18 April 2023 @ 01:23 am
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.

 
 
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Amy[personal profile] brightknightie on April 27th, 2023 02:32 pm (UTC)
Re: Brightknightie's request
No, I didn't mean Steph K. (Mel's silent partner was from a previous generation of online fandom, compared to Steph.)

If a method of deletion becomes available, I'd like to let my request remain for that possibility.

>" 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."

Thank you for checking the LC site. Theirs is the only faction site likely to have my name. Again, if the references cannot simply be deleted, I'd appreciate it if you would, when you have time, change any of theirs to Brightknightie, too, so that I can at last deal with my own website and split pseudonym. My choices on my own site have been driven in large part by the presence of my name on files controlled by others; if the name fully goes away elsewhere, so that it is not a breadcrumb trail to my door, and from there to my present presence, then I can also make new choices with my own files.

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

I don't wish to make you miss sleep or otherwise disrupt higher priorities. Everyone has obligations and occupations; new things must get in line accordingly. This is not an emergency.
greerwatson[personal profile] greerwatson on April 28th, 2023 04:02 pm (UTC)
Re: Brightknightie's request
I've changed the Light Cousins' links to say "Brightknightie".

It does occur to me, though, that there are some pages in the FK Wiki that do have your first name on them. These are articles:
  • "Amy's Forever Knight Fanfiction Recommendation of the Month"
  • "Amy's Script-Based Forever Knight Timeline"
  • "Amy's Forever Knight "Stuff" List"
These are the actual titles you use on your website; so I can't cite them in any other way. (At least they don't have the initial of your surname.)

These are all very interesting pages/sections of the Bright Knight site. I've found them very useful; and I'm sure other people have too. Please give me the heads up when you revise your site so I can make the changes to the wiki articles.

Edited 2023-05-02 11:27 pm (UTC)