fandom Meta: archiving stories directly from LJ

[arrow00]

So, this is all (once again) cesperanza's fault. It all started with a posting she made in which...well, I'll let you read it for yourself if you're interested, but what came to me while reading it was we need better archiving. Not that existing archives aren't beautiful and whatnot, but there is no tie in with LJ, and the LJ community is thriving, and many people (such as me) are posting directly to LJ and not bothering to archive (for a variety of reasons.)

The problem with the LJ community is: stuff gets lost. I discovered that myself when digging up stories for my reclist. There are just too many wonderful gems disappearing into the mists of time. The folks at places like ds_weekly and others do a fantastic job of keeping us in touch with each other on a weekly basis, but they aren't searchable...and there is just no guarantee that LJ won't disappear like the wind in a desert.


The Proposed Solution

What I'm proposing is this: I'm willing to write an archiving script that will essentially pull LJ story postings and all the accompanying meta information and stuff them into a searchable database.

It would only do so for willing writerly participants. All that would be required of them is that they friend the archiving LJ users (ds_archivist or ts_archivist to start with) and follow a particular template when posting wherever they usually do, something like this:

Title: Guess Who's Coming to Dinner
Author: arrow00 (must be lj username)
Pairing: F/V
Rating: PG
Summary: Ma Vecchio and Dead!Bob find an uneasy truce.
etc. (TBD)

(Hm. I think I might actually write this story.)

The participants can post to whatever communities they like; I will simply make the archivist users join all the communities involved and check those communities and users daily for new stories.

What do you guys think? Will this fly? Are people willing to have their stories added to a centralized, searchable archive automatically?

The beauty of this system is a user can change their story and have it rearchived if they make their edits and then change the date. Sure, it will result in stories showing up more often (maybe they can preface the story with [posting updated] or something so people won't get mad.)

Obviously, there is more to think about and plan, but I find myself massively excited by this idea: it might bring the power and features of LJ to join with the missing features of an archive.

Heck, we can even (I think) include a comment box on the bottom of the story so folks can send their comments right back to the original LJ post.

Oh, and the best part about this: LJ will have already formatted the story html all pretty. I'll just grab everything between the cut tags.

Comments

[vsee.livejournal.com]

Hiya, arrow,

I am the "some woman" (eeep!) cesperanza was referring to in that post, and I was sort of quoted out of context anyway. I am very much in favor of more widespread archiving. See my follow up post over here.

Your system is something like what I was picturing. I'd like to see if it is possible to only slightly alter existing habits (something like inserting tags or whatnot) and using the existing power of the resources we use.

[arrow00.livejournal.com]

I agree with your follow-up post, vsee. Archiving just isn't *easy* enough, ultimately. And there are other problems with it: it's not cross-communication enough, and people's comments usually go directly to the author--this discourages commenting and community reaction. For most, you also can't edit your story afterward w/o intervention.

Plus, it doesn't have cutie icons. :)

We'll see if I can get any traction with my idea, which I think of as sort of "glue" between the best features of both methods.