FanFiction.Net

Fanfiction.net, is a fanfiction archive that launched in October 15, 1998. The site is created, owned and maintained by Xing Li. Fanfiction.net may be the first multi-fandom automated archive, and was arguably the largest fanfiction archive on the internet at one time.There is much debate about which archive is the largest or most popular archive in fandom. The answer often depends on which variable (number of users, works, fandoms or monthly users) you choose to judge the size or popularity of an archive. Wattpad may have more fics numerically, but an accurate count is difficult to achieve. As of 2008, it included several thousand fandoms with several hundred new stories being uploaded daily.Numbers based on freifraufischer's data (Accessed 6 December 2008) FictionPress is its sister site and is an archive for original fiction and poems. The two sites split off on February 16, 2003.
Fanfiction.net was hugely influential and well known in fannish spaces during the 2000s. It contributed to a more centralized fandom experience for readers and writers of fanfiction, and removed technical and financial barriers many faced when trying to host their works online.
Its submission rules changed several times during that decade, inspiring debate and discussion and what type of content should be accepted on a multi-fandom archive. The Fanfiction.net purge of NC-17 content in 2002 was particularly influential; angering many fans and beginning a fannish migration as many authors of adult fanfiction sought a more inclusive home for their works.
It is believed that the site's users tend to be quite young. A poll on the site in April 2000 said the percentage of users who were 10–19 years old was 61%. In January 2001, they trended even younger, with 10–19 years old at 70%.. It is unknown how those demographics have changed over the years.
==Features==
FF.Net has features beyond story archiving that provide tools for readers and writers, some simply useful, others giving the site a social side that lets fans connect.
===Browsing and filtering===
When browsing, stories on Fanfiction.net display the following information: the title of the story; the author; a short summary, which must be characters or less; the fandom, or fandoms if it is a crossover; the rating, which ranges from K to M; the language the work is in; the genre; the number of chapters, words, reviews, favorites, and follows; when it was last update and when it was published; the characters (up to four) and ships (up to two); and if the story complete.
All of these things can be filtered at the top of the browsing page. Pairings were added as a filtering option in October 2013. (Previously, you could mark a fic with characters, but there was no way to distinguish between pairings and non-pairings of those characters.)Forum thread from October 13, 2013 discussing the recent update.
===Reading===
Stories are split into chapters, which must be loaded one at a time. There is no "view all chapters on one page" option without third-party tools. The site also blocks highlighting text (ostensibly to avoid plagiarism) and downloading fics. However, several tools have been developed for this: Flagfic is a discontinued downloader; FanFictionDownloader occasionally has problems when FF.net makes updates; the FanFicFare plugin for Calibre continues to work. FF.net stories cannot be directly imported to AO3; writers wishing to copy or transfer their works must download their stories and re-upload them.
===Favoriting and following===
The site allows readers to assemble lists of their favorite stories and authors, which function as public bookmarks and rec lists, similar to Delicious social bookmarking. Favorite authors and favorite stories are visible in separate tabs on users' profiles and can be seen by anyone who visits the page.
Following is a convenient story and author alert feature so that users can keep up with new chapters of WIPs and new stories from particular authors. Which authors or stories a user is following isn't publicly visible.
Authors get an email alert when someone favorites or follows them as an author or one of their stories, and the number of favorites and follows a story has are publicly-listed stats. Authors have access to lists of who has favorited or followed them or their works.
===Communities===
Communities on Fanfiction.net are collections of stories curated by one or more person, separate from a user's favorites list, usually based around an interest or theme, similar to a rec list or thematic lists. In popular fandoms, this can make it easier deal with the large number of stories.
The user who creates a community is known as the "Founder" and has the power to add stories, remove stories, view community stats, appoint staff, and delete the archive. Community staff can also add or remove stories. Other users can follow the community and receive emails when a new fanfiction is added, but following gives users no permissions to add or remove works.
Communities can be either "category specific" meaning they focus on just one fandom or "category agnostic"/general, focusing on no specific fandom. This cannot be changed after the community is made.This is warned about on the Create/edit a Community(requires site membership) tab in the Community section of the user dashboard. (Accessed Jul 11, 2018) When looking for a community, users can use the search bar to search just for communities or browse general communities or fandom-specific communities, but cannot browse a full list of all communities. In addition to specifying one's desired language, communities can be sorted in the following ways:
* Random
* Staffs
* Stories
* Followers
* Create Date
By default, communities are displayed by highest follower count first when browsing. Staffs and followers show highest amounts first. Create Date sorts by most recent first.
In some documentation on Fanfiction.net, communities are referred to as just "Communities" while in other places they're called "community archives" or "C2 Communities".
===Reviews, stats, and other tools===
Fanfiction.net allows readers to post reviews on stories, a community building feature that other automated archives lacked at the time when FFN was first established. Reviews by signed-in members can be replied to via private messaging.
Another useful feature is the stats page, where users can see how many people opened their story and where these readers come from.
Fanfiction.net also has a public message board system, an online dictionary and beta reader services.
===Languages===
As of July 2018, the following languages are supported:
* Afrikaans : Afrikaans
* Albanian : Shqip
* Arabic : العربية
* Bulgarian : България
* Catalan : català
* Chinese : 中文
* Croatian : hrvatski jezik
* Czech : čeština
* Danish : dansk
* Devanagari : देवनागरी
* Dutch : Nederlands	
* English : English
* Esperanto : Esperanto
* Estonian : Eesti
* Farsi : فارسی
* Filipino : Filipino
* Finnish : suomi
* French : Français
* German : Deutsch
* Greek : Ελληνικά
* Hebrew : עברית
* Hindi : हिंदी	
* Hungarian : magyar
* Icelandic : Íslenska
* Indonesian : Bahasa Indonesia
* Italian : Italiano
* Japanese : 日本語
* Korean : 한국어
* Latin : LINGUA LATINA
* Malay : Bahasa Melayu
* Norwegian : norsk
* Polish : język polski
* Portuguese : Português	
* Punjabi : ਪੰਜਾਬੀ
* Romanian : Română
* Russian : Русский
* Serbian : српски
* Slovak : Slovenčina
* Spanish : Español
* Swedish : svenska
* Thai : ภาษาไทย
* Turkish : Türkçe
* Ukrainian : Українська
* Vietnamese : Tiếng ViệtTaken directly from the language selection dropdown on the New story page, which requires a log-in to view. (Accessed 13 July 2018)
====Language usage in 2010====
It is believed the bulk of the fics on FF.Net are in English. In early 2010, the Harry Potter section had approximately 440,000 works in it. These break down by language as follows:These figures were generated on February 23, 2010. The number of fics visible when viewing the fandom doesn't match the total listed on the index page, and new works are constantly uploaded, so the totals and percentages are approximate. Language names are taken from the FF.Net dropdown.
* 80% - English
* 6% - Spanish
* 6% - French
* 3% - Portuguese
* 3% - German
* 1% - Other
** >100 works - Dutch, Swedish, Russian, Polish, Hungarian, Italian, Indonesian, Chinese, and Finnish
** >10 works - Danish, Turkish, Czech, Norwegian, Hebrew, Catalan, and Filipino
** 0-10 works - Greek, Japanese, Romanaian, Bulgarian, Korean, Croatian, Scandinavian, Vietnamese, Arabic, and Latin
Naruto (a fandom with a large presence on the site) shows a similar pattern: around 85% of the fic is in English and only a handful of stories are in Japanese.
==Types of Fandoms==
FF.Net is popular with fans from many different communities including anime fandom and media fandom. The top ten most popular fandoms by story count as of 2013 are:These figures are based on the index pages as of 29 November 2013. The top four places remain unchanged since 2011, but Yu-Gi-Oh, Lord of the Rings, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer have fallen off the top-ten list completely, to be replaced by Glee, Hetalia: Axis Powers, and Pokémon. See Top 20 Fandoms of 2010: Table 4 (Accessed February 19, 2011). As of 2013, story counts for the top ten are as follows: Harry Potter (665K), Naruto (348K), Twilight (214K), Inuyasha (111K), Glee (100.0K), Hetalia - Axis Powers (96.0K), Supernatural (88K), Bleach (75.6K), Kingdom Hearts (70.4K), Pokémon (67.1K).
* Harry Potter
* Naruto
* Twilight
* Inuyasha
* Glee
* Hetalia: Axis Powers
* Supernatural
* Bleach
* Kingdom Hearts
* Pokémon
Harry Potter alone accounts for nearly 14% of all the fics on FF.Net, with Naruto and Twilight making up 7% and 4% respectively.All figures in the Types of Fandoms section are compiled from viewing the site as at February 2010.
Anime/Manga: Naruto is the largest fandom in the anime category, but dozens of other popular anime series have sections with at least several thousand fics. Hence, while anime makes up only 19% of the fandoms on FF.Net, it accounts for 31% of the fic.
Books: FF.Net users can specify whether they are writing for the book or movie version of a canon, but each fandom only appears in the index page for one media type. 80% of the fics in the book category are for Harry Potter, Twilight, and Lord of the Rings.
Cartoons: Avatar: The Last Airbender and Teen Titans have particularly large sections.As of 29 November 2013, the top five cartoon fandoms were Avatar: Last Airbender (37.2K stories), Teen Titans (35.4K), Transformers/Beast Wars (23.1K), Danny Phantom (16.8K), and My Little Pony (16.8K). Cartoons index page.
Comics: Most of the comics fics are for US superhero comics, many of which also have separate sections for cartoons or live action movies. Some less mainstream comics also have large sections: The Jhonen Vasquez (author of Johnny the Homicidal Maniac) section accounts for about 5% of comics fic.
Games: The Games category includes a wide variety of computer, video, and role playing games, but the majority of the fics are from games like the Final Fantasy franchise and Kingdom Hearts, which are associated with anime fandom.
Misc: The Wrestling section is the largest.As of 29 November 2013, Wrestling had 35K stories, almost twice as many as the second largest category, "Misc. Books" (19K). Misc index page. The Misc category also houses a variety of crossover sections and things like radio dramas and mythology.
Movies: FF.Net lists many fandoms under their book format, so the movie category is relatively small. Some of the bigger fandoms in it are major franchises like Star Wars, Pirates of the Caribbean, and High School Musical. Some older or less famous movies like Newsies and Labyrinth also have large sections. Films from outside the US are not well represented.
Plays/Musicals: RENT fic makes up 40% of this category, Wicked fic another 21%. Most of the fandoms are for Broadway productions, but Shakespeare also has a large section.
TV: No one fandom predominates in the TV section. There are similar numbers of fics for a wide variety of mainstream American TV shows. As of November 2013, there were over 18,000 fics for each of the following shows (in descending order): Glee, Supernatural, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, NCIS, Vampire Diaries, Stargate SG-1, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Criminal Minds, House, M.D., Bones, and Stargate Atlantis.Fanfiction.net TV shows by popularity (Accessed 29 November 2013.) As of November 2010, there were over 12,000 fics for each of the following shows (in descending order): Supernatural, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Stargate SG-1, NCIS, House, M.D., Stargate Atlantis, Gilmore Girls, Bones, Glee, One Tree Hill, and Smallville. Fanfiction.net TV shows by popularity (Acessed 2010-11-23) Some British TV shows also have large sections: Doctor Who, Sherlock, and Merlin. Series from other countries, including fan-favorite Canadian series such as due South, popular Asian dramas, and tokusatsu, are not especially well represented, considering the size of their fandoms outside of FF.Net. Anime is in a separate section.
A general quiz about the genres for fanfiction on the website was created by Trotsky11 on Sporcle.
===A Quick Peek into 2000===
A September 2000 look: See: which includes: 
A fan did a tally of some available fic in December 2000: 
Another fan adds: 
====October 2000 Snapshots====
File:FanFiction.Net October 2000.png|FanFiction.Net main page as archived by the Wayback Machine on .
File:FFN Games Category Oct 2000.png|FanFiction.Net "Games" category, as archived on .
File:FFN Misc Category Oct 2000.png|FanFiction.Net "Misc" category, as archived on .
File:FanFiction.Net Writers University.png|Writers University at FanFiction.Net, as archived on .
==History==
Xing Li was a UCLA student at the time he created FF.net, and the server space for FF.net was originally on a server connected to UCLA, where it was considered a test of the server's functionality. entry at Fan History Wiki.
Xing Li made this July 1998 announcement at alt.tv.x-files.creative about his X-Files webpage fan resource called The Definitive X-Files Source In it, he hints at "FanFiction.Net":
The domain name was registered on September 18, 1998."NameGoDaddy.com, LLC Whois serverwhois.godaddy.com, Referral URLhttp://www.godaddy.com" -- .Up until 2007, Xing Li's actual email was listed. "The reason I mention this is that for a while there, the only way to get hold of ff.n was through their often broken support website. So the very site you'd use to get hold of ff.n to let them know something was wrong wouldn't be working, and chances were high they wouldn't notice something was wrong.
After about two weeks of this back in 2006/7 when nothing worked (alerts/etc), I got fed up enough to WHOIS the domain. At the time, Xing's real e-mail was there so I was actually able to prod a real live person to wake the eff up and find out what was wrong.
Well, I checked again just recently out of curiosity and now the registered e-mail is some generic fanfiction@somethingsomething. I wouldn't like to estimate the chances of anyone actually reading the e-mail there if ever the (blank)@fanfiction.com/fanfiction.net e-mails stop working for some reason.
If ff.n wants to know why they are routinely pilloried for being out of touch and more focussed on being nitpicky about making sure that even putting three zeros next to each other in a review gets cut out, this purposeful habit of the owner and staff not making themselves easily available is one of the biggest symptoms." - ff.n's domain info , December 1, 2008
The site was publicly launched on October 15, 1998, three weeks ahead of schedule."I'm very happy to announce that www.fanfiction.net is now officially open!!!!!! And we have done it 3 weekss [sic] ahead of projected finish date. While everyone trick-or-treated we were hard at working debugging the site. =)" -- www.fanfiction.net opens!!, November 3, 1998, post at alt.tv.simpsons
It started out small. Three months after its launch, Xing Li said the site had "498 fanfics archived [by] 263 registered authors" and if you emailed him a link to a story you thought would be "worthy of honor," to email him and he'd "personally check it out.""Happy Chinese New Year everyone! Server stats as of today: 498 fanfics archived 263 registered authors. Here is a run down of recent site changes: 1) FanFiction.Net now comes in 5 great flavors!! Yes, you heard that right. Inspired by the iMac computers from Apple I have added a module so you can choose from 5 different color schemes for the site. Now featuring flavors in Grape, Lime, Tangerine, Mint, and Strawberry with more to come in the future. =) 2)Added a "Website Spotlight" feature on the front page. If you feel that you fanfiction site is worthy of the honor email me with the url and I will
personally check it out. =) [snipped] -- WWW.FANFICTION.NET SITE UPDATE! 1-31-1999 January 31, 1999 The site must not have remained with UCLA's servers very long, as in roughly 1999, Xing Li noted that "Digital2000: Site hosting generously donated by D2K." was FanFiction.net's home.The link provided by Xing Li was .
On Fanfiction.net's first anniversary, Xing Li wrote: "I would like to thank each and every one of our talented authors who have devoted countless hours creating something special, that we call fanfiction, for everyone in the world to share and enjoy." On the site's next year anniversary, Xing Li wrote: "FanFiction.Net is in its third year of existence and we are proud of what we have we fostered to date. I'm extremely proud of our current staff, Steven, Meimi, Cairnsy, and Michele, Flourish, and Valerie Duff on what they have done and have full trust in what they have in store for the not so distant future. From the very beginning we have let our actions speak for ourselves and have left the dance with words to you, the authors and columnists." 
===Initial Costs and Funding===
FanFiction.Net was created by Xing Li while he was a student at University of California, Los Angeles. The original servers for the site were connected to his then-employer. This employer "recouped part of the cost in order to use it as a test for how well their servers worked." The Archivists
In 2001, When these costs rose (one fan said $1,500 a month,“To my knowledge, be it limited, FanFiction.Net is set up as a non-profit corporation in the interest of self protection. They have over 1 million site hits a month and expenses, if I recall correctly, totaling over $1,500 a month. It is NOT cheap to run fanfiction.net." -- by Michela Ecks, July 5, 2001 Xing Li himself said "thousands of dollars" a month "As you all know, FanFiction.Net has been very unreliable since late July. There are many factors attributing to this down-turn of events but one stands out above all others: Resources: We do not have the human resource nor the monetary resource to keep up with the demand for the services offered by the site. FanFiction.Net by itself requires thousands of dollars to up keep every month. The site is coming up to its 3rd anniversary and it would be a honor and tribute to everyone on staff to have the site live beyond the next decade.") Xing Li tried to cover these costs by cutting some services, getting back to "fundamentals," and asking fans to become "a Support Service Member."FF.net gets a monkey wrench up the as... , September 6, 2001
Advertising on the site was initially used, removed, then later re-implicated. See Advertising and Profit and Some Comments to Its Introduction.
===Founder and Other Staff ===
The "About" page from Fanfiction.net around 1999 lists these names as being on staff:
* Xing Li (CEO) was initially very active in the day to day running of the site, responding to technical support emails personally. As he has stepped back from public discussions and interaction with users, many new users are unfamiliar with his role in the site.Re: Who actually runs Fanfiction.net? , comment at Fail. Fandom. Anon., July 12, 2001
* Trizung Nguyen (programmer)
* Steve Wang (programmer)
* Marc Eckhert (programmer)
* Steven Savage (CEC Director)
* Carinsy (CEC Director)
* Meridian (CEC Director)
* Chris Adams (Graphic designer of Fido, the FanFiction.Net mascot)
The "About" page also highlighted "graphic icons provided by Talos of IconFactory, and "Digital2000: Site hosting generously donated by D2K." 
====Other Past Moderators, Staff, and Columnists====
* Cairnsy 
* Flourish (was on staff at the age of 13,Fandoms, the Internet, and Harry Potter: An interview with Flourish Klink, co-founder of FictionAlley and CMS lecturer (2013) left FFN.net in September 2001 "I fall out with the management of FF.N. All of a sudden the people I "hated" became my friends. V. odd; I still don't quite understand how I managed it." - from A Short History Of Me In Fandom; archive link (Aug. 31st, 2002) during The Cassandra Claire Plagiarism Debacle, and became one of the founding members of FictionAlley.Org 
* Valerie Duff 
* Meimi (moderated message boards, advised Xing) 
* Michelle Savage (moderated the mailing list) 
* Michela Ecks/Laura Hale (June 2000 to either January 2001 "January 8, 200[1] Writers University has left FanFiction.Net and I'm sad that it has left. However, FanFiction.Net will move on and so will the staffs of Writers University. You will not hear personal remarks from me or any other ff.net staff members regarding this issue as the matter was private to start with and private to end with. - Xing" -- , note that Xing Li mistypes the date as 2000 rather than 2001, something he corrects a few posts later"In the issue of transparency, in the early 2000s, I was briefly on staff at FanFiction.Net as a volunteer." -- Talk:FanFiction.Net adult content purge felt across fandom two weeks on, Wikinews, Laura, June 16, 2012 or December 2001 ), ran Writers University, wrote the first terms of service for the site,, October 22, 2002." (Heck, their Terms of Service they ROBBED from FF.Net which I wrote. It says zero tolerance of plagiarism yet... well, bah. They don't own up to their hypocrisy. I try to own up to mine.)" (September 10, 2002)"(I'm not saying that FictionAlley.Org doesn't but I mean, after all, I did write 75% of their Terms of Service so they must have similar ethics to me no? Oh my, if I was petty and rude, I might say with some malice that they are nothing but plagiarist through and through ;-) but see, I'm not that petty. Stealing almost word for word from FanFiction.Net's Terms of Service and ha ha ha! having plagiarized material on their Terms of Service...Nearly a year earlier, Heidi Tandy had responded to Hale's allegation regarding FictionAlley's TOS: "Thats my TOU you're talking about and accusing of being copied from ffnet. There's a section in both TOU's that's identical to be sure, but that section, in both TOUs, is taken directly from the Digital Millenium Copyright Act and is standard in the trade for Terms of Use policies. Go look at Yahoo's. I also want to note that nobody from ffnet has ever contacted me regarding our TOU. If they want to accuse me to my face, I would calmly point out that I did not look at the ffnet TOU when I created FictionAlley's. Instead, I created the TOU from a templace I created in January, 2001, which was based on the topics covered in over 100 terms of use and privacy policies, includin the one I created for the New York Times in 1996, which was similar, but not identical to, the one which they currently have at http://www.nytimes.com/info/help/agree.html (they've changed some services in the past 5 years)." -- (December 20, 2001) went on to found FanDomination and Fan History Wiki)
* Sheryl Martin (advised Xing Li when he first founded the site)
* Steven Savage (chose columnists, was a site programmer)
* Tara O'Shea (created one of the images for the site, wrote a column for the site)
* many, many other columnists, see some here, here, here, here, and many other archived pages
===Introduction Posts: 1998===
From a September 1998 post to alt.tv.x-files.creative, a few weeks before FanFiction.Net opened: 
From a November 1998 post to alt.tv.x-files.creative: 
====Some Comments to Its Introduction====
All comments below are from www.fanfiction.net is now open!! (November 3, 1998)
From some X-Files fans: 
===Some 1999 Updates by Xing Li===
[April 19, 1999]: 
[July 28, 1999]: 
===Old News Posts: A Whole Lot of History===
For a lot of information via postings by Xing Li between August 1999 and February 2001, see: 
====Some History Timelines====
* A 1998-2005 timeline is here: .
* A 1998-2010 timeline is here: , posted at Fan History Wiki
Notable events from :
* First fic uploaded was "Golf and Cows" by Sonja Blue on November 3, 1998
* SwearPatrol debuted August 26, 1999
* Discussion forum debut was November 19, 1999
* Mailing list debut was December 4, 1999
== Controversies ==
Over the years in operation, FanFiction.Net was the center of many controversies: some include copyright issues, control of content, service instability, and profit.
===First Automated Archive===
It was touted by its creator to be the first automated fan fiction archive. Of course, the moment Xing Li said this, there were nitpicks and disagreements:
From a Simpson's fan: 
===Legal Assistance===
In June 2000, Xing Li asked for general legal help and support: 
===Advertising, Expenses, and Profit===
Also see: 
* Some Comments to Its Introduction
* a post at Fanthropology (June 27, 2007)
The site today relies on advertising, making many fans question its non-profit stance and this relationship to fandom and profit.
 
A November 5, 1998 post by Xing Li: 
A June 4, 2000 post by Xing Li: 
A June 4, 2000 post by Xing Li, one which states the site "does not take in any money": 
A July 28, 2000 post by Xing Li: 
A July 5, 2001 post by Laura Hale (former site staffer"In the issue of transparency, in the early 2000s, I was briefly on staff at FanFiction.Net as a volunteer." --Laura, June 16, 2012) talks about the site and money: 
From a discussion at the FanLib in May 2007: 
A fan's comment in 2015: 
===Downtime===
FanFiction.Net suffered from frequent downtimes. Sometimes these downtimes lasted for a week or more. There were frequent posts to many Usenet groups over the years which asked for more information,"Fanfiction.net's unexpected outage continues. Our best estimates indicate it could be down until the 8th-9th of August, depending on the exact nature of the problem." -- a repost on rec.arts.anime of an official FFN message, dated August 1, 2001 and commiseration from other fans.
A fan commented that one of these downtimes was a claim that it was for a 9/11 memorial. see commentsby darkrosetiger at The corporatization of fanfic? (2007) 
One downtime was in July 2003: "July 8th, 2003 - FanFiction.Net is currently in the process of acquiring server parts for a scheduled system-wide upgrade in 2 weeks. We are hoping this upgrade will significantly reduce or remove the "server is too busy" message during peak traffic hours." Two comments from fans regarding this downtime: "It was up but it's down again. :p Anyone care to start a betting pool? The person who guesses closes to the actual time FF.net is back up and stable wins." And "Perhaps with this upgrade they will become more stable?...time will tell.." both messages from Fanfiction.net still down... at alt.fan.harry-potter
These long times became advantages for other fanfiction archive sites, as desperate and bored fans, explored other sites and expanded their interests. FictionAlley was one such benefiter from the extensive downtime in the summer and fall of 2001.This downtime is commented on extensively by Xing Li and quoted at , August 8, 2006 From an exchange in October 2001: 
===Glitches===
FanFiction.Net is notorious for occasional breakdowns when a part of its users are unable to access certain features of the site. These breakdowns were termed "Glitches" by on-site forum communities. At times, the circumstances in which a glitch would appear are strange:
* A public announcement about an older glitch, now fixed.
* A completed "successful database upgrade".
* An uninformative staff service announcement with typos.
Most glitches are not announced and take up to two weeks to fix. They are rarely fixed over the weekend and continue till the next week.
Glitches affect different parts of the site. Depending on severity, they may involve:
* The statistics feature: fanfic writers would see they have zero readers, but still receive reviews.
thumb|left|FanFiction.Net goes into read-only mode.
* Beta Readers: members cannot browse for beta readers, and get a "FanFiction.Net Error Type 1" window.Solution to Story Updates (Accessed 10 April 2011)
* Site content: story chapters, reviews and forum posts submitted after the glitch started would flash, appear and disappear during page reloads. Forum communities know it as "the post eating glitch".
* Story submission: writers cannot post new chapters or stories in certain categories. It was called a "type 2 error" by site staff in March, 2011, and lasted since March 18 till March 31. Tech savvy members found a way around this glitch.FanFiction.Net Error Type 2 Workaround(Accessed 10 April 2011)
* Login area: members are unable to login. The site goes into read-only mode. Most recently, it happened from April 9 to April 10, 2011.
====2020 Glitch====
From approximately October 31, 2020, links to newly posted chapters/stories resulted in a "Type 1" error, reporting "Chapter not found. Please check to see you are not using an outdated url".FFN "Type 1" Error - Issues with viewing new chapters/stories posted by u/sorasfishing at :/r/fanfiction, Nov 3 2020. Mods decided to sticky this post to r/fanfiction, due to the influx of posts on this issue at the time. FictionPress's Twitter account had not been updated since October 3 and there was no update about if/when this issue would be resolved. By November 5/6, all users were reporting that the issue appeared to have been resolved.
In the meantime, many FFN users posted on sites like Reddit about their issues accessing the site, with several users discussing a move to Ao3 in the absence of a resolution. Even after the issue was resolved, several FFN users were seeking advice on moving to Ao3; with one of those posts referring to this particular glitch as The Great FFN Collapse of 2020.On the verge of moving to AO3 after the Great FFN Collapse of 2020 and I have a few questions posted by u/FuriousSherman at :/r/fanfiction, Nov 6 2020.
===Formatting Problems===
The uploading software of FF.Net strips stories of certain elements, such as hyperlinks, indentations or double spacing. This forces fans to create creative line breaks, such as repeated pairing acronyms. Other fans post tutorials for inserting the desired characters into the text. by Toboe LoneWolf on Geocities. (Accessed 15 September 2009) via Wayback. In 2004, the site was criticized for eating words and making whole sentences disappear in uploaded chapters due to bugs in the site's QuickEdit word processor. Since then, the editing software has been updated several times and renamed to Document Manager.
In 2007, FanFiction.Net's document manager did not allow creative separators. Only the site-default horizontal line was accepted as a separation technique between parts of a chapter.
Changes in software up to 2010 applied only to works submitted after a certain date. The changes also used to impose restrictions such as removing square brackets and asterisks from stories and summaries. As a result, older stories could have different, more varied formatting (classic with indentations instead of block) and bigger character sets. In 2009, FFN even imposed a technical ban on repeating numbers in reviews. This caused confusion as numbers like 100 and 1000 would show up as 10.
This has changed in 2010 when the editor became less restrictive. Special characters like the asterisk were allowed again and the review issue was resolved. Also, 2010 was the first time a change in editing software affected older works. Stories using indentations were reformatted into block style, misshaping some of them.Misshapen Story (Accessed February 19, 2011) Certain characters such as square brackets ] disappeared from all story summaries while they remained visible in the author's login area.
In 2011, FanFiction.Net kept updating the hyperlink filter, with mixed results. Links to the site's forums were not automatically deleted from messages and reviews, while informal references to the site such as FanFiction.Net became impossible, with text being changed to include a full hyperlink to the main page.
===Staff Problems===
FanFiction.Net is considered understaffed by many users who try to reach member support but fail to receive any replies to a query. This is influenced by the amount of traffic the domain receives daily, including requests for new categories, inserting canon characters and questions about the site and abuse reports. Another image of the workload was the ticket-based support system in January 2005. Support answered every question sent, but the queue was two months on average. James is the only known staff member, who responds to emails and deals with abuse reports.
Xing Li, the site's owner, has apparently not been seen or heard from in years. There is a fan fear that Fanfiction.net is possibly a one-person operation, and that this is always dangerous. A fan in 2015 wrote: 
The site has been mostly archived by a third party: See FanFiction.Net - Archive Team and Fanfiction.net Re-pack.
See Also: What Everyone Should Know About Fanfiction.net (2001)
===2022's Shutdown Rumors===
In September 2022, rumors that the site will be closed began to spread on the web, especially on Twitter where several users are expressing their concerns about the fact. Especially now that it is impossible to archive content via Wayback Machine due to the new FFN host policies.
{{NQuote2|just a soft FYI to all my fanfic readers out there:
there's a stronger-than-normal rumor that fanfiction (dot) net is shutting down soon. it is one of the biggest archives of fanfic from the late 00s, so if you have any fics on there you want to keep -- I'd suggest you get them|user=@ashposton at Twitter
|child={{NQuote|I remember when a lot of the geocities / angelfire / fanfic forums went down in the transition to internet 2.0. We lost a LOT of fanfic history when it happened. There are fics that I remember that are now lost to time.|user=@ashposton at Twitter
|child={{NQuote2|I have no idea how founded this rumor is -- but the site stopped updating their news on Sept 23rd of last year, after a successful server migration.
They also host Fiction Press, so if you have any original fiction over there -- you might wanna back it up. Just in case.|user=@ashposton at Twitter
|child=
 
In May, 2023, it was believed that fanfiction.net was gone because visiting fanfiction.net displays a default or transferable site template, rather than the site. However, this is just an error with the site's servers - going to www.fanfiction.net takes you to the actual site.Tumblr post: 
===Home to a Lot of Pseudocides===
FFN had a reputation for fans pretending to have died to generate sympathy, create drama, escape others' fannish expectations, leave fandoms in creative ways, and to avoid having to finish their WIPS.
==Content Guidelines==
See: Includes an ironic typo: "Here is a list of conducts that should always be observed: 1. Spell check all story and poetry. There is no excuse for not performing this duty. If you do not have a word processor that has the spell checking feature, use a search engine such as Google.com to find one." -- Version 11-20-2008, accessed June 5, 2012. (note that the page may not be available on mobile devices, please change the settings to "computer version" in your browser to access the page if this happens)
For other archive guidelines, see List of Content Banned by Archives.
===Ban on Fic Based on the Works of Specific Authors===
Beginning in late 1990s to early 2000s, FFN banned fanworks based on specific authors. These bans are still in place, as of 2017:
"FanFiction respects the expressed wishes of the following authors/publishers and will not archive entries based on their work. Failure to comply with site rules will result in the removal of stories and/or suspension of account.
: Anne Rice
: Archie Comics
: Dennis L. McKiernan
: Irene Radford
: J.R. Ward
: Laurell K. Hamilton	
: Nora Roberts / J.D. Robb
: P.N. Elrod
: Raymond Feist
: Robin Hobb
: Robin McKinley
: Terry Goodkind
=== 2001 RPF Ban===
Once upon a time, FF.Net allowed fanfiction about real people. In June 2001, there were more than 5,000 'N Sync stories on the site. In September 2002, an announcement was made disallowing Reality TV RPF (along with the NC-17 fic, see below) as of April 12, 2003. Actor RPF had never been allowed on the site.See Talk Page Discussion referring to email correspondence from the time.
However; as early as 2008-2009, RPF experienced a hidden resurgence. The fics, mostly J-Pop and K-Pop, are posted in the subcategory. Unlike the rest of the site, where English dominates most categories, these undercover RPF fics are more likely to be in a language other than English. Indonesian fics number around 1,400 (almost all of them RPF) compared with 1,300 fics (mixed, mostly non-RPF) written in English.On July 18, 2011, filtering the Screenplays category to Indonesian returns 1,335 results out of 2,515 in total.
Posteriorly in July 2011, actions have been taken by a few Indonesian authors to rectify this problem by notifying RPF writers of their violation of rules, posting examples of 'right' fics in the Screenplays subcategory, and notifying the support staff. The actions are met with fierce resistance from established RPF authors. However, a few RPF writers relented and, as of writing, had begun deleting their RPF. 
The ban has never been 100% effective, and it is easy to find RPF hiding in plain sight in various fictional fandom categories.A look at the Supernatural category on July 18, 2011 showed a J2 story on the first page of results.
===Adult Content===
From the Terms of Service, updated in 2005: "Please be aware that some contributions to FanFiction.Net contain adult content. Stories that contain mature content require a statement that you are of age to legally read the material if an author appropriately rates their piece. It is your obligation to leave areas that are unpoliced, misrated or allow adult content. if you are not of the age of consent in your area. FanFiction.Net is not responsible for the misrating of adult oriented content but will remove content if the misrating is brought to the attention of FanFiction.Net staff." 
From the Terms of Service, updated in 2009: "You further understand and acknowledge that you may be exposed to User Submissions that are inaccurate, offensive, indecent, or objectionable, and you agree to waive, and hereby do waive, any legal or equitable rights or remedies you have or may have against FanFiction.Net with respect thereto, and agree to indemnify and hold FanFiction.Net, its Owners/Operators, affiliates, and/or licensors, harmless to the fullest extent allowed by law regarding all matters related to your use of the site." 
=== The Purge of NC-17 Content: 2002 and 2012===
In the beginning, Xing Li and the site actively courted fans from many Usenet groups, including alt.startrek.creative.erotica.[April 19, 1999]: "Archive your fanfics on fanfiction.net and expand your audience reach.... Again, if you have any suggestions for the site just email me and I will do my best to meet your desires. Remember that your input shapes the future of fanfiction.net... Until next time, adios! Xing" -- Prior to September 2002, the site used a pop-up to prompt readers to say whether they were over 17 or not."To even GET to the adult stuff, there's at least three controls that have to be passed through, a box to pull down to even see the listing of works higher than PG-13, then a pop up warning box, then then fic itself, which most responsible authors... put their own warnings." -- , post at alt.tv.er.creative, September 13, 2002
On September 12, 2002, FanFiction.Net banned and removed material that was rated NC-17. A second purge occurred on June 4, 2012.
Both purges shook fandom, and much discussion ensued regarding rights and responsibilities of archives, rights of fans to be able to write and post what they liked, and more. Both purges also resulted in fandom migrations and created fiction influxes into other archives.
See more at FanFiction.Net's NC-17 Purges: 2002 and 2012.
===2010 Forum Purge===
On the night of November 25, 2010, FanFiction.Net purged its forums, deleting threads not updated for 9 months. This was announced less than 10 hours before an automated engine mauled through forums by creation date. During the night after Thanksgiving, while most of the site's chiefly American population slept and was away from a computer, over 60,000 forums were affected. As a result, 22 million posts (66% of all posts ever made) were deleted during the purge. Instead of "reducing clutter", the intent posted on the front page, the event resulted in thousands of completely empty forums with no archive or backlog of any sort. Important forum discussion, sentimental and cultural value formed in forums since they were introduced in 2005 was lost. Only forum subscription statistics showed there used to be content. (Accessed March, 28 2013) When the purge completed, 90% of the General forums were empty. (Accessed March, 28 2013) The site took no action about forums with no posts prior to the purge. It completely changed the way users viewed their forums, from a safe haven, to something entirely temporary.Reaction to the Forum Purge (Accessed June, 21 2013)
On the same day, the site announced purging Personal Messages. This process took more than two days to finish, and some users were able to feverishly back up their old correspondence. After the event, users expected better service, or another type of compensation, but received none. The site is yet to keep its promise made on November 26 to bring mobile forums "in a few days" (Accessed February 18, 2011)
The original announcement: 
One fan's response: 
===2004 Script-Format Ban===
"FanFiction.Net" banned script format on July 27, 2004.
A fan's comment: 
===2005 Ban on Choose Your Own Adventure Fic/Self-Insertion Fic/Reader-Insert/2nd Person Point of View Fic===
See:
* Choose Your Own Adventure Fic
* Self-Insertion
* Reader-Insert
=== 2005 Songfic Ban===
Because of copyright worries Songfic was banned in 2005.
From FanFiction.Net's site on April 28, 2005: 
One theory:
German intellectual property organizations demanded from $1000 to $5000 remuneration per lyric they owned rights to found on unlicensed domains. 
Fans comment:
===Conflict, Defamation, and Flaming===
FanFiction.Net has long tried to reduce user complaints caused by their peers' aggressive behaviour. Users are now able to report signed reviews for abuse and block unwanted users from contacting them.
However, the site removed "libel" as a forbidden practice from their ToS in 2008, and would not endorse petition movements such as letting writers delete offensive signed reviews on their own.Forums » Writers Anonymous » Petition: Deleting signed reviews (Accessed 11 Aug 2010) The staff took an idle stance during the flame war concerning The Author Alliance in 2004, when several thousand stories were removed in Sonic the Hedgehog and Pokemon fandoms, a deed Xing Li noticed in the site's article on AllExperts.AllExperts > Encyclopedia FanFiction.Net (Accessed 11 Aug 2010) It refused to delete the account of Flame Rising in 2008, a site-wide flamer, who hosted a 700,000 post flamer forum, The Fireplace. As of 2010, the site takes no action against The Literate Union despite phone calls to the site's parent company to delete the LU members.Citation Needed
==Fan Comments==
Despite its huge popularity, large user base and wide ranging fandom representation, FF.net has a reputation for being indiscriminate in story quality among members of many different fannish circles. Large portions of LiveJournal-based fandom, mailing list-based fandom, the Television Without Pity forums, and Godawful Fan Fiction have all been known to look askance at the site. Because of this reputation, FFN is sometimes referred to as "The Pit of Voles", "The Pit", or other derogatory nicknames. There even exists a hate community for the archive, established after a change of ToS in 2004.Anti Fanfiction.net on LiveJournal (Accessed 15 September 2009)
However, FF.Net's absence of quality control is viewed by many as a benefit; it gives everyone a chance to express themselves. Unlike moderated archives, FF.Net does not employ any active means of assessing story quality. Its guidelines do require basic spell-checking and grammar quality, but the site does not enforce these requirements in any comprehensive way.
In 2000, when a fan suggested to others they submit their Star Trek fic to FF.Net, another one replied: 
Many feel that FF.Net is under-appreciated among the fan community. From a fan in 2011: 
A comment from about 2004:
A comment from 2004:
==="The Pit of Voles"===
The site has also fought, at least in later years, the perception that it archived content of generally lower quality, thus earning it the nickname The Pit of Voles.
The origin of the term comes from a fan named Mie Tsukikoushi, who had a blog called "." In December 2001, Mie Tsukikoushi wrote: "Also noted: The web entity known as fanfiction.net is a pit of voles. You heard me." (December 18, 2001)
The term has persisted such that even in 2010 it's used enough to be referenced directly in posts like You say 'Pit of Voles' like that's a bad thing. by fangasmic:
===Fanfiction.Net vs. Archive of Our Own===
In 2012, sockii posted a meta essay about Fanfiction.net and Archive of Our Own, comparing the two multifandom archives and laying out their perceived strengths and weaknesses.
==Statistics==
Estimating the user base of ff.net is difficult since people use their accounts in different ways and many accounts are completely inactive. FFN Statistics is a group project that attempts to collect and analyze account statistics gathered from the archive. The blog is a project of the Literate Union Welcome (Accessed November 21, 2010)
They collected account data and produced a table which shows that while ff.net had ~2.2 million accounts at the end of 2009 and is growing—gaining more accounts than are deleted each year—that growth rate has slowed in recent years.FanFiction.Net users (Accessed November 21, 2010)
Some anecdotal statistical context: three months after the site's debut, there were 407 stories archived, 249 registered authors, and 76 categories.WWW.FANFICTION.NET UPDATE! Jan 20,1999, post by Xing Li at alt.toys.transformers.fanfic, January 19, 1999
===Specific Specifics===
* Les statistiques de fanfiction.net on La fanfiction: Etude sociologique has extensive additional statistical data, in French.
* (2010)
* (July 2010)
* (July 2010)
* (July 2010)
* (December 2010)
* (January 2011)
* , at ToastyStats (2015)
===Terms of Service and Privacy and Help Desk and Other Links (Old and New)===
* (around 1999)
* —topics only, incomplete, just a taste (around 2001)
* —topics only, incomplete, just a taste (around 2001)
* (around 1999)
* (updated 2005)
* (updated 2009)
* (updated 2005)
* (updated 2009)
* Guidelines (updated 2008)
==Meta/Further Reading==
* (entry at Fan History Wiki, includes timeline (up to 2010) and photos
* Why I took my stories off of Fanfiction.net by The Brat Queen, topic is feedback (2000?)
* What Everyone Should Know About Fanfiction.net (2001)
* (April 28, 2005)
* by yourlibrarian (originally posted July 20, 2010, republished February 2, 2022) For the study referred to in the text, please see: (July 18, 2010)
* FF.Net and the quality of writing; archive link page 1; archive link page 2 by Fanaatikko monessa suhteessa (vampirenaomi) (2011)
* Wayback links to the front page of FF.net
* Fanfiction.net: The Worst Thing That's Ever Happened to Fanfiction?
* Why Are people more verbally abusive on FanFiction.Net in comparison to Archive of our own?, a multi-user discussion on :/r/fanfiction (Sept 2020)
* Unleashing your imagination and burning your porn stash: the Great Fanfiction.net NSFW purge(s); archive link (topic: FanFiction.Net's NC-17 Purges) (2020)
* A Brief History of Online Fanfiction Platforms by Fangirls Anonymous (May 2021)
*The story of Critics United, the self-appointed fanfiction police; archive link by purplewigg (2021)
==Notes==
==References==
Category:Multifandom Archives
Category:1998 Archives
Category:1990s Archives
Category:2000s Archives
Category:2010s Archives
Category:2020s Archives