a very quick signal boost

[seventhe]

I've been meaning to post this for a while, and I wasn't around a computer much this weekend and didn't want to post it from my phone - I wanted to at least think about the words a little bit.

I use AO3; I like AO3, I like it a lot. I have friends who are on the OTW Board, who are involved in Tag Wrangling, who do other things I only vaguely know and understand. So I'm not really involved here - only peripherally.

But... that's kind of the problem (as I say in my comment), because I don't know much about AO3 or the OTW, and they really only appear in my personal fandom circle as "Here's a place you can post that has fixed most structural problems other sites have." They're not present, they're not visible, they're not welcoming. There's no community on AO3, and community is a big part of fandom.

And that sucks.

But it wouldn't be half as bad if I didn't keep hearing faint strains of, but we want you! We want to expand to tiny fandoms, to video games and anime, to non-Western fandoms; we want to involve you. But they don't, and they haven't, and it isn't like Final Fantasy fandom is dead, I compile ff_press once a week, I run ff_exchange; it sure isn't dead and it keeps getting revived every time Squeenix wants another $30 from my wallet.

But they say this, and do nothing; and then other things happen that really make me feel strange and unwelcome.

I know my Circle/FList is full of non-Western media fans: Final Fantasy fans, Chrono Trigger fans, other video game fans; anime fans, Sailor Moon and Cowboy Bebop and I don't even know what else fans; even JPop and KPop and other things that just aren't represented at all on the AO3, that don't see it anywhere in their fandoms, in their daily fannish functioning. We aren't there. A lot of us got mad/hurt/upset at Yuletide this year, too. And we still aren't there. And if you look at their latest poll... we still aren't there.

And so to you guys, I'd like to invite some conversation. You're welcome to do it in this entry if you're more comfortable with me - I'll pass it on to the relevant post. But you're also welcome to do it in a more appropriate place if you can please (a) remember to keep this person's fannish and Board identities separate, as they desire; and (b) are respectful to someone who put a lot of thought, time, and work into compiling a really interesting, informative, helpful, and - you know what - downright painful entry.

I offer up here, for perusal, The OTW Server Poll and Fannish Diversity.

Thoughts welcome, and thank you to the Board member who took the time to put this public, transparent, honest document together.

Comments

[wallwalker]

Thank you for linking this. I found it myself a while back and shared my thoughts... if I can think of anything else to say, I will. The general consensus so far seems to be, "the OTW needs to go out and find the non-Western fans and actively invite them to join in," but very few people seem to have any idea how to suggest that the OTW do that. Which isn't meant to be insulting, because I don't have any useful suggestions on that end, either. :/

Also - because I really haven't felt comfortable admitting this anywhere else, even on my own journal unless I lock it to private - I really don't understand why the Yuletide fandom incident was as big of a deal as it was. Yes, some larger fandoms were included in the INITIAL list. They were edited out a week later. And the moderators said that this might happen, and that if it did, they would take care of it. Which they did. I remember several different fandoms being the subject of frothing rage over being included, and I don't remember any of those fandoms showing up on the final list.

I can understand being upset about the Yuletide thing as a symptom of a larger issue. It's all of the rage and hate over the event itself that I don't quite get.

[jack_of_none]

If I may interject, I think the hullabaloo about the inclusion of large anime fandoms wasn't so much that they got included, but the fact that people pointed out that using AO3 would give bizarre results for a lot of non-Western fandoms, and people didn't feel like that concern was addressed well. Bringing it up resulted in mostly radio silence from the mods and some "Well, then get people to post more fanfiction on AO3 so the numbers work out" comments, which people interpreted as shilling. Also, around the time that this was going on, some of the Yuletide old guard types made posts about how Yuletide really wasn't FOR anime/manga fans, which was sort of unrelated but just fueled the fire.

Plus, not all the big fandoms were removed. I mean, hell, Pokemon was on the list, as was Warcraft. They were never removed despite people pointing out their size.

[wallwalker]

Okay, this makes more sense now. I probably missed most of that, since I was kind of on the periphery of that whole discussion; my situation about Yuletide last year was kind of weird. (Short version: I'd made up my mind NOT to participate, then changing it at the last minute because someone I know IRL wanted to participate and asked me to join him. So I signed up, but didn't pay a lot of attention to the discussion until after the final list was done; what I saw was bits and pieces from friends.)

Thanks for the explanation; I appreciate it. :)

[franzeska]

*wanders by late*

There's also the sort of in-groups within in-groups within in-groups problem with yuletide. I've seen people citing my own post as the prime example of an old guard attitude that yuletide "isn't for anime", when it was actually a rehash of the fact that the few old guard yuletiders who are in anime/manga/etc. fandoms have been whining about how bad yuletide is for those fandoms since the beginning (and so are irritated when people bring up "new" problems and refuse to listen when we say they aren't new and--however much we may wish otherwise--aren't likely to change). But a post like that looks quite different to anybody who doesn't share that same history of years of bitching about yuletide.