Fanfiction has never had a federated home: should we just potentially take over SquidgeWorld Archive (or fork the code)?

16 hours ago by Teknevra to c/fediverse

I (and a lot of other people, I'd guess) read and write fanfiction.

But as far as I know, there's never really been a federated fanfic platform, nothing that plugs into the fediverse the way Mastodon does for microblogging or PeerTube/Loops does for video.

Then I stumbled upon SquidgeWorld Archive (SQWA), an AO3 alternative that actually runs on the same codebase as AO3 otwarchive.

It's got way fewer users than AO3, which honestly gives it a cozier, more small-town vibe.

The devs/maintainers behind it, squidge.org, even run both Mastodon and Bluesky accounts.

The catch: people have posted that fics pulling thousands of views on AO3 get little to none on SQWA. Makes sense, it's just a much smaller pond.

So, two half-formed ideas that I wanted to possibly toss out:

Suggestion #1: "colonize" SQWA.

What if fediverse-native fanfic folks just started actually posting there? Cross-link your fediverse socials, bring your existing following over, treat it like planting a flag. It already exists, the maintainers are clearly fediverse-friendly, it just needs bodies.

Suggestion #2: fork it (and ao3) and actually federate it.

AO3's otwarchive code is open source, which is exactly what SQWA is running on. What if someone forked it and built out real federation, ActivityPub support, the whole deal, instead of just being a second standalone AO3 clone? That feels like the "real" long-term fix, but it's a genuine software undertaking, not a weekend project.

I'd love to take a crack at #2 myself but I don't have the time or the technical bandwidth for something that size right now, so I'm just putting it out there in case it resonates with anyone here.

Curious what this community thinks: is #1 realistic, or does fanfiction just need a ground-up federated archive to actually work?

Edit: Sorry for any mistakes, I'm currently at work.

brucethemoose 7 points 16 hours ago

Some thoughts:

…What’s actually different about Squidge? If the code is the same as Ao3, what makes it a more appealing target for “colonization” than just using Ao3?
#1 and #2 aren’t mutually exclusive. In fact, if the formatting is the same, cross posting to Squidge should be trivial.
On #2. Instead of a fork, why not PR otw code? Make the federation link a completely self-contained, discrete module, one that’s not a burden for OTW to maintain. Perhaps architect it as some basic access points in the OTW code, then the federation API support is a completely separate layer. This would massively reduce the dev burden, as it would inherit all the work in OTW code.
Yeah, I don’t have the energy for such a huge code project myself, but I might help some.
I’ve… neglected a fic for about a year, but it’s still living in my head. I think I’m going to get back to writing today, thanks! And I suppose I’ll cross posting it to Squidge too.

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jumping_redditor 5 points 16 hours ago

the tos for sqwa seems rather immature compared to ao3, and their latest update seems to suggest they want to kill their platform by making it so everyone needs an account to read their content.

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brucethemoose 3 points 16 hours ago

What’s wrong with the ToS, specifically?

It’s perhaps not as professional as Ao3, but nothing bad jumps out at me.

But yeah, making it signup-required would be terrible.

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jumping_redditor 4 points 14 hours ago

I'm mostly concerned because it isn't particularly specific about prohibited content, which is one of the major reasons ao3 was created (specifically that wattpad and It's alternatives had over restrictive rules) and having rules that are impossibly broad is almost as bad.

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brucethemoose 3 points 14 hours ago

Ah. That. Right, I didn’t even think about that.

Still, that makes it somewhat similar to Ao3, right?

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brucethemoose 4 points 15 hours ago

Also, at risk of sounding cynical:

…Are there many fanfic writers/readers on the Fediverse?

Here on Lemmy/Piefed, people here seem more interested in politics and IT than deep fandom niches.

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