FAQ series: first set

[femmequixotic]

Last week, 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:

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.

Comments

[ithiliana.livejournal.com]

Henry? Well maybe he remembers my name.

In which case he remembers I posted about how one of my papers took on a generalization he made about women creating fanfiction because they were forced to watch all the masculine shows and brought romance in, and I was writing about women who loved sf (and never agreed it was for boy's only) and wrote dark stuff and porn and action stuff--a minority among fen, and stories, but still, contradicting him. The *only* post he made on the fandebate community was to "inform" me that he'd written a lot more since that piece was published, and it wasn't fair to only work from that perspective, and I had to read all his work.

And he'd probably also remember I showed up calling a lot of the men in that debate sexists and got them very mad at me, including some of his best buddies and ex-students. I esp. remember one of his ex students who got roundly corrected by a number of women for not knowing that the novel used to be dominated by women, back a century or two. An MA in media studies does not give you knowledge about the history of the novel, but he thought he could spout off and claim that it was always written by men.

And since that debate--well, did you notice the article about OTW that cited Henry only? He didn't give that writer any other names, although I gather he didn't realize he was the only person being referenced. But no, I don't think he will give my name to anybody (the journalist I mentioned I talked to the other day? Was referred by a woman scholar who was referred by a woman scholar.)

And let me be clear too: he's in a different discipline than I am--we don't publish in the same types of journals or attend the same conferences. I don't go to the media conferences, and don't care too, so it doesn't matter that I spouted off.

There are two men I know who'd probably refer people to me, in that situation, both academics, one queer, one a feminist, and neither does fan studies (in fact, they're such good friends they wrote me letters for my slashing proposal). They do science fiction--although one is sneaking over into fanzines as well as pulp zines, using archival material (the OLDer fan productions). The other does children's lit and the fantastic.

However, the vast majority of time networking is done, that I have benefitted from, it's from women.

I was the one saying why bother with the aca-fan debate, I don't care about bringing the boys in, or spending time educating them, I want to create networks among the women because my experience in academia is that 99% of the time, it's women who'll support other women, recommend them, etc.

Showing up and calling the men sexist does not get one referrals, but I really didn't give a damn. Actually, I got a nice invite to read a paper on slash because women who were lurking and reading at that debate liked how I kept calling the guys on their sexism (and tried to bring in the subject of racism).