FanFiction.Net

This article is about the automated multi-fandom fic archive. You may be looking for the 1995-2005 anime fiction archive.

Archive
Name:	FanFiction.net aka FF.net and FFN
Date(s):	October 15, 1998 – present
Archivist:
Founder:	Xing Li
Type:	Fan Fiction Archive
Fandom:	Multifandom
URL:	http://fanfiction.net
Click here for related articles on Fanlore.

linking banner, seen at Jedi Discipline

Fanfiction.net, is a fanfiction archive that launched in October 15, 1998. The site was created and is owned by Xing Li. Fanfiction.net may be the first multi-fandom automated archive, and was arguably the largest fanfiction archive on the internet at one time. As of 2008, it included several thousand fandoms with several hundred new stories being uploaded daily. FictionPress is its sister site and is an archive for original fiction and poems. The two sites split off on February 16, 2003.

Fanfiction.net was hugely influential and well known in fannish spaces during the 2000s. It contributed to a more centralized fandom experience for readers and writers of fanfiction, and removed technical and financial barriers many faced when trying to host their works online.

Its submission rules changed several times during that decade, inspiring debate and discussion and what type of content should be accepted on a multi-fandom archive. The Fanfiction.net purge of NC-17 content in 2002 was particularly influential; angering many fans and beginning a fannish migration as many authors of adult fanfiction sought a more inclusive home for their works.

It is believed that the site's users tend to be quite young. A poll on the site in April 2000 said the percentage of users who were 10–19 years old was 61%. In January 2001, they trended even younger, with 10–19 years old at 70%. It is unknown how those demographics have changed over the years.

Features

FF.Net has features beyond story archiving that provide tools for readers and writers, some simply useful, others giving the site a social side that lets fans connect.

Browsing and filtering

When browsing, stories on Fanfiction.net display the following information: the title of the story; the author; a short summary, which must be characters or less; the fandom, or fandoms if it is a crossover; the rating, which ranges from K to M; the language the work is in; the genre; the number of chapters, words, reviews, favorites, and follows; when it was last update and when it was published; the characters (up to four) and ships (up to two); and if the story complete.

All of these things can be filtered at the top of the browsing page. Pairings were added as a filtering option in October 2013. (Previously, you could mark a fic with characters, but there was no way to distinguish between pairings and non-pairings of those characters.)

Reading

Stories are split into chapters, which must be loaded one at a time. There is no "view all chapters on one page" option without third-party tools. The site also blocks highlighting text (ostensibly to avoid plagiarism) and downloading fics. However, several tools have been developed for this: Flagfic is a discontinued downloader; FanFictionDownloader occasionally has problems when FF.net makes updates; the FanFicFare plugin for Calibre continues to work. FF.net stories cannot be directly imported to AO3; writers wishing to copy or transfer their works must download their stories and re-upload them.

Favoriting and following

The site allows readers to assemble lists of their favorite stories and authors, which function as public bookmarks and rec lists, similar to Delicious social bookmarking. Favorite authors and favorite stories are visible in separate tabs on users' profiles and can be seen by anyone who visits the page.

Following is a convenient story and author alert feature so that users can keep up with new chapters of WIPs and new stories from particular authors. Which authors or stories a user is following isn't publicly visible.

Authors get an email alert when someone favorites or follows them as an author or one of their stories, and the number of favorites and follows a story has are publicly-listed stats. Authors have access to lists of who has favorited or followed them or their works.

Communities

Communities on Fanfiction.net are collections of stories curated by one or more person, separate from a user's favorites list, usually based around an interest or theme, similar to a rec list or thematic lists. In popular fandoms, this can make it easier deal with the large number of stories.

The user who creates a community is known as the "Founder" and has the power to add stories, remove stories, view community stats, appoint staff, and delete the archive. Community staff can also add or remove stories. Other users can follow the community and receive emails when a new fanfiction is added, but following gives users no permissions to add or remove works.

Communities can be either "category specific" meaning they focus on just one fandom or "category agnostic"/general, focusing on no specific fandom. This cannot be changed after the community is made. When looking for a community, users can use the search bar to search just for communities or browse general communities or fandom-specific communities, but cannot browse a full list of all communities. In addition to specifying one's desired language, communities can be sorted in the following ways:

• Random
• Staffs
• Stories
• Followers
• Create Date

By default, communities are displayed by highest follower count first when browsing. Staffs and followers show highest amounts first. Create Date sorts by most recent first.

In some documentation on Fanfiction.net, communities are referred to as just "Communities" while in other places they're called "community archives" or "C2 Communities".

Reviews, stats, and other tools

Fanfiction.net allows readers to post reviews on stories, a community building feature that other automated archives lacked at the time when FFN was first established. Reviews by signed-in members can be replied to via private messaging.

Another useful feature is the stats page, where users can see how many people opened their story and where these readers come from.

Fanfiction.net also has a public message board system, an online dictionary and beta reader services.

Languages

As of July 2018, the following languages are supported:

Afrikaans : Afrikaans Albanian : Shqip Arabic : العربية Bulgarian : България Catalan : català Chinese : 中文 Croatian : hrvatski jezik Czech : čeština Danish : dansk Devanagari : देवनागरी Dutch : Nederlands

English : English Esperanto : Esperanto Estonian : Eesti Farsi : فارسی Filipino : Filipino Finnish : suomi French : Français German : Deutsch Greek : Ελληνικά Hebrew : עברית Hindi : हिंदी

Hungarian : magyar Icelandic : Íslenska Indonesian : Bahasa Indonesia Italian : Italiano Japanese : 日本語 Korean : 한국어 Latin : LINGUA LATINA Malay : Bahasa Melayu Norwegian : norsk Polish : język polski Portuguese : Português

Punjabi : ਪੰਜਾਬੀ Romanian : Română Russian : Русский Serbian : српски Slovak : Slovenčina Spanish : Español Swedish : svenska Thai : ภาษาไทย Turkish : Türkçe Ukrainian : Українська Vietnamese : Tiếng Việt

Language usage in 2010

It is believed the bulk of the fics on FF.Net are in English. In early 2010, the Harry Potter section had approximately 440,000 works in it. These break down by language as follows:

• 80% - English
• 6% - Spanish
• 6% - French
• 3% - Portuguese
• 3% - German
• 1% - Other
  • >100 works - Dutch, Swedish, Russian, Polish, Hungarian, Italian, Indonesian, Chinese, and Finnish
  • >10 works - Danish, Turkish, Czech, Norwegian, Hebrew, Catalan, and Filipino
  • 0-10 works - Greek, Japanese, Romanaian, Bulgarian, Korean, Croatian, Scandinavian, Vietnamese, Arabic, and Latin

Naruto (a fandom with a large presence on the site) shows a similar pattern: around 85% of the fic is in English and only a handful of stories are in Japanese.

Types of Fandoms

Total number of fandoms by media type in 2010

Total number of fics by media type in 2010

FF.Net is popular with fans from many different communities including anime fandom and media fandom. The top ten most popular fandoms by story count as of 2013 are:

• Harry Potter
• Naruto
• Twilight
• Inuyasha
• Glee
• Hetalia: Axis Powers
• Supernatural
• Bleach
• Kingdom Hearts
• Pokémon

Harry Potter alone accounts for nearly 14% of all the fics on FF.Net, with Naruto and Twilight making up 7% and 4% respectively.

Anime/Manga: Naruto is the largest fandom in the anime category, but dozens of other popular anime series have sections with at least several thousand fics. Hence, while anime makes up only 19% of the fandoms on FF.Net, it accounts for 31% of the fic.

Books: FF.Net users can specify whether they are writing for the book or movie version of a canon, but each fandom only appears in the index page for one media type. 80% of the fics in the book category are for Harry Potter, Twilight, and Lord of the Rings.

Cartoons: Avatar: The Last Airbender and Teen Titans have particularly large sections.

Comics: Most of the comics fics are for US superhero comics, many of which also have separate sections for cartoons or live action movies. Some less mainstream comics also have large sections: The Jhonen Vasquez (author of Johnny the Homicidal Maniac) section accounts for about 5% of comics fic.

Games: The Games category includes a wide variety of computer, video, and role playing games, but the majority of the fics are from games like the Final Fantasy franchise and Kingdom Hearts, which are associated with anime fandom.

Misc: The Wrestling section is the largest. The Misc category also houses a variety of crossover sections and things like radio dramas and mythology.

Movies: FF.Net lists many fandoms under their book format, so the movie category is relatively small. Some of the bigger fandoms in it are major franchises like Star Wars, Pirates of the Caribbean, and High School Musical. Some older or less famous movies like Newsies and Labyrinth also have large sections. Films from outside the US are not well represented.

Plays/Musicals: RENT fic makes up 40% of this category, Wicked fic another 21%. Most of the fandoms are for Broadway productions, but Shakespeare also has a large section.

TV: No one fandom predominates in the TV section. There are similar numbers of fics for a wide variety of mainstream American TV shows. As of November 2013, there were over 18,000 fics for each of the following shows (in descending order): Glee, Supernatural, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, NCIS, Vampire Diaries, Stargate SG-1, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Criminal Minds, House, M.D., Bones, and Stargate Atlantis. Some British TV shows also have large sections: Doctor Who, Sherlock, and Merlin. Series from other countries, including fan-favorite Canadian series such as due South, popular Asian dramas, and tokusatsu, are not especially well represented, considering the size of their fandoms outside of FF.Net. Anime is in a separate section.

A general quiz about the genres for fanfiction on the website was created by Trotsky11 on Sporcle.

A Quick Peek into 2000

A September 2000 look: See: Fanfiction.net Statistics, ^{Archived version} which includes: Fanfiction.net Statistics Tables: 2000, ^{Archived version}

A fan did a tally of some available fic in December 2000:

They have collected more fanfics for Emergency (15) than for The Dukes of Hazzard (7).

There are two Taxi fanfics, and twoMuppets Tonight stories.

There are 125 Next Generation fanfics, but 521 Scarecrow and Mrs. King fanfics.

They have 12 Law and Order fanfics (one of them a crossover with a Who Wants To Be A Millionaire fanfic), but 49 Caroline in the City stories.

There are six fanfics for The Twilight Zone, but 785 for Star Trek: Voyager.

They have as many Full House fanfics (2) as they have Bewitched or Wishbone.

There are 34 West Wing fanfics, 38 Sliders fanfics, and 71 Laverne and Shirley ones, but no Three's Company or Happy Days ones.

They have more 21 Jump Street fanfics (6) than they have Simon and Simon (5) or Team Knight Rider (3).

They have 96 Due South fanfics, but only one Northern Exposure. There are, though, 72 Moonlighting fanfics.

178 Dawson's Creek fanfics, but 390 Power Rangers. 89 Profiler, 56 Quantum Leap.

Why these breakdowns? Why have these particular shows drawn so many writers to fanfiction.net? What is this this "Higher Ground" show that has 1063 fanfics?

Another fan adds:

No no no, what's scary is that there are over 10,000 Harry Potter fics,

while there are only 17 Discworld fics.

Also, there are exactly 18 Minesweeper fics.

October 2000 Snapshots

• 

  FanFiction.Net main page as archived by the Wayback Machine on "October 17, 2000". Archived from the original on 2003-02-07..

• 

  FanFiction.Net "Games" category, as archived on "October 21, 2000". Archived from the original on 2003-02-07..

• 

  FanFiction.Net "Misc" category, as archived on "October 22, 2000". Archived from the original on 2003-02-07..

• 

  Writers University at FanFiction.Net, as archived on "October 22, 2000". Archived from the original on 2003-02-07..

History

Xing Li was a UCLA student at the time he created FF.net, and the server space for FF.net was originally on a server connected to UCLA, where it was considered a test of the server's functionality.

Xing Li made this July 1998 announcement at alt.tv.x-files.creative about his X-Files webpage fan resource called The Definitive X-Files Source In it, he hints at "FanFiction.Net":

I have 3 big original projects planned for the site so if you are interested in helping me out. Email me..It's gonna be big..hehe -- Xing

The domain name was registered on September 18, 1998.

The site was publicly launched on October 15, 1998, three weeks ahead of schedule.

It started out small. Three months after its launch, Xing Li said the site had "498 fanfics archived [by] 263 registered authors" and if you emailed him a link to a story you thought would be "worthy of honor," to email him and he'd "personally check it out." The site must not have remained with UCLA's servers very long, as in roughly 1999, Xing Li noted that "Digital2000: Site hosting generously donated by D2K." was FanFiction.net's home.

On Fanfiction.net's first anniversary, Xing Li wrote: "I would like to thank each and every one of our talented authors who have devoted countless hours creating something special, that we call fanfiction, for everyone in the world to share and enjoy." On the site's next year anniversary, Xing Li wrote: "FanFiction.Net is in its third year of existence and we are proud of what we have we fostered to date. I'm extremely proud of our current staff, Steven, Meimi, Cairnsy, and Michele, Flourish, and Valerie Duff on what they have done and have full trust in what they have in store for the not so distant future. From the very beginning we have let our actions speak for ourselves and have left the dance with words to you, the authors and columnists."

Initial Costs and Funding

FanFiction.Net was created by Xing Li while he was a student at University of California, Los Angeles. The original servers for the site were connected to his then-employer. This employer "recouped part of the cost in order to use it as a test for how well their servers worked."

In 2001, When these costs rose (one fan said $1,500 a month, Xing Li himself said "thousands of dollars" a month ) Xing Li tried to cover these costs by cutting some services, getting back to "fundamentals," and asking fans to become "a Support Service Member."

Advertising on the site was initially used, removed, then later re-implicated. See Advertising and Profit and Some Comments to Its Introduction.

Founder and Other Staff

The "About" page from Fanfiction.net around 1999 lists these names as being on staff:

• Xing Li (CEO) was initially very active in the day to day running of the site, responding to technical support emails personally. As he has stepped back from public discussions and interaction with users, many new users are unfamiliar with his role in the site.
• Trizung Nguyen (programmer)
• Steve Wang (programmer)
• Marc Eckhert (programmer)
• Steven Savage (CEC Director)
• Carinsy (CEC Director)
• Meridian (CEC Director)
• Chris Adams (Graphic designer of Fido, the FanFiction.Net mascot)

The "About" page also highlighted "graphic icons provided by Talos of IconFactory, and "Digital2000: Site hosting generously donated by D2K."

A FanFiction.Net staff get-together in December 2000. Xing Li is in the back, on Santa Claus's right. Michela Ecks is in the back with the glasses. The other members are unidentified.

Other Past Moderators, Staff, and Columnists

• Cairnsy
• Flourish (was on staff at the age of 13, left FFN.net in September 2001 during The Cassandra Claire Plagiarism Debacle, and became one of the founding members of FictionAlley.Org
• Valerie Duff
• Meimi (moderated message boards, advised Xing)
• Michelle Savage (moderated the mailing list)
• Michela Ecks/Laura Hale (June 2000 to either January 2001 or December 2001 ), ran Writers University, wrote the first terms of service for the site, went on to found FanDomination and Fan History Wiki)
• Sheryl Martin (advised Xing Li when he first founded the site)
• Steven Savage (chose columnists, was a site programmer)
• Tara O'Shea (created one of the images for the site, wrote a column for the site)
• many, many other columnists, see some here, here, here, here, and many other archived pages

Introduction Posts: 1998

From a September 1998 post to alt.tv.x-files.creative, a few weeks before FanFiction.Net opened:

Hi, Some of you probably know me as the webmaster of the "The Definitive Xfiles Source" Website <http://www.xcelpro.com/xfiles> but most of you have no clue. Well, I have just acquired the rights to http://www.FanFiction.net and being the devoted xfiles fan I am, Xfiles will be THE FEATURE. =)

The site will be 100% ColdFusion for those techies out there. In another words, it will be FULLY automated. Ranking, Search, Submission, Editing, etc just to name a few. I'm working overtime to have the site open to the web community by November 8th.. (Just in time for the new Xfiles season ;-p) I would like to make it THE best possible fanfiction portal on the net and to do so I would love to hear some comments/suggestions from all the writers here on this newsgroup to what functions you would like to have. Your input is very critical and will help to shape the site. Thanks for your time...

Xing: Webmaster/CGI Programmer for The Definitive Xfiles Source and www.FanFiction.net

From a November 1998 post to alt.tv.x-files.creative:

Hi everyone, I'm very happy to announce that www.fanfiction.net is now officially open!!!!!! And we have done it 3 weeks ahead of projected finish date.

While everyone trick-or-treated we were hard at working debugging the site =) Here is what the site has to offer:

1) 100% automated system for readers and especially for authors 2) Author profile with advanced security tracking to ensure that no one else can submit under another person's acct. 3) Dynamic rating system for all the stories 4) Author has the option to not release their email address. 5) Top20 fanfiction feature based on the rating system. 6) Author can modify/delete any of their stories and much much more...

As far as we know this is the first and only fully automated fanfiction website where there is no waiting period for any and all changes/submissions. Everyone here at www.xcelpro.com is damn proud of our accomplishment. Actually, it's only the two of us... =) Well, enough of my talk..go see it for yourselves....Any and all comments are welcomed.. Xing

Some Comments to Its Introduction

All comments below are from www.fanfiction.net is now open!! (November 3, 1998)

From some X-Files fans:

[Nascent]: This is a nice idea and the webpage is well-designed. It has features that I'd like to see Gossamer acquire, including self-archiving. However, the advertising makes me VERY nervous. Xing, are you getting clickthru payback on those banners? Because if you are, you may be jeopardizing fanfic's nonprofit status. Until this is clarified, I'd encourage authors not to archive here. Nascent

Xing Li: We are currently addressing Nascent's concern and we have put up a msg on our homepage to reflect our commitment. http://www.fanfiction.net Please send any and all comments to my email address. Thanks... Xing

Imajiru: While I believe that Xing's concept of providing a central archive for multi-fandom fiction is a wonderful thought, and I commend her (?) for her efforts and obvious hard work in setting it up, there are several reasons why I will NOT archive my fiction there, and will discourage others from archiving there as well. First of all, in response to the issue of the banner advertising used on the site, Xing says:

>we have put up a msg on our homepage to reflect our commitment.

The aforementioned message states that "The ad space you see above is used to cover the costs of the server." --To me, this is still a dicey concept, in that revenues are being raised AT ALL. Most of the fan fiction archivists I know pay for their web space out of their own pockets -- or at the very most, solicit donations from within fandom to keep the archives going. A flat-out link exchange (you show my banner, I show yours) is one thing, but the idea of mixing commercial revenues with fan fiction... just makes me acutely uneasy.

Also: The author's registration page states that by registering, you agree to the following: "You give Fanfiction.net the nonexclusive rights to publish your material and the right to reject any material submitted." Excuse me... publish WHERE? On this web page? On other web pages? In fanzines? On a CD-ROM? This is entirely too nebulous for my comfort, and I'm not about to agree to these terms.

(Not to mention, the statement about getting permission from collaborating authors COULD be interpreted to mean the Powers That Be who wrote the show in the first place, and I don't think that's going to happen...)

Someone else I know mentioned that the inclusion of Star Wars in the categories is an EXTREMELY bad idea, because the Powers That Be in SW fandom are notorious for being AGAINST fanfic in any form... Fanfic is a grey area, and exists only because no one has yet squashed it. Maybe we could win a court battle, if it ever came to that, but... who among us has the kind of money it'd take to pay the lawyers? I'm leery of ANYthing that draws too much attention to fan fiction, and this site seems to be designed to do exactly that.

And finally -- what's with the cookies? The main purpose of using cookies is to track visitors to a site, and frankly, I don't want to be tracked. I have my browser set to warn before accepting a cookie, and I rarely choose to accept them, and this is not one of those times.

...Lest this e-mail be seen as a blanket condemnation of the site: The ability for the author to self-archive their work is a wonderful thing, the potential for browsing works from multiple fandom and for searching through fic and rating fic are very well-done. And the overall concept, of creating a central 'home' for fan fiction on the net, is a laudable one; for one thing, it could provide a place for fanfics that would otherwise go unnoticed, in smaller fandoms than our own. BUT... I've been an XF fan for too long; I'm paranoid. I've watched FOX shut down too many websites -- none of them fanfic, *not yet*, but that could be only a matter of time. There are just too many things about this site, as it stands, that make me feel too uneasy to want to be a part of it.

Sorry, Xing; it's a lovely idea, and I wish I could be more positive about it, but the way things look now, I just can't. Imajiru

[Mirage]: Wow, nice site. Glad to see you took down the $$$ banners, though. Face it, the money for your server is going to come out of your own pocket. Zines are another thing, since they're underground and people barely break even on them anyway.

I don't think it's the first automated place, though. It looks alot like FanFic.net. Same sort of instant upload and archiving with search features. But better designed. :-)

Hey, you know maybe fanfiction.net or FanFic.net and Gossamer Project people should team up...it would certainly reduce a lot of work for the poor Gossamer archivists.

[Xing]: I'm correct when I said that www.fanfiction.net is the first real-time automated and fanfiction archive system. The good folks over at www.fanfic.net have an automated system but it only runs periodically which kinds of defeats the whole purpose of having an automated system. You be the judge. =)

[Maie]: A FAQ forum would be a very good idea. Some users who read the R&G/ToS may not understand some of the terms and which topics they refer (e.g. interactive stories such as suggestions for the next chapter) and may not understand what they're agreeing too when they click the "I have read and agreed to these terms" button. Also do you have an email I could contact you with? I can't seem to get a response from the support team :(

Some 1999 Updates by Xing Li

[April 19, 1999]:

Hi! Current Stats - 1,115 Fanfics Archived, 477 Authors, 110 Links: As you can tell by the stats, fanfiction.net is growing a very healthy pace. Readership is up 50% from 2 weeks ago! Archive your fanfics on

fanfiction.net and expand your audience reach. I just want to remind everyone to be constructive in terms of their reviews/comments of fanfics on the site. I have came across a few reviews that was pretty harsh. The author/fanfic might be worthy of the lashing but it would be more constructive to say why it "sucked" rather attacking the author by the ways of, "What the hell were you thinking?", "You plagiarist!", "Lame", etc. This so called "plagiarist" was in fact innocent. Every author tries to write the best entertaining story possible and readers should show their gratitude by displaying some restraint in terms of personal attacks when reviewing fanfics on fanfiction.net. =)

Again, if you have any suggestions for the site just email me and I will do my best to meet your desires. Remember that your input shapes the future of fanfiction.net

I'm still looking for new entries for "Writer's Corner". Got a essay on the subject of fanfiction? Then email me the essay I will archive it! Until next time, adios! Xing

[July 28, 1999]:

Hola fellow fanfic fanatics!

It has been a while since my last posting and here is a list of all the changes/additions to fanfiction.net.

1) New Java ChatRoom!! Enough said. hehe

2) Full-Text search! You can now search within ALL the archived fanfics. Very powerful tool I must say.

3) Moved to a new server so every page will now be MUCH faster!

4) Reorganized the Top20s so entries with more reviews will be ranked higher.

5) Streamlined navigation menu. Now everything is within reach. =)

I would like to take this moment and let everyone know that we are currently looking for creative editors who can spicy up the content on fanfiction.net. Here are the perks that comes with the job:

1) Real world experience. It's not often you get to work on a website with 360,000 (more than a third of a million) hits per month and growing. Great for anyone's resume.

2) Pride: You be helping to shape/secure the future of fanfiction.

3) Totally voluntary environment that promotes creativity. We are not slave drivers. ;-)

4) You personal email address @fanfiction.net.

FanFiction.Net is totally non-profit so no one gets paid a dime but I'm sure the experience to be gained is priceless. =) Until next time...

Xing aka Diego Montoya, ICQ: 3643686

Old News Posts: A Whole Lot of History

For a lot of information via postings by Xing Li between August 1999 and February 2001, see: "Old News". Archived from the original on 2003-02-07.

Some History Timelines

• A 1998-2005 timeline is here: FanFiction.net at PB Works, ^{Archived version}.
• A 1998-2010 timeline is here: , posted at Fan History Wiki

Notable events from "Old News: August 1999- February 2001". Archived from the original on 2003-02-07.:

• First fic uploaded was "Golf and Cows" by Sonja Blue on November 3, 1998
• SwearPatrol debuted August 26, 1999
• Discussion forum debut was November 19, 1999
• Mailing list debut was December 4, 1999

Controversies

Over the years in operation, FanFiction.Net was the center of many controversies: some include copyright issues, control of content, service instability, and profit.

First Automated Archive

It was touted by its creator to be the first automated fan fiction archive. Of course, the moment Xing Li said this, there were nitpicks and disagreements:

[Mirage]: Wow, nice site. Glad to see you took down the $$$ banners, though. Face it, the money for your server is going to come out of your own pocket. Zines are another thing, since they're underground and people barely break even on them anyway.

I don't think it's the first automated place, though. It looks alot like FanFic.net. Same sort of instant upload and archiving with search features. But better designed. :-)

Hey, you know maybe fanfiction.net or FanFic.net and Gossamer Project people should team up...it would certainly reduce a lot of work for the poor Gossamer archivists.

[Xing]: I'm correct when I said that www.fanfiction.net is the first real-time automated and fanfiction archive system. The good folks over at www.fanfic.net have an automated system but it only runs periodically which kinds of defeats the whole purpose of having an automated system. You be the judge. =)

From a Simpson's fan:

[xing li wrote: As far as we know this is the first and only fully automated fanfiction website where there is no waiting period for any and all changes/submissions.]

Uh, wrong.

The Simpsons Writers Consortium is fully automated for members/authors --and allows you to post scripts and give feedback instantaneously. Now, you can change your information immediately. AND--the content is 100% pure Simpsons. You can't beat that =) (This site has been open for a full month now, so no discussion as to who copied who).

Let me clarify something. This person's website is for FINISHED scripts of several TV shows--many of them from Fox.

The Simpsons Writers Consortium is an online AUTOMATED writer's group, where members post WORKS IN PROGRESS for critique by other members. Each member works on a project until complete--and the script is posted (after a majority vote--Is the script as good as it can be?)

SWC's purpose is manyfold: To sharpen each person's writing/critiquing abilities; to learn the craft of writing; to create quality Simpsons scripts; and, ultimately, to change the mind of the Simpsons Production office about hiring readers for fan-fiction.

Star Trek had their fan-fiction readers, and some fans even had scripts produced! (John Whelpley--"Suddenly Human", David Kemper--"Peak Performance") Legal hassles are a cop-out. If one screwball can't make a difference, maybe MANY can. We are over thirty members strong; come join today--it's free. No banners anywhere on the site. There are SEVEN works in progress.

Legal Assistance

In June 2000, Xing Li asked for general legal help and support:

FanFiction.Net is a 1.2 million visitor/month online community specializing in the archiving and publication of fan-fiction: stories based on characters/environments from popular medium. As of today, we have over 26,000 fanfics archived and are expected to double that amount within 2 months. It is a hriving place for aspiring writers as well as those that write for entertainment. Example: A romantic story between Buffy and Angel written by an avid "Buffy:The Vampire Slayer" fan.

We need all the legal help we can as the traffic continues to explode. FanFiction.Net is not a business but rather an online archive and community. We do not take in any money and thus we do not have the money to pay for consulting fees. Everyone here has poured their heart into something they truly believe in and love.

In return, you have a rare chance to deal with cutting-edge internet issues and receive the thanks from millions of fans. Fanfiction is a very controversial online legal issue today.

If you or your friends are interesting to help out individually or as a team, we would more than appreciate it.

Xing Li, Founder of FanFiction.Net

p.s. please email me directly and not repsond to the newsgroup.

Advertising, Expenses, and Profit

Also see:

• Some Comments to Its Introduction
• A look at some fandom based money numbers, ^{Archived version} a post at Fanthropology (June 27, 2007)

The site today relies on advertising, making many fans question its non-profit stance and this relationship to fandom and profit.

A November 5, 1998 post by Xing Li:

Many of you expressed concerns about our "ad" policy to support the cost of our server and we even thought about have any "profit" from ads given to a charity using a voting scheme. But, we decided to abolish the ad scheme altogether and in the process of revamping it into an automated fanfiction site banner exchange program several of you had suggested. Please support www.fanficion.net and help it grow.

A June 4, 2000 post by Xing Li:

Traffic to fanfiction.net has exploded in the last month and as such, the server is in need of more resources. I have personally spent close to 2k on fanfiction.net but I alone cannot financially support the expenses as traffic continues to spiral upwards. FanFiction.Net is a non-profit cause and we need your help. Starting today, we will be asking for voluntary donation of resources we feel critical to future of fanfition.net. We are not asking for money and we will only ask for products/services we need. As of this moment, fanfiction.net server is need of computer memory:

Single 256mb and/or 512mb SDRAM module.

From the most recent data, over 1.2 million authors/readers visit fanfiction.net every month. If you are financially well off and are willing to lend a helping hand, we need you! If you have the ram module listed above and are willing to donate it to fanfiction.net, please contact me at [email protected].

A June 4, 2000 post by Xing Li, one which states the site "does not take in any money":

Large online community in need of legal assistance.....

FanFiction.Net is a 1.2 million visitor/month online community specializing in the archiving and publication of fan-fiction: stories based on characters/environments from popular medium. As of today, we have over 26,000 fanfics archived and are expected to double that amount within 2 months. It is a hriving place for aspiring writers as well as those that write for entertainment. Example: A romantic story between Buffy and Angel written by an avid "Buffy: The Vampire Slayer" fan.

We need all the legal help we can as the traffic continues to explode. FanFiction.Net is not a business but rather an online archive and community. We do not take in any money and thus we do not have the money to pay for consulting fees. Everyone here has poured their heart into something they truly believe in and love.

In return, you have a rare chance to deal with cutting-edge internet issues and receive the thanks from millions of fans. Fanfiction is a very controversial online legal issue today.

If you or your friends are interesting to help out individually or as a team, we would more than appreciate it. -- Xing Li, Founder of FanFiction.Net

p.s. please email me directory and not repsond to the newsgroup.

A July 28, 2000 post by Xing Li:

In a few weeks, I will no longer be able to support FanFiction.Net financially all by myself. As a result, I have partnered the site with Amazon.com's Associates Program. For every dollar generated by a referral, FanFiction.Net will receive $0.05 in return from Amazon. As of today, FanFiction.Net's operating fees total $500-600 per month and will likely to increase as the site continues to experience a healthy growth rate. Hopefully the Amazon referral program will absorb at least part of the operating cost. Please support FanFiction.Net by making your Amazon.com purchases from the search menu below the columns on the right.

A July 5, 2001 post by Laura Hale (former site staffer) talks about the site and money:

“To my knowledge, be it limited, FanFiction.Net is set up as a non-profit corporation in the interest of self protection. They have over 1 million site hits a month and expenses, if I recall correctly, totaling over $1,500 a month. It is NOT cheap to run fanfiction.net. If they were forced to "pay" people to be on staff (and Lord, Meimi and Cairnsy should be payed because they go through a lot of shit because people make several inherently flawed assumptions such as the net is place free to do anything that you want so you can send off nasty letters and threatening letters to people on staff, plagiarize from pros and fans, upload microsoft help files, etc. They have to deal with upset and irrate people.), the cost would be much greater and I think the qualitity of the site may ultimately suffer. (Than again, flip side is that if they paid, they could probably attract more professional columnists to write on more pertinent topics to writers, encourage the powers that be to be more involved in fannish activities thus preventing some of the wacky schools of thought on both sides from creating situations that potentially alienate both sides. Of course... that would increase fan fiction's "legitimacy" and since fan fiction is really about subverting culture... would it still be fan fiction?)

I'm babbling and I have no idea where I was going but to sum it up: FanFiction.Net has banners and premium services, not to generate profit but to cover costs. To my knowledge, very limited since I chat with Meimi mostly and aside from this incident, not much involved other than as standard user, erm yeah... anyway, all extra money goes back into the site so that it has less down time.

From a discussion at the FanLib in May 2007:

[hotpoint]:

If fanfiction.net got a C&D; to pull one of my Fics I figure they owe me nothing and I wouldn't be annoyed if they did so even without checking to see if the argument made in the notice stood up. If however someone had been making money from the Fic and in doing so likely caused the C&D; and they then subsequently gave up without arguing the case I'd be rather more incensed.

[David Williams, a founder of FanLib ]: We have great admiration for fanfiction.net, but this idea that they don't profit is going to drive me off a roof. They generate so many ad impressions and revenue (and this is publicly available information) you would not believe how much dough they have rolling in*. This is all great for them. And they work hard and provide a good service. But, the notion that they're not commercial is an extremely common misconception. And there are many other commercial sites making big bucks off fan fiction as well: Quizilla, TheForce.net, LiveJournal, Yahoo!, just to name a few.

[darkrose]: I'm sorry, but that's just not true. None of the sites you mention are primarily fanfiction repositories. Yahoo! certainly isn't, and it's frankly disingenuous to try to claim that it is. LiveJournal isn't--it's a social networking site that many people involved in online fandom have found suits them. Quizilla is a site for online quizzes, not fanfiction.

[...]

[David Williams, a founder of FanLib ]: Fanfiction.net and LiveJournal are *not* low-profile, dark little corners. These sites are *huge* as well as profitable.

[hotpoint]: Regardless of the reality the other sites you cite are generally perceived as being far less commercial than yours and hence will have a lower profile on corporate radar.

You look like a business operation, fanfiction.net looks like someone's hobby.

[David Williams, a founder of FanLib ]:: Okay, I'm going to stop myself from getting riled about this. You know, at least one of those other, seemingly hobbyist sites is currently running full-page interstitial ads. Very annoying; even more profitable. If you saw this site through ad buyer eyes instead of fan eyes, well... perception [insert grand canyon here] reality. I don't want to disparage anyone, but maybe we should get a little credit for being forthright. I sound riled, I know.

They want to make money by producing, distributing and exhibiting big entertainment. Not by monetizing fan fiction. They recognize that fan fiction is marketing for their high-margin wares. It's really a win-win that no one is incentivized to upset. Fans get a long creative leash and the studios get happy active customers who evangelize to the rest of the world.

A fan's comment in 2015:

does it still earn enough through ads to be worth it

That's a great question!

So I did some googling...

And I conclude* that Xing Li can afford to buy new servers. However, his track record of investing in full-time technicians & admins to properly run the site is a whole other matter.

*Stats & math stuff comparing FFn with AO3 info on which I base my conclusion below…

According to: http://www.freewebsitereport.org/www.fanfiction.net: "Fanfiction.net has been receiving Daily Pageviews of 1 Million and should generate an estimated Daily Advertisement Revenue of $3,081 USD and Monthly Advertisement Revenue $92,437 USD."

"Archiveofourown.org has been receiving a Daily Pageviews 609,081": http://www.freewebsitereport.org/www.archiveofourown.org

"AO3’s costs for [2013] are projected to run up to $70,000": http://www.dailydot.com/society/ao3-fundraiser-auction-fanfic-archive/

from 2011: "our DB server was US$5,554, and the Rails twins were US$4,193 each. The storage server was US$3,014, and the switch that lets them all talk to each other was US$280. In total we spent US$17,234"

• WE CAN HAS SERVERS! | Archive of Our Own

So if AO3's expenses ($70k) are 60% of FFn's (if we base it ONLY on pageviews, which I know isn't nuanced), then FFn's yearly expenses = $116,666.

If FFn earns $92,437/month in ad revenue (which sounds like a preposterous overestimate) then it only takes less than 2 months for FFn to pay for its expenses for a year.

4 or 5 months of FFn ad revenue sounds more plausible, and if that's the case, then yeah, Xing Li can buy new servers.

FFn's main problem appears to be the maintenance of its servers, which requires HIRING PEOPLE as regular staff. He won't even hire people to moderate site content, so I have no idea if he has any dedicated employees to care for the site, or simply calls in a contractor to fix stuff that's broken (which would, frankly, be a nightmare for the poor contractor to deal with, especially if previous contractors refuse to deal with FFn anymore and no one is around to explain a previous technical mess).

Downtime

FanFiction.Net suffered from frequent downtimes. Sometimes these downtimes lasted for a week or more. There were frequent posts to many Usenet groups over the years which asked for more information, and commiseration from other fans.

A fan commented that one of these downtimes was a claim that it was for a 9/11 memorial.

One downtime was in July 2003: "July 8th, 2003 - FanFiction.Net is currently in the process of acquiring server parts for a scheduled system-wide upgrade in 2 weeks. We are hoping this upgrade will significantly reduce or remove the "server is too busy" message during peak traffic hours." Two comments from fans regarding this downtime: "It was up but it's down again. :p Anyone care to start a betting pool? The person who guesses closes to the actual time FF.net is back up and stable wins." And "Perhaps with this upgrade they will become more stable?...time will tell.."

These long times became advantages for other fanfiction archive sites, as desperate and bored fans, explored other sites and expanded their interests. FictionAlley was one such benefiter from the extensive downtime in the summer and fall of 2001. From an exchange in October 2001:

[NAPPA]: Does any one have addresses for good HP fanfiction. I am specially looking for Lily/James love/hate and Harry/Harmione stories. I have gone on the fanfiction.net but they are down for so long sometimes it makes me positively crazy. Please help me............ [Heidi]: At FictionAlley, we've set up a new page with ways to search by author, ship, lead characters and summaries - we will be adding full text searching this week. I know it's shameless promotion (but we are noncommercial, so there's that) - visit the Page O'Links (which I personally call FicAll)...

Glitches

FanFiction.Net is notorious for occasional breakdowns when a part of its users are unable to access certain features of the site. These breakdowns were termed "Glitches" by on-site forum communities. At times, the circumstances in which a glitch would appear are strange:

• A public announcement about an older glitch, now fixed.
• A completed "successful database upgrade".
• An uninformative staff service announcement with typos.

Most glitches are not announced and take up to two weeks to fix. They are rarely fixed over the weekend and continue till the next week.

Glitches affect different parts of the site. Depending on severity, they may involve:

• The statistics feature: fanfic writers would see they have zero readers, but still receive reviews.

FanFiction.Net goes into read-only mode.

• Beta Readers: members cannot browse for beta readers, and get a "FanFiction.Net Error Type 1" window.
• Site content: story chapters, reviews and forum posts submitted after the glitch started would flash, appear and disappear during page reloads. Forum communities know it as "the post eating glitch".
• Story submission: writers cannot post new chapters or stories in certain categories. It was called a "type 2 error" by site staff in March, 2011, and lasted since March 18 till March 31. Tech savvy members found a way around this glitch.
• Login area: members are unable to login. The site goes into read-only mode. Most recently, it happened from April 9 to April 10, 2011.

2020 Glitch

From approximately October 31, 2020, links to newly posted chapters/stories resulted in a "Type 1" error, reporting "Chapter not found. Please check to see you are not using an outdated url". FictionPress's Twitter account had not been updated since October 3 and there was no update about if/when this issue would be resolved. By November 5/6, all users were reporting that the issue appeared to have been resolved.

In the meantime, many FFN users posted on sites like Reddit about their issues accessing the site, with several users discussing a move to Ao3 in the absence of a resolution. Even after the issue was resolved, several FFN users were seeking advice on moving to Ao3; with one of those posts referring to this particular glitch as The Great FFN Collapse of 2020.

Formatting Problems

The uploading software of FF.Net strips stories of certain elements, such as hyperlinks, indentations or double spacing. This forces fans to create creative line breaks, such as repeated pairing acronyms. Other fans post tutorials for inserting the desired characters into the text. In 2004, the site was criticized for eating words and making whole sentences disappear in uploaded chapters due to bugs in the site's QuickEdit word processor. Since then, the editing software has been updated several times and renamed to Document Manager.

In 2007, FanFiction.Net's document manager did not allow creative separators. Only the site-default horizontal line was accepted as a separation technique between parts of a chapter.

Changes in software up to 2010 applied only to works submitted after a certain date. The changes also used to impose restrictions such as removing square brackets and asterisks from stories and summaries. As a result, older stories could have different, more varied formatting (classic with indentations instead of block) and bigger character sets. In 2009, FFN even imposed a technical ban on repeating numbers in reviews. This caused confusion as numbers like 100 and 1000 would show up as 10.

This has changed in 2010 when the editor became less restrictive. Special characters like the asterisk were and the review issue was resolved. Also, 2010 was the first time a change in editing software affected older works. Stories using indentations were reformatted into block style, misshaping some of them. Certain characters such as square brackets ] disappeared from all story summaries while they remained visible in the author's login area.

In 2011, FanFiction.Net kept updating the hyperlink filter, with mixed results. Links to the site's forums were not automatically deleted from messages and reviews, while informal references to the site such as FanFiction.Net became impossible, with text being changed to include a full hyperlink to the main page.

Staff Problems

FanFiction.Net is considered understaffed by many users who try to reach member support but fail to receive any replies to a query. This is influenced by the amount of traffic the domain receives daily, including requests for new categories, inserting canon characters and questions about the site and abuse reports. Another image of the workload was the ticket-based support system in January 2005. Support answered every question sent, but the queue was two months on average. James is the only known staff member, who responds to emails and deals with abuse reports.

Xing Li, the site's owner, has apparently not been seen or heard from in years. There is a fan fear that Fanfiction.net is possibly a one-person operation, and that this is always dangerous. A fan in 2015 wrote:

I really do wonder whatever that would be worth the huge money investment [to replace the site's aging servers], though... I mean, FFNET is still the go-to site for fics in a lot of fandoms, but does it still earn enough through ads to be worth it for Xing? With all the issues the site is having lately, I'm starting to fear one day it'll break down and the time/money necessary to fix it up won't be worth it and the site will die without warning :|"

The site has been mostly archived by a third party: See FanFiction.Net - Archive Team and Fanfiction.net Re-pack.

See Also: What Everyone Should Know About Fanfiction.net (2001)

2022's Shutdown Rumors

In September 2022, rumors that the site will be closed began to spread on the web, especially on Twitter where several users are expressing their concerns about the fact. Especially now that it is impossible to archive content via Wayback Machine due to the new FFN host policies.

[@ashposton at Twitter]
just a soft FYI to all my fanfic readers out there:

there's a stronger-than-normal rumor that fanfiction (dot) net is shutting down soon. it is one of the biggest archives of fanfic from the late 00s, so if you have any fics on there you want to keep -- I'd suggest you get them

[@ashposton at Twitter]
I remember when a lot of the geocities / angelfire / fanfic forums went down in the transition to internet 2.0. We lost a LOT of fanfic history when it happened. There are fics that I remember that are now lost to time.

[@ashposton at Twitter]
I have no idea how founded this rumor is -- but the site stopped updating their news on Sept 23rd of last year, after a successful server migration.

They also host Fiction Press, so if you have any original fiction over there -- you might wanna back it up. Just in case.

[@ashposton at Twitter]
Also -- no need to panic yet!! Just calmly back up your fics. It's a rumor, and hopefully it'll stay a rumor. (And always back up your fics anyway.)

[@galacticidiots at Twitter]
I can’t believe fanfiction dot net is on its last legs. This is the end of an era. The metaphorical burning of the library of Alexandria of our time. How do you say goodbye to the place who taught you everything you knew about sex ed as a young teen?

In May, 2023, it was believed that fanfiction.net was gone because visiting fanfiction.net displays a default or transferable site template, rather than the site. However, this is just an error with the site's servers - going to www.fanfiction.net takes you to the actual site.

Content Guidelines

See: Content Guidelines, ^{Archived version} (note that the page may not be available on mobile devices, please change the settings to "computer version" in your browser to access the page if this happens)

For other archive guidelines, see List of Content Banned by Archives.

Ban on Fic Based on the Works of Specific Authors

a front page from October 11, 1999: note that Anne Rice was still a category

Beginning in late 1990s to early 2000s, FFN banned fanworks based on specific authors. These bans are still in place, as of 2017: "FanFiction respects the expressed wishes of the following authors/publishers and will not archive entries based on their work. Failure to comply with site rules will result in the removal of stories and/or suspension of account.

Anne Rice Archie Comics Dennis L. McKiernan Irene Radford J.R. Ward Laurell K. Hamilton

Nora Roberts / J.D. Robb P.N. Elrod Raymond Feist Robin Hobb Robin McKinley Terry Goodkind

2001 RPF Ban

Once upon a time, FF.Net allowed fanfiction about real people. In June 2001, there were more than 5,000 'N Sync stories on the site. In September 2002, an announcement was made disallowing Reality TV RPF (along with the NC-17 fic, see below) as of April 12, 2003. Actor RPF had never been allowed on the site.

"Many months ago FanFiction.Net introduced a form of ban for real-person based stories (RPS): actor fiction. After evaluating that ban and receiving many responses as a result of that ruling, it has been decided that we need to extend the rule to all real-person stories to keep it consistent. The affected categories are:

All Music Groups

Misc >> Sports

TV Shows >> Big Brother, Survivor, Who's Line is it anyway?....

Please note that all the stories effected by the ruling above have not been removed. They will be retained until October 12th, 2002. If the changes apply to you, please login and use the backup feature to create a personal copy on your local computer."

The Music RPF section as last archived on September 20, 2002.

However; as early as 2008-2009, RPF experienced a hidden resurgence. The fics, mostly J-Pop and K-Pop, are posted in the "Screenplays". Archived from the original on 2003-02-07. subcategory. Unlike the rest of the site, where English dominates most categories, these undercover RPF fics are more likely to be in a language other than English. Indonesian fics number around 1,400 (almost all of them RPF) compared with 1,300 fics (mixed, mostly non-RPF) written in English.

Posteriorly in July 2011, actions have been taken by a few Indonesian authors to rectify this problem by notifying RPF writers of their violation of rules, posting examples of 'right' fics in the Screenplays subcategory, and notifying the support staff. The actions are met with fierce resistance from established RPF authors. However, a few RPF writers relented and, as of writing, had begun deleting their RPF. ^{[citation needed]}

The ban has never been 100% effective, and it is easy to find RPF hiding in plain sight in various fictional fandom categories.

Adult Content

From the Terms of Service, updated in 2005: "Please be aware that some contributions to FanFiction.Net contain adult content. Stories that contain mature content require a statement that you are of age to legally read the material if an author appropriately rates their piece. It is your obligation to leave areas that are unpoliced, misrated or allow adult content. if you are not of the age of consent in your area. FanFiction.Net is not responsible for the misrating of adult oriented content but will remove content if the misrating is brought to the attention of FanFiction.Net staff."

From the Terms of Service, updated in 2009: "You further understand and acknowledge that you may be exposed to User Submissions that are inaccurate, offensive, indecent, or objectionable, and you agree to waive, and hereby do waive, any legal or equitable rights or remedies you have or may have against FanFiction.Net with respect thereto, and agree to indemnify and hold FanFiction.Net, its Owners/Operators, affiliates, and/or licensors, harmless to the fullest extent allowed by law regarding all matters related to your use of the site."

The Purge of NC-17 Content: 2002 and 2012

In the beginning, Xing Li and the site actively courted fans from many Usenet groups, including alt.startrek.creative.erotica. Prior to September 2002, the site used a pop-up to prompt readers to say whether they were over 17 or not.

On September 12, 2002, FanFiction.Net banned and removed material that was rated NC-17. A second purge occurred on June 4, 2012.

Both purges shook fandom, and much discussion ensued regarding rights and responsibilities of archives, rights of fans to be able to write and post what they liked, and more. Both purges also resulted in fandom migrations and created fiction influxes into other archives.

See more at FanFiction.Net's NC-17 Purges: 2002 and 2012.

2010 Forum Purge

On the night of November 25, 2010, FanFiction.Net purged its forums, deleting threads not updated for 9 months. This was announced less than 10 hours before an automated engine mauled through forums by creation date. During the night after Thanksgiving, while most of the site's chiefly American population slept and was away from a computer, over 60,000 forums were affected. As a result, 22 million posts (66% of all posts ever made) were deleted during the purge. Instead of "reducing clutter", the intent posted on the front page, the event resulted in thousands of completely empty forums with no archive or backlog of any sort. Important forum discussion, sentimental and cultural value formed in forums since they were introduced in 2005 was lost. Only forum subscription statistics showed there used to be content. When the purge completed, 90% of the General forums were empty. The site took no action about forums with no posts prior to the purge. It completely changed the way users viewed their forums, from a safe haven, to something entirely temporary.

On the same day, the site announced purging Personal Messages. This process took more than two days to finish, and some users were able to feverishly back up their old correspondence. After the event, users expected better service, or another type of compensation, but received none. The site is yet to keep its promise made on November 26 to bring mobile forums "in a few days"

The original announcement:

News: November 26th, 2010 -- Please note at 1AM US Pacific (PST) time, we will perform several matainance actions which will result in the temporary downtime of forum posting for about 30 minutes.

We will also at this time introduce an auto-delete feature of removing PM message with send timestamp of older than 9 months. The 9 months freshness limit will be enforced for both PM messages and forum topics to ensure fast response time for these systems. For perspective, there are 17 million pm messages currently in the system and we need a self-cleaning system to move forward.

Lastly, both forums and pm/private messaging feature will come to the mobile site within a couple of days.

One fan's response:

Since the previous six-month period for forums was, in fact, an error, and the last untouched date in forums was February 20, 2010 which is nine months away, they fixed the announcement from the 25th and are using the same filter on your personal messages.

FanFiction.Net introduced an inbox feature in the middle of 2009, June 14th (if the timer didn't mess up), so we could see all our personal messages (PMs) on one page without a fuss. It was a very convenient feature for those of us keen on keeping the actual email tidy, and it let everyone keep track of PM conversation easily. The problem is that FFN created a false sense of security. "You no longer have to save your messages because we save them for you" or something like that. Now, that security is lifted and replaced with shock. Literate Union members petitioned to the administration for more time to preserve personal conversation history. Personal messages, like other types of personal stuff are an emotional and often important part of fandom history. It's rare to see someone not care about their old doodles and exchanges with other fans. This is their past, and a bit of nostalgia is usually present. Erasing these messages would be taking away something fans value and love. First lessons in writing, gaining new friends in the writing world and many other cherishable moments disappear if FFN deems them too old for the site.

It's what makes fandom history so difficult to document. You might care about not repeating mistakes you've done in the past, but if the admin doesn't care, good luck and F U. What's interesting is that they're using the scissors on everyone on the site like some communist state: "Your hair must be this short to continue." If you're out of server space, get rid of trollfics, pay attention to plagiarist requests and, for goodness sakes, weed your own backyard. You don't bomb a city to make a parking lot. Besides, if FFN doesn't fail anytime soon (their domain registration expires in September 2011), they'll soon be out of server space again. Unless they're expecting the number of new members to drop, so they never again have a greater amount of PMs archived, the ordeal is pointless. Though, if they hired a consultancy firm to get easy fix solutions, they must know what they're doing.

And the amount of discontent it's going to cause. I don't know about you, but I've spent an hour backing up my PMs this morning. Tomorrow, I'm going to find the reviews I've sent throughout my stay on the site. Heavens forbid the site decides to flip off old reviews or stories, but one can't be too careful in this situation.

One thing for sure, I'm staying on FFN. They might not have done something agreeable this time, but this doesn't compare with ownership wars or emotional mod fights that happen in other archives I'd rather not name.

Edit: It's 9:30 AM GMT+0, and I've lost 20 PMs. 9:45, the number increases to 50. In two minutes the number of deleted PMs goes up from 1178353 to 1204467.

2004 Script-Format Ban

"FanFiction.Net" banned script format on July 27, 2004.

July 27th -- FanFiction.Net Content Guidelines have been updated to reduce the apparent confusion of two rules:

1. Chat and script format are the same. We have not allowed chat/script format for years.

2. Choose your adventure and second person/you based are interactive entries. We do not accept interactive stories.

https://web.archive.org/web/20040815080549/http://www.fanfiction.net/

A fan's comment:

Sure, as always, members have said "FFN has changed, and we're not going to post there anymore," but the collective "we" was a silly generalisation that had no effect, and the site grew. Just as it did in 2002 and 2010.

Now, this is where the factuality ends. You probably may want to know where the idea of the "ban" comes from. The site was different in 2004 and admins were closer to its users, so communication was more open and easier to get the juice from the top. There was a group called The Author Alliance, later referred to as The Alliance... back in the day. They were notorious for flaming and later removal of stories on the site. One of the 13 core members...I don't recall the name (could have been Super Solus, ReactionX or someone else) researched that script format (then allowed) as used in practice on FFN was no different from chat format, as used in IRC, IM (not allowed since the guidelines were created). Basically, before the announcement, members would contest that their work is scripted, not a roleplay session from online chatrooms. It was a common excuse, which caused bickering between opposing camps. Once the announcement, supposedly, based on that member's research, has been made, the site put a big fat cross on everything in similar formats. Three lines of script/chat in the author's note got your story down. Two lines, I'm guessing, could be considered as someone being daft with punctuation rather than a format issue.

The announcement set things straight very nicely, and the site made a big purge. For example, Sonic the Hedgehog lost some 30% of its weight in August. Dropping from over 5000 stories to about 3400. Stunning. Now, I actually wonder what the announcement entailed in theory. If chat = script, and chat was banned since the first guidelines (last months of 1998), script format was also banned. Then again, if it was banned, why was there arguing and unremoved stories? Why was Sonic the Hedgehog allowed to have 30% of its bulk being against the rules? It's really an interesting record when nearly a third of an archive is in violation of one rule, while you have numerous rules up.

2005 Ban on Choose Your Own Adventure Fic/Self-Insertion Fic/Reader-Insert/2nd Person Point of View Fic

There are two prime reasons that 2nd person (you) based fics are not allowed.

The first, and most important reason is because it can be considered a form of child porn. Say, for example, you're reading a "You based fic" that goes along just fine for a few chapters, but then comes to a part with a lemon (sex scene), that story is having someone run their hands down your buddy, exploring your more intimate attributes, removing your clothes, laying you down, you get the idea, yes? Now lets say that you're 13 years old reading this story. The person responsible for writing said story is now guilty of child porn, and if an angry parent found out they could not only sue the site itself but also prosecute the writer and have them labeled as a sex offender for the rest of their life.

The other reason that Second person (you based) fics are not allowed is because they are often used for interactive stories. As in people send in reviews asking the author to write what they want, rather than going off of the actual authors own "imagination".

See:

• Choose Your Own Adventure Fic
• Self-Insertion
• Reader-Insert

2005 Songfic Ban

Because of copyright worries Songfic was banned in 2005.

From FanFiction.Net's site on April 28, 2005:

In addition, FanFiction.Net would like to address a growing problem. For whatever reason, some writers feel it's okay to copy-n-paste musical lyrics they have not written into their fiction. If you did not write it, do not post it. This has always been our policy. Please remove these entries immediately to avoid account closure.

One theory:

These issues involved Cease and Desist letters sent by the MPAA, alleging trademark infringement on the part of sites for using their ratings system. The other issue involved German record labels sending Cease and Desist letters to sites containing lyrics. These letters requested remuneration for every song which had the lyrics listed. While no fan fiction sites were targeted, a number of archives, including FanFiction.Net, pulled all songfics in order to ensure they would not be subjected to fines.

German intellectual property organizations demanded from $1000 to $5000 remuneration per lyric they owned rights to found on unlicensed domains. ^{[citation needed]}

Fans comment:

I dunno, I think that's reasonable, especially after reading some people's songfics. =/ A lot of people don't give credit where it's due. Not only that, many songfics are pretty bad anyway. Just stick to an original story instead of using someone else's words, ya know?

Yeah, song fics suck...so this doesn't seem to bother me at all :lol:

I'm not a big songfic fan, but it strikes me as a bit hypocritical that a site that is based off writing about things that are NOT by you all of a sudden cracks down in this manner. Couldn't they at least have put a warning first? Like: "If you are going to use song lyrics, please include the musical artist in the disclaimer." Or something.

A disclaimer is always a good thing, though. I'm just surprised that some "authors" don't credit the artist. Then again, here we are downloading free songs off engines like Kazaa and Napster (or at least we used to).

That makes me really mad. I often use songs as a source of inspiration. As long as no one tries to steal credit for the lyrics, fanfiction.net should allow them to be used. The next time I use a song for inspiration, I just won't include it in my final draft, but doesn't that seem like I'm not giving credit to the artist?

Morbid voice: I wonder what they're going to take from us next.

The one problem I see is that FF.net stands to lose 1/4th of their writers with a move like this. A lot of good authors (who might've done a songfic in their early careers) could get banned for this. The site could collapse with these writers gone. Many could form their own fanficiton website to compete with FF.net (like Mediaminer and Freedom of Speech Fiction).

"Words. That's what. They're going to take our words."

That's what the people running FF.Net are doing. In 2002, they deleted every NC-17 story on their site, probably in response to some irresponsible soccer moms who didn't bother monitoring what their kids did online and complained about the "pornographic" material. Most NC-17 stories --- the well-written ones, at least --- are not by any means pornographic. They lean more in the direction of erotica, sensual and romantic.

And now . . . in 2005 . . . they're going to delete the accounts of anyone who uses songs in their stories unless they delete those stories. 2002 was just the beginning. So far, their pattern is to get rid of certain types of fan fiction simply on account of a few punks who can't be bothered to write decent sex stories or give credit to the original artists whose songs they appropriated for their stories. I repeat, this is just the beginning. They are sliding down the long, slippery slope into Nazi-style tyranny.

My solution: Petition them. Our 1st Amendment rights give us the power to protest unfair practices of institutions and FF.Net is an institution that is currently engaging in unfair practices. Petition them. Show them that we aren't just going to capitulate to their every whim.

I poured my heart and soul into these. Like hell I'm taking them down.

If they keep banning stuff, I am starting my own fanfic site.

Conflict, Defamation, and Flaming

FanFiction.Net has long tried to reduce user complaints caused by their peers' aggressive behaviour. Users are now able to report signed reviews for abuse and block unwanted users from contacting them.

However, the site removed "libel" as a forbidden practice from their ToS in 2008, and would not endorse petition movements such as letting writers delete offensive signed reviews on their own. The staff took an idle stance during the flame war concerning The Author Alliance in 2004, when several thousand stories were removed in Sonic the Hedgehog and Pokemon fandoms, a deed Xing Li noticed in the site's article on AllExperts. It refused to delete the account of Flame Rising in 2008, a site-wide flamer, who hosted a 700,000 post flamer forum, The Fireplace. As of 2010, the site takes no action against The Literate Union despite phone calls to the site's parent company to delete the LU members.^{Citation Needed}

Fan Comments

Despite its huge popularity, large user base and wide ranging fandom representation, FF.net has a reputation for being indiscriminate in story quality among members of many different fannish circles. Large portions of LiveJournal-based fandom, mailing list-based fandom, the Television Without Pity forums, and Godawful Fan Fiction have all been known to look askance at the site. Because of this reputation, FFN is sometimes referred to as "The Pit of Voles", "The Pit", or other derogatory nicknames. There even exists a hate community for the archive, established after a change of ToS in 2004.

However, FF.Net's absence of quality control is viewed by many as a benefit; it gives everyone a chance to express themselves. Unlike moderated archives, FF.Net does not employ any active means of assessing story quality. Its guidelines do require basic spell-checking and grammar quality, but the site does not enforce these requirements in any comprehensive way.

In 2000, when a fan suggested to others they submit their Star Trek fic to FF.Net, another one replied:

I strongly disrecommend this option. Fanfiction.net is a neat site, but as melissa said they are having problems with the volume -- the archivist tells me traffic has been exploding since the first of the year. More important, their reader poll suggests that half of their users are under 18. To archive thousands of adult stories at a site with so much underage traffic would cause *major* trouble for us [at alt.startrek.creative.erotica.moderated] and for them.

Many feel that FF.Net is under-appreciated among the fan community. From a fan in 2011:

And contrary to the prejudices held by the outspoken LJ lot, not everything on FFN is shit. Most of it, sure, but I developed a keen sense of judging a story by its summary and never had the problem of accidentally reading badfic. Sure, you'll usually have to slog through pages of trash before finding the good stuff, but there are jewels on FFN and I was frequently annoyed by how fic that deserved attention didn't get it because people convinced themselves that only idiots posted to the pit.

I know that there are people who have legitimate issues with FFN and their policies. That's fair enough. I know that there are people who are on AO3 mainly because of the politics behind it - in which case, rock on! But then there is the crowd that won't go near FFN because it's allegedly a simmering pool of fourteen year olds and all the fic is shit, and that - that is patently untrue and incredibly annoying. FFN has a much bigger and much older archive than AO3, it is easier to navigate and - this is an important part - it's got open registration. The only time I can remember FFN being somehow hostile towards its users would be when it moved to ban smut and some other genres of questionably prosaic nature.

To return to the lady introducing the muggles: I wanted very badly to ask the reason why she was so studiously avoiding FFN. Not linking fic there could be coincidence, but talking about AO3 but not even acknowledging where AO3 came from (FFN's smut ban, as an extension of Strikethrough) - that's a boycott, and I'd go as far as to say that it is unfair to the very muggles she sought to invite to the club. Because dear madams: You're missing out if you never go to The Pit.

A comment from about 2004:

The largest and most reknown (aka the "Pit of Voles") multifandom Mega-Archive. Tens of thousands, possibly millions, of stories in every conceivable fandom and of every conceivable genre. Granted, this can make it difficult to find the diamonds in the roughs, but they're there! Updated constantly by the authors themselves, it is a continuous source of fanfic for whatever your pleasure. When you're done reading a fic, don't hesitate to click on the menu at the bottom and Submit A Review! It's instantaneous feedback, no effort required -- what could possibly be better than that? Please note, however, that FF.Net no longer allows NC-17 fic of any variety to be archived.

– Moonbeam at Fanfiction Quicklinks

A comment from 2004:

Ff.net was way different back then- the stories were in alphabetical order and there were only like thirty pages of Harry Potter fan fiction. Each chapter was treated as its own story. You had to review before you could go any where else.

For awhile, ff.net even had message boards for each category. That was then the MS-characterization reared its head. I remember- the first post was : 'what is a Mary Sue' and it was explained.

It's amazing what has changed since then. The entire fandom has basically been revolutionized. It's so different than what it used to be. Fanfiction.net was the site, back then. Now it...isn't.

"The Pit of Voles"

Main article: The Pit of Voles

The site has also fought, at least in later years, the perception that it archived content of generally lower quality, thus earning it the nickname The Pit of Voles.

The origin of the term comes from a fan named Mie Tsukikoushi, who had a blog called ""Mooncalf Noises". Archived from the original on 2003-02-07.." In December 2001, Mie Tsukikoushi wrote: "Also noted: The web entity known as fanfiction.net is a pit of voles. You heard me."

The term has persisted such that even in 2010 it's used enough to be referenced directly in posts like You say 'Pit of Voles' like that's a bad thing. by fangasmic:

There are no barriers to entry on fanfiction.net. No html coding to learn. No popular authors to suss out. No community standards to grasp, because there's really no such thing as a community on ff.net; despite all of its trappings, it still is at its heart a large collection of stories, not people. So the Fandom learning curve that we've all had to trip up? Not really a problem over there. Its appeal and affinity for Fandom newbies suddenly made a lot of sense.

Fanfiction.Net vs. Archive of Our Own

Main article: Fanfiction.Net vs. Archive of Our Own

In 2012, sockii posted a meta essay about Fanfiction.net and Archive of Our Own, comparing the two multifandom archives and laying out their perceived strengths and weaknesses.

Statistics

Estimating the user base of ff.net is difficult since people use their accounts in different ways and many accounts are completely inactive. FFN Statistics is a group project that attempts to collect and analyze account statistics gathered from the archive. The blog is a project of the Literate Union

They collected account data and produced a table which shows that while ff.net had ~2.2 million accounts at the end of 2009 and is growing—gaining more accounts than are deleted each year—that growth rate has slowed in recent years.

Some anecdotal statistical context: three months after the site's debut, there were 407 stories archived, 249 registered authors, and 76 categories.

Specific Specifics

• Les statistiques de fanfiction.net on La fanfiction: Etude sociologique has extensive additional statistical data, in French.
• Fan Fiction Statistics - FFN Research: Fan Fiction Demographics in 2010: Age, Sex, Country, ^{Archived version} (2010)
• Fan Fiction Statistics - FFN Research: FanFiction.Net Member Statistics, ^{Archived version} (July 2010)
• Fan Fiction Statistics - FFN Research: Most Popular Categories, ^{Archived version} (July 2010)
• Fan Fiction Statistics - FFN Research: FanFiction.Net story totals, ^{Archived version} (July 2010)
• Fan Fiction Statistics - FFN Research: Research 101, ^{Archived version} (December 2010)
• Fan Fiction Statistics - FFN Research: FanFiction.Net Fandoms: Story and Traffic Statistics, ^{Archived version} (January 2011)
• FANFICTION.NET: FANDOMS OVER TIME, ^{Archived version}, at ToastyStats (2015)

Terms of Service and Privacy and Help Desk and Other Links (Old and New)

• "Help Desk". Archived from the original on 2003-02-07. (around 1999)
• "Forum: Beta Readers". Archived from the original on 2003-02-07.—topics only, incomplete, just a taste (around 2001)
• "Forum: Government". Archived from the original on 2003-02-07.—topics only, incomplete, just a taste (around 2001)
• "Terms of Service". Archived from the original on 2003-02-07. (around 1999)
• "Terms of Service". Archived from the original on 2003-02-07. (updated 2005)
• Terms of Service : FanFiction, ^{Archived version} (updated 2009)
• "Privacy Statements". Archived from the original on 2003-02-07. (updated 2005)
• Privacy Policy : FanFiction, ^{Archived version} (updated 2009)
• Guidelines (updated 2008)

Meta/Further Reading

• "FanFiction.net". Archived from the original on 2003-02-07. (entry at Fan History Wiki, includes timeline (up to 2010) and photos
• Why I took my stories off of Fanfiction.net by The Brat Queen, topic is feedback (2000?)
• What Everyone Should Know About Fanfiction.net (2001)
• Fanfiction.net bans songfics, ^{Archived version} (April 28, 2005)
• Fanfiction.net's Development And Lessons for LiveJournal, ^{Archived version} by yourlibrarian (originally posted July 20, 2010, republished February 2, 2022)
• FF.Net and the quality of writing (2011)
• Wayback links to the front page of FF.net
• Fanfiction.net: The Worst Thing That's Ever Happened to Fanfiction?
• Why Are people more verbally abusive on FanFiction.Net in comparison to Archive of our own?, a multi-user discussion on /r/fanfiction (Sept 2020)