So, about the OTW, then...
2023-06-24 08:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rodoThis is the hardest thing I’ve written in ages, if you can believe it. It took multiple drafts and a long, long time. It’s also the first post I’ve written about the OTW in over a decade. For the record, I was a volunteer, but quit due to them not making any progress on the issues I had joined for. I promised to re-join once progress had been made – which you can tell never happened, because I never did rejoin. I also used to be a mod on an archive (ff.de), way back when (and got fired in a very spectacular fashion for being friends with the wrong person, a locked tweet and a mildly critical post I had posted before becoming a mod, that was fun). I never had to deal with anything even close to what azarias had to deal with, but I feel for them – especially the dysfunction around their firing.
There have been a lot of problems with the OTW, and they have been there for a long time. None of what has come to the fore these last few weeks has been new on an abstract level, even if the specific permutations were. It is pretty obvious to everyone (including, I’d like to think, the people at the OTW itself) that something needs to change. The problem is: what?
I didn’t join in on End OTW Racism because its wishy-washiness raised some red flags for me, although that might be due to my particular fannish situation and might be innocuous. I also really don’t think wishy-washy is at all helpful in this situation. It’s all well and good to demand some sweeping, vague change that will solve racism on the AO3 (or at least alleviate it), but there’s a couple of problems with that:
1. How do you decide that you’ve succeeded? With some complaints, it’s really hard to gauge what counts as a success. The vagueness can also make it hard for the OTW to figure out what is requested of them. Clear goals would go a long way (you can even go all SMART, if we want to use annoying business lingo), and they can help both the OTW and the people protesting figure out if they’re succeeding. That would also cut down on people arguing about things like the blocking feature and whether it’s enough, a step in the right direction, or not useful at all.
2. Is [insert thing here] really something the OTW can/should do? The OTW/AO3 has a clear goal: provide a safe haven for any and all fanworks. It wants to be as broadly inclusive as possible, and that’s important from a fannish perspective shaped by the context that brought about its birth. I’ve seen people demand changes that don’t really work with that goal. There’s stuff that I wish wasn’t on the AO3 too, like explicit underage about real-life underage people, fic depicting racist stereotypes and some Nazi-related stuff. But where do you draw the line? Who makes that decision? How is it enforced? Those are all questions that need answering, and they should all be answered with the OTW’s mission in mind. That should be the maxim, not what you or I want the archive to be to suit our own personal needs.
Now, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t a lot of things the OTW can and should do, but it also ties into the first point. I’m not actually totally against things like a racism warning, for example, it’s just that I’ve yet to see someone propose it in a way that is practical, that’s user-friendly (since users will need to tag their own fics in a way that’s mostly rule-conforming – if everyone just throws up their hands and uses CNTW, it won’t do any good) and mod-friendly (since it would be mods who would have to deal with the extra work of figuring out whether something counts). And even before that step can be tackled, the OTW has to be in a place where there is a system in place that allows for a well-trained, effective mod team that tackles abuse reports within a week, rather than months to years.
Fortunately, there’s some excellent posts out there about how the org can change, such as this one bychestnut_pod, as well as well as what synecdochic said. Basically, the OTW needs to stop reinventing the wheel and figure out best practices. That, I think, needs to happen before they (and we) can even dream of tackling some of the more demanding tasks, such as finally getting the archive out of beta. The OTW has basically stalled in place for ten years, barring some minor changes – any big changes to the archive or any of its other projects are likely to require big organisational changes first.
And if all else fails, well, we can build out own place(s). We did it more than once already. It might seem daunting to newer fans who came into fandom in the era dominated by ginormous social media sites, who don’t remember webrings and hand-coded Geocities archives, but it seemed daunting back when the OTW got started too, and yet they managed somehow.
azarias had to deal with, but I feel for them – especially the dysfunction around their firing.There have been a lot of problems with the OTW, and they have been there for a long time. None of what has come to the fore these last few weeks has been new on an abstract level, even if the specific permutations were. It is pretty obvious to everyone (including, I’d like to think, the people at the OTW itself) that something needs to change. The problem is: what?
I didn’t join in on End OTW Racism because its wishy-washiness raised some red flags for me, although that might be due to my particular fannish situation and might be innocuous. I also really don’t think wishy-washy is at all helpful in this situation. It’s all well and good to demand some sweeping, vague change that will solve racism on the AO3 (or at least alleviate it), but there’s a couple of problems with that:
1. How do you decide that you’ve succeeded? With some complaints, it’s really hard to gauge what counts as a success. The vagueness can also make it hard for the OTW to figure out what is requested of them. Clear goals would go a long way (you can even go all SMART, if we want to use annoying business lingo), and they can help both the OTW and the people protesting figure out if they’re succeeding. That would also cut down on people arguing about things like the blocking feature and whether it’s enough, a step in the right direction, or not useful at all.
2. Is [insert thing here] really something the OTW can/should do? The OTW/AO3 has a clear goal: provide a safe haven for any and all fanworks. It wants to be as broadly inclusive as possible, and that’s important from a fannish perspective shaped by the context that brought about its birth. I’ve seen people demand changes that don’t really work with that goal. There’s stuff that I wish wasn’t on the AO3 too, like explicit underage about real-life underage people, fic depicting racist stereotypes and some Nazi-related stuff. But where do you draw the line? Who makes that decision? How is it enforced? Those are all questions that need answering, and they should all be answered with the OTW’s mission in mind. That should be the maxim, not what you or I want the archive to be to suit our own personal needs.
Now, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t a lot of things the OTW can and should do, but it also ties into the first point. I’m not actually totally against things like a racism warning, for example, it’s just that I’ve yet to see someone propose it in a way that is practical, that’s user-friendly (since users will need to tag their own fics in a way that’s mostly rule-conforming – if everyone just throws up their hands and uses CNTW, it won’t do any good) and mod-friendly (since it would be mods who would have to deal with the extra work of figuring out whether something counts). And even before that step can be tackled, the OTW has to be in a place where there is a system in place that allows for a well-trained, effective mod team that tackles abuse reports within a week, rather than months to years.
Fortunately, there’s some excellent posts out there about how the org can change, such as this one by
chestnut_pod, as well as well as what synecdochic said. Basically, the OTW needs to stop reinventing the wheel and figure out best practices. That, I think, needs to happen before they (and we) can even dream of tackling some of the more demanding tasks, such as finally getting the archive out of beta. The OTW has basically stalled in place for ten years, barring some minor changes – any big changes to the archive or any of its other projects are likely to require big organisational changes first.And if all else fails, well, we can build out own place(s). We did it more than once already. It might seem daunting to newer fans who came into fandom in the era dominated by ginormous social media sites, who don’t remember webrings and hand-coded Geocities archives, but it seemed daunting back when the OTW got started too, and yet they managed somehow.
