heidi | (no subject)

Posted upon request, so that the reasoning behind why FA doesn't host NC17 stories is publicly accessable:

The original plan had been to have the NC17 stories archived separately
from the rest of FA. FA was technically planned in June/early-July 2001,
launched in mid-July with Schnoogle, and the rest of the fic houses at
the end of July. We had *always* planned to take ArtisticAlley live in
the Spring, and also launch an NC17 archive then. And since FFN was
hosting NC17 fics, there didn't seem to be a real rush to create the
NC17 section.

The reason for keeping them separate was that a number of our mods,
including Flourish, Colin, Rex, Starling, Priscilie, Narri, Mack, Phil,
etc., were under 18, and we thought it would be too difficult to keep
them from being exposed to the NC17 stories, and still host them on the
site, in part because Flourish and Colin were so active in the (then
entirely manual) uploading process that summer and fall. When Stacey
(Phatgirlfics, now Phatphatkitty) came on in the early fall, it was with
the expectation that she and Gwendolyn Grace would work to create the
NC17 version of FA - Arrowtick Alley was the original name plan.

But in the Spring, various people talked with Stacey about an archive,
and there were some machinations there which I didn't know about until
after the fact, and Stacey asked us to bring Kissaki on to
FA so she could learn the ropes, with an expectation of starting an NC17
archive in 2002 that would be a sister site to FA. Stacey had a
falling-out with FA in August of 2002 and quit working with FA then, but
Kissaki was still part of FA, and that September, when FFN went down in
their lie-filled "commemoration of 9/11" gesture, which was really done
so they could tuck away the NC17 stories, Kissaki, along with a number of
FA staffers (including some people who are still on staff for both sites)
started work on RS.org.

So basically, RS.org was created as an FA sistersite, and we still do
think of it that way. It was founded on similar principles, by many of
the same people, and with a similar structure. And given the way domain
names and passwords work on the internet, and the way the sites are
hosted, it's sort of working well this way. At least, I hope to think
so...

In other words, FA
was created with four houses, separate in terms of reviewboards and
upload systems and structure, because the original site creation team,
which included a lot of people who have been mostly out of fandom for a
while by now, each wanted to be in charge of a separate type of fics.
Some people wanted to only deal with humor, for example, or with romance,
or with long fics. And some people (including Gwen) wanted to be involved with the NC17 section. So we planned to keep each house separate in
terms of maintenance and organizational team, etc. But by August, most of
the kids who'd been so gung ho in June had school to worry about, and
many, but not all, of them curtailed the time they spent on FA, so we
just had one team deal with intake for all the fics. And as I discussed
above, the plan was for Stacey and Gwen and others to create the NC17
site. But it got put off, and Stacey quit, and then Kissaki took on the project,
but by that point (Sept. 2002) everyone thought it made more sense to
keep the intake process separate, which led to the existence of RS.org as an entirely separate entity. There has not been, and there is, and I don't expect there will be, any synergy of structure or maintenance between RS.org and FictionAlley, just because the sites have grown up and flourished independently, and it seems to be working well.

Questions? Anything I got wrong? (It's possible!)