Don't panic! Livejournal isn't in any imminent danger, despite today's news (many of us here at OTW are archivists, and we know how long it takes for sites, even unattended ones, to degrade.) We'll all still be here tomorrow!

That being said, we do want to remind LJ-based fandom that:

* You can create a User: page for yourself on Fanlore. (All those "If LJ goes away" posts on LJ are kind of useless if LJ actually goes away!) You can put all your pseuds, journals, websites, and other contact info on your User: page, and the wiki is searchable and obviously updatable, so folks will always know where to find you. (See examples here, and there's an easy "create account" link in the left side toolbar of every page.) (Please note that the User: page is different from a regular wiki page. You control the content of your User: page: it's more like a LJ profile page, whereas regular wiki pages about individual fans are collaborative and editable; generally, others will make and edit these pages.)

Below is the final section of the draft Terms of Service for the Archive of Our Own, and its accompanying FAQs. The earlier sections and their accompanying FAQs can be found on the Archive site (ToS and FAQs).

This is a work-in-progress. We're posting it to get as much feedback as possible. If there's something you don't understand, please ask. We will try to clarify, and possibly add to the FAQ. If there's something you don't like, it would be really helpful if you'd suggest alternatives.

Members of the Content Policy committee will be available to answer questions. Please remember that anonymous comments are disallowed.

Want a first look at the Archive Of Our Own? Come browse!

While we're still very much a work in progress, with many of our most exciting features still in development, you can now go to http://archiveofourown.org and browse for stories!!

(Please note that this early version of the archive only works/looks right with the Firefox browser.)

(Read on for many more exciting details!)

We are creating an open-source software package, OTW-Archive, which will allow fans to host their own robust, full-featured archives, which can support even an archive on a very large scale of hundreds of thousands of stories and has the social networking features to make it easier for fans to connect to one another through their work.

The OTW will use this software to provide the Archive of Our Own: a noncommercial and nonprofit central hosting place for fanfiction and other transformative fanworks, where these can be sheltered by the advocacy of the OTW and take advantage of the OTW's work in articulating the case for the legality and social value of these works.

The OTW is committed to protecting the privacy of fans, whether they are users of our services or not. We do not allow anyone to connect fan identities and real life identities on our services against the wishes of the individual in question. Our content policy committee and focus groups are working on policies and procedures to both prevent this and minimize the damage should someone break the rules.

We'll do our best. While spam prevention will evolve along with typical spam attacks, we currently plan to require email confirmation for new account creation, and to use a CAPTCHA-style spam prevention measure for comments from non-registered users. We feel this is a good compromise that keeps signing up for an account accessible, while also protecting users from anonymous spammers.

No, not at all. In fact, we hope that other fans will use our archive software (which will be open-source and free to use and modify) to build their own archives.

Building the kind of archive the OTW envisions is not a simple process. We're not just setting up an archive using existing software, but building new open-source archive software that can be easily maintained and easily reused, and which can handle potentially millions of stories from hundreds of thousands of simultaneous users.

We will not be policing the archive actively; someone must report a violation of the TOS to us before it is investigated. An OTW committee will be organized from volunteers to handle these reports of TOS violations. These volunteers will themselves be archive users and fans. Like all OTW committees, this group's membership will rotate on a regular basis.

Yes, absolutely.

No one (including the OTW as an organization) will be making money from the archive or its content; in fact, the opposite, because the OTW will be paying to host the archive. Advertising will not be shown. Instead, we will likely have public radio-style pledge drives to ask for support from our users. However, no donation will ever be required to use the archive or any of its tools.

Our first goal is to create a new open-source software package to allow fans to host their own robust, full-featured archives, which can support even an archive on a very large scale of hundreds of thousands of stories and has the social networking features to make it easier for fans to connect to one another through their work.

The Archive Of Our Own is in beta as of October 2008. For information about archive policies, please see the archive Terms of Service and FAQ.

The OTW is the name of the nonprofit organization created to advocate for fandom and to house other projects such as the archive (which will be known as An Archive Of Our Own) and the academic journal.