The Gossamer Project is a group of specialty
archives
An archive is an accumulation of historical records or materials – in any medium – or the physical facility in which they are located.
Archives contain primary source documents that have accumulated over the course of an individual or ...
that, combined, contain the vast majority of ''
X-Files''
fan fiction on the Internet.
[The Gossamer Project Help Desk – History of Gossamer]
/ref> In the mid to late 1990s, the Gossamer Archives/Project was one of the "big three" single media fandom
A fandom is a subculture composed of fans characterized by a feeling of empathy and camaraderie with others who share a common interest. Fans typically are interested in even minor details of the objects of their fandom and spend a significant ...
-focused archives on the Internet, and remained the largest single fandom fan fiction archive until the emergence of various Harry Potter archives in the early 2000s.
As of April 2007, the archive contains 35,192 database entries, with stories dated from May 1995 through April 2007.
History
First archive
The original Gossamer Archive was opened on May 4, 1995 by Vincent Juodvalkis after mirroring files from all the older FTP
The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a standard communication protocol used for the transfer of computer files from a server to a client on a computer network. FTP is built on a client–server model architecture using separate control and data ...
sites which collected stories from ''alt.tv.x-files.creative'' (ATXC) Usenet
Usenet () is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979, and it wa ...
newsgroup
A Usenet newsgroup is a repository usually within the Usenet system, for messages posted from users in different locations using the Internet. They are discussion groups and are not devoted to publishing news. Newsgroups are technically distinc ...
. He began collecting/archiving all fan fiction posted to ATXC, and later, from the X-Files Fan Fiction mailing list. In early 1996, an FTP mirror site was set up at the Free University of Berlin
The Free University of Berlin (, often abbreviated as FU Berlin or simply FU) is a public research university in Berlin, Germany. It is consistently ranked among Germany's best universities, with particular strengths in political science and t ...
, maintained by Vera. In April 1996, Vincent posted to ATXC that his archive was receiving over 100,000 hits per week. Because he was worried that the bandwidth consumption was having a negative effect on Ohio-State's network, he was considering solutions, including moving the archive to a commercial site and selling advertising space on the front page to pay for the heavy-duty bandwidth and disk space (235 MB) requirements.On July 3, 1996, Vincent announced the projected shutdown of the Ohio-State site, citing a lack of time and network saturation.
Revival
During the summer of 1996, several alternative sites were created, including Stef Davies's UK site, Adam Lee's Australian
Australian(s) may refer to:
Australia
* Australia, a country
* Australians, citizens of the Commonwealth of Australia
** European Australians
** Anglo-Celtic Australians, Australians descended principally from British colonists
** Aboriginal A ...
site, and Harri Nyman's Finnish
Finnish may refer to:
* Something or someone from, or related to Finland
* Culture of Finland
* Finnish people or Finns, the primary ethnic group in Finland
* Finnish language, the national language of the Finnish people
* Finnish cuisine
See also ...
site. On August 12 of that year, Natasha (aka Kelsy) began the "Gossamer Project", a project to database, categorize and summarize all the currently archived stories,. Originally, her site was only a collection of HTML
The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaSc ...
links to the other archives, but when she found a US-based server willing to host a site with the disk and bandwidth requirements of Gossamer, she launched a full US mirror site. By early 1997, most of the other archive attempts had consolidated under the Gossamer Project umbrella, generally using the database and HTML page generation scripts created by Natasha. Several types of files, including unfinished stories and specialty files (poems, filks, non-fiction) were separated to their own sites. In February 1997, the site on the X-Philes.com server was created as a test site for improvements to the Gossamer database and page generation scripts. On May 31, 1997, Natasha announced the closure of the Gossamer USA (Simplenet) site, and her retirement from archiving.
Reorganization
In June 1997, the Gossamer Project was reorganized. Gossamer X-Philes was opened for public access, and Gossamer Simplenet was handed over to Deirdre from Natasha. Lisa (Gossamer Birdfeeder/story cleanup), Adam (Gossamer Australia), Deirdre (Gossamer Simplenet/story cleanup), Chael (Gossamer X-Philes/technical), Harri (Gossamer Finland), Vera (Gossamer FTP), Amy (Specialty Archive), Michelle (Unfinished and Serial Archive), and Gem (Database Administrator) took over maintenance.
The archives were fully integrated, using the same database of files, containing the same story files, and posting story updates at around the same time. On November 1, 1997, Gossamer Australia closed and Adam Lee retired from archiving. On February 10, 1998, the gossamer.org domain name
A domain name is a string that identifies a realm of administrative autonomy, authority or control within the Internet. Domain names are often used to identify services provided through the Internet, such as websites, email services and more. As ...
was registered, although it was not fully used by the Gossamer Project for another year. In May 1998, after the site was featured in the Yahoo!Life magazine, the site located on the Simplenet.com network was shut down due to its bandwidth usage. The site was moved to Interspeed.com, which then shut it down again for bandwidth consumption 2 weeks later. In May 1998, Gossamer was listed in an article in the Yahoo!Life print magazine, and experienced a traffic spike to over 60,000 hits per site, per day. Two weeks later, Gossamer Simplenet was forced to close by simplenet.com due to the excessive traffic. The site moved to Interspeed.net temporarily, but was shut down again due to excessive traffic within 14 days. On July 12, 1998, Gossamer Germany (Germany.gossamer.org) was opened on the FU Berlin
The Free University of Berlin (, often abbreviated as FU Berlin or simply FU) is a public research university in Berlin, Germany. It is consistently ranked among Germany's best universities, with particular strengths in political science and t ...
network that had hosted the Gossamer FTP archive since 1996. The name choice proved to be a bad decision, as many US-based fans refuse to use a site obviously located in Europe due to concerns about speed and access. In August 1998, a script forbidding deep linking
In the context of the World Wide Web, deep linking is the use of a hyperlink that links to a specific, generally searchable or indexed, piece of web content on a website (e.g. "http://example.com/path/page"), rather than the website's home page (e ...
was deployed on the X-Philes.com server, when it was discovered that (a) the site's bandwidth was too high for its host's liking and (b) that 30% of the bandwidth was being consumed via deep links directly to fan fiction text files from other sites in the community. This script was later deployed to all active Gossamer sites to prevent the bandwidth issues associated with deep linking.On April 1, 1999, all archive names based on networks or locations were retired. Fluky, Krycek, and Skinner archives were opened as subdomains under the primary gossamer.org domain name. From June 1998-2000, the Gossamer Project was booted from other servers due to bandwidth consumption and other related issues. Due to a 1999 decision to group all sites under the gossamer.org domain and "redeploy" the same subdomains to new servers, the loss of these various servers did not impact the user community as earlier shutdowns had. During late 1999 and early 2000, the Gossamer archives received, on average, 1,000 direct e-mail
Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic (digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" meant ...
, newsgroup and mailing list submissions a month. The archiving team fell behind for many months, resulting in more than 8,000 files being archived during 2000. From that high water point, the submissions rate has gradually fallen to a current rate of about 600 submissions per year. From 2000-2007, there have been several archive moves, but few events that have had long-term effects on the archive or readers. In 2001, the Gossamer Skinner name was retired and eventually replaced by Gossamer Tooms, due to the unreliability of the servers that had hosted Skinner over the years and to note the acquisition of a commercial dedicated server
A dedicated hosting service, dedicated server, or managed hosting service is a type of Internet hosting in which the client leases an entire server not shared with anyone else. This is more flexible than shared hosting, as organizations hav ...
for Gossamer usage.
In the media
During the late 1990s, the Gossamer Project was noted and discussed in several major media outlets, generally in lifestyle articles focused on the media fan fiction phenomenon emerging online. On August 18, 1997, the Gossamer Project was discussed in an article in the ''New York Times'' which focused specifically on the X-Files fan fiction online. This article included a description of the archive, and the article's primary image was the front page of the site. In May 1998, the Gossamer Project was highlighted in a fandom-focused edition of Yahoo!Life, resulting in an extreme increase of traffic to the sites. While this brought attention to the site, it also resulted in negative effects, including the most popular mirror site being removed from the server it had been on for several years due to bandwidth abuse. In later 1998, the Gossamer Project was mentioned as the primary X-Files fan fiction archive online in an article in Pitch Magazine. In the December 1, 1998 edition of ''Entertainment Weekly
''Entertainment Weekly'' (sometimes abbreviated as ''EW'') is an American digital-only entertainment magazine based in New York City, published by Dotdash Meredith, that covers film, television, music, Broadway theatre, books, and popular cu ...
'', the Gossamer Project was mentioned in the Writers Bloc sidebar for the article ''Fan Fiction: Out of Character'' by E. Klotz and the front page used as the primary image for that section. The Gossamer Project was also mentioned in the April 29, 2001 article ''The E-Files,'' by Nancy Schulz, published in ''The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...
''.
Online Discussions about Gossamer
In recent years, the Gossamer Project has become a touchpoint for nostalgic discussions among fans about "the way things were" before the emergence of FanFiction.net
FanFiction.Net (often abbreviated as FF.net or FFN) is an automated fan fiction archive site. It was founded on October 15, 1998, by Los Angeles computer programmer Xing Li, who also runs the site. It has over 12 million registered users and hos ...
and the ongoing decentralization
Decentralization or decentralisation is the process by which the activities of an organization, particularly those regarding planning and decision making, are distributed or delegated away from a central, authoritative location or group.
Conce ...
of single fandoms amongst many sites and forums. The Gossamer Project and the X-Files community represent what is now considered an old style, online fan fiction community: centralized around an archive and a few posting forums, making it easy to find and access the majority of fan fiction posted in that community.
In the online article ''Once upon a time . . . What fragmentation in fandom means to you'' by LJC, media fandom in the mid to late 1990s is described as:
It was the age of The Gossamer Project, alt.startrek.creative, and LISTSERVs. It was a simple world, a happy world, a world before bandwidth and advertising revenues ruled the Internet. When it was easy for fans to find what they wanted, because there were huge glowing neon signs pointing them towards Mecca at every bend and fork in the road. We were all pilgrims on the same road.
and specifically refers to the Gossamer Project existence today:
The Gossamer Project began in the spring of 1995, and survives today by mirroring to avoid bandwidth hell. It is still the #1 place the majority of fans read fan fiction for X-Files, and continues to grow due to longevity and brand awareness. Everyone knows about it, and everyone can find it. It's got one helluva big neon sign that shines awful bright.
The Gossamer example has had effects on other fan fiction communities, with many archives describing themselves as the "Gossamer" of their fandom, or with readers looking for the "Gossamer" of the fandom. In the blog post, Confessional, on the blog A Southern Girl's Guide to Almost Anything, the writer bemoans the lack of centralization she was finding in '' Star Trek: The Next Generation'' fandom by asking "Was there no organization in that fandom? Where's their Gossamer, the X-Files massive fanfic archive?!"
Academic Discussions about Gossamer
In the paper ''Coming Out as a Fanfiction Writer'' presented at the Western Australian Science Fiction Conference in 2001, the Gossamer Project is used, along with FanFiction.net, as an example of one of the largest online fan fiction archives.
The Gossamer archive for X-Files fanfiction (probably the largest fanfiction archive on the internet for a singular show/ movie/ book and probably the largest fanfiction archive next to Fanfiction.net, has approximately 25,000 stories on the archive. Nine thousand of those stories were received in the year 2000 (the archive started in 1994/5) The archivists add anywhere from 400 - 900 stories an update and the updates happen about twice a month.
In an article entitled "Gender and Fan Culture (Round Eight, Part One): Abigail Derecho and Christian McCrea" posted to Henry Jenkins's blog on July 26, 2007, the Gossamer Project sites and its sister project Ephemeral and their impact on online fandom and fannish history were discussed:
For all who might think that posting X-Files fanfic to the ATXC board did not really constitute a technological innovation, I say this: the ATXC and its successor, the Ephemeral/Gossamer archival system, have proven over the last dozen years that a simple open-source PHP archive of HTML documents will outlast a lot of other hypermedia creations. While gamers hunt down emulators, fans of hypertext literature long for a working installation disk of Mac Classic OS, and digital historians cry over numerous broken links and four-year-old Flash animation that just never loads all the way, readers of online fan fiction sit back and enjoy the plain-and-simple HTML, reliably archived and presented in neat rows and columns for their pleasurable consumption for years to come. If that isn't technical genius, I don't know what is.
References
External links
The Gossamer Project
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gossamer Project, The
Fan fiction
The X-Files (franchise)