femmequixotic (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
femmequixotic) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
otw_news2008-01-31 10:06 am
femmequixotic) wrote in otw_news2008-01-31 10:06 am
FAQ series: first set
Last week, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ciderpress wrote:
In the hopes of not overwhelming you, we've decided to post the FAQ in bundles of five or six questions and answers, one bundle every other day or so. Ultimately, they'll all be added to the OTW website's FAQ.
What you'll read here in![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
otw_news is a bit more informal than what will appear on the website; that's because the website is for fans and non-fans alike. But here, in otw_news, we're fans talking to fans. SRSLY.
Keep a look out for more bundles of FAQs as well as interviews with a few of the OTW's board members in the next few weeks!
1. Fandom got along just fine without OTW for forty years.
This is true and we hope will continue to be true for another 40 and 400 years--fandom will definitely continue to do fine without us and after us and forever and ever amen. But, on the other hand, fandom has not had the internet for 40 years. With the advent of the internet, and especially Web 2.0, fandom's connection with the so-called Real World has increased, and its relationship with copyright holders has increasingly come under focus. OTW is attempting to add a voice to the conversation about copyright, one that is articulate, informed, organized, and on the side of fandom.
2. Why do you care about Fanlib? Fanlib isn't forcing anyone to archive there, just ignore them!
FanLib set a dangerous precedent that fandom is available for the profitable plucking and exploitation by people who are not part of the culture of fandom; OTW does not, never has, and never will, profit from fandom, and objects on principle to FanLib's attempt to do so.
OTW's concern is that for-profit companies like Fanlib might become the public face of fanfiction, especially since fanfiction writers have a history of lying low. With more companies than ever keenly interested in how they can profit from "user-generated content", OTW doesn't want fannish newbies and other interested parties thinking this for-profit ideology represents fandom or for fans to be taken advantage of by such companies.
3. OTW's corporate structure is suspect. Fandom should be subversive.
OTW believes that its mission is best served by an organization that is transparent and accountable.
4. Why does OTW want to make fanworks legitimate? We don't need society's legitimization!
The kind of legitimization the OTW is focused on is that of fans being able to post their stories and art and vids without worrying they will be hit with a lawsuit. That's all. Sadly, we're pretty sure society as a whole will never quite understand the \o/ of something like, say, a really good wingfic. Which is a shame.
5. Edited at 9:59 a.m. 2/1/08 to remove this question. The specific concerns will be addressed in later FAQs. Our sincere apologies for this misstep; no dismissiveness of the concerns raised within it was intended in any form. We very much appreciate the discussion regarding the way it was perceived.
Edited at 9:50 p.m. 2/1/08. When we realized that our flip answer to question 5 was inappropriate for this forum, we deleted it. However, for archival purposes and in the hope of achieving some measure of transparency, here it is again:
5. The OTW is trying to take over all of fandom, and they didn't talk to me first, and they started in LJ, and they're going to cause all of fandom to be destroyed, and the worst of all is that they're a bunch of academics! They're trying to reinvent fandom when we have all the archives we already need thank you very much, and we don't need another one, and they're going to (1) legitimitise or (2) commercialize fandom and ruin it for all by dragging some terribly bad case of fanfiction into court. They use big words, and they're taking too long to set things up and they're not answering emails fast enough. (A tongue-in-cheek crticism from ithiliana's post: http://ithiliana.livejournal.com/804036.html)
Yes, there are some academics involved with the org. There are also some students, some lawyers, some unemployed folks, some young people, some old people, some fannish newbies, some folks who've been in fandom for decades, some blondes, some brunettes, and some redheads. :-)
And we're really not trying to reinvent fandom. We're building a fabulous, scaleable pan-fandom archive chock-full of interesting features which we hope fans will choose to use, but even if you'd rather not use it, you can still take advantage of the archive code and use it to build something else.
Commercializing fandom is exactly what we don't plan to do. We're here to try to prevent that from happening. Folks like FanLib and even copyright holders and user-generated content sites that make money from ad-revenues want to commercialize and monetize fandom, to make money off of the things we produce out of sheer love; we're here to offer an alternative to for-profit fansites, with the intent of preserving and protecting the fannish world we know and love.
--femmequixotic, bethbethbeth, ciderpress, mirabile_dictu, shrift, svmadelyn.
Community Relations Committee
Edited 7:39 p.m. 1/31/08 to remove phrase regarding hair colors per comments below.
Edited at 9:59 a.m. 2/1/08 to remove question 5 per comments below.
Edited at 9:50 p.m. 2/1/08 to re-add question 5, struckthrough, for archival and transparency purposes.
ciderpress wrote:There has been a great deal of discussion during and after our "Why OTW?" week, not only about OTW, but also about what it is to identify as a fan, what fandom means to different people and how individual fans and groups shape their own fannish experiences.
It's evident from what we've read that there have been some misconceptions about what our org is and what we hope to do. We apologise if we have been unclear about some of the concepts and policies, and we hope you will understand that we are still in the process of setting up policies and honing language. We don't have all the final, polished answers yet and we need time, hard work and your help to do that. In fact, our content policy will be up for discussion and feedback in a fandom-wide setting before we set our policies in stone.
In the hopes of not overwhelming you, we've decided to post the FAQ in bundles of five or six questions and answers, one bundle every other day or so. Ultimately, they'll all be added to the OTW website's FAQ.
What you'll read here in
otw_news is a bit more informal than what will appear on the website; that's because the website is for fans and non-fans alike. But here, in otw_news, we're fans talking to fans. SRSLY.Keep a look out for more bundles of FAQs as well as interviews with a few of the OTW's board members in the next few weeks!
1. Fandom got along just fine without OTW for forty years.
This is true and we hope will continue to be true for another 40 and 400 years--fandom will definitely continue to do fine without us and after us and forever and ever amen. But, on the other hand, fandom has not had the internet for 40 years. With the advent of the internet, and especially Web 2.0, fandom's connection with the so-called Real World has increased, and its relationship with copyright holders has increasingly come under focus. OTW is attempting to add a voice to the conversation about copyright, one that is articulate, informed, organized, and on the side of fandom.
2. Why do you care about Fanlib? Fanlib isn't forcing anyone to archive there, just ignore them!
FanLib set a dangerous precedent that fandom is available for the profitable plucking and exploitation by people who are not part of the culture of fandom; OTW does not, never has, and never will, profit from fandom, and objects on principle to FanLib's attempt to do so.
OTW's concern is that for-profit companies like Fanlib might become the public face of fanfiction, especially since fanfiction writers have a history of lying low. With more companies than ever keenly interested in how they can profit from "user-generated content", OTW doesn't want fannish newbies and other interested parties thinking this for-profit ideology represents fandom or for fans to be taken advantage of by such companies.
3. OTW's corporate structure is suspect. Fandom should be subversive.
OTW believes that its mission is best served by an organization that is transparent and accountable.
4. Why does OTW want to make fanworks legitimate? We don't need society's legitimization!
The kind of legitimization the OTW is focused on is that of fans being able to post their stories and art and vids without worrying they will be hit with a lawsuit. That's all. Sadly, we're pretty sure society as a whole will never quite understand the \o/ of something like, say, a really good wingfic. Which is a shame.
5. Edited at 9:59 a.m. 2/1/08 to remove this question. The specific concerns will be addressed in later FAQs. Our sincere apologies for this misstep; no dismissiveness of the concerns raised within it was intended in any form. We very much appreciate the discussion regarding the way it was perceived.
Edited at 9:50 p.m. 2/1/08. When we realized that our flip answer to question 5 was inappropriate for this forum, we deleted it. However, for archival purposes and in the hope of achieving some measure of transparency, here it is again:
ithiliana's post: http://ithiliana.livejournal.com/804036.html)Yes, there are some academics involved with the org. There are also some students, some lawyers, some unemployed folks, some young people, some old people, some fannish newbies, some folks who've been in fandom for decades, some blondes, some brunettes, and some redheads. :-)
And we're really not trying to reinvent fandom. We're building a fabulous, scaleable pan-fandom archive chock-full of interesting features which we hope fans will choose to use, but even if you'd rather not use it, you can still take advantage of the archive code and use it to build something else.
Commercializing fandom is exactly what we don't plan to do. We're here to try to prevent that from happening. Folks like FanLib and even copyright holders and user-generated content sites that make money from ad-revenues want to commercialize and monetize fandom, to make money off of the things we produce out of sheer love; we're here to offer an alternative to for-profit fansites, with the intent of preserving and protecting the fannish world we know and love.
--
femmequixotic, bethbethbeth, ciderpress, mirabile_dictu, shrift, svmadelyn.Community Relations Committee
Edited 7:39 p.m. 1/31/08 to remove phrase regarding hair colors per comments below.
Edited at 9:59 a.m. 2/1/08 to remove question 5 per comments below.
Edited at 9:50 p.m. 2/1/08 to re-add question 5, struckthrough, for archival and transparency purposes.
no subject
But then you have the same problem as the letters to the editor page: do you keep any errors or infelicities in the wording, grammar, spelling, punctuation, etc., and seem to be mocking it? Or do you edit it and no longer be faithful to the author? Even if comments are grammatically correct, repeating them verbatim can still seem to hold them up for mockery if they contrast strongly with the responses in tone, or if the comments as a whole are strikingly different from each other, while the responses have a single seamless flow.
Most teams I've worked on have tried where possible to do both: cast the comments to which we respond in the same style as our responses, making sure that we've captured the broadest possible range of original comments, and wherever those comments were made publicly, maintaining the link to them (or footnote, appendix, etc.) so anyone can verify the original phrasing and see that all were responded to.
Where the originating comments don't need to be repeated, or where doing so keeps the discussion so focused around them that it can't move forward to focus on solutions, one way to still show a commitment to full responsiveness is to do like IT and corporate FAQ's -- have a clear procedure for anyone who feels their question wasn't answered (or not completely, or not in the right sense) to re/submit it.
It's all the "principle of charity" as they say in philosophy: take extra effort to avoid misrepresenting the other person's POV, and express a willingness (and show a way) to be corrected if a misunderstanding has crept in.
Truthfully, even where I've been on teams that have been able to insist on doing all those things, our client or agency still might end up not addressing points that are later seen to be critical. After all, one can only answer the questions that are asked. Unless, of course, an organization (or its representatives) engage in overt self-reflection, asking the hard questions only an "insider" knows to ask.
Periodic (or even ongoing) public self-reflection can be a good idea, also, when there are enormous issues in play like public trust, organizational responsibility, newness, or risk. Reflexivity goes beyond simply reacting to comments or critique; it's proactive, and shows the relexive organization or individuals taking the extra step of questioning themselves, openly. People in positions of great trust or power, like ministers or executives (including of non-profits) write those periodic letters to the flock or whomever for exactly this reason, when required reports alone don't do it.
Given the writing and thinking skills of OTW folks, and some fen's irascible skepticism so far, that might be another good bit of communication to consider.... especially if you could burden the Board, etc., even more (!) so folks could hear directly from them. I would never compare fen to 6A's Barak, but remember how much more effective it was last June for fans to hear from him, rather than abe or some mid-level (or less).
NOT that I don't imagine y'all have (A) thought about all of this, and (B) are volunteering insane amounts of time and talent already!! They're just my top-of-the-head thoughts -- take them for what you think they're worth.
no subject
(I would love to say that we are absolutely going to get it right on the first try but, in my own personal opinion and experience --not the org's! -- it does take a bit of trial and error, especially in npo and charity work. Finding the balance between speaking as part of the community in question and speaking as part of an organiation and finding a way to communicate that makes a large and diverse population happy requires a lot of work and we're putting it in now so the org will get it right in the future :). We appreciate the leeway people are giving us, it really helps us to get it right!)
no subject
YES THIS.
You gotta be transparent: and not just to look transparent, you actually have to be transparent.