OTW, our fully furnished fannish city
Dec. 15th, 2007 07:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabThere is nothing I have wanted more than a fannish home on the internet, with infrastructure and diplomacy and representation from all walks of fandom, privileged equally and in a safe space, from where we can stand as one to fight for the legitimacy of our practices AND have a home, where our sisters and lovers live, where we can come back at the end of the day and share our desires and our picspams and porn. I've always envisioned fandom as a kind of sprawling city -- certainly in number and in vocality we are as large and impressive as any subculture, with our own jargon, needs, values, and subcommunities. Just like in the days when het writers railed against slash writers, or slash writers railed against RPSers, at the end of the day, I hope/believe we continue to find more in what unites us than divides us -- hence the need for an umbrella'd home for us all to explore our potentiality as producers of fannish content and our community as it sails toward legitimacy and intellectual ownership.
The OTW site went live, to the expected range of responses from glee to wank, love to hate. And as there are as many kinds of fannish people as there are fish in the sea (or whatever) it's unsurprising -- except for the fact that this Organization is specifically set up to represent ALL OF US.
I know most of the board members of the OTW personally, along with the staff of the academic journal and the legion of fannish volunteers trying to get involved, and while I have tremendously high hopes for the project, there are some significant obstacles standing between the OTW as it is now and the ideal OTW that we can all get behind and feel part of.
1. The academic bent on the part of the board and the site, from the mission statement to the adjunct academic journal, can understandably be interpreted as a kind of elitist vocabulary that not all fannish folk are discoursed in. Or, in other words, the privileged members of the OTW board -- which can then translate into the environment into which normal folk will be expected to join -- come from a place where fandom and fannish activities are academized, and therefore subject to a level of politicizing and theorizing that only the most rarefied of fandom members participate in. And so it's prohibitive -- folks without an academic background can't be expected to have the vocabulary to discuss fandom in these terms, and therefore they're left out of the political process and may find themselves, and their needs from fandom and feelings about fandom, unrepresented.
2. The OTW has made a very clear stance on its protective and legal acknowlegement of the need to legitimize fannish WORKS, but it lacks the same kind of agenda when it comes to protecting the CREATORS of the fannish work, namely us. In the world of textual theory, the author dies the minute the work comes under scrutiny -- but in our case, killing off the author for the good of the text is actually short-changing what is great about fandom, again, US. The academic journal is called Transformative Works and Cultures, which does address the environment of fannish cultures, but only in an academic or socio-anthropological sense. Rather than that kind of top-down representation of fannish "culture," I think it's much more necessary to have an archive of our own where we can PRACTICE fannish culture, and where we participate for the REASONS we came into fandom in the first place, love, desire, interactivity, community, FUN.
3. And then there's most definitely a percentage of fandom -- probably a large percentage -- that's not interested in being politicized and who don't participate in fannish activities for the textual queering or narrative subversion...but rather for sex! And fun! By linking the OTW archive to the political and legal campaign for the acknowlegement of fanworks, and by linking them both to the TWC academic journal, people who might not have otherwise wanted their participation and product to be coopted into a political agenda will find themselves just that. You know, civilizing the savages who don't necessarily want to be civilized. Sure the culture might do better if democracy was imposed, but, like the US in Iraq, it's not exactly up to one group of "civilized" individuals (in this case the aca-fans who are versed in the language and theory necessary to make the legitimization of fandom into a political and intellectual property issue) to impose one particular breed of legitimatizatin on a wider and more diverse group at large.
4. The archive itself, once it goes live, could really prove or disprove a lot of my fears, and until we can actually start poking around and see what kind of environment we have to move into, there's really no way of knowing if OTW will reach the necessary tipping point to become THE fannish home base. The resourceful programmers among us are working right this moment to construct a brand new open-source infinitely scalable and modular platform for the archive to be built on, which is exciting but also nerve-wracking because reinventing the wheel is always a dangerous prospect. If it turns out that the archive is really primarily an ARCHIVE, then, while it will indeed be an organization protecting (and housing) transformative WORKS, it will certainly NOT be the community we need in order to actually migrate from Livejournal. And if the new software DOES include the community-making infrastructure that we've gotten so used to and implemented so well across LJ, the question will become whether it's better for individual fans to work and play in an environment that's specifically fan-based (and therefore welcoming and inclusive) while also perpetrating its own fannish agenda (and necessarily politicizing the "works" on the site and the environment that made them possible) -- OR to toil in friends-locked anonymity on Livejournal, threatened with TOSsing and adult content flags, but party to no fannish agenda but your own. Also, the beta process surrounding the launch of the new software has been remarkably opaque -- I haven't heard hide nor hair about asking for functionality or attributes for the software, nor do I even know where one would go to share ideas about what we (as representatives from diverse and different walks of fandom, anime, RPS, etc) need in regards to our fannish "home."
5. All of this is really about making sure that the OTW -- or any long-term fannish home -- be inclusive rather than exclusive, and that it respect and privilege what fandom does for US over what fandom means for society at large. Or at the very least, these should be two different discussions -- one, what do fans NEED from a home on the internet, and two, what does the WORLD need to know about us and our practices? And then, of course, what are the best ways to marry these two agendas so that, along with the simple acknowlegement of transformative work as both legal and legitimate, we are ALSO respected as creators of these works, growing from a largely female-populated community based social consciousness. This is, to a degree, in the OTW mission statement, but so far we don't know how it's going to play out.
6. And then specifically, there are some problems with transparency as far as how the committees have come about and as far as communication has gone from within the board/committees and fandoms at large. First, the only members listed on the website are the five members of the "ruling council" board, which is great, and though they use their real names they include great fannish cred in their bios (plus most of us know who these folks are anyway) and are doing a good job demonstrating that they're a good set of representatives. BUT, the committees are all closed-door, and even the volunteer/recruiting posts had screened comments and then simply CLOSED when the committees were full, without sharing the information regarding WHO was participating in these committees and what THEIR agendas and projects are. I went over to try and join the Community Relations committee only to find it closed, with no information as to where I can go to either a) participate in development or b) observe the beta process and help tweak it along the way. The fact that there's no access to the beta site or room for feedback at this point in the process is also sort of oppositional and in contrast to the initial inspiration -- an archive of OUR OWN. In other words: what can we do now, as a group and as participants, to make sure that this is a process that is continually shaped based on what it is that we as a group, as a village, need from this home.
7. To wit, this is about participatory culture -- this is about US. The quick turnover from a community-spawned process to a corporate/bureaucratic top-down initiative is sort of contrary to what excited me about the project in the first place, and I can absolutely see how the bureaucratic language could threaten the average fangirl who's looking to get involved but is turned off by the corporate lingo and economics of the site development. Also -- where'd the fun go? We're here for fun, and sex, not just legitimacy, and part of being a creative and dynamic organization means there has to be irreverence, inclusivity, and a feeling of warmth and homeyness to the site; as it stands, we might as well be stock brokers with a cute umbrella.
At the end of the day, the problem with the OTW right now is that it is heading toward a great political and legal organization to protect the intellectual property/fair use licensing of texts as fanwork -- but it's still the organization of transformative WORKS, and not, yet, the organization for CREATORS OF transformative works. The author is dead, the works are protected...and our processes and methodologies are out in the cold, knitting and petting our cats and being lesbians and librarians and cosplayers and gamers and RPSers and fanboys and vidders and so on. In order for the OTW to be a true fannish home, it needs to be a home that we, we women, we writers and fans, want to live in -- not just a political entity that protects our work.
I want to thank the fans who went above and beyond to bring the OTW about, to get organized, to retain legal council, to do the dirty work and research that will be necessary when we're in a position to defend our legal and fair use appropriation of the texts we're transforming. And I also want to thank the programmers and genius kung-fu Python scripters among us who are, as we speak, building the archive software for the OTW's archive and (hopefully) blogging and social networking platform. I have nothing but the highest hopes for this project -- and I'm already feeling the excitement stirring for the upcoming possible fannish migration into a home where we're protected -- a home that loves us! Mostly, I just want to make sure that what we build reflects all of us, in the greatness of our numbers and diversity of our practices of participation, to make textual poaching and participatory fandom a living, breathing entity that's legitimate, respectable, and revolutionary.
ETA: Several comments have pointed out that I've been too heavy-handed on the female-space side while simultaneously trying to preach inclusivity -- whoops! Some irresponsible/flippant language use there on my part; sorry. By "female space" I'm actually lifting that from the OTW mission statement, and from the fact that, insofar as fandom is a gendered entity, this kind of textual poaching is considered "fangirl" behaviour (vs. action figures, comics, and video games, described as "fanboy" behavior -- see also the Jenkins debates on Gender and Fan Culture for more about these linguistic gendered activities, while remembering of course that just because a behavior is considered "fanboyish" or "fangirlish" it's still open to and participated in by men, women, transpeople, etc.) and in the OTW's political statement and much academic work that's written on participatory culture, our breed of ficwriting and production of works has been generally gendered female. FWIW.
On the otherhand, my offhanded "lesbians" comment was not at all meant to be a description of everyone around here, it just came as part of a list that included knitters and librarians -- and as neither a knitter nor a librarian, obviously I don't think that's all we are, I was just, you know, being rhetorical.
Anyway, thanks to the folks who pointed out my oversight -- and I am right there on board with making the OTW protective of ALL walks of fanlife and all methods of participation.
The OTW site went live, to the expected range of responses from glee to wank, love to hate. And as there are as many kinds of fannish people as there are fish in the sea (or whatever) it's unsurprising -- except for the fact that this Organization is specifically set up to represent ALL OF US.
I know most of the board members of the OTW personally, along with the staff of the academic journal and the legion of fannish volunteers trying to get involved, and while I have tremendously high hopes for the project, there are some significant obstacles standing between the OTW as it is now and the ideal OTW that we can all get behind and feel part of.
1. The academic bent on the part of the board and the site, from the mission statement to the adjunct academic journal, can understandably be interpreted as a kind of elitist vocabulary that not all fannish folk are discoursed in. Or, in other words, the privileged members of the OTW board -- which can then translate into the environment into which normal folk will be expected to join -- come from a place where fandom and fannish activities are academized, and therefore subject to a level of politicizing and theorizing that only the most rarefied of fandom members participate in. And so it's prohibitive -- folks without an academic background can't be expected to have the vocabulary to discuss fandom in these terms, and therefore they're left out of the political process and may find themselves, and their needs from fandom and feelings about fandom, unrepresented.
2. The OTW has made a very clear stance on its protective and legal acknowlegement of the need to legitimize fannish WORKS, but it lacks the same kind of agenda when it comes to protecting the CREATORS of the fannish work, namely us. In the world of textual theory, the author dies the minute the work comes under scrutiny -- but in our case, killing off the author for the good of the text is actually short-changing what is great about fandom, again, US. The academic journal is called Transformative Works and Cultures, which does address the environment of fannish cultures, but only in an academic or socio-anthropological sense. Rather than that kind of top-down representation of fannish "culture," I think it's much more necessary to have an archive of our own where we can PRACTICE fannish culture, and where we participate for the REASONS we came into fandom in the first place, love, desire, interactivity, community, FUN.
3. And then there's most definitely a percentage of fandom -- probably a large percentage -- that's not interested in being politicized and who don't participate in fannish activities for the textual queering or narrative subversion...but rather for sex! And fun! By linking the OTW archive to the political and legal campaign for the acknowlegement of fanworks, and by linking them both to the TWC academic journal, people who might not have otherwise wanted their participation and product to be coopted into a political agenda will find themselves just that. You know, civilizing the savages who don't necessarily want to be civilized. Sure the culture might do better if democracy was imposed, but, like the US in Iraq, it's not exactly up to one group of "civilized" individuals (in this case the aca-fans who are versed in the language and theory necessary to make the legitimization of fandom into a political and intellectual property issue) to impose one particular breed of legitimatizatin on a wider and more diverse group at large.
4. The archive itself, once it goes live, could really prove or disprove a lot of my fears, and until we can actually start poking around and see what kind of environment we have to move into, there's really no way of knowing if OTW will reach the necessary tipping point to become THE fannish home base. The resourceful programmers among us are working right this moment to construct a brand new open-source infinitely scalable and modular platform for the archive to be built on, which is exciting but also nerve-wracking because reinventing the wheel is always a dangerous prospect. If it turns out that the archive is really primarily an ARCHIVE, then, while it will indeed be an organization protecting (and housing) transformative WORKS, it will certainly NOT be the community we need in order to actually migrate from Livejournal. And if the new software DOES include the community-making infrastructure that we've gotten so used to and implemented so well across LJ, the question will become whether it's better for individual fans to work and play in an environment that's specifically fan-based (and therefore welcoming and inclusive) while also perpetrating its own fannish agenda (and necessarily politicizing the "works" on the site and the environment that made them possible) -- OR to toil in friends-locked anonymity on Livejournal, threatened with TOSsing and adult content flags, but party to no fannish agenda but your own. Also, the beta process surrounding the launch of the new software has been remarkably opaque -- I haven't heard hide nor hair about asking for functionality or attributes for the software, nor do I even know where one would go to share ideas about what we (as representatives from diverse and different walks of fandom, anime, RPS, etc) need in regards to our fannish "home."
5. All of this is really about making sure that the OTW -- or any long-term fannish home -- be inclusive rather than exclusive, and that it respect and privilege what fandom does for US over what fandom means for society at large. Or at the very least, these should be two different discussions -- one, what do fans NEED from a home on the internet, and two, what does the WORLD need to know about us and our practices? And then, of course, what are the best ways to marry these two agendas so that, along with the simple acknowlegement of transformative work as both legal and legitimate, we are ALSO respected as creators of these works, growing from a largely female-populated community based social consciousness. This is, to a degree, in the OTW mission statement, but so far we don't know how it's going to play out.
6. And then specifically, there are some problems with transparency as far as how the committees have come about and as far as communication has gone from within the board/committees and fandoms at large. First, the only members listed on the website are the five members of the "ruling council" board, which is great, and though they use their real names they include great fannish cred in their bios (plus most of us know who these folks are anyway) and are doing a good job demonstrating that they're a good set of representatives. BUT, the committees are all closed-door, and even the volunteer/recruiting posts had screened comments and then simply CLOSED when the committees were full, without sharing the information regarding WHO was participating in these committees and what THEIR agendas and projects are. I went over to try and join the Community Relations committee only to find it closed, with no information as to where I can go to either a) participate in development or b) observe the beta process and help tweak it along the way. The fact that there's no access to the beta site or room for feedback at this point in the process is also sort of oppositional and in contrast to the initial inspiration -- an archive of OUR OWN. In other words: what can we do now, as a group and as participants, to make sure that this is a process that is continually shaped based on what it is that we as a group, as a village, need from this home.
7. To wit, this is about participatory culture -- this is about US. The quick turnover from a community-spawned process to a corporate/bureaucratic top-down initiative is sort of contrary to what excited me about the project in the first place, and I can absolutely see how the bureaucratic language could threaten the average fangirl who's looking to get involved but is turned off by the corporate lingo and economics of the site development. Also -- where'd the fun go? We're here for fun, and sex, not just legitimacy, and part of being a creative and dynamic organization means there has to be irreverence, inclusivity, and a feeling of warmth and homeyness to the site; as it stands, we might as well be stock brokers with a cute umbrella.
At the end of the day, the problem with the OTW right now is that it is heading toward a great political and legal organization to protect the intellectual property/fair use licensing of texts as fanwork -- but it's still the organization of transformative WORKS, and not, yet, the organization for CREATORS OF transformative works. The author is dead, the works are protected...and our processes and methodologies are out in the cold, knitting and petting our cats and being lesbians and librarians and cosplayers and gamers and RPSers and fanboys and vidders and so on. In order for the OTW to be a true fannish home, it needs to be a home that we, we women, we writers and fans, want to live in -- not just a political entity that protects our work.
I want to thank the fans who went above and beyond to bring the OTW about, to get organized, to retain legal council, to do the dirty work and research that will be necessary when we're in a position to defend our legal and fair use appropriation of the texts we're transforming. And I also want to thank the programmers and genius kung-fu Python scripters among us who are, as we speak, building the archive software for the OTW's archive and (hopefully) blogging and social networking platform. I have nothing but the highest hopes for this project -- and I'm already feeling the excitement stirring for the upcoming possible fannish migration into a home where we're protected -- a home that loves us! Mostly, I just want to make sure that what we build reflects all of us, in the greatness of our numbers and diversity of our practices of participation, to make textual poaching and participatory fandom a living, breathing entity that's legitimate, respectable, and revolutionary.
ETA: Several comments have pointed out that I've been too heavy-handed on the female-space side while simultaneously trying to preach inclusivity -- whoops! Some irresponsible/flippant language use there on my part; sorry. By "female space" I'm actually lifting that from the OTW mission statement, and from the fact that, insofar as fandom is a gendered entity, this kind of textual poaching is considered "fangirl" behaviour (vs. action figures, comics, and video games, described as "fanboy" behavior -- see also the Jenkins debates on Gender and Fan Culture for more about these linguistic gendered activities, while remembering of course that just because a behavior is considered "fanboyish" or "fangirlish" it's still open to and participated in by men, women, transpeople, etc.) and in the OTW's political statement and much academic work that's written on participatory culture, our breed of ficwriting and production of works has been generally gendered female. FWIW.
On the otherhand, my offhanded "lesbians" comment was not at all meant to be a description of everyone around here, it just came as part of a list that included knitters and librarians -- and as neither a knitter nor a librarian, obviously I don't think that's all we are, I was just, you know, being rhetorical.
Anyway, thanks to the folks who pointed out my oversight -- and I am right there on board with making the OTW protective of ALL walks of fanlife and all methods of participation.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-12-15 04:10 pm (UTC)I hope that you're doing well. *hugs*
no subject
Date: 2007-12-15 05:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-15 05:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-15 06:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-15 06:27 pm (UTC)All the ComRel committee members are working as volunteers, and needless to say, we won't be serving on the committee forever, which means new volunteers will always be welcome.
In the interim, though, I'll share the link to this entry and see if we can get some of your questions answered (...and maybe see at what point in the process full-scale technical betaing will start...and in what way you might be able to participate now, if you have time).
As far as committee membership goes, though: members' names have been available to the fannish community/general public on all the otw_news sites since September. If you want to check out who's currently on which committee, just click here (http://community.livejournal.com/otw_news/9256.html).
-Beth
cath the fan speaking
Date: 2007-12-15 06:39 pm (UTC)From what I can tell, the two most academic aspects (journal and legal) are at the forefront right now, because the other projects just take longer, I think. In that Scalzi thread, I was annoyed that OTW was reduced to its legal aspect when to me that's the one I expect to engage the least with, and I can understand how it looks like this is all academia all the time when that's merely intended to be a small part connecting to the outside.
I see as working both for connections within and to the outside, and for the latter it helps to play by their rules and have the respective creds. But the larger part will be wiki and archive and the reasons why we're here, and I think right now the infrastructure is getting built for that to happen.
I have to think more about the author/works issue...I'm not sure I fully understand your critique here...
no subject
Date: 2007-12-15 07:05 pm (UTC)I feel that the politicization of all things fannish in OTW is a necessary response to the emergent capitalization of fanwork that's happening all over the place, epitomized by FanLib (the comments to cath's latest entry have a lot about that) as well as to the legal issues which are part of that. That's a big reason why I am all over OTW's purpose, as a fan and as a fan of fandom and as an academic and as a person with a general all-over distrust of everything being about money.
I share most of the rest of your issues, though. 6 and 7 especially. It seems to me that OTW has taken on a corporate non-profit structure without really thinking about whether that's the best for their purposes or about what the alternatives might be and whether alternative modes of organizing might be able to harness fandom's anarchic energies better, and I think that it's causing a lot of disconnect. Maybe it stands out most clearly to me because I know a fair few people who are involved in social justice organizing and who very self-consciously disidentify with the standard organizational models because they think those structures are diametrically opposed to what they're trying to achieve. I know OTW is not a radical social justice organization, but I think that while the corporate model may be essential for the lawyer sides of things it makes no sense for of the rest of it. I'd like to think there could be room for a degree of internal dissent (since there's no way that many fans all share one opinion about the organization!) in the public face of OTW -- a less slick appearance might actually feel more trustworthy.
I don't know whether conversations about that are going on within the organization, but I hope that they are. I would like to think that it approached self-critique the way the most sensible, self-aware fans approached all those racism debates.
no subject
Date: 2007-12-15 08:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-16 01:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-16 03:06 am (UTC)And this makes me sad. If "fandom" moves to a place like this, what about those of us who are fandom's audience?
Also, part of the reason I stay here, on LJ, is because it's not JUST about fandom. Fandom is often the way I meet someone, but it's not the thing that holds us together - that is our common human type things.
no subject
Date: 2007-12-16 08:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-16 10:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-16 10:36 am (UTC)Inclusive and female-space are not the same thing. Inclusive would include men, straight women, and transexuals. The space you seem intent on making is one for lesbian and bisexual women.
Thanks, but no thanks.
no subject
Date: 2007-12-16 10:41 am (UTC)Also, because it's worth saying and important to say: The bulk of fandom is made up of people who do not write, and the people who discuss, read, review, and squee are always going to be the heart and backbone of fandom. Not to mention the people we - the writers- are writing *for*.
no subject
Date: 2007-12-16 11:21 am (UTC)I really shouldn't comment on any of your other points, since I am not affiliated with the OTW and do not know about any of their inner workings, nor can I predict at all how it's going to turn out and what the balance of archive to academic pursuits will be. But I can say that I found the entire process up until now phenomenally transparent and all-including. It's very tough to be this informative when you're building something so big while being scattered all across the globe, or even one country. I've always been very impressed with how they managed that.
no subject
Date: 2007-12-16 11:54 am (UTC)I'm a lesbian slasher but my personal community of fannish friends includes straight women, straight men, bi women (including both my primary and secondary partners), bi men, and transfolk. We are readers, writers, artists and sometimes all three. These are the people with whom I feel safe to do my fannish thing and be my fannish self and I cannot and do not want to consider myself a part of any community that excludes them.
One of the things that I've always found problematical as a lesbian leatherwoman is that people in fringe spaces have this weird tendency to try to find even more fringy people to exclude. I hate to see that kind of thing happening in fandom because I don't want to see fandom lose any of its voices.
no subject
Date: 2007-12-16 12:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-16 01:12 pm (UTC)"Nope, sorry, you can't join, you're not a fanfic writer." It's just that the current media focus seems to be on the legal aspects of what OTW hopes to achieve, which is protection for writers/artists/vidders. I think that legal protection will pay off for everyone, though, in creating a safe space and lessening the chances of random, unexpected deletions and such.
no subject
Date: 2007-12-16 01:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-16 05:59 pm (UTC)It's easy to feel like we, the audience, is being left behind sometimes. And that would be sad! Because we're not just a passive audience - we're the PR, we're the cheerleaders, etc
no subject
Date: 2007-12-16 06:05 pm (UTC)Fandom IS community, and that community INCLUDES THE FREAKING AUDIENCE. Talking to people, sharing thoughts and ideas and making friends and *playing together*, making friends and sharing and talking is what this is all about, for a whole lot of people.
And you're welcome. Thank YOU for speaking up about your concerns, and providing a valuable reminder.
no subject
Date: 2007-12-16 07:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-16 07:35 pm (UTC)Word. Especially to Numbers 1 and 3.
no subject
Date: 2007-12-16 08:05 pm (UTC)Anyway, thanks for pointing this out!
no subject
Date: 2007-12-16 11:06 pm (UTC)Regarding committee transparency, a list of committee members was posted at
no subject
Date: 2007-12-17 05:16 am (UTC)Re:point 6
Date: 2007-12-17 02:13 pm (UTC)Most folks in lj-based media fandom, maybe.
There are tons of fanworks-creating fen all over the internet on other archives, websites, mailing lists, etc in anime/rpf/etc fandoms who wouldn't have a clue who any of those folks are and they would have no special fannish cred in those parts. Which has been mentioned repeatedly already, but it's still a sticking point to some people on whether these other fans and their fanworks have any reason to believe they have anything to gain from OTW (and whether OTW really wants any input/help from them, either).
no subject
Date: 2007-12-17 09:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-18 02:42 am (UTC)ETA: Bah, I'll get this right at some point. :P I forgot to say that I couldn't agree more with what you've said about readers being the backbone of fandom, and I'm sure archive project as well as other OTW projects will offer a space for everyone, including non-writers. There are already a ton of non-writers in the organization and serving on committees, so hopefully that won't be overlooked.
Re: point 6
Date: 2007-12-18 05:34 am (UTC)The point of the bios, I would assume, is to say, "yes, this person really is active in fic-and-whatnot creating fandom"--which is something that none of the newer commercial archives *cough Fanlib cough* are willing to do: they claim to be "fans," by which I gather they mean, "we like to watch Star Trek."
Whether or not you recognize the details or the fandoms mentioned on the bios (I'm not active in any of the mentioned fandoms, although I do recognize them), a fan from another venue should be able to recognize the style of the claims: that that's what a "fannish resume" would include.
Which doesn't directly address the question of "what's in it for me? Why should I give a damn what OTW does, or wants to do?"
As I understand it, they started out wanting one thing:
An archive that wasn't going to yank fanworks or delete user accounts because of some scare campaign by advertisers or religious fundamentalists, nor because a copyright owner handed over a C&D or DMCA complaint.
Not that they'd ignore those--but they'd demand they be dealt with legally, not as "this account might make us talk with lawyers; make it go away."
The legal defense idea came out of that. The blog, out of the realization that fandom doesn't need yet-another-archive that doesn't allow social connections. The wiki... well, everyone needs a wiki, right?
Whether they'll be good at any of these things remains to be seen, and I'm certain nobody involved expects All Of Web Fandom to jump up screaming, "oh thank you OTW; you're EXACTLY what I've been wanting!"
no subject
Date: 2007-12-21 12:57 am (UTC)I think they're trying to do something great and wonderful, but like everything, as fandom is made of people, it's not being executed to everyone's liking.
And I find myself worried at the scrutiny it is drawing from the culture at large to our fun fun hobby.