Should I do a "Classic Fics" column?

[slickrcbd]

Something on CaerAzkaban made me realize that there are a lot of Ranma fans who were not around 20 years ago and missed a lot of the classic fanfics so popular back then.
Many of these can only be found using links to archive.org.

Some years back I did a column on the Yahoo Group (now moved to groups.io) CaerAzkaban for the Harry Potter fandom where each week I would review a fic at least 5 years old that I enjoyed. If I were to revive it today I'd make the cutoff at least ten years.

However, I just compiled and posted a list of oldies for Ranma on CaerAzkaban, but did not go into a lot of detail. Would anybody want me to do a weekly thing for the rest of the year based on that list with a review, or should I just repost the list here as it is all at once and be done with it?

I figure that some of the younger members might not know about some of the fics hosted on the defunct anifics websites (after anifics went down then came back a couple years later without the personal web pages), or the stuff on http://www.fanfic.net (NOT a typo, put it into archive.org), or a bunch of other stuff hosted on dead hosting sites like members.xoom.com or members.aol.com, to say nothing of the loss of Geocities and the archive reocities to the ravages of time.

[Sunshine Temple]

There is some real potential here.

As link rot is a major thing, and content on the internet is shockingly ephemeral.

[Ellen Kuhfeld]

I save everything I read in the way of fanfiction. Got over a GB of Ranma and Ranma Crossovers (including a lot of fukufics). I started reading and saving in the Nineties. I might be able to help in this endeavor. Of course technology changed a lot during those decades, so format and naming are a bit - peculiar - sometimes. There are some real winners in there (like Gabriel Blessing's "Dancing"). Of course if I started reading them to decide which are/were worthwhile, I would fill up several years... A few real high points before 2010 wouldn't be that hard, though. It's amazing how high-speed internet can multiply your reading.

It might, of course, be harder to say where they are now, or even where they were then.

[PCHeintz72]

This has the potential to open up a lot of fics to readers whom have not been reading for 20+ years... assuming you can find valid links (we've lost so much, all the way from Safaspuds, to anifics and other private sites and smaller archives, to anime addventure, and beyond...).

After all, Ranma fanfiction peaked a log time ago (approx 2003-2006 was the height IMHO), even if new stories are still coming out, like just today the new Ranma and Gate Cross by Ozallos

Lets see, just going by my own library and not caring about content or cross.... and for just Ranma stories...

For each year I have stories last updated in for... the breakdown is roughly:
<1994 1 story
1994 1 story
1996 1 story
1997 5 stories
1998 57 stories
1999 33 stories
2000 38 stories
2001 156 stories
2002 205 stories
2003 257 stories
2004 286 stories
2005 230 stories
2006 260 stories
2007 197 stories
2008 182 stories
2009 193 stories (I also had 134 ones I had downloaded from a site not correctly tracking dates, not counting those)
2010 119 stories
2011 86 stories
2012 79 stories
2013 58 stories
2014 57 stories
2015 50 stories
2016 43 stories
2017 23 stories
2018 23 stories
2019 10 stories
2020 25 stories

Those numbers of course will differ for everyone... but it should at least give an idea of a general trend.

[slickrcbd]

This has the potential to open up a lot of fics to readers whom have not been reading for 20+ years... assuming you can find valid links (we've lost so much, all the way from Safaspuds, to anifics and other private sites and smaller archives, to anime addventure, and beyond...).

Assuming you mean sofaspuds, I was unable to coax anything out of archive.org.
I only have these two links in my bookmark file, however archive.org only has stuff from after the site went down:
http://www.sofaspud.org/main/
http://www.sofaspud.org/main/fanfic/Ranma/GirlDays/
Honestly, I can't recall for sure what else was there besides Kenko's stuff.

[Spica75]

However, I just compiled and posted a list of oldies for Ranma on CaerAzkaban, but did not go into a lot of detail. Would anybody want me to do a weekly thing for the rest of the year based on that list with a review, or should I just repost the list here as it is all at once and be done with it?

If you can spare the time and energy, i think it's an excellent idea.

Just bringing it up at all in a forum is also going to have at least some people look who are just looking for good fics in general, and that's nothing but good, getting a few more people finding the decent amount of good Ranma-fics that do exist.