here's the thing

[memorizingthedigitsofpi]

The OTW inhabits this weird dual space in my mind (and possibly in reality but I'm not bold enough to state this quite that affirmatively).

On the one hand, it's An Institution of Fandom - caps used because it's just that huge. Its hugeness is only partly related to the number of works and the number of registered users and the number of hits, etc. Its size within fandom is much more about the ideas it represents. Fan creators own their own works. Transformative works are legitimate creations. Own the servers and tell "the man" to go to hell. Fannish culture is worth preserving. By fans, for fans.

On the other hand, it's a bunch of cobbled together fannish projects. Like, imagine whatever zine or big bang or [insert thing you're into] got big enough that it had millions of people interested in it. Imagine the people running that zine in their free time because they love their fandom now trying to provide a service to millions of people literally every day. Now imagine the kind of drama you hear about with any particular fannish project and expand that out over a thousand volunteers - some of whom have been around for over a decade.

I don't really have a point here. I'm mostly just trying to find words to express ideas that I'm still working my way through. I spent a long time thinking of OTW as The Institution and it hasn't really been all that long at all since I realized it's actually just another fannish project and therefore subject to all of the same issues that every other fannish project is subject to - but scaled up by a factor of a hundred.

Been a while since I posted some thinky thoughts. Figured I might as well.

Comments

[mistressofmuses]

I think that this is something worth keeping in mind, and sometimes it's hard to! It *feels* like such an institution in a lot of ways - and really, it is! So much of fannish culture, or at least the subset of it that I feel closest to, have shaped and been shaped by OTW. I LOVE a lot of what they do.

But at the same time, it IS a group of volunteers who have pretty admirably dealt with a MASSIVE amount of scaling that no one could really have anticipated. But it's still just people, and the more people the more drama and the more demands and the less ability to please everyone in every situation.

It is worth considering, especially with at least two pretty big sources of contention and drama right now, how this is just one fannish project. (And I don't mean that in any disparaging way. Not "ugh, they're *just* fans doing fandom", so much as "yes! they're just fans like the rest of us! they've got their own dramas and issues and biases, and that means the same sort of complex and sometimes not great things as any other fandom group!"

Though I think it is hard to reconcile the two sides to what OTW does and is. Because they ARE an authority in at least some ways, in terms of the lead they take on legal issues, and the infrastructure(s) they've built. But they aren't THE authority on all of fandom everywhere forever, and if people find their values incompatible, there's no reason they can't move elsewhere or create their own spaces either.

It's hard to articulate!

[memorizingthedigitsofpi]

I think another part of the issue is that there are a LOT of people in fandom right now who were born after OTW was founded. Like, if that fact doesn't boggle your mind, I don't know what will. So you have a small contingent of people who were around when the OTW was founded. A slightly bigger group who found AO3 in the early years and figured out what the deal was, and then the overwhelming majority of people who only kind of vaguely understand that AO3 isn't the same thing as FanFiction.net but mostly because of the interface differences. I'd say the vast majority of AO3-based fans don't have any idea what the OTW is or that it even exists.

To those fans, AO3 is fandom, or at least the core of it, which makes it an even bigger institution in their lives. Institutions come packaed with expectations, and it's no wonder that people are disappointed time and again. They're comparing AO3 (and therefore OTW) to huge corporations like Twitter or Disney instead of to things like The Sugar Quill or the Kirk/Spock Fanfiction Archive. But then again, how can they compare to those other fic archives when AO3 ended up unintentionally supplanting a lot of them?

Ask most AO3 volunteers, and they'll tell you they want more Archives out there! They want people to create the spaces they want to see, just like the OTW founders did. There is no perfect solution that will work for everyone and as hard as everyone tries, AO3 can't be the magical thing that somehow is.

Fandom is too big and too widespread and too diverse for AO3 to be able to communicate with everyone, and situations like the AI thing prove that people don't actually read the whole thing when it's in written form. I've lost count of the number of times and ways that I've told people that dark mode exists and here's how you can get it and every single time, it's brand new news for a lot of folks.

I'm rambling now, but I'm glad I'm not wildly off base here. It's just something I've been thinking about recently.

[mistressofmuses]

Lol, that really is a crisis-inducing statistic, lol: how many people were born after OTW was founded. *OUCH* Fetch me my walker! But that's definitely a good point, and one I've personally had a difficult time taking into consideration... how different it must be to grow up with websites that have existed for your entire life, that are older than you are. I grew up in the 90s and early 00s, so the internet *existed* in usable fashion for nearly my whole life, but I also saw once-prominent sites fade away, and new ones take their place. But nothing really predated me, lol.
But based purely on longevity, you ARE probably dealing with a certain amount of that "institutional cred" coming from the fact that the userbase has never existed (or haven't existed as fandom-participants) in a world that didn't have AO3 as a fic hosting space.

And yeah, a lot of people, mostly but not exclusively younger, also have a very hard time seeing anything as separate from the corporate internet. And of course, again, why would they, when almost every site they use is owned by a corporation, with corporate interests?

I wish there was a bit more "DIY Spirit" to the internet as a whole. I know there's certainly SOME of that present, and fandom itself is one of the best sources for it, but... There's less drive and know-how when it comes to building and organizing spaces, despite the fact that having alternatives and options that are curated around different standards/fandoms/content/etc. would largely be a benefit. Sure, it's nice to have what feels like a one-stop-shop for all your fic needs, but competing access needs/desires means that there will always be conflict. When people are dissatisfied, they should have the option to go somewhere else.

I know I've seen a *lot* of times when you've explained what seems like an extremely basic feature. (Same with a few others that answer questions about AO3 at times.) There are people who use the site with no idea how to filter, or what to-me-basic terminology means, etc. That info isn't hidden away, but some people don't know enough to try and find it. And again, it's a issue of scale: even if you had the very optimistic 1% of users that won't read the FAQs or the help files before complaining that they can't do something... 1% of 1000 users is 10 people you have to answer questions for. 1% of 1000000 users makes for a LOT of repeat questions.

[yvannairie]

Yeah, it's especially difficult in.... like, cross-generational environments? Where people are used to institutions being things that are being funded by anonymous VCs looking to make a profit or otherwise part of a giantl coglomerate and subject to influences that have nothing to do with the userbase?

It's difficult to understand how shallow the actual operation is when the scale is so enormous and ever-growing.

[memorizingthedigitsofpi]

It's difficult to understand how shallow the actual operation is when the scale is so enormous and ever-growing.

^ this. allll of this.

[samjohnsson]

I said for a while that a running problem in the Org was that people remembered when it was a project set up on a kitchen table, and the women running it were checking it in between their knitting (praise). It's not that anymore, but it 100% hasn't adapted. (It's part of the reason I got out of the way: I was tired of pushing, and I wasn't sure if I was holding it back, too.)

[memorizingthedigitsofpi]

Yeah. It was a helluva thing to realize the breadth and depth of the issue, and I got tired of pushing too. Less due to how long I pushed (which honestly wasn't very long at all, especially in comparison) but rather due to the fact that I understand human nature and I could see the humans involved and it's like looking at a chess board and mentally mapping out the next 23 moves and realizing that you're checkmated.

I could rattle off a list of things that might make changes for the better, but it's the kind of thing where you'd probably need to do a lot of them at the same time and there'd be no fail safes if they didn't work and all of it would have to happen while somehow still keeping the Archive going which... well, that's a whole other beast.

It's all so big now that it often feels like if you move one pin out of place the whole thing will crash. But at the same time, maybe it needs to crash in order to get better? I don't know. I just know that I care about it a lot and I worry about it a lot.

[i_wish_to_remain_nameless]

I mean I do not have a lot of faith in the OTW getting their act together, but I like having a major website that's not corporate run and trying to manipulate me to stay on it for ad revenue. That's why I really don't agree with the people who just want to burn the whole thing to the ground (even aside from the issue of worthwhile content being lost) since as things stand it seems unlikely that a group would get to the point where it could make a website like ao3 again. Or one with any kind of sizable userbase at least.
I honestly think about posting my fics other places sometimes but I'm pretty sure my stuff is too weird for Wattpad and I don't think that ff.net is a viable platform these days. I guess I could post at least my shorter stuff to Tumblr but I'd personally prefer to put it a platform specifically for stories.
I kind of miss having site specifically for particular types of content. Social media makes me feel like I'm just being buffeted around by the winds of fate sometimes.
Anyway I do wish the OTW could get their act together even though I doubt they will.