{"id":280409,"date":"2018-10-19T00:26:09","date_gmt":"2018-10-19T00:26:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2018\/10\/19\/on-the-ao3-all-these-years-later-4\/"},"modified":"2018-10-19T00:26:09","modified_gmt":"2018-10-19T00:26:09","slug":"on-the-ao3-all-these-years-later-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2018\/10\/19\/on-the-ao3-all-these-years-later-4\/","title":{"rendered":"On the AO3 all these years later"},"content":{"rendered":"

bert-and-ernie-are-gay<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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cesperanza<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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olderthannetfic<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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redwingstarling<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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cathexys<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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fairestcat<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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fairestcat<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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The tenth anniversary of the OTW and all the AO3 discussion going around this week inspired me to go look at astolat\u2019s original post about creating an An Archive Of Our Own, and found my comment on it:<\/p>\n

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\u201cI think this is needed and long past needed.<\/p>\n

There are of course huge fanfic archives out there like ff.net, but the bigger and more public the site, the more restrictive it is, the more stuff around the edges gets cut off. I don\u2019t WANT the public face of fanfic to be only the most easily palatable stuff, with the smut and the kink and the controversial subjects marginalized and hidden under the table.<\/p>\n

And I particularly don\u2019t want to see us all sitting around feeling frustrated while this fabulous community is commodified out from underneath us.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not fit to be a project manager, but I\u2019m great with details and general organizational work. If someone takes this and runs with it, I\u2019d love to help.\u201c<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Eleven years and rather a lot of volunteer-hours later, I stand by every single word.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And then I found my original post <\/a>on the idea that became the OTW\/AO3, which says in part:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cHowever, as I was reading the comments over there, I noticed a frustrating, but not surprising number of comments along the lines of \u201cwell, it\u2019s a good idea, but it\u2019s way too ambitious\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not talking about the really useful and practical comments bringing up pitfalls and difficulties to be aware of from the get go with something this massive and complex, I\u2019m talking about all the comments that go something like this: <\/p>\n

\u2013 <\/p>\n

Amen. I want a site like that. I\u2019d pay money for an archive like that, and I\u2019d invest time and effort to make sure it\u2019s as great as it can be. [\u2026] But then I hit the realism switch in my brain and it goes \u2018splodey. Because sadly it\u2019s not a very realistic concept.<\/a><\/p>\n

And this:<\/p>\n

\u2013 <\/p>\n

In a perfect world it could be an amazing thing and a great way to \u201crally the troops\u201d so to speak and provide a sort-of one-stop shop for fan-fiction readers and writers. I see a couple potential problems, though.<\/a><\/p>\n

Or this:<\/p>\n

\u2013 <\/p>\n

Oh god.<\/p>\n

I like what you\u2019re saying, I really do, but I think it\u2019s actually impossible to achieve.<\/a><\/p>\n

and all the various comments that start with <\/p>\n

\u201cIt sounds like a cool idea\u2026but\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

or words to that effect.<\/p>\n

Taken separately, these comments don\u2019t seem like much, but every time a new one showed up I couldn\u2019t help but be reminded of <\/p>\n

this<\/a>\u00a0post by commodorified, and her oh so brilliant and beautiful rant therein:<\/p>\n

\u201cWOMEN NEED TO LEARN TO ASK FOR EVERY DAMN THING THEY WANT.<\/i><\/p>\n

And here are some notes:<\/i><\/p>\n

Yes, you. Yes, everything. Yes, even that.<\/i><\/p>\n

All of it. Because it\u2019s true. We\u2019re mostly raised to live on table scraps, to wait and see what\u2019s going when everyone else has been served and then choose from what\u2019s left. And that\u2019s crap, and it\u2019ll get you crap.<\/i><\/p>\n

Forget the limited menu of things that you automatically assume is all that\u2019s available given your (gender, looks, social class, education, financial position, reputation, family, damage level, etc etc etc), and start reading the whole menu instead.<\/i><\/p>\n

Then figure out what you want. Then check what you\u2019ve got and figure out how to get it. And then go after it baldheaded till either you make it happen or you decide that its real cost is more than it\u2019s worth to you<\/i>.\u201d<\/p>\n

And THAT is what Astolat\u2019s post is about. It\u2019s about saying \u201cTHIS is what we want, let\u2019s make it happen.\u201d It\u2019s about aiming for the ideal, not for some artificially imposed, more \u201crealistic\u201d option. <\/p>\n

And I think that\u2019s fabulous. And I think we CAN do this, we CAN make this amazing, complicated idea happen. But in order to do so we\u2019re going to have to be careful about those little voices inside our heads saying \u201cwell, it\u2019s a nice idea, but\u201d and \u201cthere\u2019s no point in trying for that impossible thing, let\u2019s aim for this \u2018more realistic\u2019 goal instead.\u201d<\/p>\n

Because, damn it, why\u00a0shouldn’t\u00a0<\/i>we ask for every damn thing we want. And why\u00a0shouldn’t\u00a0<\/i>we go out there and get it?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I am so pleased to have been proved correct.\u00a0<\/p>\n

(And also, in the category of\u00a0\u201cwomen need to ask for every damn thing they want\u201d? I took those words to heart, which is one of many reasons Marna\/commodorified and I have been married for going on eight years.)<\/p>\n

ETA<\/b>: I know some of the links are broken, they copied over from my original post and I didn\u2019t have the energy to either delete them or track them down elsewhere.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Asking for it and doing it!!!<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

So inspiring. And yes – at the time this seemed such a pipedream, but look at it now! <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Yup. I remember saying I\u2019d support it regardless, but it would only really be useful to me as a poster if it allowed every kind of content. Heh.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

God this brings it back.\u00a0 People saying we couldn\u2019t do it, that we would never be able to do it, etc. And then there was the sort of six months later <\/i>moment where people were like, but where is it? <\/i>(!)\u00a0 Dudes, we had to found a nonprofit company first! so we could be legal and raise money and pay taxes and have a bank account and enter contracts – and moreover, the archive was written from scratch: from a single blinking cursor on the screen, custom-designed from the ground up.\u00a0 I remember that I had the job of tracking wireframes in the early days as the real designers figured out how the flow of pages in the archive were going to go. Amazing. <\/p>\n

Anyway,\u00a0 I want to say that the group that came together around the OTW \/AO3 in those first years had a track record like WHOA: so many of those people had been archivists, web-admins, fannish fest-runners, newsletter compilers, community moderators, listmoms (kiddies, you won\u2019t know what this is) or had other fannish roles that gave them enormous experience in working collaboratively in fandom and keeping something great going year after year. And\u00a0 OTW continues to attract great people\u2013and so also, while I\u2019m blathering, let me say that volunteering for the OTW also provides great, real world experience that you can put on your resume, because AO3 is one of the top sites in the world and TWC has been publishing on time for ten years and Fanlore is cited in books and journalism all the time and Open Doors has relationships with many meatspace university libraries and archives etc. so if you think you have something to bring to the table, please do think about volunteering somewhere. It\u2019s work, believe me, but it\u2019s also pretty g-d awesome. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

You took back the servers; and that will always,\u00a0always\u00a0<\/i>bring me to tears. Thank you for your work and your love\u2014not a day goes by that I\u2019m not grateful.<\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

bert-and-ernie-are-gay: cesperanza: olderthannetfic: redwingstarling: cathexys: fairestcat: fairestcat: The tenth anniversary of the OTW and all the AO3 discussion going around this week inspired me to go look at astolat\u2019s original post about creating an An Archive Of Our Own, and found my comment on it: \u201cI think this is needed and long past needed. There … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “On the AO3 all these years later”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[1070,25847,146,2560,312,20074],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280409"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=280409"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280409\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}