Policy on stories that have been pulled from archives?

[ffutures]

In several entries I've linked to works by an author who seems to have abruptly dropped out of the fanfic scene, with their accounts on Fanfiction.net and AO3 suddenly vanished some time in the last few weeks. I have no idea why.

What's the policy on this - find another work that covers the same sort of ground, or link to the original work on archive.org if they have it? I'm guessing find another work, but in some cases that won't be easy so I wanted to check.

Now sorted - I've linked to webarchive.org and added a note that they've been deleted, and added a new example in one case.

Comments

[morgandawn]

We usually add a note if the item has been deleted, and then find another example. We don't remove the work because it's part of the historical record.

[ffutures]

OK, thanks!

[greerwatson]

If there's a copy on the Wayback Machine, by all means link to that. As long as the work was originally a public post (anything on ff.net and AO3 should be), you can cite it.

However, if you can find other examples of what you're talking about, that's good, too. No harm in doing both!

[ffutures]

Right, I'll give it a try.

[atamascolily]

If the fic is especially noteworthy, it's worth making a Fanlore page about it (and/or the author) that includes the history and deletion. I have been doing that with a number of fics that I reference so that if the author ever decides to pull the main text, there's still a record of its existence on Fanlore.

[ffutures]

I think they're mostly just examples of a particular genre, pairing, etc., not especially noteworthy but good examples.