TOS/TOU focus group

[femmequixotic]

The OTW is seeking fans from a number of fandoms and countries-of-origin to review the proposed TOU/TOS. Because the document is still preliminary and does not yet address specific content, we are looking for consensus on general principles and other important issues (privacy policies, etc.) so that we will have in place an overall framework and a set of procedures for resolving problems.

Creating this focus group is just one step we're taking before we release the policy for general discussion and feedback.

The draft thus far includes much of what any TOU/TOS does, such as banning ads and asking users of the archive to refrain from putting spam, chain letters, or pyramid schemes on the archive. It explains that the OTW will also require a valid email address from you if you’re going to house your fanwork on the archive.

Even if you’ve already volunteered, we welcome your participation in this focus group as well. We ask only that you not be closely associated with someone on the Board or serving on one of the committees.

Our goal is maximum inclusiveness of content in this archive, so we hope people from a wide variety of fandoms will look at the drafted document and help us craft one that is readable, that leaves room for new technologies, and that welcomes producers of fanworks.

We are not asking for specific content language at this point; in fact, we ask you to refrain from that discussion in this task. That portion will be coming, however, and we’ll soon ask for your help with that as well.

For this task, we've asked volunteers to indicate their fandoms and country of origin in order to ensure a broad spectrum of participants among the focus group members. Members will be selected by the Content and Community Relations committees.

If you’re interested, please respond no later than December 12, 2007 to the volunteer job posting.

---femmequixotic, bethbethbeth, ciderpress, mirabile_dictu, shrift, svmadelyn
Community Relations Committee

Comments

[briarwood.livejournal.com]

You guys are doing fantastic work but PLEASE cross-post these announcements to your communities on other sites. I know it's a lot of trouble, but if you're not going to x-post maybe you could kill those coms and create RSS feeds of this one instead?

I'm killing my LJ at the end of this year and I'm going to miss out on so much if you continue to post only here. I'm not alone - a lot of fen are already ex-LJ, and more seem likely to follow.

[ciderpress.livejournal.com]

Hi,

We have mirror communities on greatestjournal, journalfen and insanejournal (all under the name: otw_news) that we cross-post to as well as a del.icio.us here (http://del.icio.us/otw_news) where we link to our announcements and a twitter here (http://twitter.com/otw_news).

If you have an rss feed reader and would like to follow us through that, just add this feed: http://community.livejournal.com/otw_news/data/rss (http://community.livejournal.com/otw_news/data/atom, if you have an atom reader!).

[briarwood.livejournal.com]

I'm aware of your mirror communities, but are you sure you're actually cross-posting? I have otw_news on my flist on Journalfen and IJ, but Livejournal is the only place I see most of your announcements.

[ciderpress.livejournal.com]

I checked this morning. IJ and GJ are both up to date -- sometimes, we consolidate the announcement and volunteer posts if they are posted on the same day and all posts link back to the original livejournal post -- but Journalfen is behind.

Sorry about that. We normally try to make sure that all updates occur within 24 hours of the original livejournal post -- we'll take extra care to make sure that there is as little time lag as possible.