The Barrow-Downs Fan Fiction Forum

[Mithadan]

Thank you Barrow-Wight!

A while back (more than 10 years ago) we maintained a separate bulletin board for the posting of Tolkien-related fan fiction. There were a large number of stories posted by a variety of members, many of whom are not presently active.

Several years ago the Barrow-Downs Forum went down as a result of malicious content posted or linked by bots or persons. It took a while to get this site back up. Around the same time, the Barrow-Downs Fan Fiction Forum also went down. It was not resurrected.

I recently was able to access the now defunct Fan Fiction Forum. This new Forum is an experiment to see if there is interest here in posting stories so that everyone can enjoy and comment upon them. This Forum will be moderated. Stories posted MUST BE TOLKIEN-RELATED.

As I mentioned, a lot of material was posted to the old Fan Fiction Forum. I am not entirely comfortable taking material from that old Forum and posting it here without input from the authors. I would like to hear members' thoughts about this.

If you posted a story to the old Forum, please PM me and I will let you know how to access it to recover your writing. Members, for now, should not post stories written by others and, obviously, should not claim authorship of other peoples' work.

[Huinesoron]

I wasn't around when the Downs wrote fanfic, but I have a lot of my own. I personally wouldn't have any problem with someone re-archiving any stories of mine that dropped off the internet (and in fact, I've acted as 'unauthorised archivist' for a few stories myself); and I would be interested in seeing what the Downs created. I can certainly understand your discomfort, though, and will happily accept whatever you go with.

Can you clarify whether the Red Book is solely for people (the authors or yourself/other moderators) to repost old fanfic from the Downs bulletin board, or whether it's also supposed to be for people to post their own old fanfic from other sources? I'm getting the impression it's the first, but am not quite sure.

hS

[The Barrow-Wight]

For now we will be posting only old Barrow-Downs Fan Fictions to this forum, but we may expand that to include other Fan Fiction once we get everything situated.

[The Barrow-Wight]

The fan fictions were submitted to the Barrow-Downs with full permission for us to display them to the public, so I think that we will have no issues if we repost them from the Wayback Machine to here.

I haven't looked at that location, so I don't know how many stories are there that would need to be moved. I think the easiest thing to do would be to have volunteer(s) bring them over and post them to the Red Book forum, which moderators will screen and publish. That leads me to a few questions.

- How many stories are there to move?
- Who will move them?
- When do we start?
- When do we finish?
- Do we start accepting new stories after the old ones are posted?

[Mithadan]

It's hard to determine how many stories were posted on the old Forum, because later versions of the site were filled with spam. As of August 11, 2011, it appears that there were more than 100 stories posted. I have not tried to view them individually, and some may be corrupt.

[Bêthberry]

If there is a forum for Downers to post new fan fiction--and not just to carry over the things from the Fan Fiction site-- I would be inclined towards making it stuff solely from Downers and not from other sites. Nothing against stuff from other sites, but the Downs did have a unique ethos and it would be valuable, imho, to maintain that.

[Urwen]

Originally Posted by The Barrow-Wight

- Do we start accepting new stories after the old ones are posted?

If you're accepting user input on this one, I say 'yes'.

[Huinesoron]

Originally Posted by The Barrow-Wight

I haven't looked at that location, so I don't know how many stories are there that would need to be moved. I think the easiest thing to do would be to have volunteer(s) bring them over and post them to the Red Book forum, which moderators will screen and publish. That leads me to a few questions.

- How many stories are there to move?
- Who will move them?
- When do we start?
- When do we finish?
- Do we start accepting new stories after the old ones are posted?

I have some experience digging stuff out of the Wayback Machine, so if that's the source I'd be willing to volunteer to help out.

Is it permissible to post comments or reviews to stories that are reposted? I'm thinking particularly of the ones where the original author is still around, like Mithadan's Tales from Tol Eressea, but an answer for orphaned stories would also be appreciated.

hS

[Mithadan]

I personally have no problem with comments.