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morgandawnFandom usually jumps into technologies, uses them, and then acts surprised when we realize that we have no clue what we're doing or how the use of the new tech has changed an aspect of our fandom culture. Right now a few authors are posting notices that you need permission to link to their fanworks in "public spaces". Or that they'd prefer their readers comment on their fic where it was originally posted. Each author gets to unilaterally define what is public with the expectation that every reader will follow because that is part of the "social contract". So for today Goodreads = public and is not a place to list or review fanfic. Tumblr is OK (for now) because it is not seen as a "public" space.*
It used to be easier to know what to expect of other fans but the moment we went online, the fannish social contract was voided due to sheer size and complexity of online interactions. Add the fact that new platforms and new ways of interacting keep coming out every 20 minutes and you have a hot conceptual mess filled with poorly understood expectations.
I know that when we went online in the 1990s few of us had any idea that fans would be publicly posting their porn fanfic** to open access websites (no. stop. think of the children!), displaying their explicit art where anyone could see (blush), and tweeting their love of RPS and knotting fic (OMGWTFBB!). By those standards, we have all breached the original fannish social contract of keeping fandom a "safe space" simply by interacting with one another in public and online. And I suspect that 20 years down the road, we will again struggle to recognize "fandom" as it continues to be reshaped by technology.
So I would rather see us practice mindfulness and awareness that the tools and platforms we use change us and our culture instead of snapping at one another because we've changed and that we no longer know what to expect from one another.
Because to be honest, I have no clue any more. And I'd be wary of anyone who claims otherwise.
*Keep in mind that most fans don't bother to turn off Google indexing on their tumblr blogs (or their LJ...or their DW..or their twitter or their.....). And even if they do, every time someone else reblogs your content, if *their blog* is searchable by Google it will still be "public".
**A few of us did have in inkling but we all kept it quiet because we did not want to scare our fellow fans with our crazy visions of the future filled with flying fans sporting jetpack keyboards and tinhats.
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(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-17 01:09 am (UTC)I am fascinated by the outrage on Tumblr, because I feel like you do, see what you're seeing: Tumblr's already so far out there from our flocked/robot&spider blocked LJ/DWs that I can't believe people are surprised that others would consider their fic Good Reads discussion worthy.
We come across this ever so often (like remember the fic of fic debate where we tried to establish what can be used to transform and what can't or the can you link to tiny LJs and what if you have a huge following, is that ethical), and you nailed what's happening when fandom mores change and different fandom etiquettes clash (or new fans simply invent their own!).
Anyway, thanks for a great post!!!
(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-17 01:21 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-17 02:30 am (UTC)Cool. I'll retumblr then... (Maybe that's part of the problem...folks who think of that, the whole repetition/copy of text/image as the default?)
(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-17 01:48 am (UTC)Now everything seems 'out there' but the understanding is not - recently, I was asked to explain the difference between fanfiction and original fiction (during a workshop) and I think I managed well enough, but clearly the questions asked were born out of false knowledge ("Yes, 50 Shades was fanfiction in origin. No, it wasn't copied from Twilight." etc etc)
Anyway, yes, the tools change us.
Also, can you share your Tumblr name? I'm phantomas37 :)
(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-17 02:51 am (UTC)(no subject)
From:(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-17 01:53 am (UTC)On the one hand, fanfic is not, for the most part, "books" in the sense that Goodreads was intended to review.(Especially not now, with it being owned by Amazon.) GR is a social platform intending to sell books for Amazon, where they didn't have to develop the infrastructure and upkeep is minimal--and part of "minimal upkeep" means "fuck if we're going to bother setting standards about what 'is' or 'is not' a book. If someone wants to post a cereal box and review the artwork and nutritional data text, shrug."
On the other, I can quite understand fanfic authors getting upset that they're getting reviews from people who don't understand canon, who are reading fanfic as if it were commercially-oriented short stories or novels.
On the gripping hand... I am so, SO VERY glad AO3 exists and that the unwanted attention this will bring to fandom (because it'll bring some) will be noted and addressed by the OTW, rather than the owners of fanfiction.net or wattpad or livejournal. That anyone who screams "this so-called book is nothing but copyright infringement of [favorite other book]!!!' will be faced with a whole academic journal and several congressional hearings' worth of documentation that no, it's not.
As far as the data itself being dragged to GR--the titles, authors, a cover assigned by librarian whim, original summary and new commentary... as uncomfortable as that makes some authors, it's not illegal to make lists and links of content elsewhere on the web. GR's a mashup of del.icio.us and Yelp, focused on "books," an undefined topic; plenty of people screamed about their business showing up on either of those sites, and fandom, for the most part, ignored them. If we think it's reasonable to bitch about a hotel because their restaurant service sucks when the customers are in costume, well, the public is allowed to gripe about a story that doesn't make sense if you haven't read a series of novels first.
It doesn't stop being remix culture because the mundanes are doing it.
(The idea of tumblr not being "a public space".... oh ghods my sides hurt from laughing. Just because your stuff won't get noticed in the constant confetti blizzard of LOOKIT LOOKIT LOOKIT does not make it less public.)
(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-17 02:10 am (UTC)*prints this out and frames it*
(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-17 02:32 am (UTC)Yes, brilliant and highly quotable!!!
And yes, I think it's so bizarre that the folks getting upset are coming from Tumblr. I don't post anything there because it IS so public and out there...
/retreats to her flock...
(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-17 03:38 am (UTC)May I quote you?
Everywhere?
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From:(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-17 03:49 am (UTC)https://www.goodreads.com/user_status/show/54428714?comment=111100055&page=2#comment_111100055
was that when a reader creates a manual entry they can add info about the author or the story. And this is where many fan writers are (rightfully) concerned when they find their enthusiastic reader has linked to the author's blogs or tumblr accounts etc. The good news is that this info is not auto-populated. The bad news is that it is not auto-populated. which means anything can be added.
Info on the author cannot be added to their profile page by the average user - but if you are a SuperUser (Librarian) you can edit the author's page (and again link to a blog or tumblr). The good news is that once you claim your profile you can eliminate this. The bad news is that you have to know the profile is there.
Think of all the website scrapers running right now that are pulling info from your blog and your tunblr and your twitter and your Youtube account (and yes your AO3 pages which are indexed by Google) and you can see how impossible it is to limit what gets added where. At the very least, GR will remove the info, but most of these other aggregator websites will not. The only way to limit this info is to lock access.
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-17 09:20 pm (UTC)BTW, love your subtle call out. This concept of posing alternatives in threes rather than a simple binary came out of the Niven/Pournelle world-building for “Mote in God’s Eye”. The new race of creatures (“Moties”) had multiple arms and their language allowed for better than binary thinking unlike us poor left/right symmetrical humans.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-17 02:07 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-17 02:24 am (UTC)Miscellaneous people with accounts on Goodreads are uploading AO3 (and occasionally other places) metadata. And this is not so much to Amazon's advantage (they gain nothing from fanfic being listed, and occasionally will have drama over it), but it also costs them nothing, whereas curating book listings would take a lot of time and effort.
Basically, they're not going to sort out the difference between a story published at AO3 and one published at Smashwords, or one published at NewStoriesEveryDay.com, or whatever other fic-hosting site shows up. Listings take up very little server space, and the cost of curating would be much, much higher than the cost of "just allow everything, and remove individual pages when we receive a creditable complaint."
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From:examples of how goodread fans are not "real" fans
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From:Specific and protected community
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Date: 2014-12-17 05:45 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-17 06:21 am (UTC)And some of the freakout is understandable, but... it's not like fans are dragging f'locked fic or password-archive stories into googleable blog sites. They're grabbing public, searchable data from one place and posting it in another public, searchable social space.
And this drama happens EVERY time fandom stretches past its current boundaries and spills over into some space formerly not known for fannish content.
Maybe we need a Fanlore page for "When Fandom Content Winds Up In Mainstream Spaces," because the same cycle happens over and over. The only reason it hasn't killed fandom is that the new activity *always* brings in more new fans than old ones decide to go into lockdown mode. (Of course, much of the old guard refuses to recognize the new fans as "real enough" until they've had their own "OMG my fanfic is showing up WHERE" moment.)
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From:to answer cathexys question about how I used to feel about fandom visibility
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Date: 2014-12-18 05:39 pm (UTC)Huh. I'm pretty sure I read fanfic reviews at Goodreads when Merlin was still on the air, so reviewing fic there isn't all that new a development. The sky hasn't fallen yet.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-18 06:07 pm (UTC)I think Goodreads officially allowed fanfic to be listed in...2010? The first time I found the Goodreads librarians discussing fanfic in their forum was 2009 (they were deciding whether to remove Cassandra Claire's fanworks for plagiarism, which I think they did.)
So yeah..... no falling sky pieces. But for today - in one corner of fandom - Goodreads = public = bad. I think elf hit it on the head - "Fandom is only where I say it is and only includes those who I say belong" Another variation of " Your platform is not OK, my platform is the only OK." or "Print Fans Are The Only True Fans, Net Fans Are Not Real Fans, Net Fans Don't Want To Build Communities,They Just Want To Consume Fanfic Hidden Behind Their Little Computer Screens".
http://fanlore.org/wiki/%22Crossing_the_Line:%27Netfans%27and_%27Printfans%27%22
(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-18 07:35 pm (UTC)Yes, this kind of stuff is only going to get worse, and no doubt, we'll have fewer and fewer rights, or ways of opting out of anything, but that doesn't mean everybody has to be okay with it.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-20 07:40 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-01-03 05:45 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-01-03 05:51 am (UTC)Thank you! I had no idea something similar had happened. http://amplificathon.dreamwidth.org/1165271.html?thread=4697559&style=light http://podficmeta.dreamwidth.org/13417.html?replyto=161897
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Date: 2015-01-03 11:00 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-01-03 11:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2015-01-06 03:57 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-01-06 04:27 pm (UTC)Yes, please go ahead and link.