delicious, delicious :( (or, the farewell ballad of final fantasy press?)

[renay]

This: Is Yahoo Shutting Down Del.icio.us? [Update: Yes]

This is terrible not only for me, personally, because I have thousands of bookmarks, an entire web-life saved in my delicious account, but because ff_press relies on delicious to operate.

Final Fantasy Press is a fandom newsletter that is simply not sustainable without delicious — we hand-coded from 2005 to 2010, most of the time 30 individual links a day. If you've ever used a fandom newsletter, imagine that: coding everything by hand, for almost five years. We burnt through editors like paper because of it, too. It was just so much work, and when we finally had the ability to use delicious it was such a blessing. A breath a fresh air, a chance to pull in fannish communities across services, to feature different types of fannish work, fanart and cosplay and other types of creations. 2010 has been a good year for the newsletter and we have even more links now. Because of delicious and the freedom it gave us we expanded service to Dreamwidth and DeviantArt and Fanfiction.net and AO3 and tons of other services. There's no way we can do that anymore, manually, without our code that allows us to access the delicious API through our compile code.

There are a few other services out there, but I just don't know how well they would work for a newsletter. I haven't searched yet, but if there's not one, then I don't know, once delicious is closed, how Final Fantasy Press will continue. That is the rotten, gross truth of it. If the staff and I can't find a sustainable solution, the Final Fantasy fandom newsletter is dead. Not that we won't look, not that we won't bust our asses to find an alternative, not that we are going to give up, but I just — I am facing the realization that my fannish life is being impacted by a company who was not and never will be invested in fannish infrastructure. First Geocities, now delicious — I will never, ever trust a Yahoo! product again, ever.

I know we can't be the only fandom newsletter impacted. The burn of it is, it's not just newsletters — it's rec lists, both dedicated and personal, it's fannish resources, links to projects by theme, accounts dedicated to specific fandoms and pairings and kinks. God, recsrainbow, inceptionkinkmeme, the fans whose bookmarks I use when I join a new fandom...the more I think about it the sicker and more devastated I feel.

I have no clue what to do. This is a nightmare.

additional links:
News regarding delicious.com
Goddamnit
Yahoo is shutting down Delicious.com
Bloody HELL [aka @#%**! Delicious News]

etas:

1. Obviously ff_press isn't going anywhere until Yahoo provides hard dates for us to plan around, and we'll still be using it to compile for now, because, well, there's nothing else to do. Keep on keeping on.

2. We're not at risk for losing our bookmarks, because I export our bookmarks from delicious every time we add 500 to our total.

possible solutions for the way our compile code works:

1. diigo has an API, but I have no clue how accounts here work, exactly — I have been poking it a little, and it seems like it's the most similar to delicious?

2. pinboard has an API and an interface that seems straightforward (and the API is very similar to delicious, which, ha, might want to plan on actually INCLUDING the API on YOUR site, not linking to delicious, guys). This seems to most logical solution for us if in the future, based on this entry. I know they're getting hammered right now, though.

3. Scuttle, for self-hosting, which is sad for the social aspects, but theoretically possible for us.

That's as far as I've gotten, research wise. This is very frustrating.

eta part lkahfslhks;lgjs;df: Yahoo Trying To Sell Del.icio.us, Not Shut It Down. My quick thoughts: still suspicious, still curious about long term viability if no one wants it and it dies anyway, has shaken my fannish bedrock, but hope this will buy us some time to develop a real, viable fan solution to delicious, like this?

Even so, I will be backing up the newsletter account erm, quite a bit more often now.

Comments

[ailelie]

I have no idea how well it'd work, but what about creating a shared account on Xmarks? Then only syncing links added to the shared and public folders? Xmarks would work no matter which browser your various mods used.

--

I ran a quick search for the best options. Here is what I found:

Diigo: http://www.diigo.com/
Mister Wong: http://www.mister-wong.com/

[ailelie]

The downside to Diigo and Mister Wong is that you need to log in (FB, twitter, etc work it seems) and/or register in order to view the bookmarks.

[renay]

Even services that require a log in might be useful if there was still an API we could access to see to work with the data. I am striking nothing from the table at this point. *desperate*

[ailelie]

Is this what you're looking for?
http://www.programmableweb.com/api/diigo

Mister Wong does not yet have public API

[renay]

Yeah, public API is pretty much a requirement, I believe. Thanks for that link, I hadn't been able to find one for that site.

[ailelie]

There's also Faviki, which is an up-and-comer this year apparently: http://faviki.wikia.com/wiki/API

http://faviki.wordpress.com/2009/12/01/new-feature-delicious-to-faviki-import-auto-posting-to-delicious-and-twitter/

[regann]

I just saw this and thought "BUT WHAT ABOUT FF_PRESS?!"

I'm so sorry, Renay. We've been LJ friends since almost around the time you started ff_press and I know how much it means to you. I hope you guys figure out some way to keep it going. *hugs*

[renay]

Wasn't I just talking about favorite fannish tools? OH GOD, MY HEART. THIS IS JUST CRUEL IRONY, UNIVERSE.

Yeah, we have! ff_press defines so much about my fannish existence. I have worked so hard on it, I don't want it to die. :(

[regann]

I KNOW RIGHT?

Anyway, I found this post on Lifehacker specifically on migrating delicious bookmarks this morning, which might help? IDK. If nothing else, maybe the commenters know something.

[chaosraven]

http://lifehacker.com/5540019/five-best-bookmark-management-tools

I DON'T EVEN KNOW. There's some talk in some comments about a fan created system or about making the ao3 system more like delicious. This is some serious balls though.

[lassarina]

Google has a bookmarks system, but I don't know much about how to use it. I did discover, in my efforts to make myself a guinea pig tonight, that it apparently wants me to install the Google Toolbar to import my Delicious bookmarks. (By the way: when you export out of Delicious, it only LOOKS like your tags didn't come through. They're an attribute in the href tag of each and every link. they're not gone, they just don't show in the HTML file when you open it. Don't have my heart attack.)

Several of my friends seem confident that *someone* will make an open source variation on this, so keep your fingers crossed...?

AUGH

[auronlu.livejournal.com]

FFPress is probably the reason I have remained active in this fandom when others have fallen by the wayside. it's not that I don't love them, but if I get busy with other things and come back, FFPress is there... it's just THERE... letting me look back at what I missed. (I'm still primarily browsing back issues of LJ, but I do use the bookmarks sometimes).

You guys have put so goddamn many years of work into it. I don't know how you do it. I have put my life and soul into other projects but never helped with this one... I just am so very, very thankful.

I hope and pray Yahoo didn't just kill your baby. You have made such a difference with it.

Re: AUGH

[renay]

Aww, you mean you don't stalk the auron/lulu tag? >.> But it's true, back issues are more useful right now because we're still trying to pull everything in to the delicious account -- ONE DAY it will actually be the collection of all the links. Although now I am so hesitant about prodding people into USING the archive, you know? We've done so much work. Maybe Yahoo! does plan to sell instead of close.

One day we hope to offer "how you can help" things for fans who don't want to compile but still want to lend a hand. We just need to find the time, and this kind of put a dent in our get-up-and-go. :/

[dossier]

the sga_newsletter is in the same boat, though we use a different tool to aggregate links. going backwards to hand-compiling a daily newsletter is too horrendous to contemplate!

your compile code is fascinating, did you write that?

[renay]

That was the first thought I had when I saw the news: not my personal accounts, not all the people I follow for their excellent fic-finding skills, but: NEWSLETTER. Hand coding is horrendous. I have new gray hairs this weekend.

(It was actually sga_newsletter that gave me the idea we could use delicious! Hello, there. :D )

zachariah (my live-in code monkey) fixed the script for us based on code that hermitsoul shared with me by...murklins? FF is definitely multi-fandom (there's at least 20 individual fandoms right now) so the way the the script worked originally was awesome but not exactly what we needed. We just said "HERE'S OUR SPECS" and he performed miracles. I was never sure what he did, exactly, if it was looking at the old script and building something new, or if he just edited it to make it function. It took him a few weeks, at least. Yay, javascript. *g* We still need to source/credit/note changes once it's out of beta so people know whose work it is — I've sent e-mails in the past but I think they got eaten by the spam monster, oops.

I hope the last update on this situation is true. I so hope delicious lives on until fans can find a new ways to operate, which does often take time.

Man, never let me talk about the newsletter or newsletter things, I will not shut up. SORRY. >.>

[sirea1182.livejournal.com]

Wow, this really sucks to hear...of course I know first-hand how much time and effort you guys put into ffpress, it would be horrible to lose all that work. I really hope you can find an alternative!

[renay]

It seems like delicious might not be closing, just being sold to someone else...I really, really hope so. I remember hand-compiling! IT WAS A NIGHTMARE AND I NEVER WANT TO GO BACK. *horror*