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

[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.