We have information for about 5,000 stories (http://www.fanhistory.com/wiki/Category:Stories_hosted_on_Geocities), about 250 fan fiction archives (http://www.fanhistory.com/wiki/Category:Fan_fiction_archives_hosted_on_Geocities) and information from over 100 fansites (http://www.fanhistory.com/wiki/Category:Fansites_on_Geocities). I know that Fan History and the Organization for Transformative Works don't have that much admin overlap in interests so it would be nice if we could mirror (and keep our respective licenses) articles on both so that a broader range of fandoms can be covered. We've mostly been focusing on Harry Potter, anime, X-Files fandom, soap opera fandom, music fandom, terminology pages. I'm not entirely certain where the focus is... but the broader it is, the more support? The better.
At this point, even if we could share say screencaps of sites and try to get a big collection of those, where the look of the sites is saved and we can go back later and mine that information? It would be fantastic so that we have it. I know that there are one or two projects out there trying to save everything but that might not be easily accessible and you're going to loose original date stamps to know when things were last updated, how old sites were, etc.
And yeah, sucks big time what Geocities is doing. On the other hand, if they weren't closing, there would not be the push to document fandom from the early 1990s. Getting that done is fantastic. (The service itself was awesome ofr the time... but at the moment? Kind of crappy. Lots of people already pulled out from Geocities or Geocities closed them. Lots of the important Babylon 5 fansites on it were gone.)
We're still planning on doing some promotion for our preservation efforts and if OTW would be interested in teaming up, we would be happy to promote them as part of our efforts to increase fandom awareness and participation in this project.
Re: Cooperation request
At this point, even if we could share say screencaps of sites and try to get a big collection of those, where the look of the sites is saved and we can go back later and mine that information? It would be fantastic so that we have it. I know that there are one or two projects out there trying to save everything but that might not be easily accessible and you're going to loose original date stamps to know when things were last updated, how old sites were, etc.
And yeah, sucks big time what Geocities is doing. On the other hand, if they weren't closing, there would not be the push to document fandom from the early 1990s. Getting that done is fantastic. (The service itself was awesome ofr the time... but at the moment? Kind of crappy. Lots of people already pulled out from Geocities or Geocities closed them. Lots of the important Babylon 5 fansites on it were gone.)
We're still planning on doing some promotion for our preservation efforts and if OTW would be interested in teaming up, we would be happy to promote them as part of our efforts to increase fandom awareness and participation in this project.