FanLib V2.0?

[merrily]

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.

Comments

[christycorr]

Huh. That's so strange. It doesn't look as creepy as fanlib, but it's definitely just plain weird.

[merrily]

I find this creepier than FanLib, actually. The FanLib guys didn't mean for us to find their B2B website (where they talked about the truckloads of cash they were going to make from fans), nor did they expect us to notice or care that their Board of Directors was made entirely of non-fan men. Thing is, though, they didn't hide that stuff.

With this one, I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop.

[sabinetzin]

The thing that makes me not think this is a corporate entity is how truly bizarre the combination of fandoms is. I can't find anything to link them- SG-1, but not SGA or SGU? The Mummy franchise? Chuck? Half these shows aren't even ongoing.

It's just weird. IDEK.

[merrily]

Indeed, the mix is totally bizarre. Is that a picture from The Crow? And from Charmed? And what's the Mr & Mrs thing -- is that supposed to be Mr. & Mrs. Smith the movie, or that short-lived tv show, or what?

My nose still says corporate, though. It's on a standalone paid domain (wouldn't fandom people opt for the free choice, most of the time? or make it branch out of their own, personal website?), and Ghost Whisperer is the largest graphic. Which makes no sense.

[sabinetzin]

Okay. I sniffed around, cause I was getting curious. Domain is registered to a private individual. The individual (I don't want to pass out their name, though, I mean, it's right there in the whois) appears to be connected to fandom. Likely used to hold the LJ account thrallofwriting which was used to mod at least one Whedonverse community. Looks like the awards were already extant on proboards and this was just a move. Pretty sure they used to be here: http:/fanficawards.proboards.com/index.cgi?

And this is her fic comm: http://community.livejournal.com/gabbysfics/profile (Gabrielle Channing is clearly a pen name, so I don't feel bad about passing it around)

[merrily]

Okay, got it. Am sending her a note, asking her to clarify stuff.

[ljc]

And she's now deleted her journal.

[merrily]

Is there any way to tell when a journal was deleted?

[sabinetzin]

I can't actually find any comments/posts from her after late 2007.

[merrily]

Running a fanfic awards site as your exclusive contribution to fandom seems. I'm not sure. Limited?

[sabinetzin]

Yeah, I, uh, stand by my previous diagnosis of "whack-job".

It looks like she does or used to run a whole lot of other stuff- claiming comms, prompt comms, and the like- in a whole bunch of fandoms. I think she used to write, too, but after 2007 I'm only finding RPGs and fic awards. I think she also just opened a new journal at Vox.

And, JSYK, I am having way too much fun with this.

[sabinetzin]

Actually, I don't think that's new. It appears to have been deleted some time ago.

[merrily]

Have sent a note to her email addy asking her if she'd like to comment to provide us with some clarification.

[merrily]

Her hotmail account has been deleted too.

[sabinetzin]

Well, that was stupid. She used it to register both her domains. She's also thegabbster/thegabbster.us (possibly taken down?).

[merrily]

Both those are inactive.

[sabinetzin]

That should've been thegabbster which is deleted (though I found a "Hi this is thrallofwriting" comment from it). Not sure what's up with the site, Whois says it belongs to the same person as wordsonthewind.us and is pending deletion.

[sabinetzin]

Okay, okay, I finally ran her down. She's nowcarpediem.

[merrily]

You're a freaking net magician.

[sabinetzin]

FEAR MY WRATH.

Really, it was all google and WHOIS. People don't know how much information they leave lying around.

[merrily]

This immediately made me wonder how much information I've left lying around, but it turns out that WHOIS doesn't have my name on file. It just refers the viewer to the Canadian Internet Registration Agency.

[merrily]

How do you figure stuff like that out?

[sabinetzin]

Making connections. WHOIS gave me her email, email gave me her 1st lj, 1st LJ gave me her handle, messageboard posts with handle gave me her penname, old comment gave me her 2nd LJ, 2nd LJ gave me her Vox/myspace, penname gave me her ff.net account, ff.net account gave me her current LJ.

But, really, she didn't make any sort of real effort to keep them separate, which made it easier. But that's a suspicious amount of mess to have to go through just to find out who runs an awards site.

[merrily]

She should really have just put up a "who I am" section on the site proper. Then no one would've cared.

[sabinetzin]

Seriously, though! A simple, "Hi, my name's so and so" and I wouldn't have even thought of looking like this.

[inalasahl]

Amazing tracking work on your behalf, though!

[merrily]

Oh, I just rattled people up. :-)

[inalasahl]

What's paranormal about Mr. & Mrs. Smith anyway? Aren't they just normal human assassins?

[merrily]

*muses* They are rather preternaturally beautiful.

[princessofgeeks]

sg_fignewton actually communicated with them and chose not to participate. you might ask her about her experience.

[merrily]

Thanks for the tip! I'll ask for details.