otw_news | Links and Comments collection post

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Links and Comments collection post

This has been an exciting and interesting week for the Organisation for Transformative Works. Thank you for all your interest! We have been avidly following the comments, links and discussions in and arising from last week’s posts.

While we may not be able to reply to each comment, please be assured that we are reading each comment and suggestion and following the discussions in various fannish and non-fannish forums.

We would love to hear from you if you read or hear of further discussion about OTW and related subjects that you think are of interest to us and other fans.

To make contacting us a bit easier, as well as e-mailing us, you can also comment to this post to leave us links, thoughts, ideas and questions of all shapes and sizes! This post is also linked in the sidebar as "Links & comments collection post" for your convenience.

Our del.icio.us account:

http://del.icio.us/otw_news

is also being updated with interesting fannish and non-fannish articles and discussions as we find them. Please come and browse our del.icio.us if you are interested.

If you have a delicious account, you can share links with us by tagging them for:otw_news and we’ll receive them.

We link to open posts and articles but if we have linked to your journal or blog and you do not wished to be linked, please drop us a line at comrel@transformativeworks.org and we’ll remove it.

Thank you!

--

femmequixotic,

bethbethbeth,

ciderpress,

mirabile_dictu,

shrift,

svmadelyn
Community Relations Committee

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Just to clarify... is the Delicious account intended to fulfill basically the same function as

metafandom? I don't have an account myself, but if this is where the interesting links are going to be, I suppose I may have to get one.

Hi! I'm actually the one in charge of the delicious account and I'm currently bookmarking links (from news media, blogs, journals etc) that mention OTW or transformative fanworks (such as Scrabulous!) which of interest to the organisation and to our supporters and observers.

It isn't as panfandom as

metafandom and isn't as lj-centric (hopefully!) in the search for discussions.

You can read our delicious here: http://del.icio.us/otw_news

:)

Thanks for clarifying. This makes perfect sense--serves me right for posting before I had my cup of tea this morning! :)

metafandom mod poking in *G*

Basically what she said. Figure it as the metafandom of OTW? (Note: I do not speak for OTW). Metafandom isn't ready to compile all meta that is fandom related on ALL of the internet so we'll miss a majority of the OTW posts outside of LJ and its clones so assume there won't be a huge amount of overlap, if that's what you're worried about.

you beat me to it! (what are you doing up at this hour *G*)

Thanks! Makes perfect sense now. :)

I just wanted to say that I haven't be commenting, but I have been following along, and I am so impressed with you all, your courage, intelligence, and thoughtfulness. Thank you for what you are doing.

Don't know if you have this yet or not:

http://leegoldberg.typepad.com/a_writers_life/2007/12/fannish-rights.html

I fully support OTW's mission, and say *three cheers* to all the impressive and tireless work that has brought us this far.

However, this all started with the dream of an "archive of our own," and in my opinion that's still what fandom wants most. The viability of this endeavor rests on the success of the software, and whether the archive (and the org more broadly) appeals enough to reach the "tipping point" that would make it fandom's (or fandoms') de facto new home.

My humble suggestions for how to nurture the archive, abridged version:

1. PERCEPTION

a) More frequent updates about the progress of the archive, along with more frequent opportunities for open participation.

b) Creating a space (separate from otw_news) focused ONLY on the discussion and development of the software/archive, where those who are indifferent to or alienated by the larger vision of OTW can feel more welcome (this could be a platform for the more granular progress reports and participation suggested in (a)).

2. DEVELOPMENT

a) Mobilizing existing tools (whether fan projects or general open source CMSs) to expedite the process. I'm concerned about a potential greatestjournal/insanejournal/journalfen situation, where the presence of several competing systems with different but comparable strengths and weaknesses results in NONE of them taking off. It's crucial to get the software out while the time is ripe, to head off similar projects.

Overall: we have an incomparable reservoir of passion and resources in fandom, and an incomparable model of decentralized development in open source, and in my opinion OTW should try to open up the flows between the org and these strata as much as possible.

I just poked around technorati and send a stack of for:otw_news links your way. (I checked their delicious history so hopefully not spamming you with ones you've already got!)

Subscribe to the technorati search feed! it is most fabulous.

From the Christian Science Monitor; can we get a link up of press posted to the community?

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1228/p09s02-coop.html

***********
EDIT: Wait, it is on the faq *slaps forehead*. But I still think my other point stands: that there's an unstated implication that you only care about certain kinds of transformative works, and that the differences are to do with the kinds of fans who make them, not the level of transformativeness. You can probably leave this ambiguous for a while, and I know you're just starting out, but eventually you're going to have to either embrace fanworks like Machina and home-made lightsaber duels (which could every easily lose the female-safe-spaceness etc), or explicitly exclude them from the organisation. This interests me personally since my fanworks are statues/Harry Potter clocks/fancomics etc, which sit on that art/craft divide, and I came to as a "feral" fan more involved with "male" spaces like webcomics and sf conventions than fanfic etc.

Also, I still think that line of the "Values" statement is rather muddled :)

******
I just read through your faq and it's missing what seems to be a fairly basic question, namely: What is a transformative work? I know it seems obvious but I'm not sure it is, entirely. (Up until now I thought you guys were just about fanfic but now I realise you're not)

I don't mean 'What will be in the archive?', since that's understandably limited by technical/legal etc contraints. I mean the theoretical scope of the works and fancreators covered by the organisation in principle, legally, in PR, in the eventual journal articles etc.

In the "Values" list you list "media, real person fiction, anime, comics, music and vidding", which seems like a mishmash of sources to transform and the resulting transformative works (I'm not aware of "vids" meaning anything in a fannish context other than "fan made videos", but on the other hand I'm not aware of any fans actually making anime. "Music" just confuses me)

From various metafandom discussions and the "What will be in the archive" answers etc (EDIT: and the chat transcript) I get the feeling you include: fanfic (including RPF), fanvids (recut footage), fanart, and podfic

What about fan made fanfic-as-movies or machinema? Or lego models? Or Harry Potter scarves? Or any of the other many diverse transformative works made by fans? They only occured to me today, but imo they're just as transformative, and often in just as much need of legal protection, academic analysis, and a good home. But they're not remotely part of one community, and afaict aren't particularly female dominated (and certain subcultures are definitely very male dominated).

The statement "We value our identity as a predominantly female community with a rich history of creativity and commentary." implies that you're mainly concerned with stuff like fanfic and fanart which comes from this particular fanficcy subculture (or as the Rockfic etc people would point out, a number of interrelated subcultures) Which is fine (imo), but if this is true then you need to make that clear before you get a bunch of angry male machinema makers complaining that you won't help with their legal fight against Valve or let them on the board. (I think an organisation that really was for all transformative works would also be a great (if even more ambitious) idea, but I don't think that's what you're actually doing)

Edited 2008-01-09 03:15 (UTC)

Thanks for your question about what transformative work actually is, and especially as it relates to the OTW's mission. There should have been a quick acknowledgement that we'd received it back when you posted this, and I apologise that you were left hanging.

Your question is #1 on a list of frequently asked questions which is currently being discussed. An answer should be posted in the next week or so -- Community Relations is working on a big FAQ which will answer many such issues raised by fandom.

As I said in our discussion on your LJ, the ToS will focus on the nitty gritty of what is allowed in the Archive, and what is covered by our legal mission; the ToS documents will be open for public consultation before being officially adopted.

In short, our projects are designed to support each other, so our main legal focus (at least to begin with) will be on protecting the kinds of transformative works hosted in the Archive, whether they are actually hosted there or not. We do want to help fans who are not hosting with us and who are doing other transformative works.

To start with the Archive will accept fanfic, and probably icons and other small works of transformative art. The plan is to branch out from there, and include meta, larger fan art pieces, songvids, etc. Beyond that, the scope may well grow as the Organisation grows, but it's too early to do more than speculate.

A week? Cool! I await with bated breath :) (Also if anyone's reading this and curious, here's the post she's talking about)

Here's a link you might be interested in, supporting the idea of "transformative works":

http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/resources/publications/recut_reframe_recycle/

Thank you!

At this point, I have no idea whether this has already been addressed or not.

I have a delightful author for whom, once the AAOOO is open, I would like to post the fiction she has published in her LiveJournal so that it does not get lost.

Should she decide, at a later time, that she wants one or more of her stories removed from the Archive, is there already a method for this? She has agreed in principle to allowing me this honor, so long as she retains the right to remove.

Yes, absolutely; there's several ways of doing this, but in short, any author can remove her fiction from the archive (or edit it, for that matter) at any time. The AO3 is being designed for author control of fiction. (An author will have other options too, such as to make the fic visible to logged in archive users only, etc.)

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Links and Comments collection post

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