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!

[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.

[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.)

[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.