852 Prospect

:For the Sentinel zine 852 Prospect see 852 Prospect (Sentinel zine).
852 Prospect was an archive for adult fanfiction based on the TV show The Sentinel. While it accepted both het and slash adult stories, the majority of the stories on the archive were slash, reflecting the fandom.
==Origin of the Title==
The archive is named for the fictional address where the two main characters of the show live: 852 Prospect Ave., Apt. 307, Cascade, WA 98765, USA.
==History==
The original Sentinel Slash Archive, starting in 1996, was manually updated and run by Michelle. In 1997, when the archive had not been updated for over six months and Michelle could not be reached, Merry, Nita and several other fans started an Interim Archive on Tripod using copies they had of the some of the existing stories, adding new stories regularly as they were posted on the Sentinel fiction lists. Nita became the chief archivist shortly after the Interim Archive was created. A server meltdown took the original archive down in 1998 or 1999.
By November 1999, the Interim Archive had moved to a more permanent home on squidge.org. It was renamed 852 Prospect, and became the primary adult archive in the fandom.
Nita stayed on as archivist, mainly solo with occasional help from other fans, until July 2004, when she handed it over to alice ttlg. During the archive move to AO3 in 2012, Magician took over the role as moderator of the archive and has been its archivist ever since.
852 Prospect started out like all archives of the time: manual. The archivist and her helpers had to add each story by hand, coding all the links on various navigation pages. astolat wrote the first Automated Archive script for 852 Prospect while it was still on Tripod, making it the first automated fanfic archive on the web.
===Work Categorisation===
Works uploaded to the automated 852 Prospect could be categorised (and searched) using the following ratings, categories, pairings and warnings:
*Ratings: G || PG || R || NC17
*Category: Alternate Universes || Challenges || Crossovers || Drama || Episode Related || Filk || First Times || Holidays || Humor || Plot What Plot? || Poetry || Romance || Senslash Fun || Series
*Pairings: J/B || J/S || B/S || J/m || B/m || S/m || J/f || B/f || S/f || J/B/S || J/B/m || J/B/f || Other Pairing || Pre-Slash || Stories with no pairing info
*Warnings: b/d	 s/m	 violence death story	 m/m	 m/f f/f	 multiple partners	 rape/nc h/c	 song lyrics	 crossovers AU	 bestiality	 angst partner betrayal	 none	 Other: see story notes
Warnings were defined on the Posting to the Archive FAQ:
==Import to Archive of Our Own==
In July 2010, alice ttlg announced on the SXF mailing list that she was looking for an archivist to take over maintaining 852 Prospect: 
In 2012, she began working with the Open Doors committee of the Organization for Transformative Works to import the archive to the Archive of Our Own.
The import encountered several delays due to performance issues on the Archive of Our Own, but the collection was created in January 2013 to allow 852 Prospect authors to manually import their works if they wished with Magician as the collection's archivist. The rest of the 852 Prospect archive was imported to the Archive of Our Own on May 10, 2013, making it the second classic fic archive to be rescued by being imported into the Archive of Our Own. All story links on the original 852 Prospect archive now redirect to their imported counterparts on the Archive of Our Own (with the exception of stories that have been deleted by their authors).
==Some Stats==
In 2007, Sentinel fans debated whether their fandom was on the wane. In a post to the Prospect-L mailing list one fan provided some helpful stats about the early years on 852 Prospect archive:
Other stats (supplied by the Prospect-L admin in 2007):
:2002 - 635 stories
:2003 - 514 stories
:2004 - 423 stories
:2005 - 305 stories
:2006 - 254 stories
==Fan Comments==
==References==
Category:Sentinel Archives
Category:Squidge.org
Category:1996 Archives
Category:1990s Archives
Category:2000s Archives
Category:2010s Archives