cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/53757573
Two months ago, I made this post:
https://lemmy.world/post/50855395
In this community, about potentially either “colonizing”, or forking Squidgeworld Archive (alternative to the fanfiction site ao3).
Apparently, ao3 has recently shut-down for 2-4 weeks:
https://www.404media.co/archive-of-our-own-ao3-down-maintenance/
https://nerdist.com/article/ao3-archive-of-our-own-down-for-two-to-four-weeks/
My question is: Should we consider potentially making a Fediverse alternative to Ao3 / SqWA?
If you head over to the Squidgeworld Archive website, it states that over 2,300+ ao3 users have already migrated over to SqWA from ao3.
(Now it’s over 12,000+ in the last 20 hours ALONE.)
Just imagine how many people could potentially be brought into the Fediverse, if there were a working federated alternative version of ao3 / SqWA.
Or if Fediverse users, instead of creating an alternative, instead commited to “colonising” SqWA, instead.
The software is almost completely irrelevant. It’s all about the story archive. Given Lemmy’s observed distaste for edgy content, I don’t think a federated AO3-like repo is likely to fly, but I’d love to be proven wrong. It might be preferable to have a straightforward mirror if that can be arranged with AO3.