rodo's journal

This 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.

( Rest of the post under the cut. )

Now I hope that the OTW archive will be a lot like Animexx (which is for fanart and dōjinshi as well, and which is the website of an association), but with less focus on anime fandoms and better rules. I have also been told by someone in the OTW that they want to make it more international than ff.net, which is what I volunteered for. My Thoughts on Yaoi/the OTW by rodo, 13th January 2008

First off, this is not an election post. It is an evaluation of sorts, and an explanation as to why I do not think I can justify working for the OTW for longer if there aren’t some drastic changes. This is not me being dramatic, in fact, I feel rather sober about it all. I did cry over my keyboard, but that’s not why I write it. I did have volunteer burnout, but that was years ago. I just came to realise that within the organisation, I am powerless to express my dissatisfaction on a wider scale, and that my hopes for the OTW will likely never be realised. I can not change that, which is partly due to the communication culture within the organisation, a culture that I am not equipped to deal with.

( 1. Forced Positivity – the OTW’s equivalent of Newspeak )

( 2. What I Came To Achieve and What I Didn’t )

After about four years, here I am, trying to figure out the chances of the OTW becoming what I dreamed of. And I think they are slim. I fought windmills for years and failed. So unless somebody can convince me that there absolutely will be radical changes soon, I don’t think I can justify my continued involvement. Because after four years of development, how can my priority not be an afterthought?

Okay, the obvious answer to this question would be: “Because not everybody in the world knows English and the AO3 is meant to be for everyone”, and that’s a good answer. It’s not the only answer, though. I know people who never learned English in school. I also know people who have difficulties learning languages and thus never really understood English. But generally speaking, I’m from a country where many, many people learned English in school (it’s compulsory for everyone in my state, for example), where many advertisements are in English, just like shop names, product names and many, many more. In theory, all these people should be able to navigate the archive.

( However, being surrounded by English all the time evidently doesn't mean people understand it. )

*sigh* I'm behind schedule, and I kind of lack a proper topic for this week's meta (I can only think semi-properly because I'm on ibuprofen anyway), so this is what you get instead:

Archiving Fic on Blogs

I just spent half the day organising my fic on my DW account, for various reasons:

1.) The import helper does not change the links at the bottom of a chapter that leads to the next one. I had to do it manually, because otherwise people would have ended up on IJ instead.

2.) I revamped my tagging system. I added genres, ratings, warnings, pairings and several story tags.

3.) I used all that to finally put a sticky post at the top of my journal with links to (almost) all of my stories and various tags.

( And that, of course, reminded me of how ill equipped journals are for fic archiving. )

Apologies for the mistakes I probably made. As mentioned above, my brain is not fully functional at the moment.

English:

Well, needless to say, I haven't been well. I hope I can sort it out some next term. I at least managed to go to a doctor and got a note which allowed me to take a break from university. And I handed in a homework today which I hope will find its way to the lecturer (secretaries at my university always get ill when students have to work on a deadline) and that she will be okay with ten pages plus bibliography instead of ten pages including bibliography. *sigh*

( Fic Progress )

Deutsch:

( Ein neues Rating auf ff.de )

Ich hatte mich eigentlich über das neue FF.de-Forum gefreut, aber da die im Moment so einen Wirbel drum machen, dass jemand sich öffentlich über eine gewisse BNF-Autorin beschwert und ihr Verhalten anprangert hat, hat sich das schnell wieder gelegt. Und je mehr ich von den Betreibern mitbekomme, desto weniger mag ich sie. *seufz* Dabei hatte ich die Seite bisher eigentlich recht gern.

Außerdem: Kritik an jemandes Verhalten =/= Verstoß gegen das Persönlichkeitsrecht (inwieweit das auf Internetpseudonyme zutrifft, weiß ich noch nicht einmal)


Wenn das im englischen Fandom genauso lief, würden wahrscheinlich immer noch alle Leute denken, Laura Hale/wie-auch-immer-sie-gerade-heißt wäre die Person für die sie gerne gehalten würde.

Firstly, I have to admit that yes, I did volunteer for the OTW. My reason for doing so was neither my belief that what they do is the best thing that ever happened to fandom, but rather my realisation that it was time to stop whining and do something. I have been in online fandom for almost five years now. But really, I drew fanart long before that. It all started when I googled for news on the fifth Harry Potter book and I ended up reading a fic about Harry and Draco having sex. I was appalled at first. But still, I could not wait for the next book, and so I looked for other, less slashy stories. I was hooked, and I stayed. During these five years, I witnessed a few skirmishes with TPTB, and neither of them ended in favour of the fannish side. The fans whined about it and migrated elsewhere. This flexibility is one of the things I admire fandom for, but my admiration never stopped me from wishing there would be no more migration, that we would all live happily ever after in our own perfect place. And that, in essence, is what the OTW offers. That does not mean that I agree with all their ideas, but I realised that I did not improve things by quietly whining in my own little corner of fandom, but that I have to work with them to make sure they take the direction I want them to. I have seen a lot of people criticising them, but only a few of them made an effort to talk to them.

( Cut for tl;dr )

I know that I did not touch upon a lot of the criticism I read, but these are the most common points, I think. I apologise for the sheer length of my ramblings and the mistakes I likely made.

doro_chan