Well, like I mentioned in disclaimers, I haven't been active in the site in years and years (although actually I have been to the forums more recently, now that I recall, looking for demographic surveys) but, yeah, in my day, and I'm pretty sure still, the forums are a major part of the site, especially the mentoring and educational part, and a lot of the fic that got archived there came out of the culture that existed on the forums. I'm still lj friends with quite a few people I met only on FAP.
Even if I'm wrong about the forums still being that active - and I'm fairly sure I'm not - certainly if we saved the fic archives but not the forum archives, *so much* history, and context for the fic on the archive, would be entirely lost. Plus, there was even a fair amount of fic posted to the forum but not the archives - in the days when not everybody had a blog, people would post the little ficlets and cookies that weren't elaborate enough for the archive to pairing/character threads on the forums. People didn't really think of the forums as being something separate from the archive, since they really were two parts of one big, intertwined community, so I can see why people might not be thinking to mention them separately: if someone associated with FA says "we need to save our archive" without specifying, I suspect that "our archive" is just assumed to include FAP as well.
Anyway, also: Open Doors isn't even *operational* yet, not to mention the danger of putting all your eggs in one basket, so it's a bit disingenuous to say that people should go there first instead of trying to save their site as it exists. Open Doors, I thought, was intended primarily for sites that were no longer active or had no willing administrators, not for sites that are still thriving communities.
Re: Thank you for this.
Even if I'm wrong about the forums still being that active - and I'm fairly sure I'm not - certainly if we saved the fic archives but not the forum archives, *so much* history, and context for the fic on the archive, would be entirely lost. Plus, there was even a fair amount of fic posted to the forum but not the archives - in the days when not everybody had a blog, people would post the little ficlets and cookies that weren't elaborate enough for the archive to pairing/character threads on the forums. People didn't really think of the forums as being something separate from the archive, since they really were two parts of one big, intertwined community, so I can see why people might not be thinking to mention them separately: if someone associated with FA says "we need to save our archive" without specifying, I suspect that "our archive" is just assumed to include FAP as well.
Anyway, also: Open Doors isn't even *operational* yet, not to mention the danger of putting all your eggs in one basket, so it's a bit disingenuous to say that people should go there first instead of trying to save their site as it exists. Open Doors, I thought, was intended primarily for sites that were no longer active or had no willing administrators, not for sites that are still thriving communities.