I've been told that Mel's health was poor; and that, for years, she basically did nothing with the archive at all, except to pay the hosting service. Someone apparently helped her work out her finances; and I dare say they (or multiple "theys") acted as gatekeepers. "Complex layers of interaction" is a phrase I find totally believable having once tried to contact her about something or other.

I don't know who Mel's "silent partner" was. If you mean Steph Kellerman, then I'm pretty sure she simply saved a copy of the entire archive back in 2001 as a back-up-in-case, and put it up later so that the fandom would not lose its main archive. On the other hand, she was certainly archivist for the FTP site for many years. I've checked: she took your stories down from that archive. It would not have been difficult. The FTP site has quite a simple structure: each author's stories are in a separate folder.

However, the file set-up for Mel's archive is goddawful, to put it mildly. The folders aren't too hard to navigate; but the names of the story files are arcane. And, of course, anyone who googles your name will find it in the index, so that has to be changed. Except that the nominal index actually links to two complete sets of pages, alphabetized, one set for authors and one for titles.

Now, obviously, your name appears on only one of the author index pages and all your stories are listed there en bloc; so once I find you, I find them. However, the title index is a much bigger matter. Each story has its own separate mention on the page for the initial letter of its title; and, of course, in each case, you are listed as author. This means I'll need to locate each story individually on whichever title index page it's listed on; and you've been prolific.

I don't know how Mel generated these index pages; but their source code is extremely difficult to read—just one step short of a wall of text. Finding anything on them is not quite impossible; but it requires close, painstaking, time-consuming perusal. It's an eye-crossing, migraine-inducing task.

I've just spent about three hours doing a find-and-replace for your presence in the FK Wiki where we had you down as first-name-plus-final-initial. (At least for wikis there's a search box!) You are now "Brightknightie" there. By my judgment, having had a look at the source code for the sundry archive pages I'll have to fiddle with, it will probably take me several times as long to deal with things there. Days of work, in other words, a few hours at a time.

I'm an archivist by nature. I don't think anyone volunteers to take over an archive unless they are psychologically inclined towards the preservation of facts and artifacts. From my perspective, if I'm going to go to so many hours of trouble, I'm going to do a find-and-replace.

So I'll pseudonymize you as "Brightknightie" everywhere I can think of. Are any of your stories likely to be in faction archives as well?

*******

Edited to add: I've checked the Light Cousins' site. Their fiction section has links to your website. I've changed the author's name to match what you've got there.

Nibbling round the edges, here, easy stuff first. (I need to go to bed. It's ridiculously late.)