OTW News Reader Comment Period

[otw_staff]

The OTW Communications Committee periodically reviews its news distribution process to best balance volunteer workload and the maximum reach possible for readership. This review has shown that for some years now there has been little to no engagement here on Dreamwidth.

However readers on Dreamwidth are capable of utilizing RSS feed accounts. On Dreamwidth, OTW news can be found via the otw_rss_feed and there is a separate account for the AO3 News blog.

The Communications Committee is proposing to stop manually adding blurbs and links to this account, and instead redirecting readers to subscribe to the feeds. This account will not be deleted, so its archive will remain open. It simply will not be updated.

Today begins a 2 week feedback period from readers regarding this change, letting us know how many people are still reading, and what reasons those readers might have as to why the feeds would not serve the same function.

If you do comment, please let us know how long you have been reading this account and how often you click through to the website to read the full news posts. On June 24, we will post again with a decision.

Thank you for your interest in OTW news!

Comments

[tei]

DW is the only place I see OTW news posts. I think this is a valuable platform for the OTW to be on, but from what I can see the main difference is just that the RSS version is uglier, so I guess do what you need to.

[bluedreaming]

The RSS feeds seem to auto-delete, from what I can tell, so it functions only as a way to subscribe and not any kind of record.

There are a lot of feeds on the otw site (such as the board meeting minutes) that aren’t part of the main rss and aren’t even visible from the main page. It might be appreciated if this account could created feeds on dw for all of them and highlight that in a post, so that dw users are aware of all the feeds and can choose what to follow. (Hard to follow something if you don’t know it exists.)

Also, the only place board meeting announcements are announced is Twitter, which doesn’t even has rss. So if the move to stop posting directly to dw is meant to better balance volunteer labour, I’d like to respectfully request that a trade-off benefit would be to post the meeting announcements in at least one other place that isn’t Twitter and to which people can subscribe. (Whether that is dw, or a feed from the otw site, or something else.)

[muccamukk]

Seconding all of this. I don't use twitter, and never hear when board meetings are happening.

I also only ever see news on DW, and would prefer that something that kept a record and is easily searchable remained active.

[vriddy]

I always read the posts, and have been reading since I created this account in 2020, I think this was one of the first comms I followed :) I do read and click through most news items, though I don't comment in either place. The comm is helpful to learn about updates and is the main way I do hear about them. It'd be a bit sad to lose the proper Dreamwidth comm, especially at a time when other fandom spaces like Twitter are getting more hostile, though I can follow the RSS feeds. There's something weird going on with the feeds where old posts get pushed to the feed again whenever there's an update, so the comm is nice to make sure the new stuff does surface and not miss it.

[princessofgeeks]

Please don't stop posting here!

It's my only fandom home. I am not on Tumblr, Instagram, etc. I also do read the OTW's own website.

I read every post you make on Dreamwidth although I do not comment very often.

[autobotscoutriella]

I've been reading this account for a couple years now, and always click through to the full news posts! This is the primary place I see OTW news, and I'd be a bit bummed to not have it. (I rarely, if ever, use Twitter, though I do sometimes spot a post on Tumblr.) That being said, if it's an issue of balancing volunteer workload most effectively, I'd be willing to work with the RSS feed option - I'd certainly prefer that slight inconvenience to overloaded volunteers. I think Dreamwidth is a valuable place for the OTW to have a presence, but I also understand it's not necessarily where the bulk of interested readers are.

[hannah]

I'd also prefer the OTW continue to use DW news posts. I use DW and I don't know how to find the RSS feed.

[ratcreature]

I don't use a RSS feed reader. I don't engage here, but I do click if it looks interesting. If the news weren't posted here, it would just slide off my radar, as I don't use Twitter enough to see all tweets of accounts I follow.

[havendale]

Right now this comm is the main way I access OTW news. I tend to miss things when they’re posted on Tumblr.

My feeling is that while DW is fairly quiet generally at the moment, it remains a fallback for a lot of fans when other platforms go under. Given that the future of several platforms looks a bit uncertain (Twitter and Reddit in particular), it’s possible there’ll be an increase in activity here at a future point.

[azurelunatic]

I would prefer that communication through this community remain.

I don't remember when I subscribed, and I almost never click through.

[beleghir]

I've been following this account for several years; it's the only place I see OTW news. I click through to the website for roughly 1/3 ~ 1/4 of posts, based in large part on the content of the blurb and whether the topic appears to be of interest.

Regarding engagement, I never comment on DW because that's not where the actual news post is - it makes no sense to me to comment anywhere other than the website.

I know blurbs aren't a trivial amount of work, but I find them very valuable and I would be dismayed to see this account go inactive. The lack of an archive for RSS feeds is a major drawback, and I would be unlikely to switch over.

[smilebackwards]

I've been following posts from here for years and I click through to read almost all of them! I do also follow on tumblr but it's much harder to not miss posts there.

[melannen]

I read OTW news pretty much exclusively here! If I feel the need to comment I will click over to the OTW site to comment, since that is where the majority of discussion is, but I greatly prefer reading through this account. I would not mind if comments here were redirected to the OTW site, though, if that reduced volunteer needs.

The RSS account would be an OK replacement, but I'd like to make sure that an OTW volunteer would be tasked to maintain it - DW RSS feeds frequently go silent due to minor changes on the originating end, so it would be very easy for DW feed to just disappear without notice if it wasn't being regularly checked up on. Also, would it be possible to tune the RSS feed so that it didn't require a clickthrough? As far as I know it's possible to set whether the feed will show the whole or partial posts, or even have several with different amounts - at least it used to. For-profit/ad-supported blogs require the clickthrough versions for obvious reasons so they've become more popular but I don't see why the OTW one could not offer RSS in full as at least an option?

(It should also be possible to use some kind of automation to crosspost to this DW account automatically without it being an RSS feed; I know it's been done in the past. That would have the benefit of preserving an archive and being far more user-friendly, as well as being a backup if the site blog is having problems.)

And finally I'd like to echo the requests above that if you are moving toward promoting RSS, to make RSS feeds of other important OTW updates more accessible.

[jjhunter]

Seconding all of this! My DW reading page is my main news aggregator; I really appreciate having OTW news available here.

[kiki_eng]

Echoing everyone else requesting that you continue posting here on Dreamwidth. It's a valuable service that I appreciate.

I've been following/reading this account for years* and probably click through to the website to read a post in full 3% of the time. There are some regular features/post types that don't interest me at all or don't interest me beyond the headline, so I don't click through; I don't like ao3_news_feed because all of that text that I don't care about isn't nested and it would clutter up my feed. ...and, yeah, the formatting of otw_news_feed is not great - I feel like I would tend to just scrawl past without reading anything.

*I've been on DW since 2009 and would have started following this account as soon as I realised it was a thing, so 10+ years?

Clarification: the decision is being posted on the same day that the feedback period ends?

[thistleingrey]

OTW RSS has been very unreliable. Originally it was Drupal's fault--I was once a volunteer with shared responsibility for such things, long years ago--but Drupal itself isn't so fragile anymore (ETA and I see that the site currently uses WP). +1 to melannen's suggestion above that if RSS is centered upon, a volunteer be tasked with keeping an eye on it.

That said, I've been reading this manual news account since it was begun (though I can write RSS XML from scratch) because Dreamwidth itself is pretty reliable. As a place to keep a record of posts, it doesn't hide things capriciously via algorithm. If y'all quit mirroring content here manually as a result of limited staff resources, I'll just stop reading OTW news. Thanks for the effort thus far, regardless.

[ainsley]

Please keep posting here!

[heresluck]

DW is the only place where I see OTW news; whether I click through to the website varies depending on the posted summary. I don't know exactly when I subscribed to this community, but probably shortly after I joined DW in 2009, perhaps as late as 2010.

I use DW for other RSS feeds and would be willing to do so for OTW news feeds as well; like other folks, I think it would be a good idea to have someone at OTW check the feed periodically to make sure it's working. And I appreciate the previous comment about perhaps having more than one feed to allow people to see announcements/updates that aren't currently posted to DW.

[havocthecat]

I read the news here, but I don't comment here, I comment on the actual news posts or on AO3, where everyone else is commenting.

Also, as with everyone else who is surprised Board meetings are announced anyplace (they're announced, for real?), I agree those should be announced with all the other news sites, not just on Twitter.

[egret]

Please keep this account for OTW news. I’ve been subscribed for years.

[wolfling]

I don't know if I've ever left a comment on anything, but I regularly click through and read the posts from here. DW is the one fannish site I always keep up with and I would hate to lose the AO3 updates here.

[mistressofmuses]

I rarely see OTW posts elsewhere. I sometimes do on tumblr, but that's basically at random based on whether I happen to be scrolling at the right time. I do not use twitter.

This is about the only place I do ever see announcements, and tends to be where I click through to OTW posts or links. I rarely comment here, because I was under the impression that it was primarily for sharing information rather than a place for discussion, and that the comments wouldn't necessarily be monitored/responded to. If I want to comment, I comment on the actual OTW post.
If any part of the volunteer labor concern has to do with feeling the need to monitor comments on the DW account, then perhaps disabling comments would remove at least that portion of it? That still leaves the need to write and share summaries and make the posts themselves, but at least it's a one-and-done task for each post rather than anything that creates ongoing work.

RSS feeds are fine when they work, but only being able to see posts up to a maximum of two weeks ago is pretty limiting.

Without the DW posts I think it's likely that I'd be in a similar boat to several other commenters: just a lot less likely to see any of the OTW communications.

[makamu]

I concur with very many of the other commentors: as DW is my only fannish home at the moment, I have no way iof reliably getting OTW news on either Twitter or Tumblr.

I usually don't comment here, but would click through to the main site and comment there. So shutting this community down would reduce my exposure to OTW communications drastically.

And may I also second posting board meeting announcements here as well as on Twitter. I am thinking of becoming a member and would greatly appreciate the opportunity to get to know the OTW better.

[zana16]

I read all the updates and appreciate them, but I don’t comment. Occasionally I click through to understand more or see others’ reactions. I don’t do RSS feeds on DW anymore so I would not subscribe.

My advice is about optics. This “Dreamwidth engagement is low” comes a week after a co-founder of Dreamwidth criticized the OTW publicly. There is a legitimate reason to wonder of this is someone in Comms being petty about that. I’d like to believe that has nothing to do with this, but as someone with professional communications experience, I’d have waited six months just to avoid the perception.

[mcbangle]

I read the OTW News posts on Dreamwidth but don't comment (this comment notwithstanding). I rarely comment on most social media posts, so OTW News is not an exception in this manner!

I second/third/fourth/hundredth that I usually find out OTW news from the Dreamwidth posts, and that RSS posts aren't a workable replacement for me. I don't use Twitter and usually access AO3 via an already-open tab so I don't always see new posts on the AO3 landing page.

That being said, I appreciate that you're taking your volunteers' workload into account and hope you find a solution to make AO3 news accessible to DW users without overworking your volunteers.

[gloss]

I always direct my comments to the official post on AO3, but I read here. I didn't realize you were *looking* for engagement here, as opposed to using this as an announcement channel.

[muccamukk]

+1 on not understanding that we were *supposed* to comment here. I thought it was for informational purposes.

[rhi]

I've been reading this almost since you started posting here; I click through on probably 75% of the links. I agree with the others about this is a good place for a repository of the links and for a stable, fallback social media.