Audiofic Archive

The Audiofic Archive, a multifandom podfic archive, was created and maintained by general_jinjur (also known as jinjurly). The Archive was created in 2006, specifically to host a diverse plethora of podfic and had a specific mission statement to uplift smaller fandoms and all creators. It moved to its current domain in 2008 and rose in popularity around 2011 and 2012. In 2013, the Archive claimed to host at least 10,206 podfic, and by 2016 there was over 25,000.
In 2016, the Archive suffered a server corruption that led to a huge file loss. For some years the Archive was still available, but many audio files were missing and no new podfics were added. However, several developments have occurred. The Archive has been rehosted at squidge.org and squidgiepdx gained admin access during 2021. Software was located at the end of 2021 that identified all Archive entries with missing files and in early 2022 squidgiepdx recruited several other fans to help restore the Archive. The 5,082 missing files are being relocated through a crowdsourced project with a public spreadsheet. The Archive is also once again taking submissions for additional podfics to be added, and all restored and new entries now have a streaming link in addition to download links.
By May 2023, more than 4,300 of the 5,078 missing files were recovered. The crowdsource effort is ongoing to locate the remaining 778 files that are missing. For details on the project and to assist locating the last missing files, see the SquidgeStatus page on Dreamwidth. 
==Site Scope==
===Mission Statement===
===Creator Permission===
The front page of the archive states that "Everything in this archive is posted with creator permission." (The creator in this case is the podficcer.) All archive entries include links to the original story text and feedback links for both author and reader.
Unlike with Paraka Productions, only the archivists were able upload podfics, so permission to upload was sought in a few ways. First, according to jinjurly, Audiofic Archive maintainers actively solicited permission to host podfic in any fandom and of any length or story type.See Jinjurly's Revision as of 22:40, September 29, 2008, which added this information to the Fanlore page.In a 2014 Pod Aware podcast, jinjurly mentioned around minute 19 that before the amplificathon community was set up, the archivists had to actively solicit a lot of the podfic that was on the archive. , posted to pod_aware, 9 November 2014. Another major source of podfic for the archive is the amplificathon community, which is run by the archivists; podficcers from many fandoms post there to get archive hosting.See the Amplificathon profile, which states that "all podfic posted to this community will be added to the audiofic archive." Podficcers could also contact the archive directly to get their files hosted. Finally, several challenges including ITPE, usually modded by archivists, formerly relied on the archive for their hosting.
However, the relationship between the Amplificathon community and the Audiofic Archive is not always clear to non-archivists. At least two podficcers who had podfic posted to the Amplificathon community, but didn't use the archive itself, were unaware of what the Audiofic Archive was or that posting podfic to Amplificathon granted the archive permission to host their files.See talk page for one case.In the December 2016 episode of Auralphonic, jenepod said that she had been unaware that the archive hosted files rather than just being a site that collected links in one place. (Checking the archive in 2019 revealed that several podfics with her name on them were uploaded to the archive between 2011 and 2016. Although jenepod did not post to amplificathon, she participated in group podfics and challenges that relied on the archive for their hosting. ) Amplificathon's community profile does state that "all podfic posted to this community will be added to the audiofic archive",, accessed 3 April 2019. but the language of the Amplificathon challenge FAQ is somewhat vague about where the podfic would be archived and has caused confusion.Amplificathon 2016 FAQ. Posted March 5, 2016. Accessed March 2019. Comment by temaris posted 1 April 2008. Accessed 3 April 2019. Thus, the implication on the archive's mission statement page that all podfics were uploaded "with the permission and full knowledge of the file creators" is not correct.. Accessed 7 April 2019.
Despite the communication failures, the Archive's policy doesn't seem to have been a source of conflict, and most podficcers do not appear to have been confused by it. Podficcers always had the option to request that their works be removed later, though this option is not explicitly stated. Poor communication did become a major complaint within the community after the 2016 server failures, but with the current rehosting and restoration, improved communication is occurring and there has been wide fan involvement in locating missing files.
===Accessibility===
All files are available in .mp3 and .zip files for accessibility purposes, but may also be available in additional formats.
===Other Multimedia===
A few filks and fan songs are also included, and threeWorks tagged "format podvid" at the Audiofic Archive. (Accessed 11 November 2014) podvids: Keylines by Cupidsbow, What A Difference A Year Makes by erica schall, and busaikko's podvid for bitter-crimson's The Epic Tale of Rodney & John, Two Girl Scout Cookies in Love.
===Size===
On 17 February 2013, Jinjurly confirmed via Twitter that at the time there were 10,206 podfics by 914 podficcers on the archive.jinjurly. Feb 17, 2013 Twitter post. (Accessed 24 February 2013)
In December 2016, Paraka stated on Auralphonic that the Archive had once hosted over 25,000 podfic.Auralphonic 025: Topicless on Ao3. Posted December 12, 2016. Accessed March 2019. The Archive has since run out of server space.
==Fandom Popularities==
In 2008 the Amplificathon challenge was set up to increase the diversity of podfics available on the archive. At that time, the three most represented fandoms on the Archive were Supernatural, Stargate Atlantis, and Due South.podmod. figuring point values for fandoms/pairings (2008 challenge), posted to LiveJournal 23 March 2008.
The distribution of fandoms has changed since 2008, though as of 2015 no fandom had managed to displace Supernatural.
At the 2012 challenge, the most popular fandoms on the Archive were Supernatural, Stargate Atlantis, and Merlin.See amplificathon 2012: fandom/pairing points. In a Pod Aware 2012 podcast, it was pointed out that Bandom RPF would have beat Merlin had each band not been counted separately.Day 2 - Podfic Fandom. Posted November 2011. Accessed March 2019.
In February 2013, the most popular fandoms were Supernatural (with 2059 podfics), Stargate Atlantis (1523), Supernatural RPF (756), Harry Potter (653), Merlin (633), and My Chemical Romance (535).audiofic browse by fandom list, Accessed February 2013.
In 2014, the Audio Snippers Club did a comprehensive Podfic Stats comparison between Ao3 and the Audiofic Archive.Podfic Stats 2: Top 15 Podfic Fandoms across AO3 and the Audiofic Archive by works, reads, and attention. Posted November 2014. Accessed March 2019. For some reason, these numbers do not match up with Paraka's 2014 stats from four months earlier, and are, as a whole, smaller by a statistically significant amount.so, I just did my semi-regular look at the podfic stats.... Tweeted June 2014. Accessed March 2019.
In October 2015, according to Paraka, the top ten most prolific fandoms were, in descending order: Supernatural, Stargate Atlantis, Harry Potter, Sherlock, Teen Wolf, Supernatural RPF, Merlin, The Avengers, My Chemical Romance, and Due South.Paraka, October 1, 2015 tweet of the top 30 fandoms. Total count of podfics for the top ten fandoms: Supernatural (1973), Stargate Atlantis (1308), Harry Potter (747), Sherlock (741), Teen Wolf (728), Supernatural RPF (727), Merlin (705), The Avengers (688), My Chemical Romance (465), and Due South (432). This list includes fandoms that did not exist when the Archive was started, though the fandoms in the 2015 list have remained relatively stable since at least March 2014.As of March 2014, the top ten most prolific fandoms were, in descending order: Supernatural (with 1923 podfics), Stargate Atlantis (1375), Supernatural RPF (680), Merlin (633), Harry Potter (625), The Avengers (572), My Chemical Romance (564), Teen Wolf (561), Sherlock (538), and Due South (407). paraka, 4 March 2014 Tweet, containing a chart of the top 15. For some fandoms the totals have decreased over the past few years because archivists have been combining entries: podbook versions were previously posted separately from the mp3s, and special-effects or music versions had been posted separately from non-music and non-effects versions. It should also be noted that these numbers do not match up with Audio Snipper Club numbers from the same year.
===Femslash===
In 2015, thingswithwings did an analysis of the longest podfics on the Archive and their comparative femslash numbers.
==Site History==
===Early History===
In a 2014 Pod Aware podcast, jinjurly described the circumstances surrounding the creation of the Archive. At the time, podfics were usually uploaded to free file hosts like YouSendIt where links would expire quickly. Jinjurly had webspace available, so they started hosting files for other fans as "a way I can actually be useful to fandom." About the archive itself, they said it was "the direct result of a conflict I had with another fan" who had very strong opinions about how podfic should and should not be made. The other fan told Jinjurly that she wanted to start a curated podfic archive that would only accept what she considered the best; in a move Jinjurly admits was "super passive aggressive," they rushed to build the Audiofic Archive while the other fan was out of town.Pod Aware podcast with Paraka, anatsuno, and Jinjurly. Day 1: The History of Podfic, posted to livejournal 10 November 2014.
On its mission statement page, the Audiofic Archive states that all podfic is welcome and "that diversity of source, voice, language, and point of view make our experience richer."audiofic archive mission and values statements, archived, accessed 1 November 2015. In a 2012 interview with Andrea Horbinski as part of the Fan Fiction Oral History Project, Jinjurly expanded:
The Archive originated in March 2006 as a set of mirrored podfic files kept in a webfolder.Original mirror location: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~allisonl/stitchnbitch/ The first podfic hosted was Rageprufrock's recording of her Stargate Atlantis story #435, The Atlantis Local Stitch'n'Bitch Chapter. Other SGA stories followed, read by Jaebi_lit and Hack_benjamin22.
On August 25, 2006, the Archive debuted as an html page of links to all hosted files.Original url: http://jinjurly.com/audio.htm At that time, all recordings were of Stargate Atlantis stories.
In early June 2007, a second page was added to cover Due South and C6D fandoms.Original url: http://jinjurly.com/audiomisc.htm The first reader archived outside of Stargate Atlantis was Slidellra. In July, a third page was added, for non-Due South-related fandoms.
On August 22, 2007, the Archive moved from those three list-form index pages to a Wordpress software installation at http://jinjurly.com/audio/.
Hard limits in the category capacity of Wordpress crippled site performance within only a few months, and the site collapsed in early April 2008. The breakdown was brought about by the first week of the Amplificathon challenge, a content drive for the Archive with an aim of increasing diversity in fandom offerings. A series of temporary fixes were put into place, merging some categories and converting others into tags, but the site remained slow, and maintenance-oriented repairs could not keep pace with site growth.
In July 2008, Dodificus became the first archive volunteer, helping to clean up archive entries as part of the run-up to the new platform. Other volunteers are Aphelant, Countess7, Pennyplainknits, and Winkingstar.
The threat of imminent site collapse prompted a move to Drupal software on September 5, 2008. At that time, the Archive was moved to its own subdomain, http://audiofic.jinjurly.com. The archivists' work then focused on strengthening the category structure to support growth and enhance usability.
During Amplificathon 2011, the archive's upload function was severely incapacitated and was not fixed until Amplificathon 2012. Because all podfic posted to the Amplificathon community on LiveJournal is uploaded by mods to the archive, the backlog of non-archived podfics increased to over 1000.The not archived tag at Amplificathon was at 1001 uses on 3 March 2012. According to pennyplainknits and dodificus' Pod Aware 2012 podcast, there were over 5000 to archive at one point. Pod aware podcast: Everything you always wanted to know about the Audio Archive. Posted November 2011.
===2012 Malware Attack===
In mid-February 2012, the site was hijacked by malwareCybel. More Archive Woes, posted to Amplificathon 18 February 2012. (Accessed 3 March 2012.)jinjurly. audiofic archive update, posted to Amplificathon 18 March 2012. (Accessed 20 March 2012) It was offline from February 21 to March 5.
Issues started to pop up as early as February 10, 2012:
Jinjurly finally responded to questions regarding site issues on February 15, but the site stayed up for 6 more days:
Finally, on February 21, the site was taken offline, and was initially projected to be back online March 1.apologies, audiofic archive will be down until march 1. Tweeted Feb 21, 2012. Accessed March 2019. It finally came back online on March 5.OMG THE ARCHIVE IS BACK (sort of). dearest archivists, all your uploaded zips are currently missing - will be restoring from backup asap. Tweeted March 5, 2012. Accessed March, 2019.
===2016 Server Failure (And Aftermath)===
====Initial Downtime====
On April 11, 2016, during Amplificathon 2016, the Archive went offline for scheduled maintenance as it moved to a new server,podmod.Audiofic Archive is down for maintenance, posted to Amplificathon Apr. 11th, 2016 but the Archive stayed down for more than two and a half months.
On May 4, jinjurly posted an update in amplificathon explaining the initial corruption and loss, but assuring the Archive would be back soon and the problems were repairable:
The site remained down for almost two more months.
====Site Return and Paraka Conflict====
On June 29, 2016, the site came back online. Jinjurly posted another update on the status of the Archive in the Amplificathon comm, explaining that most of the backups weren't yet connected, but the site had been offline too long.not entirely back, but sort of?. Posted June 29, 2016. Accessed March 2019. They then apologized for the long wait and asked, "do you have a bunch of podfic saved locally? would you like to help our archivists out? give us a holler to let us know what you have, and we will gratefully take copies off your hands - if you have things we also have as queued backup files, there's no harm in having two copies, and if you have something we're missing, then - hooray!"
In response, kitsuneheart commented, offering a Dropbox with 300gb of space. Jinjurly replied, accepting their proposal, and also asking them to lead a crowd sourced files project.
Paraka also replied to Jinjurly's post, stating if people hosted on Paraka Productions, the process would be a lot faster since she could shift them server-to-server. However, she also mentioned that she was having trouble with her volunteer access, and asked why she couldn't log in. There was no response.
On July 1, the next day, Paraka attempted to contact Archive volunteers multiple times, this time on Twitter, regarding helping with backups.@audioficarchive Hey, am I not on the list of active volunteers? I just tried connecting to the ftp site and couldn't? Tweeted July 1, 2016. Accessed March 2019.Is there a list of what's missing on the @audioficarchive?... Tweeted July 1, 2016 at 8:11pm. Accessed March 2019. She received response from @aphelant (an Archive volunteer), and started researching what was missing. At this point, many people were reporting that their links were all producing error messages.
On July 4, Paraka's roommate @johnmelmoth2 created a script to check the entries on the archive and see whether the link works or not. Initial reaction to this news included excitement and concern from other podfic fans.Wow my awesome roommate @johnmelmoth2 created a script... Tweeted July 4, 2016. Accessed March 2019.
Later that day, Paraka revealed her findings; namely that 83% (around 20,000) of the links currently on the Archive were 404ing. In a long thread on her Twitter, she asked the Archive volunteers for clarification and explanation, since all information about the issue made it seem like it wasn't that big of a deal, and yet they were asking for volunteers without specifying scope or giving information on what needed to be done (or how to do it).Shit guys, the @audioficarchive situation does not look good... Tweeted July 4, 2016. Accessed March 2019.
The @audioficarchive twitter replied to the thread asking once again for patience as they sorted everything out. Paraka replied to their response, explaining that Archive volunteers explicitly asked for crowd-sourced work and she was trying to determine what they needed from her and other crowd-sourced volunteers, whether they were supposed to just wait for the backups to restore, or be more active, and what exactly they were supposed to do in that regard.kitsuneheart offered to gather a few to speed them along, *after* I asked everyone to be patient. Tweeted July 4, 2016. Accessed March 2019.what are you talking about? please be patient as we stabilize things and restore backups. Tweeted July 4, 2016. Accessed March 2019.
On July 5 (the next day), Jinjurly responded on their own twitter. To summarize, Jinjurly was frustrated because, in their opinion:
* Paraka did not wait for response from the maintainers before running her scriptor, if all those tweets were meant to truly be questions, getting a reply before posting a bunch of weird supposition. Tweeted July 5, 2016. Accessed March 2019.
* Paraka was "spreading panic", and "brewed a massive tempest" on a holiday when everyone was busy and couldn't immediate respondbecause backups have not been applied. now she is spreading panic, ignoring the request for patience given 1 day prior to holiday weekend. Tweeted July 5, 2016. Accessed March 2019.I get that. I think she brewed a massive tempest up which, if she’d paused or asked, would have been easily cleared up. Tweeted July 5, 2016. Accessed March 2019.
* no one had asked people for crowd-sourced files haven’t asked anyone to crowdsource. I did say that folks are welcome to send files if they like - something I was asked… Tweeted July 5, 2016. Accessed March 2019.
* the general tone of the thread was accusatoryI am horrified by the tone, actually. particularly equating “just asking a question” with a long .@ stream. Tweeted July 5, 2016. Accessed March 2019.yeah - I get that. I have real issues w someone essentially issuing an accusatory statement, without..asking? Tweeted July 5, 2016. Accessed March 2019.
Jinjurly went on to explain that the backups were not yet restored, and this (along with files that have been deleted over the years for various other reasons) was the cause for the great number of 404s currently on the site.When Paraka eventually did their crowdsourced campaign in December 2016-February 2017, the number of missing files was still stated to be around 20,000. It is shown to be fairly accurate given the later Google Doc
While Jinjurly received a few tweets in support of their perspective on the situation, other fans—including anatsuno and aphelant—replied to defend Paraka.… this whole thing about us helping by ULing some podfics. it was normal for use to wonder *which* & try to determine that, no? Tweeted July 5, 2016. Accessed March 2019. They pointed out it was entirely normal for anyone to investigate the situation on their own, considering the long time period of site inactivity and confusion over the situation after only a few short updates, and with everyone's links 404ing.
Paraka herself responded, explaining her process for gathering the 404 links and attempts for accurate numbers. She also explained that she believed the language of Jinjurly's recent post was calling for crowd sourcing, especially with their response to kitsuneheart, and her frustration with the vagueness and contradictions of the situation.Look I'm just saying, you can't ask ppl to patiently wait for an automated solution *and* ask ppl to start crowd sourcing a manual solution. Tweeted July 5, 2016. Accessed March 2019.For the record, I the numbers I have do not include broken fic links, they were only zip files to podfic. @audioficarchive Tweeted July 5, 2016. Accessed March 2019. She ended, however, with acknowledging that regardless of intent, her script and information was not appreciated, and finally asking what she can do to help, offering her knowledge of technical IT work, and issuing a public apology on her twitter.what was this script meant to accomplish? I posted that we are working on restoring backups - the script verified that? Tweeted July 5, 2016. Accessed March 2016. Note: for some reason, these replies threaded backwards. Read from the bottom up.That said, I am sorry if my panic spread to others. I know the podfic fandom has been through a lot and I hate that I sometimes add to it. Tweeted July 5, 2016. Accessed March 2019. Jinjurly acknowledged her apology and offer for help.
====Last Official Word and Jinjurly Silence====
Later that day, akamine_chan posted a third update in Amplificathon addressing the concerns over panic, and once again reiterating that the loss was not that large and, while time-consuming, the back-up process would proceed smoothly and as fast as possible.An update! Posted July 5, 2016. Accessed March 2019.] This was the last real official update on the state of the Archive.
On July 6, Jinjurly replied "coming soon!" to @EosRose's tweet asking for a list of their missing filescoming soon! Tweeted July 5, 2016. Accessed March 2019. However, jinjurly would not publicly tweet, post, comment, or otherwise explicitly mention the Archive again for the rest of the year.
The @audioficarchive twitter periodically boosted a post asking for volunteers over the next few months, with their last tweet on December 15, 2016.We're looking for a few good volunteers. More info here: http://amplificathon.dreamwidth.org/2943213.html Tweeted December 15, 2016. Archived March 2019. On December 30, 2016, the Archive community volunteer wrangler effectively resigned,A tiny update. Posted December 30, 2016. Accessed March 2019. which is likely the reason for the lack of continued volunteer efforts (or any other updates).
====Paraka's 2016-2017 Crowd-Sourcing Effort====
With the site back online, new podfics continued to be uploaded, but much of the Archive's back catalog was still unavailable until December 2016, when Paraka started a crowdsourcing project to get at least all the podfics also hosted on parakaproductions back up.paraka. Audiofic Archive: Crowd Sourcing Options, posted to Amplificathon Dec. 6th, 2016. While many fans were eager to help with the restoration, some were reticent to give their files back to the Archive in light of the revealed instability.(no subject). susan_voight on dreamwidth/amplificathon says "I was feeling paranoid and wanted to have files only under my control. Thanks!" Posted Dec 7, 2016. Accessed March 2019.
Other fan uncertainty aside, Paraka and her team were actually incredibly productive, and managed to find and reupload 14,000 of the 20,000 missing podfic. Unfortunately, on February 24, 2017, they ran into a server space issue.
Jinjurly replied to this post, in their first public response about the issue since July 6, 2016, with "It is a temporary error, and I'm working on it."(no subject). Posted February 25, 2017. Accessed March 2019. The server continues to be frozen in March 2019.
In December 2016's Auralphonic Episode 025: Topicless, podficcers Jenepod, Dodificus, and Paraka discussed the continuing relevance of the archive to podfic fandom, the effect of the archive going down ("devastating," said Paraka), and the importance of keeping multiple copies.Auralphonic link 2016-12-16 The auralphonic + ep025 Pinboard contained a link to a Podfic List of files that had been lost in the crash.
The last podfic was uploaded to the Archive in February 2017. Works can still be downloaded, but there has been no statement about the Archive's future beyond Paraka's unofficial statement in February 2017 regarding server space. In June 2017, the last update on their post about server space, paraka added "I just checked the server and we're still out of space. /o\"
In April 2018, jinjurly replied to a comment on Twitter that mentioned the archive with "…guess i should repair it >.>", but otherwise the archive remained in stasis, with no other official or unofficial word.
===2022 Squidge.Org===
In January 2022, squidgiepdx posted an update on the status of the archive, which included the information that the archive had been hosted by squidge.org for several years, and that the site was now active again, with new archivists. squidgiepdx and mific were trying to crowdsource missing files, and the results of Paraka's crowdsourcing efforts would also be used. Podficcers could now submit their works again to be added to the archive., dreamwidth post by squidgestatus, 16 January 2022. Accessed 20 January 2022.
By the end of February 2022, 3,779 (74.3%) of the missing files were located and 1,600 were resolved/restored (31.4% of all the missing files restored, 42.3% of the located files restored). By the end of March 2022, 3,840 (75.6%) of the missing files were located and 2,493 were resolved/restored (49% of full archive restored, 64.9% of located files restored).
Since January 2022 the archive has been fully functional once more, with the advanced search function restored and improved, and, as of January 2025, over 5000 new podfic posts have been added since January 2022.
==Reactions & Reviews==
===General Prestige and Popularity===
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====Confusion About Amplificathon====
====Archive Stability====
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===Navigation Frustrations===
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===Public vs Private Collaborative Fanwork Posting Debate===
===Pre-2016 Technical Issues===
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(In February 2012, a malware attack crippled the site for nearly a month.)
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===Reactions to 2016 File Loss===
====Early Reactions (Pre-Reveal of Loss)====
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====Reactions to Initial Reveal of File Loss====
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====Archive Returns; Podfic Doesn't====
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(See Site Return and Paraka Conflict for more detail.)
====Loss of Faith in Audiofic Archive====
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====Backups and Speculation====
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====Squidge.org Issue====
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====Jinjurly's Most Recent Response====
==Further reading==
* transcript of a general_jinjur interview by an MLS student about the site's history (December 6, 2008)
* Fan Fiction Oral History Project with Jinjurly
* Audio Snipper's Club Podfic Stats
* Paraka's March 2014 Stats
* Paraka's June 2014 Stats
* Paraka's October 2015 Stats
* Auralphonic 025: Topicless from Auralphonic
* List of Missing/Corrupted Podfic
==Notes & References==
===Notes===
===References===
Category:Multifandom Archives Category:Podfic Fandom Category:2000s Archives Category:2010s Archives Category:2019 Featured Articles