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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.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-17 02:37 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-17 03:11 am (UTC)it then created a stub for me as author with no other info. It did not pull in anything from other social media sites.
I then sent a message using a form linked on the stubby author page to claim my profile - no one else except a librarian can edit it.
but yes gr does benefit hugely from the volunteer efforts of librarians.
as to why they decided to allow ff on goodresds until an author objects -check the links in the fanlore page. It reads more like a compromise plus less to police. At least it was until now
(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-17 03:18 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-17 03:23 am (UTC)only the author can claim their profile. But they do create an author profile for every work added so books can be linked together.
librarians are the only ones who can do higher level edits like remove duplicates or incorrect entries
(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-17 03:35 am (UTC)Also you need to be a librarian to clean up a Listopia list. Even the creators can't do it, although anyone can add books to them. I went through that hassle just a couple months ago.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-17 03:52 am (UTC)Cleaning up and such requires librarian status; adding books to the database doesn't. That's almost certainly part of the problem.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-17 04:06 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-17 04:11 am (UTC)GR is owned by Amazon; the "official squash drama" team is corporate--and their S.O.P. is "if the words 'lawsuit' or 'crime' are not involved, it's not our problem." The people who have the authority to step in are not (usually) daily users of GR, are not invested in avoiding drama but in "making the site bring money to Amazon." Many kinds of conflict work in their favor--it brings more viewers to GR.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-17 05:45 am (UTC)And I'm not looking forward to another backlash of fanfic authors locking down their fic and disabling the download option. Because that's what's going to happen.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-17 03:53 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-17 04:04 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-17 06:44 am (UTC)As we mentioned, we remove fan fiction pieces at the request of authors. If there are any works you're concerned about, the authors are welcome to contact us and we'll take care of it right away.
So that belligerent "Experiment BL626" librarian on Goodreads is completely wrong. He should be removing the fanfic entries, not arguing ceaselessly that they have every right to be there.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-17 07:28 am (UTC)Officially, only Librarians can remove fanfic entries but even their ability to remove is limited to entries that fall outside the policies (fanfic is within the policy) or are duplicates or contain incorrect info. The authors must request removal and the request needs to go to the helpdesk.
Readers can remove their reviews and comments and ratings (which some of them have done).
Again, I've only spent a day (now 2) looking at Goodreads, so YMMV.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-17 03:19 am (UTC)I'm not sure they could easily forbid entries from "fanfic archives." Does that include Wattpadd, which is used for fanfic and original fic? (AO3 allows original work.) Does it include private author webpages, where an author might post chapters or a whole work as a free sample?
Deciding what a "fanfic archive" is, is likely more work than the Amazonian managers of GR want to bother with. Unless they're likely to get sued over something, I suspect they're going to go with "a book is whatever the librarians decide to list as a book."
Fanfic archives are easy for fanfic readers/writers to identify, and to separate from "general fic archives that may allow some fanfic." But for non-fanfic readers, I'm not sure it's anywhere near as obvious. E.g. while Smashwords has a "no fanfic" rule, it's buried in their TOS (and relates to copyright; new Sherlock Holmes works should be fine)--and the whole Jekkara Press line is genderflipped versions of public domain works.
There's another issue, in that GR doesn't require links--you can review books that have no presence on Amazon or anywhere else online. And GR's limited staff is certainly not going to go poring through every "favorite book from childhood" to try to find out if the book is a "real book" or a fanfic thing.
I agree with you on several points--GR profits from other people's work, and their standards are lax to allow that. And that sucks.
I just don't agree that it'd be easy enough for them to prevent fanworks--first, they'd have to *care* that some of the "books" listed are fanfic or otherwise "not real books," and then someone would have to convince them it was a problem, and then they'd have to deal with the complexity of defining fanfic or "fanfic archive;" I'm pretty sure that GR is going to invest approximately zero hours on this.