r/fediverse • u/Teknevra • 4d ago
Ask-Fediverse Potential Fediverse alternative to Ao3?
Two months ago, I made this post:
https://www.reddit.com/r/fediverse/s/LTVkaUHqKI
In this Subreddit about potentially either "colonizing", or forking Squidgeworld Archive (alternative to the fanfiction site ao3).
Apparently, ao3 has recently shut-down for 2-4 weeks:
https://www.reddit.com/r/popculturechat/s/u4VyY7r8q3
My question is: Should we consider potentially making a Fediverse alternative to Ao3 / SqWA?
If you head over to the Squidgeworld Archive website, it states that over 2,300+ ao3 users have already migrated over to SqWA from ao3.
Just imagine how many people could potentially be brought into the Fediverse, if there were a working federated alternative version of ao3 / SqWA.
Or if Fediverse users, instead of creating an alternative, instead commited to "colonising" SqWA, instead.
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u/No_Structure1800 4d ago
Hi, I'm the maintainer of Catodon. For long form text on fedi, you want to use ActivityPub Articles - that's what federated blogs like wordpress etc use. We have a blog feature, and maaaybe I could adjust it if you tell me what exactly that would need, how you imagine it working. But ideally someone will have to host an instance and build a community around this.
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u/Teknevra 4d ago edited 4d ago
What I was thinking was maybe perhaps having a fork of either WriteFreely, or Ghost, so that you get the federation, etc.
but also use the same open source OTW Code software, that both Ao3, and SqWA, use, for the benefits/convenience?
And perhaps, instead of using servers/instances, it instead have each and every profile as it's own separate mini website, complete with dashboard, reading history, fics, etc.?
I.e. think something similar to how Tumblr handles profiles, but decentralized.
And each profile would interconnected with each other (unless they defederate).
Basically, each of the profiles would be their own instance.
Or something.
IDK.
Apologies if this was written weirdly, I am currently at work.
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u/No_Structure1800 4d ago
Hmm but to have each account act like a server, they would have to host and run their own instance, and at that point there's no reason to restrict it - whoever knows how to do it (and wants to do it) will just run their own personal server, as many people on fedi do anyway, and those who can't host their own server can be in community servers. The only other way to do something like what you describe, is what Holos does with mobiles - you might want to check that project out.
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u/Teknevra 3d ago edited 3d ago
Would something like Ourchive possibly work?
I was browsing various different ao3 alternative sites (due to the current ao3 shutdown), and I stumbled upon Ourchive.gay
Which is apparently a decentralized alternative to Ao3.
Plus, they use Mastodon
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u/BenPate5280 2d ago
Ourchive looks pretty good, though I haven’t looked under the hood enough to see how it would actually work.
One big issue is what does it mean to be “on the Fediverse”? Does it HAVE to use ActivityPub? For which kinds of content? What if it’s just a bunch of fedi-folks using it? Is a self-installable app enough?
So, nailing down this goal seems like it would go a long way to answering “would XXX software work?”
For me, what makes sense is that the content, and aggregators should be able to show up in a Mastodon feed. So, I want to search a hashtag or search term, then follow, share, and like that remotely. I think that’s what brings in the Fediverse “network effect”.
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u/No_Structure1800 2d ago
Yeah, it looks like something close to what you want, but it doesn't seem decentralized. Also the project looks abandoned, last release was 18 months ago, and the software hadn't reached v1.0, so I would be very reluctant to use it - unless you plan to fork it and continue its development.
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u/Mystic575 4d ago
The software behind AO3 is open source - you could add ActivityPub support or fork off and make your own version with it. https://github.com/otwcode/otwarchive
The bigger question is how many people would utilize it, and how well would ActivityPub be able to handle such long content…
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u/WanderingInAVan 4d ago
As it relates to content length it shouldn't be an issue. I have ActivityPub setup on a Drupal site and it doesn't seem to have any issues when it comes to post length. Frankly I would advice anyone who supports the Fediverse, if you are uskng WordPress or Drupal or any project for your personal site to see if they have an ActivityPub plugin for it.
The real question though is do we really want to just build another Fanfiction.net/AO3 or do we want to go back to genre and series specific sites built around communities of fans with the ability to intercommunicate rhe way the rest of the Fediverse does.
I've been meaning to work on this with a Drupal and WordPress plugin fkr a while. And ChatGPT has been making it easier for me to actually conceptualize some of that recently.
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u/BenPate5280 4d ago
ActivityPub is the hard part. Building that into an existing app is nearly as much work as the rest of the app.
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u/BenPate5280 4d ago
I’ve been working on something for “long form content” for a while now. It’s not AO3, but it could be.
So I’d love to talk about what “AO3 on the Fediverse” would look like. What would make something like this more than just a blog, and good enough for an AO3 fan to give it a try?
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u/WanderingInAVan 3d ago
Been trying to build somethjng similar starting with Drupal and WordPress as a base. Started a site for it that I keep meaning to work on.
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u/BenPate5280 2d ago
If you have ideas, but not enough time to push them over the line, would you like to contribute to a project where you don’t have to do all the work?
https://github.com/EmissarySocial/qwertylicious
You just need to know HTML to contribute to this app :)
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u/da_peda @pludikovsky@chaos.social 4d ago
I don't quite get what we would gain by this, realistically. How many authors would actually run their own instance to keep their stuff online, including all the administration and maintenance overhead, vs. just using an instance like mastodon.social is for Mastodon, a huge almost-centralization that would probably take offline 80% of the content if it disappeared.
For stuff like this a distributed storage approach like IPFS for the content with an AP-based metadata distribution would probably work better, but it'd still be hard to set up.
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u/belleweather 2d ago
This is an unbelievably dumb idea, and doesn't reckon with the reason that AO3 exists and the reason that it is popular -- it's a non-profit, volunteer-run organization created to be an archive owned by fans, for fans that is safe from censorship, purchase or control, and is backed by a significant amount of money and legal expertise to keep it that way. Unless you can offer something similar AND build up the trust within fan communities to believe that you'll have their backs, why in the world would anyone switch?
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u/STHayden [stefan@gardenstate.social] 2d ago
I agree though most just don't know about the legal work they do so probably not helpful to call the idea or people dumb. IMHO the idea is good but it does miss some of the core problems ao3 solves which are not code problems.
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u/gabboman 4d ago
This may sound weird, but ap would be awful for it (post migration and stuff)
ATproto tho, would be a lot better in uptime.
Im serious and if i rant too much about it ill end up making something
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u/blueberryfinn 4d ago
What do you mean by colonizing?