Entry tags:

fanlib-offends-me

inalasahl tipped me off to the following somewhat disturbing event:

Several people (not me) have received invitations to nominate fic on a new site, Words On The Wind, which purports to be a fanfic awards site, for fanwork in paranormal fandoms.

If you go over and click around, you'll notice a couple odd things:

1) It doesn't seem to have a connection to any known fandom entity.

2) There's no "about" section.

3) The graphics on the site are referencing an erratic hodge-podge of fandoms - the largest picture, for example, is from Ghost Whisperer -- but there's no graphic from Supernatural. Which seems like a bizarre omission for a site whose mandate is to run award nominations for fics from paranormal fandoms.

4) Comments have been turned off on all entries (it's running on Wordpress, so parts of it are nominally bloggish)

5) The only way to get in touch with the maintainers is to use forms -- there aren't any email addresses associated with the site. (I read through the source code too, just to check.)

When comments were still turned on on the entry called "Week 1 Update", I left a short, two-sentence comment (linking to my livejournal site) asking who Words On The Wind was, and what their fandom connection was. I mentioned that after FanLib, I was wary of participating in stuff that appeared from nowhere.

My comment got deleted an hour later. The mod didn't contact me at the email address I left, either.

So. Who's got more deets? I admit to being overvigilant against FanLib-esque incursions, but hey, there's a reason we don't like those guys.

ETA: Go go gadget fandom! A mere couple hours later, sabinetzin figures out there's a probable connection between Words On The Wind; the former lj journals thrallofwriting and thegabbster; and the mostly inactive lj comm gabbysfics. It is also probable that Words On The Wind is the reincarnation of this proboards account.

We also found out that the domain name for Words On The Wind is registered to an individual, not a corporation, and that the email account used to register it has been deleted.

In addition, I've heard from a couple of people who were approached and asked if they would let their fic stand for nomination (some of them did, some of them didn't). I find this comforting vis a vis checking the site's bonafides, because it means that the site was following award protocol and wasn't just, you know, linking to all and sundry in an attempt to get traffic.