Founded in 1999, Vox Poppuli, run by alicettlg, has been a webhost for dozens of fan websites, both personal sites and archives.

This is what Vox Poppuli looked like in 2006, when I first saw its webhost page. But the mere list doesn't give a sense of how vast the number of fics and fandom resources were that Vox Poppuli hosted. Many of those sites were multi-author sites.

Among other things, Vox Poppuli hosted Fan Email Lists, which was my entry into the fandom community.

Much of the fic hosted at Vox Poppuli has been moved over the years to AO3, but I know of at least one case where the fics have not been moved to AO3, and I'm sure there are many more, not all of which can be fully recovered through the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. So this is another major loss of fandom history, which is sad to see.

1) NightOwl of Yahoo Groups Crusade Headquarters, who helped to spread word about our project's work to preserve fandom Yahoo Groups, has announced the death of her mother. NightOwl was brave enough to work to save Yahoo Groups at the same time she was caring for her ill mother. We're grateful to NightOwl for her generous assistance, and we extend our sympathies to her for her loss.

2) Both morgandawn and I were having some difficulties with switching the status of news posts from members-only to public, so I've dealt with the issue by making all future posts here public. This doesn't affect past posts, and you're always welcome to make members-only posts here.

3) We're wrapping up the first phase of our Yahoo Project over at our Discord chatroom. The second phase will be dealing with all the data we've gathered; that will take many more months.

4) Due to time constraints, I'm retiring as a moderator, both here and at our Discord chatroom. I'm still working for Fandom History Rescue Project, and I'll continue to link to any news/blog articles that mention our project, but I won't be doing full links roundups in the future. I leave this comm's moderation in the amazingly able hands of morgandawn and arcadianmaggie.

Feel free to start threads of your own on any fandom history preservation topics!

Weekly Summary 02/03/2020, by The Mad Programer at Data Horde. "The 'Save Yahoo Groups' team (aka Yahoo Groups Fandom Rescue Project, aka Yahoo Gedden) hasn't fully tallied up their data yet, but have counted the number of groups they've downloaded so far to be about 84,655 and the number of groups they are still retrieving from to be about 38,000 for a total of 123K groups!" [Dusk's note: We still don't have final figures, but the total estimate has gone up since then.]

Saving Private Groups: This Time the Mission is the Fan, by The Mad Programer at Data Horde. "On October 22nd 2019 Tumblr user zhie started a Discord Server 'Save Yahoo Groups' (link above), the same day Morgandawn started a Tumblr blog: https://yahoo-geddon.tumblr.com/. These two outlets combined together to form Fandom's Sortie against Verizon's Yahoo Groups Siege." (Commentary on the above article at Hacker News.)

The Early Internet, Explained by One Weird Celine Dion Fan Site, by Kaitlyn Tiffany at The Atlantic. "Preservationists at the Internet Archive and the Organization for Transformative Works, which runs the fan-owned fan-fiction platform Archive of Our Own, have been coordinating to save what they can. They're aided by a Tumblr-based group called the Yahoo Groups Fandom Rescue Project, which has been sharing tips on how to use Verizon’s buggy download tools and coordinating in a 200-person Discord channel. Despite these preservation efforts, things will be lost."

Verizon blocks archivers from Yahoo Groups, almost two decades of history at risk of being lost forever, by Government Slaves, quoting our moderator morgandawn. "A blog that is monitoring the [Yahoo Groups] archival efforts, and their subsequent blocking, has said that the attempts to block archiving now mean that, 'Verizon has lost all benefit of the doubt, and is likely at least aware of what Yahoo is doing to groups, or is at worst, complicit.'"

Yahoo Groups Archives, Including Many SF/F Fanzines, To Be Deleted, by Locus Magazine. "Writer Dusk Peterson is part of the Yahoo Groups Fandom Rescue Project, 'an informal group of fans who are working to preserve the archives of fandom mailing lists.' The project has identified almost 30,000 lists at risk of deletion — 'comparable to 30,000 multi-issue fanzines being burned' — and need more volunteers to archive material. They're also urging Yahoo to delay the deletion."

These crusaders want to preserve ‘human culture’ online. Their latest target: Yahoo Groups, by The Washington Post. Excerpt:

Margaret Farrelly is part of the majority that uses Yahoo Groups through email these days. She says she has scaled down from hundreds of group memberships to just a few.

But she was still alarmed when Scott's tweet about Yahoo Groups made it into her feed. The Wisconsin resident knows the site was an early home for something she loves: fan fiction. She belongs to a collective that has identified about 35,000 fandom-related Yahoo groups to save.

Farrelly also knows someone trying to capture more than 100 beekeeping groups, and someone passionate about genealogy and adoption support circles. Another person is focusing on astronomy groups filled with photos they say may not exist anywhere else.

"It's just depressing to think how much is going to be lost," Farrelly said.

Her fandom group turned to the Archive Team for help.

FANDOM ARCHIVED

Fan Fiction Oral History Project at the University of Iowa.

GENERAL

marchmetamatterschallenge. "As sites hosting art, text, music, and more continue to either close up shop or change their Terms of Service, there have been various efforts to save content on what is often very short notice. It would be even better if fans gave our works this attention before a crisis hits. While creators have often used multiple sites to host their works, one type of work has generally been left out of fans' efforts at archiving and preserving fanworks -- meta. . . . The priority for Meta Matters is to make sure meta doesn't vanish with sites or personal accounts when those get closed or moved."

fanlore. "Supporting and creating community among the editors of the Fanlore wiki."

Rogue Archives: Digital Cultural Memory and Media Fandom, a 2016 book by Abigail De Kosnik. "An examination of how nonprofessional archivists, especially media fans, practice cultural preservation on the Internet and how 'digital cultural memory' differs radically from print-era archiving." See also a three-part interview with the author and a review of the book at Transformative Works and Cultures.

( Older resource sites )

Fandom History Rescue Project in the news

A blog that is monitoring the [Yahoo Groups] archival efforts, and their subsequent blocking, has said that the attempts to block archiving now mean that, 'Verizon has lost all benefit of the doubt, and is likely at least aware of what Yahoo is doing to groups, or is at worst, complicit.'"

--Verizon blocks archivers from Yahoo Groups, almost two decades of history at risk of being lost forever, by Government Slaves, quoting our moderator morgandawn. (Cache.)

Writer Dusk Peterson is part of the Yahoo Groups Fandom Rescue Project, "an informal group of fans who are working to preserve the archives of fandom mailing lists." The project has identified almost 30,000 lists at risk of deletion — "comparable to 30,000 multi-issue fanzines being burned" — and need more volunteers to archive material. They're also urging Yahoo to delay the deletion."

--Yahoo Groups Archives, Including Many SF/F Fanzines, To Be Deleted, by Locus Magazine. (Cache.)

Margaret Farrelly is part of the majority that uses Yahoo Groups through email these days. She says she has scaled down from hundreds of group memberships to just a few.

But she was still alarmed when Scott's tweet about Yahoo Groups made it into her feed. The Wisconsin resident knows the site was an early home for something she loves: fan fiction. She belongs to a collective that has identified about 35,000 fandom-related Yahoo groups to save.

Farrelly also knows someone trying to capture more than 100 beekeeping groups, and someone passionate about genealogy and adoption support circles. Another person is focusing on astronomy groups filled with photos they say may not exist anywhere else.

"It's just depressing to think how much is going to be lost," Farrelly said.

Her fandom group turned to the Archive Team for help.

--These crusaders want to preserve ‘human culture’ online. Their latest target: Yahoo Groups, by The Washington Post. (Cache.) s_

Posts and articles about preserving fandom history

Some thoughts re: LJ and long-term fannish content, by our member juniperberry, who also runs ds_ficminers, dedicated to preserving Due South fandom history.

Tumblr reportedly blocked archivists from saving blogs before the NSFW purge, by The Daily Dot. (Cache.)

A 2010 discussion on the ethics and legality of caching fandom content, at fanlore in a thread started by our moderator morgandawn.

According to the Organization of Transformative Works:

Popular fanmix and fan soundtrack website 8tracks recently announced that it will be shutting down on December 31, 2019. While the site might be available after this date, there’s no guarantee it will stay up - so if you’re a fanmix or fan soundtrack creator (or have created any type of playlist on 8tracks), now is a very good time to save the data from your playlists or make them available on another site.

These Tumblr posts offer detailed information from OTW and from our Tumblr blog on how to save playlists.

One of our members is helping with the race to save fandom-related 8tracks playlists. Our Tumblr post ends by saying, "If you need help saving a lot of playlists, email the list of URLs to admin@vidders.net Please put the word 8Tracks in your subject line."