I could imagine a non-fan (or semi-fan) wanting to make an archive site as coding practice for business or legal archving purposes--fanfic would give you lots of free content, with multiple categorizations, some of which are subcats of others (fandom & pairing are related; genres like angst and humor aren't; fic length, rating and author are other search features people might want).

Actually, yeah, it would be a satisfying coding problem to sink your teeth into. And I could imagine enough writers would come and play even if there wasn't a guarantee that it'd last beyond the initial project... I mean, fanfic'ers are usually a helpful and accommodating bunch, when we're not being talked down to.

It's not sparked by altruism--the people working on it want a stable archive for their own selfish reasons.

Oh, I know. Then again, pure altruism doesn't really exist (well, arguably). But, I mean, archiving is such time-consuming and thankless work - a lot of the times you hear back from people it's because they're unhappy for some reason, while one barely takes notice of an archive running flawlessly. And the scale of what OTW is attempting is just staggering so, while I think it's a really good idea, I admit I'll duck whenever there's a call for volunteers. But I'm glad that people are devoting their time to it. The idea of it is fascinating.