Shameless begging time

[julesjones]

All right, anyone got a spare AO3 invite so that I can experiment with using it as a host for stuff that might get booted from WordPress for naughtiness? (Also, it is long past time I put some more of my *own* fic online, and the Hermit Library is now pretty much read-only.)

Not having looked at AO3 other than grabbing some links for stuff already there, does anyone more familiar with it know if they have any facility for a zine editor to archive a complete anthology zine, or is it a case of you have to be the author to put a story on?

Comments

[doire]

Shameless begging works; I've got an invite you can have. I just need an email address to send it to - I'm not sure if that becomes the address AO3 uses for you in future but it looks as though it can be changed. Comments on my top entry are screened.

One of the aims is to act as an archive for other archives that may be shutting down and you can certainly create collections. Tagging and hence searching is still rather odd but it seems to be a good place to keep stuff to link to if not to have people find to read by themselves.

[franzeska]

It depends exactly what kind of display options you're hoping to have. One option is to create a collection, which is a bit like making a lj/dw com and having different people post to it. Another option is to use the "additional tags" field to add the name of a zine. (Each author would have to add these tags to their own work.)

If you wanted to archive a multi-author zine in a more zine-like format, one option would be to list yourself as co-author of everything and do the different stories as a series or as chapters of one story so they'd go in order and be collected together. You could then use a custom stylesheet to format the whole thing. It might take a few tries to get everything to be in the correct order and to look right, but that's what I'd do if I wanted to recreate the experience of the original zine on AO3. (If I just wanted to have the content up, I'd use a collection.) AO3 can't host art yet, but you can embed it if you host it elsewhere.

Archivists are allowed to move archives to AO3. A zine seems like a slightly different beast, but the authors did still originally grant permission. So, no, you don't always have to be the original author to upload something to AO3.

If an author objected, however, they could complain to the Abuse Committee (which I am on), and we'd take down the story assuming we had enough evidence that it was theirs. I'd personally try to get the authors on AO3 and either have the stories listed under their own accounts but in a community of which you are the owner or go the co-author route (which also requires that all co-authors have an AO3 account). The Open Doors Committee (which I am not on) would be the people to talk to about archive importing or about special collections in non-AO3 formats; they might have some thoughts on zines too, but I haven't asked.

[franzeska]

Oh, it also occurs to me to say that you could use the profile page of a collection as a table of contents, which would allow you to maintain some of the zine format aspects while still having stories entirely under their authors' accounts. You can also do an empty top-level collection for an entire fest/zine series/etc. and then sub-collections for each year/issue/whatever.

[julesjones]

Thanks, that's very helpful.

The zine series in question was created specifically to act as a selective archive for an otherwise deliberately unarchived mailing list. After the first couple of issues I made it a requirement of submission that permission was granted to archive online when the zine went out of print unless I was explicitly notified otherwise (mostly because people gafiated and it became impossible to contact some of them to ask for permission later). So I have blanket permission for most of the zine contents, but some of the authors will not be on AO3 yet, and a few are unlikely to be on AO3 ever, which means that the only way their zine stories get up on AO3 is if I put them there.

I'd much prefer to link to the authors' own accounts where feasible, not least so that they can easily track any comments, but the "random bits" nature of some issues means that they may have to be uploaded as a single (if multi-chapter) "story", quite apart from the problem of no current contact details for one or two authors.

[franzeska]

I can't promise exactly what would happen if there were some complaint to the Abuse team in the future, of course (obligatory disclaimer; sorry), but this all sounds fine to me. This type of archiving is certainly something that AO3 allows, precisely because of the gafiating issue. :)

[sheenaghpugh]

Do you need invites to use AO3? I didn't think so.

[julesjones]

That's what the FAQ says - it's to stop it being overloaded. You can join a request queue to get one if you don't already know someone there, but as there are currently 900 and something people in the queue, I thought I would try shameless begging first. :-)

[sheenaghpugh]

Odd, cos in my other incarnation I have an account and I don't ever recall them handing out invite codes. Must check old email...