First there was bemusement, now there are thoughts
So there have been changes from being all public access to being more, if not completely, friends-locked in at least two comms of which I'm a member, the one I want to talk about being darkangelfic which has some new rules. To put it really briefly, some of these have put some writers off from posting there and a lot of these rules were pretty new. (Is it really bad that part of my reaction was a little excitement that Dark Angel on lj has enough of a pulse to have what can be classified as an incident?) If you're looking for a fully considered response from me on this, don't. See how I sketched over the history? It should be said that I'm still working things out in my head.
For one thing, it took me a while to figure out that there is not, as I thought there was, a rule that you have to post your fic in full under a cut to the comm . There's a ban on links to other lj posts (apart from under certain circumstances) but off-site links are okay, that is, non-lj sites. Having thought about it, that seems arbitrary to me, as off-site links are as vulnerable as lj. If not more so: archives are out of individual writers' control, they might go off-line or like ff.net did, change all its links, so they may be even more vulnerable than sites that are subject to an author's whim, and if a writer wants to delete all her stuff, she can do so, whether it's on lj or any other website (though she may not be able to wipe all records of the story).
What his me personally, before I figured that out, was alethialia's point that it is going to mean one more place to remember to have to correct errors. Which is still true if you only post your story in full on your lj (is that common practice though?). But I could continue to post, as I do most times, a link to my website, so it mostly doesn't apply, though, depending on my mood, I may well post a fic under a cut-tag in a community, especially if it's a drabble. And whether I'll bother to correct the copy depends on what type of correction it is.
However, I'm pretty sure that this rule was not made public until very recently, because it came as a shock to me. And I know that it in particular has put off a good writer from posting her fics at darkangelfic, and I think that that's a shame.
The other big new rule is that all adult-rated fic has to be flocked. Again, I'll admit that my feelings are more centered around how this will affect me (though I went and changed my two R-rated fics, anyway, which reminds me that navigating really would be easier with memories.) Another comm of which I'm a member has shifted to flockedness of late, which isn't due to concern about age, per se, as I understand it. But see, both go against my this-would-suit-me attitude that most things should be available, properly labeled with a click on the link/tag knowingly option, so that the most amount of people can get access to it. Of course, I've never taken responsibility for a comm or a site, so this attitude is v. irresponsible, the most amount of people will involve kids. But I started surfing the web as an adult at university, I don't have kids, my R-rated fics are fairly tame. My attitude is more of the worry over younglings = making things harder for me than making things harder for fandom. Plus I'm fairly conservative, when I'm comfortable with a system, it has to be obviously better or more efficient or prettier for me to get wholly behind any change in said system.
So that's where I'm coming from when I say I'm not entirely happy about the changes. The outcome of the change in rule about ratings is that the community is not an all-rating community that non-members can read. (Is The Broken World the only such active DA site? I'm not a member or a frequent visitor, so I'm hazy. Either sites are dead or pairing/character specific.) Given the past divisiveness in the fandom, that's a shame. Plus there's the fact that, at present, Dark Angel is a small fandom, based on closed canon; it never built up a huge lj presence. It should be easy for people to access fics, (although I know I'm probably not thinking enough about the age-issue. NWP clearly [as in a BIG banner] labels NC-17 fic.)
Broader questions have been raised about such communities and their role in a fandom and the responsibilities to fandom/members/readers of the people who set up such communities (or archives etc). I'm horribly aware that I do have expectations, apparently, even as I want to say that I'm not likely to take on the role or moderator or archivist, so who am I to dictate? I think we'd all say that there are some things that we could reasonably expect of the person in charge, it's just that we'd disagree on what seems reasonable. Plus, we rarely know the whole story.
As the situation stands, I...I will abide by the new rules, as I understand them, but this whole incident has made me think.
[Edited a bit for punctuation.)
For one thing, it took me a while to figure out that there is not, as I thought there was, a rule that you have to post your fic in full under a cut to the comm . There's a ban on links to other lj posts (apart from under certain circumstances) but off-site links are okay, that is, non-lj sites. Having thought about it, that seems arbitrary to me, as off-site links are as vulnerable as lj. If not more so: archives are out of individual writers' control, they might go off-line or like ff.net did, change all its links, so they may be even more vulnerable than sites that are subject to an author's whim, and if a writer wants to delete all her stuff, she can do so, whether it's on lj or any other website (though she may not be able to wipe all records of the story).
What his me personally, before I figured that out, was alethialia's point that it is going to mean one more place to remember to have to correct errors. Which is still true if you only post your story in full on your lj (is that common practice though?). But I could continue to post, as I do most times, a link to my website, so it mostly doesn't apply, though, depending on my mood, I may well post a fic under a cut-tag in a community, especially if it's a drabble. And whether I'll bother to correct the copy depends on what type of correction it is.
However, I'm pretty sure that this rule was not made public until very recently, because it came as a shock to me. And I know that it in particular has put off a good writer from posting her fics at darkangelfic, and I think that that's a shame.
The other big new rule is that all adult-rated fic has to be flocked. Again, I'll admit that my feelings are more centered around how this will affect me (though I went and changed my two R-rated fics, anyway, which reminds me that navigating really would be easier with memories.) Another comm of which I'm a member has shifted to flockedness of late, which isn't due to concern about age, per se, as I understand it. But see, both go against my this-would-suit-me attitude that most things should be available, properly labeled with a click on the link/tag knowingly option, so that the most amount of people can get access to it. Of course, I've never taken responsibility for a comm or a site, so this attitude is v. irresponsible, the most amount of people will involve kids. But I started surfing the web as an adult at university, I don't have kids, my R-rated fics are fairly tame. My attitude is more of the worry over younglings = making things harder for me than making things harder for fandom. Plus I'm fairly conservative, when I'm comfortable with a system, it has to be obviously better or more efficient or prettier for me to get wholly behind any change in said system.
So that's where I'm coming from when I say I'm not entirely happy about the changes. The outcome of the change in rule about ratings is that the community is not an all-rating community that non-members can read. (Is The Broken World the only such active DA site? I'm not a member or a frequent visitor, so I'm hazy. Either sites are dead or pairing/character specific.) Given the past divisiveness in the fandom, that's a shame. Plus there's the fact that, at present, Dark Angel is a small fandom, based on closed canon; it never built up a huge lj presence. It should be easy for people to access fics, (although I know I'm probably not thinking enough about the age-issue. NWP clearly [as in a BIG banner] labels NC-17 fic.)
Broader questions have been raised about such communities and their role in a fandom and the responsibilities to fandom/members/readers of the people who set up such communities (or archives etc). I'm horribly aware that I do have expectations, apparently, even as I want to say that I'm not likely to take on the role or moderator or archivist, so who am I to dictate? I think we'd all say that there are some things that we could reasonably expect of the person in charge, it's just that we'd disagree on what seems reasonable. Plus, we rarely know the whole story.
As the situation stands, I...I will abide by the new rules, as I understand them, but this whole incident has made me think.
[Edited a bit for punctuation.)