After months and months...
... of hovering at 249 fans, Fleet of Little Ships, the Music of Last Exile fanlisting, has had its 250th fan join up. It's earned a sparkly from TAFL!
I will reapply for this one along with the Dark Schneider fanlisting -- again -- and hopefully this time my form won't get lost. 
| Jun 27, 2008 10:09am | Huzzahs!
Indeed, full circle...
I converted several fanlisting back to being updated by hand, like the good ol' days of 2003:
All In A Day's Work, L/R's Rowe and Jack relationship FL
Word, the Preacher graphic novel series
Lake Superior FL
Final Reckoning, the FL for Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe
A Town Divided, the Kaze no Yojimbo anime series FL
Behind Blue Eyes, the Prince Charming FL from the Fables graphic novel series
Unforgettable, the Lucifer and Mazikeen relationship from the Lucifer graphic novel series
Those seven have such a low growth ratio -- egads, doesn't anybody love Prince Charming or Lucifer and Mazi or that wicked scoundrel Kit Marlowe?! -- that it makes more sense to maintain the lists this way. That's seven less sites I have to keep an eye on for script weirdness and won't have to worry about security exploits or ending up on the troubles list if a mysql database goes down. Now all I have to remember is to update them once a month. 
I've tested the join and update forms and everything seems to be working fine. If anyone should run into any problems, please let me know.
Michele | Jun 18, 2008 9:27pm | General News
Two fanlistings closed
I've closed out the Just the Shoe of Us and Behind the Mask fanlistings. Since fans have just joined Word and All In A Day's Work, I'll keep them open. 
The Griffith and Charlotte fanlisting recently ended up on the Troubles list because the countries.txt file was mysteriously wiped out. Fortunately, that was the only FL affected. I think I might convert some of the small fanstlistings, the ones with 25 and under members, to a manual join and update. In the long run, it just might be easier.
When I first started fanlisting stuff in 2003, I did everything by hand. Then came the wonder of fanlisting scripts...and the problems with security exploits and mysql database instabilities etc etc. If I do return some fanlistings to manual join, it'll be like coming full circle! 
Michele | Jun 10, 2008 3:29pm | General News
Fanlistings to close...
Within the next month or two -- unless someone expresses an interest in adopting them -- I'll be closing down the following fanlistings:
Just the Shoe of Us, the Just the Right Shoe Collectibles fanlisting
All In A Day's Work, the relationship fanlisting for L/R's Jack Hofner and Rowe Rickenbacker
Word, the series fanlisting for the VERTIGO comic series Preacher
Behind the Mask, the fanlisting for Joseph Campbell's The Hero With A Thousand Faces
Invincible Under the Sun, the fanlisting for the manga series Vagabond *
It's not that I'm no longer a fan of the subjects, but with some of these, no one has joined in over a year, and in some cases, over two years.
* This fanlisting has over 300 members and is still moderately active, but I've lost interest in the series and someone who's still an enthusiastic fan should be running it.
Again, if interested in adopting any of these, please email me (link at top and bottom of page.) Even if I end up closing them, I'll keep the list of fans, just in case a new owner might like to add these names rather than start from scratch.
Michele | Mar 01, 2008 1:57pm | General News
Well, I guess I'll apply again...maybe
TAFL listed the awards for the 250 and 500 members fanlistings -- all five of them. Somehow, in that incredible and massive rush of applications, Dark Schneider's must've been lost. Oh noes!
It's not a big deal, but he was my first fanlisting and it took him almost five years to get there and I wanted my sparklies!
Eh, the Music of Last Exile is one fan away from the big 2-5-0 as well, so maybe I'll wait and reapply when that milestone is reached. It'll likely be another year at least before Cowboy Bebop and Alucard/Integra reach 2000 and 1000, respectively. I'm pretty sure I'll die of old age before Saiyuki ever gets anywhere near 5000, and maybe the same holds true for Berserk and Nicholas D. Wolfwood reaching 2000.
I think the popularity of fanlistings has waned considerably in the last year to year and a half. I have about a dozen fanlistings that I should close because so few fans join, but it's hard to do that because I'm still a fan...