Fanlore's Journal

On 16th October, it was revealed that Yahoo! is planning to shut off posting to Yahoo! Groups on 28th October, and permanently wipe all data from Groups on 14th December, in yet another instance of an internet space shutdown that will be hugely detrimental to fans and fan history.

The Organization for Transformative Works is doing everything it can to try and preserve the fannish activity and works on Yahoo! Groups before the shutdown. If you are a member or admin of a Group and want to try and preserve its contents, here are some things you can do.

Contact the OTW's Open Doors project, which works to import at-risk fan archives, if you're the admin of a Yahoo! Group and want to import its fanworks to AO3. If you're not the admin of a Yahoo! Group, you can still publish your own fanworks to AO3 - but the permission of a group admin is needed in order to import all the fanworks associated with a Group.

Create a page for the Group on Fanlore. Anyone can edit Fanlore and it's completely free - you just need to sign up for an account first. Once you have, you'll need to wait four hours before you can create any new pages - this is a precaution against spam accounts. This tutorial will help you get started with editing, and this article will give you more information on how to start a new page.

If you're not confident with making a new page from scratch or want one created before the four hours are up, you can get in touch via our contact form (select "Editing Help" as the message subject) and we will be more than happy to make one that you can edit.

What sort of thing should I put on a Fanlore page about my Group?

You can record anything you like on Fanlore that you think is relevant to fandom and is important to preserve - but here are some suggestions for information that might be useful:

• Number of members (from when the Group was most active, if it is no longer active)
• Last post date
• The information from your About Group page
• Number of messages overall
• Whether the group was public or accessible to members only
• Fun facts, like the subject of the first and last posts
• The FAQs
• A screencap of the About page
• The Mailing List template (which goes at the top of the page)

Here are some examples of Yahoo! Groups pages on Fanlore that you can use for inspiration:

• Robin of Sherwood Yahoo Group
• Henneth Annûn Yahoo Group
• HPforGrownups

Please note that anyone can edit pages on Fanlore, so the page you create won't stay exactly the same after you create it (but it will receive great additions from other editors!).

Create a Fanlore user page. If you're worried about friends from Groups being able to find you or your work elsewhere, you can create a user page on Fanlore with any fannish handles, hangouts, and other info that you want to share. Make sure to use the user profile template and check out this help page for more information on setting up your user page.

Archive your mailing list data. Fanlore gardener Morgan Dawn has created a post on Dreamwidth with ways that you can migrate or preserve data from Yahoo! mailing lists - check it out and feel free to add suggestions in the comments.

If you have any questions, problems, or just want to know more about Fanlore, please get in touch!