Attribution of Early SCPs/Other New Archive Information

Summary:

We're getting a lot of new info about the early days.

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Attribution of Early SCPs/Other New Archive Information

Modern_Erasmus 11 Oct 2018 04:10

For anyone out of the loop, this week a massive new internet archive was released this week, and an intrepid redditor with an interest in lost media found what is almost certainly the original 173 thread.

Today, another group of redditors decided to look through the archive to try to find the original versions of a lot of the oldest SCPs, to find authorship of some of the unattributed works, and threads that seem to be pivotal in the foundation (no pun intended) of SCP. This thread is here.

There's already been a lot of good info found, most pertinently being that we now have solid attribution for SCP-011 and 109. Shaggy has already updated the metadata to credit the original author.

Re: Attribution of Early SCPs/Other New Archive Information

Decibelles 11 Oct 2018 16:44

If anyone has questions, they can also feel free to ask me on IRC. I'll do my best to be of assistance.

682/093

Modern_Erasmus 11 Oct 2018 17:54

Gears has long said that the 682 of today was originally much different and less interesting before an unknown editthis user expanded the scope. We now know this user was Epic Phail Spy, with the edit history and Gears' comment here matching up perfectly with Gears' story.

In addition, The original author of 093 appears to be wikidot user TheUnlikelyAce according to this thread. This one isn't as certain, but they were apparently able to show rhett their original draft that matched the original posted version of 093 before NekoChris revamped it. Honestly I think there's an argument to be made that 093 should qualify as an original since Neko's 093 bares almost no resemblance whatsoever to Ace's version (which was just a magic mood ring) but with the current attribution placement it makes sense to replace unknown author with Ace.

Any objections to adding Epic Phail Spy as a coauthor of 682 and TheUnlikelyAce as the original author of 093?

Edit: further digging has found that 093 was originally posted to 4chan anonymously, so we can’t prove for certain it was or wasnt Ace.

Last edited on 11 Oct 2018 20:03 by Modern_Erasmus Show more

Re: 682/093

Decibelles 11 Oct 2018 21:16

Add him as the original writer, Gears as the rewriter for 682, as that is what is most accurate.

For 093, I always believed Ace to be the original author even with no hard proof, but if you wanna err on caution, then don't change the unknown author attribution.

Re: 682/093

Modern_Erasmus 11 Oct 2018 21:40

Given the lack of hard proof I'll leave 093 as is.

It's a bit more complicated than that re: 682 though, as it was originally posted by Gears, heavily expanded by phail, and iirc Gears did a bit more following that too to continue phail's work and make the piece overall more cohesive. I think just listing them as co-authors is probably the best way to represent the situation.

Re: 682/093

Decibelles 11 Oct 2018 21:57

Eh, in that case, I'm just gonna advise to leave it as-is.

The thing about SCP back-then is that the nature of the site no matter its form lent itself to changes like the ones you're describing. When doing a lot of attribution for articles myself I came across a lot of stuff like this, and probably myself shouldn't have noted some of these attributions.

I think keeping it as-is is the best move, as Gears wrote most of it even if it was following off of another user's contributions… that was just the nature of the site then.

Re: 682/093

Modern_Erasmus 11 Oct 2018 22:05

I had already went ahead and added him as a coauthor. Honestly, I think they merit it even if that was kind of the way it was back then. Phail's contributions really helped define the character and gimmick of 682, to the point that in the editthis talk page Gears credits them with making it "not suck" and remembered their contribution all this time to the point that he talked about this at length in his kaktuskast interview a couple years back.

edit: Gears talks about this in his KaktusKast interview at around the 33 minute mark. Among other things, he explicitly says it's not all his and that it was a team effort.

Last edited on 11 Oct 2018 22:17 by Modern_Erasmus Show more

Re: Attribution of Early SCPs/Other New Archive Information

Shaggydredlocks 12 Oct 2018 14:37

For things that we can absolutely verify were posted anonymously, could we use "Anonymous" in place of "Unknown Author"? I think I'd like some concrete distinction between cases where attribution is lost vs being something we never had to begin with.

Re: Attribution of Early SCPs/Other New Archive Information

pxdnbluesoul 12 Oct 2018 17:54

This seems like as good a place as any to post that I'll be hosting a browsable archive of all this stuff on bluesoul.net somewhere, probably viewable (albeit ugly) later today.

EDIT: http://scparchives.bluesoul.net/

Last edited on 13 Oct 2018 00:05 by pxdnbluesoul Show more

Re: Attribution of Early SCPs/Other New Archive Information

Modern_Erasmus 12 Oct 2018 21:19

Awesome, thanks!

Re: Attribution of Early SCPs/Other New Archive Information

Modern_Erasmus 13 Oct 2018 01:52

Per this info, Eberstrom has replaced Unknown Author as the original author of 147 and 402.

Re: Attribution of Early SCPs/Other New Archive Information

Modern_Erasmus 13 Oct 2018 02:59

SCP-014-J's original author is confirmed as OOpart Expert.

So this next one I need some thoughts on: SCP-012's original posting was found and after reading the thread in question via bluesoul's archive I'm convinced it's genuine. That said, it's written by someone with a username we wouldn't allow here “I Think I Feel a Miscarriage Coming On." Thoughts on how to handle this one? Leave as is? Credit anyway? Credit but with the initials? Open to suggestions.

Re: Attribution of Early SCPs/Other New Archive Information

Shaggydredlocks 13 Oct 2018 04:08

ITIFAMCO feels like a good enough middle ground.

Re: Attribution of Early SCPs/Other New Archive Information

Modern_Erasmus 13 Oct 2018 04:52

That’s where I’m leaning too.

Re: Attribution of Early SCPs/Other New Archive Information

Modern_Erasmus 13 Oct 2018 18:30

Gonna link Bluesoul’s archive and findings here for reference. Good stuff!

Re: Attribution of Early SCPs/Other New Archive Information

Modern_Erasmus 13 Oct 2018 23:59

040’s author has been identified as Kain Pathos Crow. This appears to have been an oversight since when I was looking into it I saw it’s listed as such in his author page :P

Metadata updated accordingly.

Re: Attribution of Early SCPs/Other New Archive Information

Modern_Erasmus 14 Oct 2018 08:17

Per this info the original author of 101 is identified as Jo Black.

Original author of 012 is being credited as ITIFAMCO, per above discussion.

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