Links and Comments collection post

[ciderpress.livejournal.com]

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

Comments

[emily-shore.livejournal.com]

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.

[rubynye.livejournal.com]

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.

[emily-shore.livejournal.com]

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

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

[projectcyborg.livejournal.com]

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.

[hope]

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.

New positive press

[cesperanza.livejournal.com]

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

Possibly very dumb question

[alias_sqbr]

***********
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)

[lynnenne]

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

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

Author removal of fan-posted fiction

[wordwitch.livejournal.com]

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.