why OTW!
Over in otw_news, the Community Relations team of OTW is running a Why I Joined/Support OTW week, and here is my contribution. :D While I'm posting, I will also take this opportunity to pimp the latest recruiting posts up in otw_news -- volunteer to be a Ruby Coder or an XHTML/CSS Coder! It will be fun! ♥
So the big underlying reason I wanted to talk about is that actually, I do take fandom seriously. The thing is, I live here. Most of my closest friends, people I hang out with both in chat and real life on a regular basis, are people I've met through fandom. I wouldn't have my current career without fandom, and I wouldn't be nearly as happy and creatively fulfilled. I care about and feel connected to a vast network of other fans. Not that everyone in fandom is all BFF or anything, just that there's a community here that we're a part of, and it's a community I love.
That's not at all the same thing as wanting to be serious in fandom. I mean, look at my LJ, you can see I am here for the squee and the glitter and the toys. I have plenty of real RL stuff to be serious about and I come here looking to get away from it. But I also care about this community that has welcomed me and given me a place to play and grow. I care about and value the creative work I have done here myself and that's been made by others that I've enjoyed. So I am willing to be serious once in a while too, and to buckle down and do some real and not immediately fun work.
I've been involved in online fandom uh, fourteen years now O_O, so it's not like this emotion got created overnight. It got built over years of early drifting in and out, gradually and tentatively starting to meet people face to face, building long-term relationships over creative work and shared interests, and that ultimately day in and day out I find heaps of fun and joy here. And I am not at all saying everyone should feel the same way; I am all for everyone enjoying fandom in their own way. Everyone chips in their little bit, even if you're just wandering through enjoying stories as an occasional lurker, maybe posting one or two comments, it's all good. But I feel like in the discussion there's been a bit of almost sneering at just the idea of caring about fandom as a community at all, so, I really wanted to step up and say, yes, I do care, and I don't think it is lame to care enough to do some real work.
And as for the particular kind of work, why OTW and a whole complicated organization -- I talked about a bunch of my initial impulses back at the beginning, and those motivations haven't changed, although strikethrough (which happened shortly after that post, I think) intensified my feelings.
The single biggest reason for me is and remains the archive, having someplace central that will last, where we can put the stuff we make, where people who want to see the stuff can find it. I want a place that is not dependent on the goodwill of a corporation like LJ whose motivation is profit, and therefore only cares about me as a useful free content generator and will throw me to sharks the second I start looking like a liability. I want a place that is not dependent on me (or some other individual) paying regular fees and doing regular maintenance to keep the site up and working.
I want these things because it drives me nuts how ephemeral fandom infrastructure is. When I want to take out a book from the library, in disappointing cases the book might be out or worse yet missing, but at least I don't have to spend three days finding out where the library's address is this week, what it's been renamed, what the secret password for access is today.
Right now, if I got hit by a bolt of lightning and quit supporting my sites, my personal website would just disappear after about a year when the dreamhost account ran dry. My lj would hang around until LJ policies changed and they deleted it or purged old journals without activity or went under, and it would disappear from view anyway as people moved to the latest site. People would still be able to get my stories through the fannish network if they went to an effort, but they wouldn't find them casually. Even worse, same thing goes for the entire Yuletide archive. Thousands of stories by thousands of authors, some literally the only piece of fanfiction online for a given fandom, goodbye. Oh, and some site that puts down holds for any domain name that expires would probably grab the url, so all the links and recs for yuletide stories ever would now link to XXX video porn with barnyard animals and viruses or something.
And in my particular case this is actually not at all likely -- been here 14 years, still going, and if I got hit by a truck my husband and my family all know about my fannish stuff and how much I care about it, they know a bunch of my fannish friends, I am confident they would find some way to preserve it. But that is me, I have a wildly privileged fannish situation in this respect that a lot of others don't. What about someone who just can't afford to keep a website up one day, or who gets sick, or whose family doesn't know?
Or (which is a lot more likely and happens all the time to lots of us me included), just -- gets tired! People move fandoms, get sick of running the community or the archive they had four years ago, maybe they try to find someone else to do it in a fandom where most of their friends have moved on -- and then they shrug, and boom, gone. Or they just abandon, if it's on something like a free website, and then eventually in move the spammers, and links die, and a few years later browsers are different and the site stops working -- etc.
This really drives me nuts. I want a better alternative if I am done with a project than dumping it, struggling to talk someone into running it that I have any confidence will actually keep it going (♥ elynross and also sidles out of her throwing range), or slogging on with something I'm over, inevitably letting it degrade as other shiny things get the better part of my attention.
And a nonprofit org is just the best practical means to this end. I mean, this is what corporation-type things are meant for -- bopping steadily along even after all the people who started them originally are long gone. A corporation also provides a liability shield for all the individuals doing the work and chipping in the money. And a US nonprofit organization with 501(c)(3) status is good because it means there is no profit motive there and you have the eagle eye of the IRS watching over the finances. What that means is, six years and two boards down the line, the board has still got to be meeting the basic standards and they can't decide hey, they've changed their minds! now they will sell the archive to Microsoft for ten million dollars, take the money and go to Aruba! Uh, no. If they try Uncle Sam will eat them. *g*
Okay! I think that is more than enough rambling from me, I actually have ten million more reasons but this would be even more crazy long than it already is. But seriously, think about coming to code with us!
So the big underlying reason I wanted to talk about is that actually, I do take fandom seriously. The thing is, I live here. Most of my closest friends, people I hang out with both in chat and real life on a regular basis, are people I've met through fandom. I wouldn't have my current career without fandom, and I wouldn't be nearly as happy and creatively fulfilled. I care about and feel connected to a vast network of other fans. Not that everyone in fandom is all BFF or anything, just that there's a community here that we're a part of, and it's a community I love.
That's not at all the same thing as wanting to be serious in fandom. I mean, look at my LJ, you can see I am here for the squee and the glitter and the toys. I have plenty of real RL stuff to be serious about and I come here looking to get away from it. But I also care about this community that has welcomed me and given me a place to play and grow. I care about and value the creative work I have done here myself and that's been made by others that I've enjoyed. So I am willing to be serious once in a while too, and to buckle down and do some real and not immediately fun work.
I've been involved in online fandom uh, fourteen years now O_O, so it's not like this emotion got created overnight. It got built over years of early drifting in and out, gradually and tentatively starting to meet people face to face, building long-term relationships over creative work and shared interests, and that ultimately day in and day out I find heaps of fun and joy here. And I am not at all saying everyone should feel the same way; I am all for everyone enjoying fandom in their own way. Everyone chips in their little bit, even if you're just wandering through enjoying stories as an occasional lurker, maybe posting one or two comments, it's all good. But I feel like in the discussion there's been a bit of almost sneering at just the idea of caring about fandom as a community at all, so, I really wanted to step up and say, yes, I do care, and I don't think it is lame to care enough to do some real work.
And as for the particular kind of work, why OTW and a whole complicated organization -- I talked about a bunch of my initial impulses back at the beginning, and those motivations haven't changed, although strikethrough (which happened shortly after that post, I think) intensified my feelings.
The single biggest reason for me is and remains the archive, having someplace central that will last, where we can put the stuff we make, where people who want to see the stuff can find it. I want a place that is not dependent on the goodwill of a corporation like LJ whose motivation is profit, and therefore only cares about me as a useful free content generator and will throw me to sharks the second I start looking like a liability. I want a place that is not dependent on me (or some other individual) paying regular fees and doing regular maintenance to keep the site up and working.
I want these things because it drives me nuts how ephemeral fandom infrastructure is. When I want to take out a book from the library, in disappointing cases the book might be out or worse yet missing, but at least I don't have to spend three days finding out where the library's address is this week, what it's been renamed, what the secret password for access is today.
Right now, if I got hit by a bolt of lightning and quit supporting my sites, my personal website would just disappear after about a year when the dreamhost account ran dry. My lj would hang around until LJ policies changed and they deleted it or purged old journals without activity or went under, and it would disappear from view anyway as people moved to the latest site. People would still be able to get my stories through the fannish network if they went to an effort, but they wouldn't find them casually. Even worse, same thing goes for the entire Yuletide archive. Thousands of stories by thousands of authors, some literally the only piece of fanfiction online for a given fandom, goodbye. Oh, and some site that puts down holds for any domain name that expires would probably grab the url, so all the links and recs for yuletide stories ever would now link to XXX video porn with barnyard animals and viruses or something.
And in my particular case this is actually not at all likely -- been here 14 years, still going, and if I got hit by a truck my husband and my family all know about my fannish stuff and how much I care about it, they know a bunch of my fannish friends, I am confident they would find some way to preserve it. But that is me, I have a wildly privileged fannish situation in this respect that a lot of others don't. What about someone who just can't afford to keep a website up one day, or who gets sick, or whose family doesn't know?
Or (which is a lot more likely and happens all the time to lots of us me included), just -- gets tired! People move fandoms, get sick of running the community or the archive they had four years ago, maybe they try to find someone else to do it in a fandom where most of their friends have moved on -- and then they shrug, and boom, gone. Or they just abandon, if it's on something like a free website, and then eventually in move the spammers, and links die, and a few years later browsers are different and the site stops working -- etc.
This really drives me nuts. I want a better alternative if I am done with a project than dumping it, struggling to talk someone into running it that I have any confidence will actually keep it going (♥ elynross and also sidles out of her throwing range), or slogging on with something I'm over, inevitably letting it degrade as other shiny things get the better part of my attention.
And a nonprofit org is just the best practical means to this end. I mean, this is what corporation-type things are meant for -- bopping steadily along even after all the people who started them originally are long gone. A corporation also provides a liability shield for all the individuals doing the work and chipping in the money. And a US nonprofit organization with 501(c)(3) status is good because it means there is no profit motive there and you have the eagle eye of the IRS watching over the finances. What that means is, six years and two boards down the line, the board has still got to be meeting the basic standards and they can't decide hey, they've changed their minds! now they will sell the archive to Microsoft for ten million dollars, take the money and go to Aruba! Uh, no. If they try Uncle Sam will eat them. *g*
Okay! I think that is more than enough rambling from me, I actually have ten million more reasons but this would be even more crazy long than it already is. But seriously, think about coming to code with us!