Cancelled & ReOpened Fanlistings

[Marilyn]

Hello,

I just discovered that the Samurai Champloo fanlisting I joined is no longer TAFL approved. It looks like it was shut down due to not being updated, and a new one has opened. The old one has over 800 members, and the new one only 27. There has got to be a better way for members to be notified that things like this happen. If the point is to have a list of fans all in one place, now you have 2 lists, and since members don't know that the listing was movied, they'll continually link the old one.

I'm just wondering if this issue has been discussed before. I wouldn't have minded if the new FL owner just took my email from the old listing & sent me an email saying to rejoin because the other one was no longer approved. Are owners allowed to do that? Just wondering what everyone's thoughts are.

[Mitchii]

I'm not a staffer, but I would like to answer that, because i encounter that (3 times in fact). I'm the new approved owner but the other fanlisting is still up and accepting members and the worst part is that is where the fans join. The TAFL said that any person can built a fanlisting regardless if it is approved by the network or not, so the owner of that "800 members fl" is still can run it, accept members, etc..like a normal fanlisting owner do, but if I were the owner i would like to removed the TAFL approved link because it is not anymore, and so the fans wouldn't be confused.

As for the new approved one, if that owner can contact the previous owner to share with her/him the members list that will be great (because that is what I do), and put it up in his site. To increase it's member, make a little effort of plugging his/her site, like in this board or other place where fans can take notice and might join.

Sometimes owners neglect their fanlistings, and eventually abandoned them, because we have other important things to do aside from running our fanlistings (Real life calls them). And about being united? the network priority (I hope I did make right about this) is to make the fanlistings (and fans for that matter) united as possible. And for me it is much formal if you were approved but anyone can built a fanlistings, it is for fans and uniting them. Well, that's my view...

[Kylara]

There is nothing really that we as staffers can do about it.  We do not have access to the members list to give to new owners or to contact and let know the fanlisting was removed.  Additionally, we cannot require that people who own fanlistings contact members upon a fanlisting being closed/adopted/removed or even moved, for we would have little way of verifying that it is done.

If you want to contact the previous owner you may, though some people would be offended by it.  It would be nice if they would give you the members list and remove their fanlisting, or at least remove the link to TAFL, but there's nothing anyone can do about it.  Who knows, maybe the reason the fanlisting was removed was for neglect and the owner hasn't been online in months--in that case, there is little chance anything will ever happen with the fanlisting until the domain expires.  

I would suggest joining webrings/cliques and affiliating your fanlisting with related subjects--owners of other fanlistings don't always realize when things are removed/closed either!  However, most would be happy to change their affiliation to the new TAFL approved fanlisting ^^;;

[Jackie]

Kylara's covered most everything :]

Basically, TAFL doesn't own the members lists, and we don't have access to anyone's members lists.  We can't force website owners to give us the lists, to email their members about no longer being approved, or to remove the TAFL links from their sites if they are no longer approved.

There is no network policy on using member lists from previous FLs.  As Kylara said, you can contact (NICELY is best) the previous owner to inquire about using their members lists, but they are not required to assist you or respond to you.  Speaking for myself, not as a TAFL staffer, I would not use an old members list unless it was very clear that the FL had been abandoned and was no longer updating - AND I would try to contact the owner first.  Some people prefer to email members of abandoned FLs instead of adding them directly.  Also, Kylara has posted good suggestions on promoting new FLs to get more members :]

Keeping track of the Updates blog is probably the best way to be notified of removed, moved, and newly added fanlistings.  (We have RSS feeds for the Updates blog and the individual categories, too, for those who like using syndicated feeds.)  Again, since we don't have access to members lists, we would not have any way of notifying members of the FLs being removed from the network or moved.  (And even if we did have the members lists, we would not be able to email thousands of members every day to notify them of removed FLs.)

[Marilyn]

Oh I understand that the staff has no obligation to do anything about it, nor should they, you are all busy volunteering for this already! I think in this case its possible the person hasn't been online in awhile - but thank you for letting me know about the RSS feed. I think I'll do that and just try to pay more close attention!