greerwatson (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
greerwatson) wrote2023-04-18 01:23 am
greerwatson) wrote2023-04-18 01:23 am
Entry tags:
Vanishing websites
About a month ago, my website mysteriously disappeared. Along with all the rest of the Forever Knight Website Archive, including three main FK fic archives, most War archives and faction sites, sundry personal sites saved from GeoCities and Fortune City, and so on and so forth.
My first reaction was to e-mail Stephanie Kellerman, who had been hosting the Website Archive on her site, www.foreverknight.org. The e-mail bounced. I posted to the FORKNI-L mailing list (on which Steph had been active last fall). No response—well, except for concern and sympathy from other FK fans. I then googled and found an obituary.
Whether the Stephanie Kellerman who died is our Steph Kellerman from FK fandom is something I have no way of knowing. That's one of the difficulties with fannish friendships. You may not actually know the person's RL name; and, even if you do, you probably don't have a street address for them. However, the obituary included the usual little bio, which said the deceased knew computers and had four grandchildren—and, although my correspondence with Steph had been mainly about the Website Archive, things did occasionally get mentioned round the edges (so to speak); and it fits.
Anyway, I do plan to put my website up somewhere in the near future on some webhosting service yet to be decided. At the moment, I'm doing some revisions here and there; so it will probably be a few weeks.
When I do, I want to get a large enough site to be able to rehost the other things that have gone. As I did a lot of the collecting and editing of the old GeoCities sites, I have back-ups. I even, in a fit of concern, went page by page through the big fanfic archive copying absolutely everything (I hope!); so that's not lost either.
It'll take time to put everything back up; and, when I do, there'll be a new domain name since Steph's "www.foreverknight.org" has apparently been paid for until 2026, and I'm certainly not going to wait until then! It will all mean an appalling lot of editing in various wikis; but c'est la vie, I suppose, if one finds oneself called to be an archivist.
My first reaction was to e-mail Stephanie Kellerman, who had been hosting the Website Archive on her site, www.foreverknight.org. The e-mail bounced. I posted to the FORKNI-L mailing list (on which Steph had been active last fall). No response—well, except for concern and sympathy from other FK fans. I then googled and found an obituary.
Whether the Stephanie Kellerman who died is our Steph Kellerman from FK fandom is something I have no way of knowing. That's one of the difficulties with fannish friendships. You may not actually know the person's RL name; and, even if you do, you probably don't have a street address for them. However, the obituary included the usual little bio, which said the deceased knew computers and had four grandchildren—and, although my correspondence with Steph had been mainly about the Website Archive, things did occasionally get mentioned round the edges (so to speak); and it fits.
Anyway, I do plan to put my website up somewhere in the near future on some webhosting service yet to be decided. At the moment, I'm doing some revisions here and there; so it will probably be a few weeks.
When I do, I want to get a large enough site to be able to rehost the other things that have gone. As I did a lot of the collecting and editing of the old GeoCities sites, I have back-ups. I even, in a fit of concern, went page by page through the big fanfic archive copying absolutely everything (I hope!); so that's not lost either.
It'll take time to put everything back up; and, when I do, there'll be a new domain name since Steph's "www.foreverknight.org" has apparently been paid for until 2026, and I'm certainly not going to wait until then! It will all mean an appalling lot of editing in various wikis; but c'est la vie, I suppose, if one finds oneself called to be an archivist.
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I stumbled through the wiki onto some still-working links to war archives, which I didn't even know existed, and my name does appear in those though googling doesn't get hits, at least not first page. (Not sure how these things get indexed.) At any rate, it was personally really joyful for me to stumble across that stuff because I had forgotten all about it. So I appreciate trying to preserve the fandom's history and also be responsive to any individualized concerns on specific content.
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If you want to p.m. me your RL name and an e-mail address, I can see if I can find the stories for you and send you copies. They may still be available off-line.
On the whole, I prefer to pseudonymize people rather than pull things. There are still those who want to read those old stories! Which people originally did give Mel permission to archive, after all. Also, when it comes to matters like wars, people sent those permission slips McLisa was so insistent on. Twenty-five years later you change your mind? You aren't even dealing with the same volunteers who archived things back then!
I do occasionally wonder why people demand archivists give hours of their time to "fix' something that they did themselves. (Yes, it can take hours.) Then I remember that people who coach Little League teams get yelled at by parents, and people who hand out sleeping bags to homeless people sometimes get cursed at.
By the way, although it takes time to pseudonymize things in wikis and fic archives, doing so in Wars is so impractical as to be impossible. Names could have been written into in any story by any faction, after all, especially party scenes and the like.
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Back then, I think none of us understood how findable we'd become, the ramifications that could have, and that the internet would be how it is today.
Thanks for the kind offer to see if my old stuff! I'll have to think on that. I was like 18 years old so it's probably pretty bad LOL (feeling some secondhand embarrassment for my young self :-D.)
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It might be safer if you do PM me your RL name so I can check. I'm pretty sure Mel shortened Brightknightie's RL surname to an initial; but there it is in full, back again, in the copy that I have. That's because, when she decided to hand over to Steph, she didn't e-mail her a zip of the site: Steph had made a copy way-back-when, and used that instead. I doubt if Steph had any idea that, some years later, Brightknightie had asked to have her name altered.
So I'd maybe better check on yours.
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