Speaking as someone who'll be responsible for overseeing at least a fair amount of academic research as TWC is under the umbrella of, though not the mouthpiece for, OTW (being as how we have to have scholarly independence to function), I'll try to answer this, though of course there are no easy answers:.
(1) I'm not sure this is what you mean, but fandom has a tradition of meta that ranges from the most offhand LJ comment to the most formal article, and we've always had that spectrum. What's nice is that for the first time, we have it in our own space--we don't have to explain why fan meta or scholarship is worthy or important.
(2) The second point is the one I'm most concerned with and have been battling for as long as I've been a fan doing scholarship on fan texts and fan culture. Recognition and reward are always important, but when they lead to actual external benefits they become more complicated. Of course, I could take the easy out and explain that neither I nor Karen are actually good test cases of this argument since we do not reap external benefits from our work. Neither one of us are academically employed in such a way that would allow publication to grant us tenure or increase our pay. In fact, I used to work in an environment (public boarding high school in the Deep South), where my scholarship had more potential to hurt me rather than grant any form of reward. But there certainly are scholars who are either in grad school or on the job market or tenure tracked or tenured who can and do profit however incidentally from published research. So let's see what that actually means, how they do or do not "use" fandom.
Here's the thing: I'm sure we've all read that really bad essay (or book) where you just want to headdesk and ask the person what they were smoking (and if you have no idea what i'm talking about be happy; if you want a list or PDF files, ask and I'll happily send examples your way : ). Oddly enough rarely are these people "in" fandom! So could we maybe argue that being in fandom and doing academic work actually increases the quality of the scholarship and the accuracy of representation? Now, the argument has been made that outsiders might be more objective, but to me that resonates too strongly with an anti-identity politics argument that feels whites teach African-American literature "better," that straight people are more objective when explaining queer studies, etc. I think that BS when I am the one in supposed objectivity and when I have a supposedly vested interest (like I ever don't).
I clearly don't speak for all acafans, but the thing is: logically, only someone immersed in the community and its values would probably even think about that. A couple of conferences ago I had a long debate with someone (a fanboy :) who hadn't ever even thought about not linking into bulletin boards. After all, they were PUBLIC, weren't they? For me, in a way, being involved with OTW is actually also in a small way and on some level about educating other scholars that there *are* ethical guidelines and internal expectations that they may not be aware of. In fact, when a few weeks ago someone emailed me to ask how to engage with vidders because they wanted to use some vids in their work I was ecstatic! Not only did that indicate that vids were being looked at alongside other things--the fact that they'd realized that just tracking down the vid and discussing them might not be the right thing to do in and for that community was important to me.
(3) The third point has me slightly confused again. I'd love for you to start a public post raising these issues, because I think there's something central you're getting it, but I'm not sure I fully know where you're heading here. In the broadest sense, OTW has a policy of supporting transformative works as legitimate (as opposed to plagiarism, which is claiming other people's work as your own) including remixing, and also supporting fair use both of creative and scholarly kinds. That being said, of course, there are rules as well as conventions, both fannish and scholarly, about how and when to quote, link, remix, and comment, and OTW's broad fair use position shouldn't stop that conversation, even though as an organization, they've taken a clear stand.
no subject
(1) I'm not sure this is what you mean, but fandom has a tradition of meta that ranges from the most offhand LJ comment to the most formal article, and we've always had that spectrum. What's nice is that for the first time, we have it in our own space--we don't have to explain why fan meta or scholarship is worthy or important.
(2) The second point is the one I'm most concerned with and have been battling for as long as I've been a fan doing scholarship on fan texts and fan culture. Recognition and reward are always important, but when they lead to actual external benefits they become more complicated. Of course, I could take the easy out and explain that neither I nor Karen are actually good test cases of this argument since we do not reap external benefits from our work. Neither one of us are academically employed in such a way that would allow publication to grant us tenure or increase our pay. In fact, I used to work in an environment (public boarding high school in the Deep South), where my scholarship had more potential to hurt me rather than grant any form of reward. But there certainly are scholars who are either in grad school or on the job market or tenure tracked or tenured who can and do profit however incidentally from published research. So let's see what that actually means, how they do or do not "use" fandom.
Here's the thing: I'm sure we've all read that really bad essay (or book) where you just want to headdesk and ask the person what they were smoking (and if you have no idea what i'm talking about be happy; if you want a list or PDF files, ask and I'll happily send examples your way : ). Oddly enough rarely are these people "in" fandom! So could we maybe argue that being in fandom and doing academic work actually increases the quality of the scholarship and the accuracy of representation? Now, the argument has been made that outsiders might be more objective, but to me that resonates too strongly with an anti-identity politics argument that feels whites teach African-American literature "better," that straight people are more objective when explaining queer studies, etc. I think that BS when I am the one in supposed objectivity and when I have a supposedly vested interest (like I ever don't).
I clearly don't speak for all acafans, but the thing is: logically, only someone immersed in the community and its values would probably even think about that. A couple of conferences ago I had a long debate with someone (a fanboy :) who hadn't ever even thought about not linking into bulletin boards. After all, they were PUBLIC, weren't they? For me, in a way, being involved with OTW is actually also in a small way and on some level about educating other scholars that there *are* ethical guidelines and internal expectations that they may not be aware of. In fact, when a few weeks ago someone emailed me to ask how to engage with vidders because they wanted to use some vids in their work I was ecstatic! Not only did that indicate that vids were being looked at alongside other things--the fact that they'd realized that just tracking down the vid and discussing them might not be the right thing to do in and for that community was important to me.
(3) The third point has me slightly confused again. I'd love for you to start a public post raising these issues, because I think there's something central you're getting it, but I'm not sure I fully know where you're heading here. In the broadest sense, OTW has a policy of supporting transformative works as legitimate (as opposed to plagiarism, which is claiming other people's work as your own) including remixing, and also supporting fair use both of creative and scholarly kinds. That being said, of course, there are rules as well as conventions, both fannish and scholarly, about how and when to quote, link, remix, and comment, and OTW's broad fair use position shouldn't stop that conversation, even though as an organization, they've taken a clear stand.