What Happened to FF.Net?

At it’s peak, it was one of the most popular sites on the internet. It is home to millions of stories and it inspired a generation of teens to write. It’s hard to believe that this site has been running since 1998. Despite all the added features over the years, the layout itself hasn’t changed much. Though with the rise of story sites like Wattpad and Archive of Our Own, the OG library of fan fiction is starting to become neglected.

This was a site that I used to visit and write for every day without fail for 10 years. I hardly ever go on this site anymore either. A part of me wants to perish all my old crap on there, but there’s another half that wants this half preserved and also exported onto A03. I think I have only imported half of the stuff from FF.net to A03, but importing stories to other sites is a lot of work. It’s not just copy and pasting, it’s all the tags, summaries, and format fixing.

A lot of stories I have uploaded on there, I never got around to finishing them. Some of the stories, I have too many ideas I try to use them all at once, but then I get stuck and work on someone else. I am not alone, I remember reading countless epics that never reached a final conclusion. There’s a lot more to this site than erotica. Erotic and explicit content has been banned from the site since 2003. Other stories not allowed on the site are any second-person fiction, stories involving real people, scripts, song fics with copyrighted lyrics, and material from a list of writers that have requested not to have their works on the site. Despite this ban, people still published work here. Before submitting stories, you had to go through the terms and conditions and click accept. I’ve not seen any stories or accounts get taken down unless there was a large volume of people reporting it.

I've heard many rumours that the site will close, but I hope it does not. I don't like to admit it but the website is a part of our geeky history. Yes, there are some crazy, terrible and disturbing content there, but there are still some great stuff out there. One man's trash is another man's treasure has never been so true. People still come up to me and say they love and remember my fics.

Sadly, there are still a lot of trolls on there. I want to scream every time I see Mr. Anonymous Cowardly Custard tells authors to kill themselves. I know it's probably some dickhead being stupid, but it is bullying that does not belong anywhere and ot should be deleted and banned. I can't believe these people still send death threats to authors. The staff on FF.Net should do more to stop this.

It's frustrating that the website hasn't gotten with the times. There's so much I think it can do. My suggestions for the website to keep it alive for another 1o+ years include:

• Do something about those trolls and spammers, especially the ones that tell writers to kill themselves. It's dangerous because you don't know how fragile the writers behind the screens are.
• Allow readers to reply to and edit reviews. It would add a more community feel to it that the site has kinda lost over the years as everyone has gone to other more appealing websites.
• A new layout because it's not the most inviting.
• A better reading experiance. I hate having the adds in between stories, its a real turn off.
• An easier way to edit the stories that we write. A03 and Wattpad have a brilliant editing and tagging system. FF.Net is too linier and many stories are not. Uploading and submitting stories on FF.Net is too longwinded.