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

[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.

[kore]

+1

[autobotscoutriella]

I'll second this! This sounds like a good idea.

[zippitgood]

Thirded. I also only ever see OTW news/posts from links on DW.

[runpunkrun]

Fourthing this! I think it's important to have a news source on DW that functions as an archive, and I'd also really love to see OTW Board meetings announced on this account.

[linky]

Fifthing all of this myself! This is very well said and I agree wholeheartedly.

[alexseanchai]

feeds on Dreamwidth only show the most recent two weeks of posts, yes

board meetings get announced? board meetings need to be announced on the OTW site and on Tumblr, and here on Dreamwidth if it stays (if the archival copy of the DW copy is important, then this account needs to get updated too, not just the RSS), and wherever else OTW News posts things

[aurumcalendula]

Seventhing this!

[olivermoss]

This is a good comment. Also, a lot of people don't know how to use RSS.

It makes sense to not have too many different places to respond to comments due to the mental load it can create, but if changes are made a lot of readers will be lost.

I am on twitter, follow few people and have it set to show me only most recent. I still rarely see OTW/DW posts there and rely on DW for actual chronological and a complete lack of algorithms.

[tptigger]

Thirding all of this. I can't deal with Twitter anymore, so I never check it

[elf]

Board meetings are announced on Twitter?

...That would explain why I'm never aware of them. I don't use Twitter. (What other OTW news is only announced on Twitter?)

It would be nice if all OTW news were announced on the OTW site, the place where we own the servers and control the archives. From there, I'd like them to be posted on Tumblr, Twitter (...I guess), and here on DW. I would like them as actual posts here, not the RSS feed that has limited functionality.

Maybe there could be an OTW Mastodon (rather than joining one - so it'd be on OTW servers); that can feed out to other Mastodon instances and may allow crossposting to Twitter.

[bluedreaming]

I think (??) it’s just the one-week-before board meeting (and maybe finance meeting?) announcement, and then the hour before announcement, with a server invite.

I use ifttt to get the Twitter posts sent to my email (because I also don’t Twitter), but unfortunately with the API change that’s now restricted to paid ifttt accounts.

[dawen]

it definitely feels weird that news posts of an archive-oriented organization are not archived anywhere but Dreamwidth (which is potentially being axed). I'd think keeping an archive of it would be a priority, whether it's here on Dreamwidth or somewhere else (or, as elf says, somewhere that the OTW owns the servers and can be assured of the archival status).

[esteefee]

N-thing this. Please continue to post somewhere that a) archives and b) is searchable. Use IFTTT or equivalent automation so valuable volunteer time isn't needed for cross-posting.

[trobadora]

100% agreed to all of this.

[flamingsword]

+1