cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/53803406

Would Ourchive possibly work as a Fediverse alternative to Ao3 / OTW?

Ourchive - GitHub

Ourchive apparently wants to democratize hosting fanworks on the internet.

From the Website Page:

Ourchive aims to continue a tradition that archives like eFiction started. When you install Ourchive, you get flexible metadata like tags, the ability to upload images and audio, and the ability to administer users, all within an easily installed Django website.

With Ourchive, you can create an account, upload works, create bookmarks and collections of bookmarks, and comment on others’ works, bookmarks, and collections.


I was browsing various different ao3 alternative sites, due to the ao3 blackout, and I stumbled upon Ourchive.gay

Which is apparently a decentralized alternative to Ao3.

Plus, they use Mastodon

Although, they're relatively new (first started in 2023), plus they're still in demo, and haven't added federation yet.

Ourchive - Fanlore.org

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[–] 4 points 1 week ago* (2 children)

The other issue is that a big part of ao3 most people don't realize is there is the volunteer tag wranglers. Some of that might be able to be done by an llm that can catch basic misspellings and common ship naming conventions but sometimes ship names refer to really obscure references that can't be reliably sorted that way.

I applied to squidgeworld personally. I'm super bummed because I JUST finished my latest two chapters of my slow burn tentacle porn plus the actual porn part for later down the line because it needs a little more burn to fully satisfy.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 week ago (1 child)

    The catchy name certainly doesn't hurt either

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  • [–] 4 points 1 week ago (4 children)

    How does adding federation to something like AO3 interact with the very important property that AO3 has that authors are in control of their space? Can an author moderate the remote / federated comments on their work?

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  • [–] 3 points 1 week ago (1 child)

    They can also set stories to private, which might not be so easy with federation.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 week ago

    Exactly. I feel like, the way federation functions, it takes control away from authors and puts it in the hands of harrassers, forcing authors back to the old paradigm (in 90s forums etc) of either having to self-host, or having to report comments and posts and hope that works.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 week ago (1 child)

    Isn't that doable with federation? I believe on mastodon you can actually block people, unlike here, and also set posts to show to followers only.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 week ago* (1 child)

    Does fediverse have automatic content propagation across instances? Because from what I have seen, content preservation is not the strongest suit of the fediverse unless it's a major instance, in which case we're just back to rebranded AO3.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

    Look if you want to run something like that, then go for it, nobody is stopping you. But we've had a bunch of threads like this already and srsly, the software is not an issue. The reason AO3 came into existence in the first place was to create a home for stories and authors that kept getting banned from other sites. It's about the stories and content policy, not the software. Do you think a federated version will allow those stories? Will your own instance allow them?

    I'm not into those kinds of stories myself (by far the biggest Harry Potter category there has Harry dating Draco), but the fact that they are allowed contributes to the tolerant atmosphere of the whole site. It was similar with Reddit before it got too corporate, and to some extent even now. Lemmy is ridiculously stuck-up by comparison. I don't understand why people think federation (Lemmy style) is some kind of fairy dust. It operates the wrong way imho: stuff like subscriptions should be entirely on the client side, to get rid of the choke point that exists at every interface between two federated servers.

    The name "ourchive" is cute but I think it's too imitative of AO3. So I'd hope for a different name. But, props for cleverness.

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