07:40 pm: Organisation for Transformative Works (aka "An Archive Of Their Own")
Way back in the summer, someone mooted the idea of an independent fannish archive, a project called "An Archive Of Our Own". I had already left livejournal, and all discussions about it were taking place on livejournal, so the only comment I remember making about it was to the effect that the lesson I thought Six Apart ought to have taught us was that fandom needed
more de-centralisation, not
less.
As far as I can tell, all the fans involved with OTW stayed with Six Apart to the very end, and are intending to stay with SUP now it owns livejournal, so self-evidently they find the benefits of centralisation outweigh the disadvantages of being vulnerable to central control.
This is a kind of dry-run post for feministsf: I'm not feeling quite smart enough to think out the ramifications of what's going on with OTW, which seems to have acquired a fair amount of structure and policy without actually having done a thing, yet.
But one of the things that definitely puts me off getting involved in any way with OTW is the fact that while the OTW crew
mirror ![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/community.gif)
otw_news to IJ and GJ, they disable comments there, so that no community of fans interested in OTW can form anywhere other than on livejournal. It is a very pro-centralisation tactic, and very much in opposition to what I see as the major strength of fandom, which has been considerably weakened by so many fans becoming so completely dependent on livejournal: that fans are not normally a centralised group. This is not just a petty "Grr, they won't let me respond!" though I think that either deliberately or through indifference offending fans who have already left livejournal is probably not good strategy. It's an example (I think) of an underlying philosophy that I just flat disagree with: that fans can't be trusted without a strong central directive. That you don't want groups of fans going off and talking about stuff
all on their own because who knows what they might come up with?
![[User Picture]](http://www.insanejournal.com/userpic/113935/33769) | | From: | ![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) elfwreck |
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| Date: | dayordDecember 2007 09:37 am (UTC) |
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I agree that this is problematic.
I can understand them wanting to have a central location; having comments active in three or four places (don't they have a JournalFen account as well?) would lose coherence; there'd be a lot of repetition in comments and their replies. And I can even understand choosing LJ as the main base, since even with the Strikethrough problems, it's the biggest center for interactive multifandom discussion (of the journal sites, anyway; I don't want them doing their official announcements on ff.net's discussion boards).
But...
It's weird to realize that several of the staff now have their main identities on IJ, but OTW is centered on LJ. I'd hope that sometime soon, they install a blog on their own website, crosspost to all the journal sites and put the comments *on their site* with OpenID logins. But I can also understand if they want to hold off on that a while, since they plan on doing a journal thing of some sort.
They should definitely, however, be poked about this. I'd at least like to hear why they chose to keep the comments on LJ instead of IJ.
![[User Picture]](http://www.insanejournal.com/userpic/185814/44799) | | From: | yonmei |
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| Date: | dayordDecember 2007 04:11 pm (UTC) |
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I'd hope that sometime soon, they install a blog on their own website, crosspost to all the journal sites and put the comments *on their site* with OpenID logins.
Well, it would be simplest of all to do that - you can use blogger or wordpress. (They could do it now, in fact, because you can export journal posts to wordpress blogs.)
But I can also understand if they want to hold off on that a while, since they plan on doing a journal thing of some sort.
That could be. It seems to be their reasoning on their project in general: hold off actually doing stuff that people could get involved in (a wiki, a blog, an archive) because you're trying to do something perfect.
Well we can go and talk on stuff all on our own - but rather I think that is more of the problem that /they/ should be concerned with... We'll come up with all sorts of lovely things - which have a basis in truth and they can't say no wait that's not what we meant, or you are interpreting the text from the wrong perspective.
I totally understand not wanting to stretch yourself out, but if you are mirroring the news, then why disable the comments?
And hosting it on LiveJournal - while there are a good many fans on livejournal, there are many that have problems with it... Additionally LiveJournal isn't really a site that has respect in general...
It just strikes me that if they were going to centralise it - wouldn't it be better off being central on their own website, own turf, own terms? They can still mirror things elsewhere to invite users to respond, but it makes it less dependant on another company....
| | From: | yonmei |
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| Date: | dayordDecember 2007 04:14 pm (UTC) |
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Well we can go and talk on stuff all on our own - but rather I think that is more of the problem that /they/ should be concerned with... We'll come up with all sorts of lovely things - which have a basis in truth and they can't say no wait that's not what we meant, or you are interpreting the text from the wrong perspective.
...a transformative work, in other words. ;-)
It just strikes me that if they were going to centralise it - wouldn't it be better off being central on their own website, own turf, own terms? They can still mirror things elsewhere to invite users to respond, but it makes it less dependant on another company....
*nods* It isn't difficult to set up an independent blog. It seems particularly weird, as you say, to pick LiveJournal as the central site, because this excludes fans who already left LJ because they didn't want to support Six Apart (or SUP, now).
