From: deirdre@x-philes.com   
      
   On Sat, 4 Sep 2004, Shannon Noelle wrote:   
      
   > Contrary to popular belief, Ephemeral and Gossamer are NOT directly   
   > connected. (I thought they were, too, but Deirdre told me otherwise.) If you   
   > post to ATXC, both Ephemeral and Gossamer normally will pick it up, but   
   > separately.   
      
   :)   
      
   Since Ephemeral posts stories directly to the web and needs a low number   
   of false positives (a low number of posts identified as fan fiction that   
   aren't), its collection spider has always used pretty strict filtration   
   methods. But a low number of false positives generally has the side-effect   
   of a high number of false negatives (fan fiction that isn't identified as   
   fan fiction and not collected).   
      
   When we've used programs to automatically collect ATXC, Gossamer has   
   always had very loose filtration. We don't care about false positives,   
   because they're weeded out by humans during the cleanup process. We want   
   no false negatives, because that's a missing story. (To tell you the   
   truth, ATXC has mainly been collected manually over the years. We've never   
   found an automated newsgroup collection program that worked to our   
   satisfaction and they don't really save any time.)   
      
   Due to those differences in process and need, it was never practical to   
   combine the collection processes. Given the multiple problems we have had   
   receiving mail from Ephemeral over the past few years, I'm glad that we   
   didn't.   
      
   > You can always send stories directly to Gossamer, even if you've posted   
   > elsewhere. They'll archive the version you send directly. :)   
      
   In most cases. If a story comes through multiple forums and one copy has   
   much better formatting than the directly submitted version (this often   
   occurs with AOL users) the better copy will be used.   
      
   Deirdre   
   --   
   www.gossamer.org   
      
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