migrate bookmarks.
This happened to me at least half a dozen times over several years. >_< It's still not something I ever think of backing up. I haven't gotten into using Firefox's bookmarks for this, even though I know they're much improved.
These days I use only private bookmarks. I dabbled with both a recs journal and delicious at various points, but both proved too cumbersome - and too public: I like being able to tag something "Ds rimming noncon" and not have anyone else know I actually read that :oD
And yet, there are other readers out there looking for fic who would be OVERJOYED to find a story neatly tagged "Ds rimming noncon"! The issue of "quality" is such a loaded one, and overrated. There's more than one reason to like a story or to save a story and "because it's hott" is a perfectly valid one, not to mention pretty damn common. A thousand kinkmemes can't be wrong.
Another BIG problem for me has been what format to save in.
I save everything in html format, unless it was posted originally as something else, like txt (very rare these days; more common in older fandoms, off author homepages). Saving complete websites is out of the question, and converting html to txt or rtf is both an extra step and almost always a disaster—in MS Word, quadruply so. I almost never have a problem with formatting when I save html documents as html documents, even on livejournal/dreamwidth. I think it helps that I always load pages with ?style=mine appended, where my style is the default site style. And this way I can read stories later the way I read them originally: in my browser, either online or offline.
How do you tag and format your 'hard-copied' fic?
Okay, I'm going to paraphrase what I wrote in a couple of comments upthread, let me know if you'd like elaboration or clarification: First of all, I'm running Mac OS 10.5. I save the fic from my browser (almost always Firefox) as an html document (Web Page, HTML Only; see above), name the file Author - Title, and put it in the relevant fandom folder inside my fic folder on my hard drive. Crossovers go in a "crossover" folder. 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(s)) in the Spotlight comments. Screenshot of that. If you put a lot more information in your titles, you might find it's not worth this extra step.
I add "&" as a prefix to all my tags so I can search for them easily without returning a ton of false positives. Alternatively, you could dispense with a prefix in the tag and search for Spotlight comments specifically by type, like so: comment:[tag] in the Finder or Spotlight menu (see more info here), but I find this method imperfect and unpredictible. I use a third-party app called Default Folder X that allows me to tag a document at the same time I save it, which is convenient; but no matter what, it's nowhere near as useful or robust as the delicious infrastructure; plus, Spotlight comments have a bad habit of disappearing under various circumstances.
A few people have mentioned they keep fic in webmail; that would give you the body of the text itself, plus a tagging system, and in gmail especially you'd have the ability to search the content. Not a perfect fix, but it's something I'm considering.
no subject
This happened to me at least half a dozen times over several years. >_< It's still not something I ever think of backing up. I haven't gotten into using Firefox's bookmarks for this, even though I know they're much improved.
These days I use only private bookmarks. I dabbled with both a recs journal and delicious at various points, but both proved too cumbersome - and too public: I like being able to tag something "Ds rimming noncon" and not have anyone else know I actually read that :oD
And yet, there are other readers out there looking for fic who would be OVERJOYED to find a story neatly tagged "Ds rimming noncon"! The issue of "quality" is such a loaded one, and overrated. There's more than one reason to like a story or to save a story and "because it's hott" is a perfectly valid one, not to mention pretty damn common. A thousand kinkmemes can't be wrong.
Another BIG problem for me has been what format to save in.
I save everything in html format, unless it was posted originally as something else, like txt (very rare these days; more common in older fandoms, off author homepages). Saving complete websites is out of the question, and converting html to txt or rtf is both an extra step and almost always a disaster—in MS Word, quadruply so. I almost never have a problem with formatting when I save html documents as html documents, even on livejournal/dreamwidth. I think it helps that I always load pages with ?style=mine appended, where my style is the default site style. And this way I can read stories later the way I read them originally: in my browser, either online or offline.
How do you tag and format your 'hard-copied' fic?
Okay, I'm going to paraphrase what I wrote in a couple of comments upthread, let me know if you'd like elaboration or clarification: First of all, I'm running Mac OS 10.5. I save the fic from my browser (almost always Firefox) as an html document (Web Page, HTML Only; see above), name the file Author - Title, and put it in the relevant fandom folder inside my fic folder on my hard drive. Crossovers go in a "crossover" folder. 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(s)) in the Spotlight comments. Screenshot of that. If you put a lot more information in your titles, you might find it's not worth this extra step.
I add "&" as a prefix to all my tags so I can search for them easily without returning a ton of false positives. Alternatively, you could dispense with a prefix in the tag and search for Spotlight comments specifically by type, like so: comment:[tag] in the Finder or Spotlight menu (see more info here), but I find this method imperfect and unpredictible. I use a third-party app called Default Folder X that allows me to tag a document at the same time I save it, which is convenient; but no matter what, it's nowhere near as useful or robust as the delicious infrastructure; plus, Spotlight comments have a bad habit of disappearing under various circumstances.
A few people have mentioned they keep fic in webmail; that would give you the body of the text itself, plus a tagging system, and in gmail especially you'd have the ability to search the content. Not a perfect fix, but it's something I'm considering.