On 16th October, it was revealed
that Yahoo! is planning to shut off posting to Yahoo! Groups
on 28th October, and permanently wipe all data from Groups on 14th December, in
yet another instance of an internet space shutdown that will be hugely
detrimental to fans and fan history.
The Organization for Transformative Works is doing everything it can to try and
preserve the fannish activity and works on Yahoo! Groups before the shutdown.
If you are a member or admin of a Group and want to try and preserve its
contents, here are some things you can do.
Contact the OTW’s Open Doors project, which works to
import at-risk fan archives, if you’re the admin of a Yahoo! Group and want to
import its fanworks to AO3. If you’re not the admin of a Yahoo! Group, you can
still publish your own fanworks to AO3 - but the permission of a group admin is
needed in order to import all the fanworks associated with a Group.
Create a page for the Group on Fanlore. Anyone can edit Fanlore and it’s
completely free - you just need to sign up for an account first. Once you have, you’ll need to
wait four hours before you can create any new pages - this is a precaution
against spam accounts. This tutorial will help you get started with editing, and this
article will give you more information on how to start a new page.