FAQ

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General questions
What is FanworksFinder.com?
What is FanworksFinder.com NOT?
Who's behind FanworksFinder.com?

Adding and editing listings
Who can add listings?
What if the fanwork I want to list isn't on the web?
What about duplicate listings?
Who can edit listings?
How do I get one of those cool button thingies on my fanworks' web pages?
How do I request that a listing be removed?
I had a listing removed and now I've changed my mind—how do I get it back on the site?

Importing listings & feeding us listings through RSS
I have a LOT of listings—do I have to enter them one by one?
Is there a way to automatically create listings at FanworksFinder.com when I post new fanworks to my site?

Reccing, reviewing & more
What does 'bury' do?
Can I 'unrec' listings I've recced?
What does 'save listing' do?
How does 'Rate Review' work?

I still have questions!

 

General questions

What is FanworksFinder.com?
FanworksFinder.com is a reader/viewer-oriented resource for locating fanfiction, fanart, fanvids and related meta on the Internet. Users can search for fiction, art, vids and meta based on fandoms, characters, pairings, genres, tags and more.

In addition to being a locator, it's a recs & reviews site. Users can "rec" (leave a recommendation for) listings by clicking the "Rec" button beside the listing. They can also leave reviews of the fanworks. Because the listings here are divorced from the fanworks themselves, reviews are more reader-oriented ("If you like plotty stories...") than author-oriented ("Yay! Write more!").

Users can also rate reviews that have been left on the site, allowing the useful reviews to rise to the top while the less useful ones get buried.
 

What is FanworksFinder.com NOT?
FanworksFinder.com is not an archive. There are no fanworks hosted here. Authors/creators of fanworks retain complete control over their fanworks at the location(s) they've chosen to host them (personal websites, archives, message boards, communities, their blogs/journals, etc.).
 

Who's behind FanworksFinder.com?
FanworksFinder.com is run byFan History LLC. Fan History LLC's staff includes people who have been involved in fandom for many years.

The script which powers FanWorksFinder was originally created by ScrewTheDaisies.

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Adding and editing listings

Who can add listings?
Any logged-in user can add a new listing. The user does not have to be the author/creator of the fanwork to list it. FanworksFinder.com has been created to help readers find fanworks that are scattered around the Internet on archives, personal sites, LJs, message boards and more.

Authors and creators, of course, are welcome to post listings, too.

There's a bookmarklet available on our tools page that makes adding new listings easy.
 

What if the fanwork I want to list isn't on the web?
The fanwork has to be posted somewhere on the web before it can be posted to the site. Our tools page has a list of multifandom archives where you might post your fanwork (provided that it is yours to post; you cannot post someone else's fanwork on web without their permission).

(If you would like your archive/community/etc. featured in FanworksFinder or Fan History, email a link to info@fanworksfinder.com.)
 

What about duplicate listings?
The system won't allow two fanworks with the same URL to be listed; if you try, the system will tell you and give a link to the listing.

If the same fanwork is hosted in two different locations, the system won't recognize that when the informaton is entered; however an admin clean-up is run periodically that merges data (and recs and reviews) for fanworks that have the same title and author but diffferent URLs. The admin clean-up script is not autonomous; a person checks each potential duplicate and either approves or disapproves the merge.
 

Who can edit listings?
Any logged-in user can edit any listing—think of it like wiki for fanworks. Every time a user edits a listing to add a tag, genre, character, pairing, etc., the site's search capability is improved, so we encourage users to add or correct information in listings wherever they see the opportunity to do so.

Also, if you see a spam listing or run across a listing with a bad link, please edit the listing to add that tag "spam" or "bad link" so that we can find it on routine database clean-ups and take care of it. Thank you!
 

I have a LOT of listings—do I have to enter them one by one?
If you can get your fanworks metadata into an Excel spreadsheet or a comma- or tab-delimited text file, we can import your listings data for you. See this page on preparing a file for import. We welcome imports from archivists, maintainers, and fanwork authors/creators.
 

Is there a way to automatically create listings at FanworksFinder.com when I post new fanworks to my site?
If you can produce an RSS feed for your listings, we can set up an RSS import that checks your feed daily and imports new listings into Fanworks Finder. Read more about setting up an RSS feed for FanworksFinder.com. We welcome RSS feeds from archivists, maintainers, and fanwork authors/creators.
 

How do I get one of those cool button thingies on my web page?
We have two kinds of external vote buttons available. The coolest is the javascript one; it will display how many recs your fanwork has. The page your fanwork is hosted on needs to meet two requirements for the javascript button to work, however. 1. You have to be able to use javascript on the page. (LiveJournals, for instance, don't appear to allow this.) 2. The fanwork's URL can't have ampersands (&) in it; otherwise the button won't recognize that it's listed on our site.

If you can't use javascript or your fanwork URL has ampersands in it, you can use the static "Rec This!" button.

Instructions for both are located at the bottom of every listing on FanworksFinder.com. Find or add a listing for one of your fanworks, click "read more" in the summary area, and scroll down to "Is this your fanwork?" The instructions will include the exact code you need to put a button for that fanwork on your fanwork's web page.

How do I request that a listing be removed?
Find the listing you want removed. Click 'read more' in the listing summary section to get the full listing page. Scroll all the way down to the bottom of the listing's page. Click 'Request that this listing be removed from the database.'

Once a listing has been removed, that fanwork, located at the URL given in the listing, cannot be added to the database again unless the person who requested the removal requests that it be reinstated. However, sometimes a single fanwork can have several different URLs (if, for instance, the fanwork has been posted in more than one place on the net—an archive, for instance, and a Livejournal community). This can cause the fanwork to be relisted under one of its other URLs. If this happens, you will have to request that that listing be removed as well. You can monitor whether the fanwork shows up again by running a search on the title (in quotes with a plus sign in front of it) and your pen name (in quotes with a plus sign in front of it), like so: +"My story title" +"My pen name". After you run the search, click the "Save it!" button to save the search. Then you can use the saved search to run a quick check every time you visit the site OR you can use the saved searches RSS feed to notify you when a fanwork matching that criteria has been added to the database.

I had a listing removed and now I've changed my mind—how do I get it back on the site?
You'll need to contact Fanworks Finder support. Give them the URL of the fanwork you'd like added back and the email address you used when you requested that the fanwork be removed. If you don't remember the email address you used to remove the listing or if you are the author/owner of the fanwork and didn't request that the listing be removed in the first place, let us know when you contact support and we can work with you to get the listing back up. Contact support.

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Reccing, reviewing & more

What does 'bury' do?
The 'bury' feature grays out the listing for the person who clicked it. Enough 'buries' will remove a listing from the public database.
 

Can I 'unrec' listings I've recced?
Yes. Go to Your Stuff and click 'Recced.' Find the listing you want to unrec, then click the word 'Unrec'. (If you click the number above 'Unrec', you will not unrec it; you'll be brought to the story listing instead, so make sure you click the word 'Unrec'.)
 

What does 'save listing' do?
It saves the listing to your account. To see your saved listings, go to Your Stuff and click 'Saved.' You can remove a listing from your saved list any time by going to the listing and clicking "Remove from saved."
 

How does 'Rate Review' work?
Give a plus (+) rating to reviews that offer something to site users. Give a minus (-) rating to reviews that don't offer anything useful. If a review gets enough minus (-) ratings, the review will be buried under a "show/hide" link.

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I still have questions!
You can use Get Satisfaction to see if some one else has asked it, answer other people's questions, and suggest features for the site.

If you'd rather ask your question(s) less publicly, use our contact form or email us at info@fanworksfinder.com.