i read dead russian authors volumes at a time

[walkingshadow]

Because it's something I've been grappling with for a while myself, I got curious about how other people save and store the fanfiction they read (or intend to read), either on- or offline. And since I just re-upped my paid time on dreamwidth, it looks like conditions are perfect for a poll! For these purposes, when I talk about "saving a story", I mean "putting it (or a link to it) in any physical, digital, or virtual space for your own personal access at a later date, for any reason". So:

Poll #2888 Your personal fanfiction curation habits: describe them to me!

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 148

View Respondents

Do you save fanfiction for personal archival purposes?

View Answers

Yes.
127 (85.8%)

No.
5 (3.4%)

I did in the past, but I don't anymore.
13 (8.8%)

It might seem like a simple question, but it doesn't have a simple answer (see comments).
3 (2.0%)

How long do you keep (or plan to keep) the fic you save?

View Answers

Until I've read it.
3 (2.1%)

For a length of time dependent on some variable(s) I will detail in comments.
2 (1.4%)

It varies depending on the story and/or my reason for saving it initially.
70 (48.3%)

FOREVER.
70 (48.3%)

What fic saving/storage method(s) do you currently employ?

View Answers

Saving digital copies to my computer in html/txt/pdf/etc. format.
119 (81.5%)

Saving digital copies to my mobile device.
11 (7.5%)

Burning digital copies to disks.
17 (11.6%)

Local bookmarking in my browser.
69 (47.3%)

Online bookmarking via delicious.
89 (61.0%)

Online bookmarking via a site other than delicious.
20 (13.7%)

Adding to my [live]journal memories.
36 (24.7%)

Printing out stories from the internet.
33 (22.6%)

Storing fanzines (hard copies).
13 (8.9%)

Some other method(s) which I will expound upon in comments.
6 (4.1%)

Have you changed your system over time?

View Answers

No. The system I currently use is the system I've always had.
42 (29.2%)

Yes. My system has changed at least once since I began reading fanfiction.
102 (70.8%)

Are you satisfied with your current system?

View Answers

Yes.
57 (39.0%)

Yes, but based on emerging fandom trends and/or my own changing habits and/or new tools/technology, I suspect that might change sometime in the forseeable future.
49 (33.6%)

No, and I'm in the process of adjusting it to accommodate emerging fandom trends and/or my own changing habits and/or new tools/technology.
13 (8.9%)

No, but I'm not sure what changes I should make to it.
27 (18.5%)

If you use more than one method, how much redundancy do you have in place?

View Answers

Little or no redundancy: stories are either in hard copy, on a hard drive, in the cloud, etc., but they're each in only one location/format.
39 (28.3%)

Partial redundancy: some stories exist in more than one location/format.
77 (55.8%)

Total redundancy: my entire catalog is mirrored in at least one other location/format.
22 (15.9%)

Assuming we're talking only about stories that you wanted or would have wanted to save, how does your collection of saved works compare to your actual fic consumption history?

View Answers

My collection of saved works closely matches up to the number of stories I have read.
15 (10.3%)

My collection of saved works underrepresents the number of stories I have read.
121 (82.9%)

My collection of saved works overrepresents the number of stories I have read.
13 (8.9%)

Not counting the duplicates (if you have a redundant system), how many stories do you have saved, total?

View Answers

Less than 100.
21 (14.5%)

Between 100 and 500.
37 (25.5%)

Between 500 and 1,000.
17 (11.7%)

Between 1,000 and 5,000.
37 (25.5%)

Between 5,000 and 10,000.
12 (8.3%)

Between 10,000 and 50,000.
4 (2.8%)

Between 50,000 and 100,000.
0 (0.0%)

More than 100,000.
2 (1.4%)

More than 1,000,000!!
0 (0.0%)

It's too complicated to estimate.
15 (10.3%)

If it's a different number than the number of stories you've saved, would you care to estimate how many stories you've read in your fannish lifetime? Round to the nearest order of magnitude, or feel free to just laugh into the text box instead.

View Answers

And when did you first start reading fanfiction?

View Answers

Before the advent of the internet.
10 (6.8%)

After the advent of the internet, but before the age of the mailing list.
6 (4.1%)

During the age of the mailing list, but before the days of the web archive and the author homepage.
18 (12.2%)

During the days of the web archive and the author homepage, but before the migration to journal-based fandom.
79 (53.4%)

After the migration to journal-based fandom, but before the rise of social bookmarking.
29 (19.6%)

Since the rise of social bookmarking.
1 (0.7%)

Your brief history of fandom is inaccurate and/or incomplete, and I had a different fannish entry point, which I will describe in comments.
5 (3.4%)

Obviously this poll is limited to my own experiences and knowledge, so I would dearly love to hear about the practices that work for you. Or practices that are no longer working for you! There's also the fact that I myself am exclusively a reader and not a writer of fanfiction. If you're a writer, does that affect your archiving habits? Do you handle your own fic differently? What about saving other fannish works, like art and podfic and vids and meta? I'm especially unfamiliar with fanart communities and their homes on the web, and with vids I very quickly run into the problem of limited disk space. So what do you do?

Here's how my current system is set up: every story I read that I ever want to lay my hands on again, I a) save in html format to my laptop (which subsequently gets backed up to an external drive) and b) bookmark in my delicious account. It's important to me to have both, since anything can disappear from the internet at any moment (sites go down, links break, C&D letters are served, authors pull their work, etc.), but a library in the cloud is, by definition and design, accessible a) to anyone b) from anywhere. Thus, in a perfect world I would have a perfectly redundant system consisting of local, offline electronic copies and the corresponding referral links to the online versions of those stories.

But (spoiler!) it isn't a perfect world, and this is how things actually shake out:

As of this moment I have approximately 7,700 stories saved to my hard drive (and backed up on an external drive), a number that wildly underrepresents the amount of fanfiction I have actually read, even just counting the stuff I have read and loved. I first discovered "fandom" and fanfiction via Buffy the Vampire Slayer in the summer of 1998 and read exclusively and extensively in it (Buffy/Angel omg! and AOL! and web rings!) until 2001. And yet I only have, let me count . . . ONE Buffy story saved to my hard drive, and it was posted three months ago. At the time, I kept browser bookmarks of my favorite sites in my AOL account, but that was on my parents' computer, and they were lost to the ether when that machine failed. In the meantime, I had gone off to college with my own computer.

I first started saving stories some time toward the end of 2002, well after I'd discovered (simultaneously) Smallville and slash and livejournal (and fandom again, but for real this time), but I didn't have a saving policy, something helpful and exhaustive like "save every story that you might ever want to lay your hands on again". Over the next couple of years I read what probably amounted to thousands of stories across a whole bunch of fandoms (especially Smallville, popslash, Sports Night, Highlander, Due South, The Sentinel, Lotrips, and Harry Potter), but I saved a vanishingly small percentage of it all. During the summer of 2002 I tore through the entire (now defunct) Our Boys Sorkinfic archive but saved zero stories from it. As of one month ago (I've since had a renaissance!), I had only nine Highlander stories saved. NINE. I started saving scrupulously (using the above-mentioned policy) somewhere in or around 2004, when I was into Harry Potter for at least the second time around (the Remus/Sirius redux), Star Trek (TOS), and M*A*S*H.

By the end of 2005 (SGA, et al.) I had created my delicious account, and by early 2006 I was using it in fits and starts; it wasn't until three years later, in January of 2009 (Merlin), that I began bookmarking scrupulously—that is, bookmarking every story I saved. I have approximately 3,200 stories bookmarked there now, less than half the number of stories I have saved offline; but I have another couple of thousand unread stories bookmarked, to keep my number of open browser tabs to a minimum, and for rainy days.

At this point I don't know if I'm ever going to attempt to gather all those stories I read but never saved, assuming that I would WANT to; assuming I could remember any titles or authors or what songs the songfics were based on (lol j/k, it was Sarah McLachlan); assuming I could find them again, which presumes that they're even still available anywhere, or will ever be made available again, e.g. on the AO3. And then there's the matter of retroactively bookmarking the stories I saved in pre-delicious times: the thought of having them all together in one neatly-tagged* place is incredibly attractive, but hideously daunting. And at the end of the day, is delicious even the right place for it?


* And THAT'S a whole mess of meta for another day.

Comments

[iceinyourmusic]

Having answered at least one question with the "details in comments" option, I feel like I shd comment, which makes me feel like I shd have a more substantial contribution to offer than "my archiving habits are determined from beginning to end by (a) a complete lack of a system, (b) the completely unpredictable ebb and flow of laziness vs. compulsiveness, (c) whatever will most likely lead to crying and gnashing of teeth when I can't find stories I want to find again even when I'm pretty sure I save the story and/or the link somewhere, and I do in fact know what I shd do to change that (i.e. come up with a system, ANY system), but I'm ttly not in the process of doing so". Sorry.

As for bookmarking, it's a sort of a marginal thing, but I wish I could get myself to use the AO3 bookmarking feature more often (though OTOH the reading history feature there is doing a lot of my work for me - can we have an internet-wide magical fic-reading history device next, please?).

As for keeping, I wanted to say FOREVER (because I never clean out my bookmarks or hard-drive etc. until something happens and everything is irrevocably lost), but I did just recently throw out some print-outs of Austenfic from the late '90s.

... summa summarum, I admire & envy everyone with an archiving system, but you're all unicorns to me.

[walkingshadow]

(b) the completely unpredictable ebb and flow of laziness vs. compulsiveness, (c) whatever will most likely lead to crying and gnashing of teeth when I can't find stories I want to find again even when I'm pretty sure I save the story and/or the link somewhere

Um, yes, this is basically the story of my life. ;____; I can get into industrious OCD frenzies, and then get completely overwhelmed and abandon the project entirely. That's what I hate the most, when things are left half somewhere and half elsewhere, half tagged and half not tagged.

can we have an internet-wide magical fic-reading history device next, please?

I vote yes! I'm interested in seeing what will come of tho AO3 bookmarking feature, but since it's still in beta and I don't have an account, I haven't been exploring it. And however popular the AO3 gets, there are still going to be authors (maybe a lot of authors?) who chooose not to archive their fic there; those stories going to need a separate bookmarking site, and I'm not thrilled about collecting stories in yet another location when it isn't going to be comprehensive. So I'm waiting and watching on that front.

[zing_och]

In addition to printing and saving stories, I email stories to a gmail account that's just for archiving fic. (I even have one just for SGA fic; that's mainly for rereading and playing with gmail tags.)

[walkingshadow]

Ooh, that is very clever! I like the idea of having the entire fic at hand PLUS gmail's tag options.

[theodosia21]

I started reading fanfiction in 2006. At that point, I would bookmark fics I had read and enjoyed or planned to read on my internet browser. However, that soon became completely unmanageable, so in May 2007 I opened a delicious.com account and started to transfer my favorites over. Now my general habit is to bookmark things that I might read some point in the future to my browser, and after I read it, if I think I might want to read it again, I bookmark it at my account. I also keep track of interesting fics at my fanfiction.net account- I keep interesting WIP in my favorite stories list and well-written completed stories in my community there. I've saved a few of my favorite stories to my computer, but I generally regard that as such a daunting task (I've just past my three thousandth bookmark on delicious) that it's a very small percentage of my favorites.

[walkingshadow]

I used browser bookmarks for a while too (through at least three browser iterations! four if I count AOL (I don't)), but found out the hard way that those were the least stable archival venue for me, and they're all gone. :( You've highlighted one of my problem areas too, namely what to do with fic that you haven't read yet (and therefore don't know if it's worth saving) but want to read in the future.

See, the bookmarking feature at ff.net is just the kind of thing I would never think of, because even though I read fic over there, I'm not part of the community and it's too far out on my periphery. But I imagine you can only use it to keep track of fic that's posted to the site?

I've saved a few of my favorite stories to my computer, but I generally regard that as such a daunting task (I've just past my three thousandth bookmark on delicious) that it's a very small percentage of my favorites.

It's interesting the role entrenchment plays here. For me, saving stories to my computer is the easiest thing to do, because it's what I've done the longest; online bookmarking is much more daunting to me, since I'm starting in the middle and I keep changing my mind about how I want to do things.

[amaresu]

Here via Metafandom delicious

For awhile I used to download and save fic onto disks, but I stopped once it occured to me that I rarely went back and read them. Around this time I'd really discovered archives and how most people posted to them anyways, so I didn't need to save them to disk. Once I came to LJ I used the memories feature extensively, but stopped once viciouswishes pointed me at delicious.

I think the most interesting thing about my move to delicious was the number of fics I choose not to migrate. When going through my memories I ran across entire swaths of my fannish history that I had no desire to retread. Pairings I was no longer interested in, fandoms I no longer cared about. I'd say there were hundreds of fics that never made the transition.

Now I use delicious almost exclusively. The past few years have made me very blaise about losing all my information on my computer (laptop crash, one serious virus that required a complete re-installation of my OS and two hard drive failures due to a faulty hard drive on my new computer) so I attempt to keep anything really important either in the cloud or on my external. If it's irreplaceable it doesn't belong on my computer. On that same note backing up my Firefox profile is a good thing.

I also use Read It Later far too much. Whenever I do a clean out of it I tend to find anywhere from 10-30 fics that I meant to get back to right away, only now it's several months later.

I keep meaning to use the AO3's bookmarking system, but I don't.

[walkingshadow]

For awhile I used to download and save fic onto disks, but I stopped once it occured to me that I rarely went back and read them.

Well, that makes total sense! Why keep all that old baggage behind? I do reread a lot, though. A LOT. And I go through fandoms very quickly, but I also go BACK to fandoms all the time; I want to keep those fics with me, at the ready.

Around this time I'd really discovered archives and how most people posted to them anyways, so I didn't need to save them to disk.

I did this too! But now there are a whole bunch of archives in a bunch of fandoms that are totally gone. :( Plus I started out at a time when I often had either a slow connection to the internet or none at all, and I had to save things locally if I wanted to read them at my leisure.

The past few years have made me very blaise about losing all my information on my computer

Ahh, that's a level of zen I have yet to achieve (sorry about your computer woes! D:). I almost made it a poll question: "On a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is 'totally nonchalant' and 10 is 'unhinged', how devastated would you be if you suddenly lost your entire personal fic collection?" I think I'd give myself an 8. And I worry about storing things in the cloud via a third party just the same, that the site will go down, that I'll have to start paying for services, that my information will be lost, etc.

I've been using Read It Later for non-fannish items only, but I too have found that I never go back to things I've saved there. Fic I want to read later I bookmark in a totally separate delicious account, and I do go to it when I'm at loose ends for something to read.

[trinity_clare]

How many different places I've saved a fic is directly related to how much I liked it. Witness:

Liked it: delicious
Will definitely want to reread: delicious with a favorite tag
Loved it so much I want access to it in case the power goes out and I'm bereft of the internet for hours and hours: html saved to my hard drive
Loved it so much I want to take a highlighter to it: printouts in a 3-ring binder.

Those are cumulative, so stories in the last category will also belong to the first three.

Before I was on LJ I pasted urls into a Word doc on my parents' computer (I didn't use browser bookmarks because I didn't want them to know I was reading porn in junior high), and when I first got on LJ it was to read WIPs, so I didn't really need to bookmark anything for a while. This was before the journal migration had really sunk its teeth in, so most people were still writing long chaptered fics instead of oneshots. I got a delicious in fall 2005, and mostly used it in place of browser bookmarks, combining fannish and non-fannish links. About a year later I joined SPN fandom, which was my first non-HP fandom and thus my first exposure to the mainline slash-based media fandom at large. Back then I used to bookmark pretty much everything regardless of quality (I've been meaning to go back and cull the badfic), but the older I get the pickier I get, so it's been evening out. I do need to go back and revamp the tags on the older links, though. *frets*

I save vids to my hard drive when I can, but I do have a disk space issue. I also try to save their header posts to my delicious, but occasionally I forget. Meta also gets saved to the delicious. Also I have a "to be read" tag with about 150 fics in it. It always seems to get longer. *keeps fretting*

[walkingshadow]

Your system makes my little OCD heart go pitter-patter! :D

I didn't use browser bookmarks because I didn't want them to know I was reading porn in junior high

Oh man, I hear you! In my family we all had separate accounts in AOL so as long as I signed off when I left the computer (and I was MILITANT about that), my bookmarks were private.

This was before the journal migration had really sunk its teeth in, so most people were still writing long chaptered fics instead of oneshots.

This is interesting, and something I haven't given a whole lot of thought to, that livejournal opened up fic writing to different lengths and formats and structures. It probably goes hand in hand with the generational shift and the change in writing style from the older, purpler prose.

I save vids to my hard drive when I can, but I do have a disk space issue. I also try to save their header posts to my delicious, but occasionally I forget. Meta also gets saved to the delicious.

I do the same. Though I was dismayed the other day when I was looking through the meta I'd bookmarked over the years to find so many broken links and locked-down posts. And vids are more likely to disappear from the internet than anything! What then? Enter the AO3?

Also I have a "to be read" tag with about 150 fics in it. It always seems to get longer. *keeps fretting*

TRUEST. My "unread" tag had something totally ludicrous like 1,400 bookmarks, and having them mixed in with the stories I HAD read (and had decided were worth keeping) was really anxiety-inducing. I solved it by creating a totally separate delicious account and dumping all my unread bookmarks in there, and instead of feeling guilty that I haven't read every single story in it, I use it as a resource for when I'm between fandoms and aimless, or ready to tackle a particular fandom (either again or for the first time). My delicious tags still give me a ridiculous amount of anxiety, between their inconsistencies due to changes I've made in my bookmarking practices, the gaps I want to fill in, and my attempts to figure out how everybody ELSE is doing it so I can get on the same page with them and maximize the social part of social bookmarking. *frets with you*

*via metafandom delicious*

[carnadosa]

I like to pretend that I actually remember how I got into fandom, like it was some kind of epiphany that I found slash online. But I really kinda don't. I'm pretty sure I first started reading fanfic in 2003 by way of accidentally finding YYH and HP fandoms. It might have been earlier, but no later then spring of 2003 (because I remember being annoyed I'd not have access to wips that summer). It took me about a year to realize that if I want to be able to find it and read it again I'd better have a better system then haphazard local browser bookmarks (those were mostly wips anyway).

It was still the days of mailing lists and achieves (when I had a much better tolerance for marginal quality fic) that I started saving everything I read to .doc. And I have, in fact (when the number of saved files was way way less then the 9,500 it is now) reread my entire saved fic achieve more then once. Now that it contains ginormous works such as Saving Conner, I don't really think that'll ever happen again.

When I worked the night shift and had access to endless computer printing in undergrad I printed stories out to read them. I don't anymore because 1. expense, 2. at this point I have a laptop, 3. I don't have a job where I could read during anymore.

I got a delicious account in 2006, but I didn't really start using it as an complete redundancy backup/index for my saved fics until somewhere in 2008? I think.

During the last warnings go-round I started a fairly serious retagging project (I used to only do pairing, fandom, fic and slash/gen/het) which actually did change the way I saved stuff, because this is the point where I made absolutely sure that if I saved it to disk I saved it to delicious. I also started making a better folder/subfolder system to attempt to find things if I didn't have internet access.

So far I find the Vista/Microsoft Word 2007 tagging to be...not that useful. But I haven't made a very determined effort either.

I keep telling myself I'll go back and try to find my older fandom favorites in BTVS, HP and SV but that's extremely unlikely. (The bulk of the 9,500 fics saved to disk vs. 5,100 fic tag on Delicious discrepancy is in those fandoms).

I save all of my fics to two different computers, two different backup hard drives and about once a year burn to disk. (Given the amount of digital space I have, digital copies are FREE).

As a random observation, when I started reading fanfic I was a pretty hardcore het shipper (using fanfic as a proxy for my romance novel habit so I could spend that money on pretty non-fiction books instead). All of my saving fic habits didn't start until I switched to almost exclusively slash.

So, my 'system', as it stands now, if I like it enough to reread someday I save it to disk and delicious. If it's drabbles it only gets saved to a cumulative pairing/gen-fandom drabbles doc unless it's a really awesome one. They're just not worth the time/effort for redundancy.

Where my account lives.

Re: *via metafandom delicious*

[carnadosa]

That was a lot longer then I thought, I guess I really like to talk about how I save stuff.

[cathexys]

I pretty much save for many different reasons.

When I started (like you, BtVS), I'd save stories to my hard drive, because I was on dial up and that way the phone would be free even with my reading fic :)

During my central archive reading I'd only save the stories i wanted to reread and/or print (and I just threw out a couple of milk crates worth of printouts...it was tough which Skinner/Krycek i might indeed reread and which I sure wasn't ever gonna look at again :)

Now I save pretty much randomly, because LJ fandom without a central archive (i.e., SPN/J2 as opposed to SGA) loses stories all the time. Deleted journals, locked journals, name changes, you name it...it's quite frustrating, and even if I know I won't get to read right away, i try to safe. (Though the 15 post format that LJ requires/invites isn't welcoming to that)

Every time I do a general backup, I backup all the fic as well. So I have a lot of redundancy... But trust me, the one story I'm trying to recollect...that's the one I forgot to save. EVERY DAMN TIME :)

Also: very cool poll! And I'd never even tried to estimate how many stories I'd saved. Though probably word count would be more impressive bc I tend to save very little under 20K words...

[walkingshadow]

I'd save stories to my hard drive, because I was on dial up and that way the phone would be free even with my reading fic :)

Ohh, dial-up. Our little 14.4kbps modem that could! My family all shared a computer when I was in high school, and we had a separate phone line for the internet, so whether I was online reading for hours or offline reading for hours wouldn't have mattered (and I WAS online reading for hours, hour and hours, usually late at night/in the wee hours of the morning; I believe this all coincided with AOL switching from hourly to flat monthly rates). I don't think I was savvy enough to even know I COULD save web pages locally, or how to go about it. And I've never printed fic out, it's always been a 100% electronic experience for me.

Now I save pretty much randomly, because LJ fandom without a central archive (i.e., SPN/J2 as opposed to SGA) loses stories all the time. Deleted journals, locked journals, name changes, you name it...it's quite frustrating, and even if I know I won't get to read right away, i try to safe. (Though the 15 post format that LJ requires/invites isn't welcoming to that)

It's extremely frustrating! That's basically the reason I use the broadest possible guidelines for saving fic, because I have no guarantee that it'll still be on the internet when I go looking for it later. Well, also because I'm more than a little compulsive, let's be honest. What I DON'T do is save fic that I haven't read yet, because it makes me horribly anxious and guilty to have a growing pile of unread fic on my computer, and I get enough of that from my unsorted music collection. Fic that I mean to read one day, but not today and probably not tomorrow, goes in a separate dedicated delicious account; and if a link is broken by the time I'm ready to follow it, that's just the way it goes. :/

But trust me, the one story I'm trying to recollect...that's the one I forgot to save. EVERY DAMN TIME :)

Oh god, YES. Murphy's Law is alive and well in fandom. Murphy, why you gotta do us like that?? :(

Also: very cool poll! And I'd never even tried to estimate how many stories I'd saved.

Thanks! :D I'm obviously at a bit of a loss as to where to go from here in terms of how I do things, and thought perhaps other people on the internet might have brilliantly efficient solutions, or that at least we could commiserate with each other. And I'm a little obsessed with numbers! Plus mine are very easy to add up (the ones on my hard drive) because they're all in one place, and delicious counts them for you; I can see that if you had some in print, some in files all over your computer, some in the cloud, etc. it would be difficult! I would be interested in word counts, too. I adore long fic, but since I started keeping track of word counts in my bookmarks, it's very clear that they make a neat bell curve that skews toward longer fic but spikes right in the 1,000-5,000-word range.

[jetamors]

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; I just kind of generally remembered the URLs of archives and forums. When I got back into fandom around 2004, 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.

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.

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.

The two major reasons I bookmark fics are to easily find them again, and to find other fics I might like, so I think I'll be relying on Delicious and FFN favorites for a while. I don't plan on importing either of those to AO3 unless/until they create an automated interface. I'd kind of like to mirror my old genfic recs onto it (especially since they'll be going offline at the end of the year), but it would take forever and by now many of the links are broken, so I doubt it'll ever happen.

[walkingshadow]

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.

[meinnim]

I usually save favorite fics in my Yahoo e-mails. I like having it in one more place besides delicious and my hard drive.

Also, it's nice to have a fic already set up in my e-mails in case someone needs a copy of it. I can send it immediately.

[walkingshadow]

I'm intrigued by this idea of saving fic in webmail. It's in the cloud (and therefore susceptible to suddenly disappearing off the internet/being compromised from within), so it's accessible from anywhere with a web connection, but it's the WHOLE STORY, not just a link to the story. Plus, redundancy, yay!

Also, it's nice to have a fic already set up in my e-mails in case someone needs a copy of it. I can send it immediately.

You are the best ever. ♥

[viggorlijah]

Have you considered evernote? I think with its browser integration and tagging, it could be a good way to archive a lot of stories and tag/index them.

I use delicious not so much for my own reference but to share links, and rely on my delicious network for daily recs of stories to try, more so than LJ newsletters or communities now. It's curated recs in a big shared format.

[walkingshadow]

Evernote is one of those things that's always on my periphery and always sounds like a wonderful idea, but in a really vague way; I don't know what to do with it. I've never thought about using it in a fannish context, but it seems like an idea worth exploring!

I use delicious not so much for my own reference but to share links, and rely on my delicious network for daily recs of stories to try, more so than LJ newsletters or communities now. It's curated recs in a big shared format.

Mmm, there is so much going on with delicious that I want to pick everyone's brains about. The different reasons people use it, the fandoms that are or aren't represented there, tagging conventions—I'm well on my way to becoming obsessed with tagging conventions. Personally, I find the traffic is waaay too high for daily recs, even carefully curated recs, but it's a fantastic resource to tap into when I'm looking for something to read, either general or specific.

[pouncer]

I like to read stories offline, so I copy them to a Word document, many times in batches -- around 100 pages long. I strip out the formatting, then transfer them to my PalmPilot to read via Documents to Go. I read on the Metro, noting which stories I really, really like. Those, I track down again and bookmark on Delicious. I keep the Word documents on my hard drive, and burn them to disc every once in a while.

I'm pondering an iTouch, once they can multitask. I assume I'll need to learn new formatting tricks to continue my offline fanfic reading habit.

[pouncer]

Wait! I also gmail the Word docs to myself, so that if I'm super-bored at work, I can read explicit fic without feeling quite as guilty.

[torachan]

I don't reread, so I don't save. The only time I have saved fic to my HD is when I was in Vampire Chronicles fandom and lots of fic was hard to find and/or disappearing. So I would save the stories on my recs list so that I could send them to people who asked.

[walkingshadow]

I don't reread, so I don't save.

Makes sense! Though it's an utterly foreign concept to me. :) It's really cool that you do so much reccing, and that you would go out of your way to help people who wanted to find a story.

I like talking about this stuff too much...

[sally_maria]

I've been reading fanfic since I first got online in 1998, and to start with we had dial-up and paid by the minute, so I used to save everything as text files, and then kept the stories I really liked and deleted the rest. At that time fanfic was partly in archives and partly on mailing lists so the emailed stuff I had downloaded automatically, but the ones I liked I still used to save in one file rather than many emails. I still have the stories I saved in the late 90s and early 00s.

With unlimited access, I started reading online and only saving the stories I was interested in. I used to bookmark archives, and work my way through them. I still belonged to quite a few mailing lists and got fic by email.

When I moved to LJ and in particular once I got into my first popular LJ fandom (SGA) my old methods simply didn't work, I couldn't always keep up with the flow of stories some times and other times it was difficult to find things to read.

So I discovered delicious, which I mostly use for bookmarking stuff I haven't read yet. On a day when I don't have a lot of time I can work through my flist, bookmark everything that looks interesting and come back to it when I'm not so rushed. Once I've read it, I delete the bookmark, unless it's something I want to keep, then I'll mark it as read and download a whole batch at once when I get the chance.

The problem was keeping the collections on my laptop and desktop synced, I'd wind up with files in one place and not the other. Then I discovered Dropbox. Now I have the files on all my computers, synced so that the same version is available on all of them, and they are in the cloud as well, where I can download them from the Dropbox website if I'm on someone else's computer.

It may not be the perfect system but it works pretty well for me at the moment.

Re: I like talking about this stuff too much...

[walkingshadow]

There is no such thing as too much! I think your strategies are fabulous.

I've been reading fanfic since I first got online in 1998, and to start with we had dial-up and paid by the minute, so I used to save everything as text files, and then kept the stories I really liked and deleted the rest.

Aww, you were much so smarter than me. It took YEARS before I grasped the concept that webpages were files you could download from the internet and keep to read at your leisure!

So I discovered delicious, which I mostly use for bookmarking stuff I haven't read yet. On a day when I don't have a lot of time I can work through my flist, bookmark everything that looks interesting and come back to it when I'm not so rushed. Once I've read it, I delete the bookmark, unless it's something I want to keep, then I'll mark it as read and download a whole batch at once when I get the chance.

Nice! This is actually exactly what I do, but with an entirely separate account dedicated to the unread. Once I read a story, I delete the bookmark from that account and save it over again in my main account, as well as to my hard drive (assuming it's one of those ones I want to keep).

The problem was keeping the collections on my laptop and desktop synced, I'd wind up with files in one place and not the other. Then I discovered Dropbox. Now I have the files on all my computers, synced so that the same version is available on all of them, and they are in the cloud as well, where I can download them from the Dropbox website if I'm on someone else's computer.

Oooh, that's pretty sexy. Dropbox is another of those services that always seemed like a really great idea, but not for me? I only use one machine (a laptop, so it's already portable), and the size limit means it wouldn't work as a complete backup solution. But 2GB could be just the right size for a fic collection, with room to grow (mine is currently just under 1GB). And I understand from the introductory video that you can share files and folders?

I think the perfect system IS the one that works well for you! So you're ahead of the game.

[megaptera]

My sister once printed out a huge Power Rangers epicfic that she was reading (it may have been a group project that she participated in but I'm not sure). I wish I'd saved more fic -- there are things that I know are gone that I wish were still around. Except that sort of feels like it would go against the authors' wishes, in cases where they took it down deliberately.

[walkingshadow]

My sister once printed out a huge Power Rangers epicfic that she was reading (it may have been a group project that she participated in but I'm not sure).

Aww. :) That's kind of cool, a story like that you could have bound like a novel. I've never printed out fic, and the few times (I can literally count them on one hand) someone has given me fic in hard copy, it was an extremely strange and unsatisfying (if not aborted) reading experience.

I wish I'd saved more fic -- there are things that I know are gone that I wish were still around. Except that sort of feels like it would go against the authors' wishes, in cases where they took it down deliberately.

Hmm, that's an issue I hadn't ever given much thought to; but after considering it, I don't think I would have a problem with it. First of all, in many cases when authors take down their own stories (that is, not counting the cases where a story disappears because an archive goes down or a link breaks or someone (either the author or a third-party host) is ordered to remove the fic for whatever reason), the stories are simply gone, and all that's left in place is some variety of error message, with no explanation and no indication as to what the author's wishes actually might be—for example, this is the case for all livejournal posts that are locked down after the fact. Second, how often does an author take down their work because they regret posting it in the first place and now wish that nobody had ever read it or would ever read it again? I can only guess, but I think that in the majority of cases a deliberate removal (or lock-down) is due to concerns about being found by an unintended audience (copyright holders, lawyers acting on behalf of copyright holders, real life subjects of RPF stories, or people the author knows personally, like family or employers). As the intended audience, that wouldn't seem to be a problem for me.

But even if it IS the case that an author has removed their work from the internet because they regret posting it in the first place and wish nobody had ever read it or would ever read it again, readers have no obligation to honor that wish, and I personally don't feel any compunction to. It was published to the internet; there are no take-backs. I likewise wouldn't feel any compunction about sharing that story with anyone who requested a copy of it (e.g. via email), though I'm not sure what the ethical or legal stance would be on re-posting it to the internet (with all proper attribution).

[fred_mouse]

one of the things I hate about my current system is that I have folders labelled 'put it in delicious' on at least two computers, but some days I have the oomph to either save the file, or bookmark, but not both. Which invariably means that the story I'm looking for is in one of those files, and searching delicious doesn't help.

Also, I use diigo for the exporting qualities (I can get the tags, which I haven't worked out how to do with delicious), and the two synch somehow [I have issues with diigo, because I work in a mac environment].

not sure whether any of this is of interest, but I was fascinated reading about other people's methods.

[walkingshadow]

This is TOTALLY of interest, thanks for commenting!

one of the things I hate about my current system is that I have folders labelled 'put it in delicious' on at least two computers, but some days I have the oomph to either save the file, or bookmark, but not both. Which invariably means that the story I'm looking for is in one of those files, and searching delicious doesn't help.

Ugh, I know that feeling. I eventually had to make a hard and fast rule for myself that I couldn't a) close a browser tab containing a story I wanted to save before I'd saved it, b) save a fic without bookmarking it, or c) bookmark a fic without saving it (that is, a fic that I had read; I have a separate, dedicated delicious account for fic I mean to read later). Sometimes I do this immediately after reading a story, but I often have a lot of browser tabs open at a time (at the height of my interest in a big and active fandom? a hundred tabs, easy), and for a long time, before I gather the time and energy to sweep through and close them, either singly or in large batches.

Re: the curse of multiple unsynchronized locations, sally_maria upthread has good things to say about Dropbox, perhaps that could be at least a partial solution for you?

Also, I use diigo for the exporting qualities (I can get the tags, which I haven't worked out how to do with delicious), and the two synch somehow [I have issues with diigo, because I work in a mac environment].

I work on a mac also, and I've heard good things about diigo in general; can you tell me more about the issues you've had with it?

i write everything down except what's on my mind

[tears_of_nienna]

(here via metafandom)

I like this poll! Finding out about other people's fic-hoarding habits is fun. I really need a better system for mine--if I'm afraid something is going to disappear, I copy it to my hard-drive. Otherwise, I just save it to an increasingly disorganized "Yay Fic" folder in my bookmarks. *sigh* You'd think after two years of library school I'd be cataloging fic by fandom and giving it a Dewey number for genre. (The 613.96 range would be crowded--I think that's where the porn would belong.)

...But yeah, this comment is mainly to say that I freaking love that Third Eye Blind song. :D

Re: i write everything down except what's on my mind

[walkingshadow]

I like this poll! Finding out about other people's fic-hoarding habits is fun.

Yay! Thanks for adding your habits to the mix!

You'd think after two years of library school I'd be cataloging fic by fandom and giving it a Dewey number for genre. (The 613.96 range would be crowded--I think that's where the porn would belong.)

Ooooh, now I'm imagining a definitive internally-consistent categorization protocol for fanfiction. It's completely unfeasible, but it would be so tidy and lovely!

this comment is mainly to say that I freaking love that Third Eye Blind song. :D

Dude, that album formed a large part of my personal soundtrack in the late 90s! :D

[goodbyebird]

I started out saving them to my lj memories, but then was shocked to find one of my favorite stories HAD GONE POOF FROM THE INTERNET :o

Luckily I managed to find another copy, and from then on if there's a fic that just leaves me absolutely giddy/bowled over, I will save it on my harddrive.

I've also begun writing recs, not only in the hopes that others will read the stories I've enjoyed(though it's certainly one of the reasons), but also for my own perusal. I'm very bad with titles, so having an actual quote from the story to go by is of tremendous help to me.

[walkingshadow]

I started out saving them to my lj memories, but then was shocked to find one of my favorite stories HAD GONE POOF FROM THE INTERNET :o

D: It's so awful to go looking for a story you expected to be right where you left it, only to encounter "Error: You are not authorized to view this protected entry" or THE DREADED 404.

I've also begun writing recs, not only in the hopes that others will read the stories I've enjoyed(though it's certainly one of the reasons), but also for my own perusal. I'm very bad with titles, so having an actual quote from the story to go by is of tremendous help to me.

That's awesome. And you're right, pullquotes are such a big help when you're trying to find a story again, or trying to decide whether a story you haven't read is worth clicking on.

[calvinahobbes]

Commenting now. Will read other comments after :o)

I've been reading fic for probably 10 years now, and I started saving fic with some regularity around 2006-7, I think.

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. I've tried it all when it comes to bookmarking: I've saved nothing, I've saved EVERYTHING, I've saved some. Right now I have what I call 'an intelligent bookmarking policy': I don't bookmark everything (I let a lot of drabbles and shortfics slide, because chances are high I'll forget all about them within hours) but I think I know myself well enough that I can predict whether I'll remember a certain story and so want to read it again - this means that 'quality' is not a criteria; frequently I'll *have* to save badfic or fic I didn't like, because something about it is in danger of lodging in my psyche and I'll need to able to revisit it.

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

I use a very bare-bones saving technique: I title the bookmark with fic title, pairing, rating, and a short word to describe the genre/or predominant feature (eg. kid!fic, hooker!John, Ds). Now that Firefox has intelligent and live bookmark searching, my titles serve as tags in their own right; I can simply start typing and see how many saved fics fit my criteria. It's fast and hassle-free. I back-up my Firefox bookmarks with Xmarks (previously FoxMarks), which also gives me a searchable online back-up archive I can access from anywhere.

This provides, of course, that links don't die. And they do, I know. I really want to be better at saving fic, but I feel it's a big job, and I've tried it several times, and snagged on problems such as archive structure (everything in one place? one folder per fandom? per ship?), titling (what to include), and have missed the ability to tag files on my computer. I guess now that Mac OSX searches both file titles and contents, I could actually start saving like I bookmark...

Another BIG problem for me has been what format to save in. I've really fretted over this. Saving complete websites is unreliable and creates that annoying folder filled with crap and pictures. Saving only html can screw up the formatting (especially LJ pages suck in html-only format). Saving in .docs or .rtfs can also screw up formatting and create some unmanageably heavy documents. Will saving as .pdf screw with my search possibilities (and will .pdf continue as a popular format)?

How do you tag and format your 'hard-copied' fic?

[walkingshadow]

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.

here via metafandom, and thus late to the party

[mizubyte]

But I still have comments, because this is new for me!! I've been online since 1997 -- my first fandom was MMPR, and on AOL and I had a lot of stuff saved in bookmarks, but that all got deleted when my parents (finally) got rid of AOL in 2004.

However I, of course, have been reading for ages since then, but all over the place (ff.net, yahoo mailing lists, forum boards etc). I just rediscovered LJ and thus fandom this past year... which is when I got introduced to Delicious. I only have a few hundred fics saved on my delicious, and the idea of trying to go back and find all my favourite stories from over the years seems... frightening. (i've found some of my absolute favourites, but most i cant even imagine trying to find).

I recently got a memory chip for my Nintendo DS, thus turning my DS into an ebook reader, so now I'm saving fics to digital copy. I have most of my delicious copied and saved, but its a time consuming practice, and trying to go back and copy them all (especially multiparters) would be an overwhelming task...

Re: here via metafandom, and thus late to the party

[walkingshadow]

Hey, welcome! You're not late, this party won't be over until I grow weary of talking about fanfiction reading and saving habits at length and in excruciating detail, i.e. NEVER.

MMPR = Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers?? I used to watch that show after school in the afternoons and loooooved it, but it way precedes my fannishness. I get the impression it was part of a much, much larger franchise than I was aware of at the time, I'd be interested in getting to know it these days. Have you seen Amy Jo Johnson on Flashpoint? It took a trip to imdb for me to place her, but she is so ridiculously awesome and adorable.

P.S. My parents didn't get rid of AOL until LAST YEAR.

I only have a few hundred fics saved on my delicious, and the idea of trying to go back and find all my favourite stories from over the years seems... frightening. (i've found some of my absolute favourites, but most i cant even imagine trying to find).

It is, it's so huge and formidable. And frankly, probably impossible. But I think that if we bide our time, more and more of those old stories will show up on the AO3. At least, I live in hope!

I'm even more unfamiliar with gaming devices than I am with smartphone and other mobile devices, I would never have thought of using a DS as a reader. Cool!

I have most of my delicious copied and saved, but its a time consuming practice, and trying to go back and copy them all (especially multiparters) would be an overwhelming task...

YES. Designing a system for future reading going forward is problematic in and of itself right now, because things have changed so quickly and it's uncertain how much change is still coming and where things will eventually settle. But when you have to take into account your OLD system and all the fic you've ALREADY read, it's another problem entirely.

[(Anonymous)]

Hiya, here via Metafandom. These are all points I find highly interesting - especially comparing other people's methods of saving and storing fic.

Personally, I'm using a combination of saving and bookmarks, but I'm not at all happy with it. I bookmark everything "to read" in Firefox. Everything I've read is deleted from Firefox and instead saved to Delicious using lots and lots of tags in the hope that I can find the fic again ten years from now.

I have a private eFiction install behind a password that I use to store stories I absolutely love. Problem is: It's a lot of work and sometimes you don't know right away that this particular story will turn into a favourite. So, to make things easier I've been trying Diigo's Snapshot feature, but I'm not at all satisfied with it, because (though stating otherwise) it won't let me save content in the deep web (stuff behind a password or a flock). Basically, it's useless.

Michelle (http://michelle.fancrone.net)

[walkingshadow]

I'm so sorry you're unhappy with your current system! It's ridiculously hard to figure out exactly what's going to work, not just for now, but going forward AND incorporating the past.

Everything I've read is deleted from Firefox and instead saved to Delicious using lots and lots of tags in the hope that I can find the fic again ten years from now.

This is an excellent point that hasn't really been talked about much so far. How can you predict the thing about a fic that you're going to remember? General tropes might seem like a good bet (kidfic! amnesia! hurt/comfort!), but very often I go searching for a story again not because I want to read the one where they get drunk on shore leave and wake up married—paramaters that encompass approximately a billion stories, but searchable once you break it down by fandom, pairing, etc.—what I want is that story with that one scene, that one line, the detail that may or may not have been intrinsic to the plot, but that almost definitely didn't make it into my tags or pullquote or review. A quick flip through any ficfinders community will reveal that I am not alone in this. Though, I mean, yes, obviously I will ALSO want to re-read the ones where they get drunk on shore leave and wake up married. So maybe we'll always need ficfinders communities for the other stuff. That's hardly the worst thing in the world though, is it? Or a platform that performed robust and precise content searches, that would help too.

I'd never heard of eFiction, but it looks like a heavyweight system. And there's been good buzz about diigo, but one of the main selling points is that it archives content; if it doesn't, I don't really see the use in switching to a bookmarking site that fewer people are using. :/

here via metafandom

[ellia]

I've got boxes of zines from the pre-internet days, and i'm too much of a packrat to part with them, even though i've long since moved on from those fandoms.

When i still had dial-up, i used to save everything down, because trying to read long epic stories online would cost you an arm and a leg. These days i pretty much save everything to delicious, though i've still got a couple of thousand stories and links on my computer that i haven't gotten around to tagging yet.

I picked save forever because i learned the hard way not to go around deleting stuff. Last time i got a new pc, i deleted a bunch of old fics on the grounds that i wasn't interested in those fandoms anymore, but then someone gave me the Highlander DVDs and i came down with a sudden urge to re-read all my old Richie/Methos favourites. But most of them had disappeared into the ether, and despite spending days on the wayback machine there were a few i just couldn't find. So now it's a case of keep everything, because i never know when an old fandom will come calling.

Re: here via metafandom

[walkingshadow]

These days i pretty much save everything to delicious, though i've still got a couple of thousand stories and links on my computer that i haven't gotten around to tagging yet.

Ugh, yes, this is so frustrating, isn't it? When everything's somewhere, but not precisely in the place(s) you want it to be, and fixing it to your liking is a non-trivial matter.

I picked save forever because i learned the hard way not to go around deleting stuff. Last time i got a new pc, i deleted a bunch of old fics on the grounds that i wasn't interested in those fandoms anymore, but then someone gave me the Highlander DVDs and i came down with a sudden urge to re-read all my old Richie/Methos favourites.

This happens to me all the time; I call them personal fandom renaissances. Perhaps one day you will come full circle to your original fanzine fandoms and you'll be glad you still have them! As for disappearing into the ether, it all comes back to that. The odds of anything that was on the internet ten years ago still being there today are so uncertain, and there's just no guarantee that anything on the internet today will be there tomorrow. And the story that disappears is always going to be the one you long to read the most.

[cesy]

I either label things in Gmail or bookmark them in Firefox if they're "to read". If I read them on AO3, I bookmark them there. I love their bookmarking system, and I am really excited about the coming improvements that will make it properly usable. If I read stories elsewhere, I don't bookmark them any more unless they're really exceptional, in which case I save them to my hard drive and sometimes print them out if they're really special to me.

[walkingshadow]

If I read them on AO3, I bookmark them there. I love their bookmarking system, and I am really excited about the coming improvements that will make it properly usable.

Cool! I'm hearing a lot of good things about bookmarking on the AO3, it sounds really promising. I think I need to shift the way I think about it from an archive only for writers, to one for readers as well.

I don't bookmark them any more unless they're really exceptional, in which case I save them to my hard drive and sometimes print them out if they're really special to me.

That is a beautifully executed hierarchical system. :)

[macey]

I read on (the dreaded) fanfiction.net for several years before coming across to the journalling sites, and have about 600 fics in my C2 'community' as compared to the 660 in my out-of-ff.net delicious. I'm actually in the process of tagging those C2 bookmarks on a seperate delicious in an attempt to actually be able to find anything ever, since the search functionality for C2s is non-existant, but, well, 600+ fic to tag by hand means it's taking a while.

[walkingshadow]

I'm actually in the process of tagging those C2 bookmarks on a seperate delicious in an attempt to actually be able to find anything ever, since the search functionality for C2s is non-existant, but, well, 600+ fic to tag by hand means it's taking a while.

Bookmarking in delicious is such a great idea (tags! searches!), and it's so easy to open an account and start saving as you go; but the huge amount of time and effort it takes to incorporate the links you already have is a whole other story. >_<

I'm not familiar with the term "C2", is it fandom-specific?

[nemonclature]

I use bookmarking more as a transitional tool for fic. So I save a bunch of links, work through them and then the ones I liked I eventually post on my reccing journal.

I'm in the process of fiddling with that, mainly becuase I prefer delicious' multi-tagging options than lj's.

[walkingshadow]

I use bookmarking more as a transitional tool for fic. So I save a bunch of links, work through them and then the ones I liked I eventually post on my reccing journal.

Rules and a process, awesome. :)

I'm in the process of fiddling with that, mainly becuase I prefer delicious' multi-tagging options than lj's.

Agreed! Delicious's tags aren't absolutely perfect (true boolean searching, I long for you!) but they do at the very least have an AND option, and bundles.

[intothisshadow]

I started reading fanfic in 1997 when I first got online (fanfic was actually one of the reasons I was interested in Internet). At first, I saved *everything* I was even mildly interested in reading, and then after reading I'd either deleted it if I didn't like it, or keep it because I liked it (or some aspects of it) even little.

After a few years of that, I changed it and saved *nothing* - it seemed unnecessary because the stories were always up on fanfic archives/mailing list archives etc. After a few years of this (about 2005) and after one or two fics I loved that I couldn't find online anymore at all (or in full) because the site was deleted/free host disappeared/chapter pages disappeared, I changed it again. Now I save everything I really love and/or what to be able to be sure of finding it again later for whatever reason. In the last year or so, I've also started using Delicious in addition to saving to my HD - I bookmark fics I don't want to save nor love, but still like to be able to find again later if it's still online... usually, this is because the type of the fic is rare or some aspect of it is.

Fics by other people I save only on one long-term location (external HD), but my own fics I make sure to have permanently saved at least on two different locations (my laptop and an external HD), and the fics I'm currently writing, I also like to upload to Google Docs so that I have an online back up of it just in case, and also so I can work on them when ie. at work and there's nothing to do.

[walkingshadow]

After a few years of that, I changed it and saved *nothing* - it seemed unnecessary because the stories were always up on fanfic archives/mailing list archives etc. After a few years of this (about 2005) and after one or two fics I loved that I couldn't find online anymore at all (or in full) because the site was deleted/free host disappeared/chapter pages disappeared, I changed it again. Now I save everything I really love and/or what to be able to be sure of finding it again later for whatever reason. In the last year or so, I've also started using Delicious in addition to saving to my HD - I bookmark fics I don't want to save nor love, but still like to be able to find again later if it's still online... usually, this is because the type of the fic is rare or some aspect of it is.

I have been through that tragedy. It's such an awful feeling to go back to a story, especially a story you've gone back to many times before, only to find an error message acting as a placeholder. :( That's such a perfect use of delicious though, to keep the things that are interesting to you in some way, but that you're not emotionally invested in enough to be dismayed if they do disappear from the internet.

Fics by other people I save only on one long-term location (external HD), but my own fics I make sure to have permanently saved at least on two different locations (my laptop and an external HD), and the fics I'm currently writing, I also like to upload to Google Docs so that I have an online back up of it just in case, and also so I can work on them when ie. at work and there's nothing to do.

Ahhh, very clever! Your works in progress I imagine you would want to be ESPECIALLY careful about backing up and keeping synched together.