injokes I don't get

[ratcreature]

So what is the "Do Not Archive (The Magnus Archives)" tag on the AO3 supposed to indicate?

Obviously it doesn't have the normal meaning like that label had on lists, since the stories are already posted on a fanfic archive, and they don't seem to have anything obvious in common wrt content when I look at the works. I wondered whether it was maybe a kind of "don't podfic" label because of the archive tapes in canon, but I saw at least one podfic with the tag, so that's not it.

I'm also wondering whether to participate in the Rusty Quill Secret Santa 2019, which includes The Magnus Archives. It allows fanart, and the requirements look fairly low-key and manageable, and I never seem to produce even sketches anymore without outside pressure, so that might be fun.

Comments

[sholio]

Unless there's something going on I'm not aware of (always possible!), I'm pretty sure this is related to a completely ridiculous fad that took off on Tumblr recently, where writers add tags like that to their fics to indicate that other people are not allowed to copy and repost them to another site. (Other variants include "do not copy" and the like.) It looks like the fandom name got added in disambiguation.

I find it utterly silly, because copying someone else's fic is already both plagiarism and against common fandom etiquette, and someone who's going to do it isn't going to pay attention to a tag, but ... Tumblr. What are you gonna do.

[ratcreature]

Well, I explicitly state the same for my fanart on AO3 in the end notes, ever since people re-uploaded stuff to Tumblr, and I got actual comments on AO3 that I ought to be happy if people even bothered to repost my art, so I don't put much stock in "fandom etiquette".

But trying to prevent this with a tag that isn't even clearly communicating that meaning to someone with over two decades in online media fandom seems not the best strategy.

ETA: also there is a "Do Not Repost" tag on AO3 which seems more transparent, but the other one is not wrangled into that

[melannen]

Way, way back in the days of Usenet and handcoded archives on webrings, there were fandoms were it was actually reasonably common to copy fics from one archive to another without permission, and as a result, a standard thing to forbid in headers, so seeing it around is giving me flashbacks to the late '90s. :D

I think the disambiguated Magnus Archive tag is probably referring to a Discord server, though - those are probably fics that were inspired by the discord chat somehow.

[ratcreature]

Ah, that makes more sense. I mean, I wish they had picked a less opaque tag like something with "Discord" added (like "discord made me do it" and similar tags), to make clear what it refers to, but then I like clear labels.

[melannen]

yeah, tag wranglers will probably have to come up with a standard way to mark those sooner rather than later, but it hasn't made it to the top of the backlog yet.

[ratcreature]

Though according to other comments here it looks like it indicates a more fandom specific meaning of not wanting creator-fan interaction with fanworks. So the Discord maybe also takes its name from that?

[melannen]

my guess is: Tumblr fandom used the tag to mean various things; the discord names itself after the Tumblr tag; people started to tag for the discord on AO3; someone on Ao3 realized the discard name and the general meaning were getting mixed up, and created the disambigged tag (I can't see why else it would be disambigged w the fandom - a tag meaning creators don't read or don't repost would be treated as a panfandom concept); the disambigged tag was not clear enough either, and now it is also being used for both things.

[ratcreature]

Something got lost in translation at some point for sure with this tag. And the wrangling is just weird imo. Making "Do Not Archive" a subcategory of "Do Not Archive (The Magnus Archives)" which currently seems the case makes no sense. I mean it is mostly used in that fandom but also Rusty Quill Gaming which may be the same creators but a different fandom, and at least a few other works also have it.

[sholio]

Oh, that's cool to know - thanks for letting me know. I wondered whether it might be a fandom in-joke I didn't get, and not related to the Tumblr thing.

[ratcreature]

According to other comments here it looks like it indicates a more fandom specific meaning of not wanting creator-fan interaction with your fanworks. The Discord maybe uses that phrasing for the same reason?

[james]

Recently there has been trouble with a Russian archivist taking hundreds of stories from AO3 and re-archiving them on their own site, which also featured ads and the like, for which the Russian archivist was getting profit. People naturally objected to this, and there was very little they could do about getting their stories taken down (I gather it was possible, but difficult? And no guarantee of success?) One of the things suggested to make it easier to get things taken down is to explicitly state you don't given permission for your story to be re-archived on another site simply because it's on AO3.

That might be what those authors are doing.

[harpers_child]

My first thought was this too. I've heard of a couple sites pulling stories off the Ao3 without author permission. (Or maybe it's the same site but several permutations.)

[ratcreature]

Other comments indicate a more fandom specific meaning of not wanting creator-fan interaction.

[jain]

A number of the voice actors and others who work at Rusty Quill like to check out the fanart, fanfic, etc. being created for TMA. From early on, though, they were sensitive to the fact that not everyone is comfortable with that level of creator-fan interaction. Accordingly, "Do Not Archive" is the tag early fans of the show came up with to indicate "If you're from Rusty Quill, please don't read this fic/look at this art/open this post."

[ratcreature]

Ah, okay. Other fandoms I've been in had habits of similar notes, but usually spelled out more clearly.

[jain]

Yeah, I'm really not sure why those early fans decided to pick such an opaque tag, but the fandom's stuck with it now.

[ratcreature]

Well, in-group idiosyncrasies are kind of inescapable. I just wish fandom specific glossaries were still a thing. Like those charming geocities sites that explained all the Sentinel fandom jargon to me in the mid-90s...

[st_aurafina]

What jain says - it's what you tag your fanwork with if you don't want Rusty Quill reading it.

[ratcreature]

Clearly there should be more fandom glossaries again. I tried to google the meaning, and looked in Fanlore too, but couldn't figure it out.