Writers, back up your stuff on FF.net...maybe....

So apparently there is a bug floating around ff.net. And it seems that clicking on user's profiles will do bad things. And possibly, the admins might have to wipe the site? But I'm guessing that might be worst case scenario. The admins, as usual, have been silent.

At any rate, viruses, or rumors of viruses, are never good. So you might want to consider backing up anything you don't want to lose. You know, just in case.

A lovely reader let me know earlier today, otherwise I'd have had no idea! And there are lots of posts out there about it now, so you can search it for more info.

On reddit/r/fanfiction, one post tells how to block the javascript. But there are problems with that as well. Like buttons not working. Ugh. Another post says just to not click on the profiles.

Honestly...I don't know.... I'm just making pdf copies of what I don't want to lose. It's a real pain, but I don't want to lose my fav stories, reviews and pms.

This is how I'm doing it:

- Copy the url of the page of reviews to webpagetopdf.com (It's free.)
- Convert the page to a pdf
- Download the page to my computer.

The handy thing is if you have several pages, you dont have to copy-and-paste each page - just change the last digit for the ff.net url for the reviews.

Example: https://www.fanficti...r/10874596/0/3/ -This is the url for the reviews for one of my stories. The last number is page 3 of reviews. Change that to 4 then convert, and it downloads the next page. Change to 5, convert, download. Etc.

Makes the whole process go much faster. (fyi-This is how I did the reviews. It may be a little different for the chapter pages, etc.)

Anyway, hopefully this will all blow over, and ff.net won't experience any noticeable changes. But just in case....

Also, I've been meaning to repost my stories on wattpad. Anyone use any different sites regularly? As a writer or a reader? Wattpad? AO3? Maybe now is the time to go ahead and start up my accounts again.

Personally, I write my stories with Open Office save them to the proper story folder on my PC as well as to my laptop and several flash drives. My final editing is done online on the FFN site. I can understand if you've changed PS or lost your original; files that one would have to take the above steps to preserve one's work but a chapter's lifetime in the FFN's doc manager is only 90 days. That's the reason I began maintaining story folders on my machines in the first place.

For some people, like myself, a purge can be a blessing. It would erase anything that I felt was subpar and a reason to rewrite a missing story to a higher standard. I have found that no matter how close I look my stories are still full of simple mistakes. Anyway, back up your work often an keep them in a safe location, It would be a shame to lose favorite stories because of something beyond our control as we've lost too much in the purges a few years ago as well as writers removing their work for whatever reason.

I heard about this the other day. Honestly I don’t really use ff.net at all anymore. It’s just... really outdated and I personally find it a pain to use. AO3 is great though, and definitely an alternative worth looking into. Once you get used to the layout it’s really user friendly, great tagging system, no annoying ads, and it’s fan run by people who actually care about protecting the work of fan writers- which means no fic purges even of mature content.

So it seems it's been fixed, according to reddit. Crisis averted. Still, it was a good opportunity to backup my reviews/stats in case something whackadoo ever happens in the future.

For me, the one thing I worried most about were reviews, pms and stats. Those belong with the stories. They have zero value to ff.net, and so would mean nothing to them to dump them. But they really mean a lot to me as I've moved through my first steps writing. One day I'll be finished, then I'll print the whole thing out, including reviews, and keep them together.

Same with traffic stats. These are only valuable to me, and I happen to find it ENDLESSLY FASCINATING to see where my fics have been read around the world. (I got several hits from the Vatican! Imagine, someone went to check out the Pope and papal history, got bored, and pulled up my fic! ) Anyway, it would mean nothing to ff.net if these stats were scrapped. But I'd like to keep them together with the story, to look back at some time. And it would be interesting with future projects (original fics) I have planned for some of my stories.

@Merchant - same here. I write in Scrivener and upload, with final corrections in ff.net. Unfortunately I posted a few author's notes in on the site, so I wanted to make sure I have a copy of those.

@Bake - I will check it out again. I got an account there years ago but never posted. And yeah, having people who deeply care about a site is majorly important to the upkeep, community and future. Which is why I always worry that one day I'm going to click on ff.net and discover they've gone poof!! They just don't seem to care as long as the site runs trouble free. They don't ever upgrade it. That can't go on forever....

I'll check out AO3 again. Those small things really change the whole experience. I've seen the same user-friendly stuff at wattpad too. Book covers, line by line commenting (instead of one big review at the end), tags, etc. Seems more like a writer's community than a document warehouse like ff.net is.

Your stuff on FFN can also get deleted if it has mature content, though it seems like this rarely happens. Definitely back up whatever you aren't okay with losing.

I was going to use AO3, but I find that I really don't like the... atmosphere...? of it. Because of it being a haven for works with mature content, there are a huge amount of stories that are just edgy, to a ridiculous extreme. I don't care that people want to write/read that stuff, that's their prerogative. But the keyword system is so garbage that people can add every pairing that is even tangentially alluded to, so when browsing AO3 you will constantly be reminded that that stuff exists.

Although I don't really read fanfics anymore, I just occasionally write them, so maybe that wouldn't be an issue now.

Your stuff on FFN can also get deleted if it has mature content, though it seems like this rarely happens. Definitely back up whatever you aren't okay with losing.

I was going to use AO3, but I find that I really don't like the... atmosphere...? of it. Because of it being a haven for works with mature content, there are a huge amount of stories that are just edgy, to a ridiculous extreme. I don't care that people want to write/read that stuff, that's their prerogative. But the keyword system is so garbage that people can add every pairing that is even tangentially alluded to, so when browsing AO3 you will constantly be reminded that that stuff exists.

Although I don't really read fanfics anymore, I just occasionally write them, so maybe that wouldn't be an issue now.

I think I get what you mean. Don’t get me wrong, there’s definitely a lot of content on AO3 that I won’t touch with a 10 foot pole, but that was true of ff.net too. That’s where I personally find the tagging system generally very handy. It’s easier when I see a tag that squicks me (be it a ship or some other element) before clicking open and can avoid it completely. There’s no way to for ff.net to be as specific on what you’re getting into, and AO3 very recently added an exclude feature, so weeding out what you don’t want is easier.

I can’t vouch for say, the state of the Naruto tag on AO3, cause I don’t go there, but I like the clean layout and the staff are good about giving updates with what’s going on with the site and all. I’ve uploaded there before (though later deleted for reasons; writing muse where have you gone?) and it was a very simple process and didn’t give me the hassles I had with ff.net in the past.

FFN added to the life span of docs? What a surprise lol, more time to make quick changes then. Personally I still keep all my writing within Google Docs.

I've been slowly warming up to AO3, especially since it's user friendly like mentioned, but I still prefer FFN simply because the interface and tagging system less complicated in the meantime. (That being said, I think it's a little unnecessary that they had to add in pairing brackets when people could have easily put a ship name in the description...)