A reader/writer we report on asked a question, in a comment on one of my posts, I was going to answer it in a comment on that post, but it got kind of long and complicated. And, as there are word limits on comments, I ran out of space and would have needed a couple more comments...
So I thought I'd answer it here instead.
Some of you may be interested, in which case read on. Most of you will be bored rigid, (especially since I briefly touched on some of these points a year or two back along), in which case skip the blurb and go straight to the updates.
The question asked was
"I'm curious as to how you select the stories that you link here."
Where to start...
Once upon a time my two good friends E & T started this website. It was to be dedicated to searching the web for femslash stories and posting links to them to enable readers to find them easily. For a couple of years they were the only reporters, though I contributed the occasional ramble. The sites they reported on were authors' personal webpages, live-journal communities, and what I term "proper" archives, multi-fandom websites, run by a webmaster, possibly with several assistants, where you submit a story and they upload it.
The Royal Academy of Bards is one of these types. Mostly in western movie, tv, and book fandoms - there were plenty of other communities dealing with manga/anime, & game, fandoms - though Uber Etc. did report on other fandoms when stories were posted to multi=fandom LJ communities.
Eventually they asked if I'd like to join them, I jumped at the chance. I love this sort of thing.
For a while we pootled along. We reported every fic on those websites, communities, and archives.
And then live-journal's new owners started doing daft things, like forgetting what made them great and instead trying to be tumblr, facebook, and twitter all rolled in to one. And they alienated their loyal base - especially the fandom-based communities. Users left in droves. Communities stuttered and fell. A few still update regularly, most don't.
Archives stopped updating, closed, or vanished from the web. The demise of AOL Hometown, GeoCities, etc. took down a lot of authors' pages, most of which were not replaced. Other authors left fandom or simply stopped updating their sites.
There were still a fair few of the upload-it-yourself sort of sites - though even they are starting to close, or not update - but most of those are too chaotic, with less-than-ideal search terms or tagging systems and consequently checking for updates is a nightmare. So things like FF.Net were not checked (FF.Net is the nightmare to end all nightmare for chaos!!) We'd post the occasional link if an author emailed to request it and sent a link. Otherwise, nope.
But I, in my hunt for fanfic in the fandoms I like, personally, to read, found AO3. AO3 has a excellent search engine, easy to use and easy to find what you need. (Though some people do abuse the tagging system quite brutally). So - desperate for things to report I began linking to AO3 fics in fandoms I followed. Then to fics in fandoms I'd heard about but don't follow (OUaT, or OitNB for example).
At first it wasn't too bad, I'd check about 20 pages (20 updates to a page) and pick out ones I liked. Then I decided to cover as much as I could - by then a week of updates would be 50 pages. Now a week's updates runs to 90 pages. There's no way on earth we can link to them all.
So I filter. It's easier to say what I
don't choose rather than what I do...
I don't link to anything in any fandom that contains under-age sex, or child abuse, or graphic rape/non-con. I'm careful with dub-con. I don't link to any RPF (real person fic - the actors rather than the characters they play). I don't link to any fic that are gender-swap (unless they are dealing seriously with trans issues). I don't link to any fics that are futanari aka G!P (girl-peen). I don't link to vore.
I don't link to high school AUs. I also don't link to some of the currently popular tropes where there are far too many badly written totally out-of-character stories - tropes such as soul-mate identifying marks in fandoms that don't have that sort of thing (apart from anything else it seems to be at best dub-con to me). I don't link to zombie AUs. Or werewolf AUs. And I don't link to fics in fandoms that are zombie or werewolf where they've taken
out the zombies/werewolves.
I stick to the western fandoms as above - (except for Legend of Korra - I got a couple of requests to start covering that, so I do).
The things I
do link to aren't necessarily my personal preference, I'll often cover things I hate... but the things I
don't link to are often because of my personal preferences!!
I don't link to stories of less than 1000 words.
I'll read the summary - if the writer can't even spell their character's name right it won't get a link. If their caps-lock appears stuck it won't get a link. If they're overly rude with the "don't like, don't read" message it won't get a link. If the summary is a bit vague I'll read the first few paragraph - or a couple of chapters - to check that it is femslash & doesn't contain any of the no-nos (I've discovered some fine stories and some great new fandoms that way - unfortunately I've also discovered some badly-spelt, ungrammatical, badly-written rubbish), if it passes it gets a link.
A lot of it is very subjective, true, I do
try to be objective if I can - if it's a good story I'll link to it, even if the spelling and grammar make me weep. I'll link to stories in fandoms about which I haven't a clue (OUaT, Rookie Blue, OitNB etc.) and hope it's good, true to the characters, and if it's AU that they're still recognisable.
I'll link to stories that have been recommended on yahoo groups or LJ communities I'm in, I'll check out websites that have been mentioned. (That's how we found you - someone in a Yahoo group mentioned a site/author they thought was good).
Hope that answers the question.
Ze
