#jdff project

That leaves me with a conundrum, though. i could try and get back to work on the project, or at least try to find someone else who wants to work on the project. I'm not actively in the West Wing fandom anymore, though, and I honestly have no idea how many people would even be interested in the archive or helped by its existence. Archiving these stories is a lot of very tetchy work, and I don't want to just pour another few hundred hours of effort into the void.

Anon, I am pretty sure I have also read that story, but unfortunately none of the details are popping into my head right now! All I can do is give you my big list of links so you can poke around and see if one of these authors is the one you are looking for. And maybe even if you don't find that particular one, you'll find something else you like?

The stories that would have been lost in the deep dark web are still able to be found and told. There are a few broken links but overall you have done an amazing job and I don't want you to think it is a job that has gone unnoticed or unappreciated. If you need any help whatsoever please let me know. I actually don't know how much help I would be but you know. Wanted to put it out there. Once again, THANK YOU (2/2)

Nice to meet you, and I’m so happy that the JDFF archive has been valuable to you! For such an old fandom, The West Wing has surprisingly good representation on AO3 and Fanfiction.net, especially since The National Library got ported onto AO3, so they’re definitely both worth a look. There are still hundreds of stories, though, that never made it onto either, and that’s what the archive is for! I also have a document I created for my own convenience but that might be fun to explore, of all the old Wayback Machine-preserved fanfic sites from back in the day. You can find it here. 

I think the site you’re probably looking for is The National Library, which unfortunately went dark a couple years ago now but was luckily saved and mostly folded into AO3. Some things were lost because the archive they were working from did not always save more than the first chapter of multichapter fics, but a lot of stuff is still there. You can find the archived version of the site here on the Wayback Machine and although the site search function is borked to hell and back, the pages that are organized by main characters and main pairings are still working and useful. 

I can’t find the actual Tumblr post I made and I’m too lazy to look hard for it now, but I’m pretty sure the list you’re thinking about is the Find-a-Fic directory I put together for the JDFF project. It’s basically a list of every old author page I’ve been able to find so far during my journey to reconstruct the Josh/Donna Fanfiction archive from Yahoo Groups. You can find it here on Google Docs. If you’re actually looking for the JDFF archive where I’ve been linking and uploading many many many old Josh/Donna fics, you can find that here. 

Don’t be embarrassed, the issue is not you at all! The biggest problem with YahooGroups shutting down was that basically nothing was saved on the WayBack Machine due to private groups and Yahoo’s settings. In the very short amount of time between the announcement and the actual closing, amateur and professional archivists scraped as much data as possible for preservation, but there’s no central place to put it online. I have some pretty large files that contain all the stories from the JDFF group, but it’s in an obscure file format that has proven difficult to share. :( Once I can get it moved to my new computer, provided my new computer stops needing to be wiped and system restored, I’m going to try and get moving with more uploading.

Went to hit up the JDFF Project because I have some time on my hands this evening but am too blaaaaah to write, and found that somebody added a bunch more story summaries, PLUS marked a few places where links were broken so I could fix them :starry eyes: Josh/Donna fans are among the very best of people. 

Reminder to anybody who is quarantined and looking for something ficcy that could take hours or days of your time, I have been archiving the Yahoo Group Josh/Donna Fan Fiction, a behemoth of a group with thousands of stories that got wiped off the web in December. Before it did, though, I downloaded the whole hecking thing and have been laboriously putting it back online as best I can. (AO3 will not take it, unfortunately, because I was not a site owner or moderator. Sad!) It’s taking a very long time and is only about a third done now, but that’s still quite a lot of fic! I’m asking for help from the community to actually go through and read the stories I’m uploading or linking, because I rarely have time to, and add helpful summaries to let future readers explore the database more effectively. If you’d like to help, or would just like to read a whoooole lotta fic, here’s the master link: 

September 15

It was a good day today but my computer is being extremely frustrating this evening. The kiddo and I did a fun but involved mystery shop that involved a lot of playing arcade games (a specialty of his and he did it well!) and a lot of report-writing by yours truly. The doggone computer shut down TWICE in the middle of writing up the shop, and it is only through the grace of Google that I didn't have to spend an extra hour or two fixing it all up. In any case I finally got it done but it took a long time and I am Very Done With Computers for today. 

Not too much happened today besides the shop, partly because that basically took up the whole afternoon. Kiddo and Husband reached an understanding where it became clear that the kiddo has missed being read to at bedtime but Husband thought the kiddo did not want bedtime reading anymore after a period of sustained not-wanting-reading-at-bedtime. Husband loves reading to the kiddo, so this is a happy meeting of the minds all around and they have started Wind in the Willows. The kiddo is happy in his loft bed still but took ages to go to sleep tonight, possibly because he got quite a bit of cotton candy today. Luckily tomorrow is Unstructured Learning Day so he won't have to spend half the day in front of his computer. 

I finished another section of the Josh/Donna Fanfic YahooGroup archive! That brings me up to seven completed sections, plus I finally made it to the letter “C” on the top end of the alphabet! It’s very exciting. I’ve also had a few people take me up on the invitation to read stories and add summaries, which is awesome. Seeing that other people are reading and contributing to this project has given me a lot of new energy for a project that sometimes seems like a lot of work for indeterminate return. I’m just happy to see that people are using it! 

Anyway, for section 8 I will be bouncing back down to the bottom of the alphabet for another agonizing slog through 500 lines of fics that all begin with the word “The,” but my pain is lessened by seeing a few of my favorite fics in that section as well. Eventually I will finish all the Thes and make my way up to the letter S, and what a happy day that will be!