Some of the Problems with OTW/AO3 Are Features, Not Bugs

[dawn_felagund]

Hoo boy, the OTW has had a rough couple of weeks. Can I first confess a teeeensy bit of schadenfreude, because some of what I've been waving my hands around all Cassandra-like about for years now it turns out is actually coming to pass (The code is a mess! The organization is in shambles!) when it felt like people looked for every opportunity to label on their fingers the reasons why AO3 was superior to any independent site a stupid fan (like me!) might want to set up because of its institutional heft. I said this, not even six months ago: "But I am most comfortable with governance that takes into account local needs and culture. I also think it is downright empowering to take care of yourself and your community rather than relying on someone else, no matter how benevolent they are ... or seem." Seem! Heh. But that aside.

To sum up the OTW's very bad no-good month: There was the whole AI kerfuffle that I wrote about in my last post. From May 17-30, End OTW Racism waged a campaign (which seems to have been pretty successful) to call attention to the fact that the OTW has gone three years without doing much of anything toward fulfilling their promises to address racism within the OTW. Then there's the former volunteer who spoke out about problems on the Policy & Abuse committee and has subsequently been vaguely accused by the Legal team to have attacked hundreds of volunteers with CSEM. Combined, this all seems to have had the effect of exposing multiple problems with how the OTW is run and governed.

Truly, I want the OTW/AO3 to be successful. It would be a disaster (and I don't think that's too strong a word) if AO3 in particular were to fail. My gripe isn't with OTW/AO3 (which has been consistently clear across the years that they do not wish to centralize fandom unto themselves) but with the people who worship at the altar of OTW/AO3 to the extent that they think there should be no god archive but theirs. I'm hoping that whatever shit needs to be gotten together at the OTW can be gotten together for them to pull out of this funk they're in.

Because I'm interested in fanworks archives generally, I've been following everything that's going on with growing interest, and of course lots of people are expressing what they'd hope to see change. But some of those things would make the OTW ... not the OTW. By which I mean that the core purpose of the organization would be changed.

Abigail De Kosnik in the book Rogue Archives classifies online archives (focusing on fanfic archives) in three ways: universal archives, community archives, and alternative archives. (She rather breathlessly asserts that AO3 is all three, which I don't agree with. Her barely suppressed adulation of AO3 is one of my chief critiques of the book.) Alternative archives don't really come into play here, but the other two do. De Kosnik defines universal archives as those that employ

comprehensive archiving, a process that strives to collect as many cultural texts as possible, to make all the texts equally accessible to the public, and to present all the texts as equally valuable. (75)

Community archives, on the other hand, work

to assemble and preserve texts that originate from, or bear direct relevance to, cultures that have been historically marginalized in traditional memory institutions. (75)

Community archives, in other words, store the works of communities that would not typically be included in libraries, traditional archives, etc.: like fanworks. Universal archives try to collect everything.

I think a lot of the struggle with OTW/AO3 comes down to the fact that OTW has created AO3 as a universal archive, when what people want (or think they are getting) is a community archive. And this is nothing new. I've been making the case for small archives for some time now on the basis that they solve the problems of people like antis who want a fandom environment sanitized of certain materials that they find "problematic" or "objectionable" by allowing them to have what they want while leaving the rest of us alone. I used to roll my eyes at some of the archives in Tolkien fandom with their stuffy no-fun-allowed policies until I realized that they did a lot toward giving fans (like Christian fundamentalists) with whom I'd rather not interact a place to keep themselves busy. Community archives also, of course, give fans who want to share a community with likeminded fans that opportunity as well. (The SWG would be such an example. When I entered the Tolkien fandom in 2004, fanfiction archives were inundated with Lord of the Rings stories. I didn't dislike LotR or fanfic about it, but I wanted to discuss and create and share with other Silmarillion people and built the SWG for that purpose.) In all, community archives collect the works of a community and are much more sensitive to the needs and culture of that community in a way that universal archives—where the completeness is part of the point—cannot be.

And it's important to realize that the OTW/AO3's role as a universal archive is central to its existence. Its raison d'être is preserving any and all fanworks. If we cast our minds back to 2007ish, when the OTW was in its infancy, Fandom was at a particularly delicate point in its history. The internet was beginning to get big ... and profitable. Fandom had been kind of humming along in its hokey homespun communities, not really being noticed ... until it was, and the platforms where those communities resided suddenly went, "OH. Advertisers may not be keen on having their product appear alongside Harry Potter porn," not to mention the fundagelicals who thought stopping The Gay Agenda was on order of achieving peace between Israel and Palestine. The OTW was formed in the crucible of those purges and censorship, when the possibility of having no place to share certain fannish content was a very real possibility. And thus it prioritized the exact opposite: complete openness to ALL fannish content. (Dreamwidth—formed at the same time, though using a for-profit model—had similar goals, coming out of the same historical context.) "We own the servers!" was the mantra. In other words, we (fans) held our own destinies (and fanworks) in our very own little hands.

OTW asserts its purpose as a universal archive at multiple points across its sites and history:

The Organization for Transformative Works (OTW) is a nonprofit organization established by fans to serve the interests of fans by providing access to and preserving the history of fanworks and fan culture in its myriad forms. (What We Believe)

--

We’d like to be fandom’s deposit library, a place where people can back up existing work or projects and have stable links, not the only place where anyone ever posts their work. (FAQ, "Is the OTW trying to replace all other archives?")

--

AO3 was designed specifically with maximum inclusivity of content in mind, and we remain committed to that principle. (Statement from the OTW Board of Directors, Chairs, and Leads

--

Our goals as an organization include maximum inclusivity of fanworks. This means not only the best fanworks, or the most popular fanworks, but all the fanworks that we can preserve. (AI and Data Scraping on the Archive)

Openness to any and all fanworks sounds lovely in theory, though I think we're beginning to see that, in practice, it can feel far less appealing, especially when it becomes the only option. The last quote continues thusly: "When it comes to which fanworks are allowed on AO3, there will always be significant tension between maximum inclusivity of content and making the Archive a welcoming space for all fans." Significant tension, indeed!

I want to be clear at this juncture that I stand with the larger goal of End OTW Racism: Three years is unacceptably long to wait for something to be done, and what the OTW promised (and what End OTW Racism is attempting to hold them accountable for) has little to do with the content of the archive; only one of their four demands ("A content policy on abusive (extremely racist and extremely bigoted) content") has anything to do with the fanworks themselves. I don't want to allege that the OTW Board is maliciously refusing to act, but I do think that promises were made with the expectation that words would be enough and no one would remember, oh yes, you did say you would do these things too. I think they're guilty of the sin of many privileged people: assuming a pat on the head and pretty words will suffice. Turns out they won't. But I digress.

We are seeing on AO3 what a universal archive looks like. It accepts AI-generated "fanworks." It allows content that is unapologetically racist, misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic, etc. Usernames and userpics can include hate speech. GIFs that appear to involve CSEM must be proven to involve minors before they are removed. (This policy has since changed.)

One volunteer describes moderation on AO3:

The default assumption is that anything not forbidden in the TOS is allowed. This is one of the things that "maximum inclusiveness of content" means. AO3 will err on the side of allowing rather than forbidding, keeping rather than deleting, and not acting rather than acting.

Again, this is intentional; none of this is surprising; this is the reason the OTW and AO3 exist.

Remember that universal archives, according to De Kosnik's definition, don't just archive everything but "present all the texts as equally valuable." The OTW was founded on the belief that fanworks and fan history have value and are worth preserving without judgment as to content or quality. Inherent in the prioritization of fanworks is the relegation of the interests of fans to secondary status. This is not a judgment, just a statement of fact. In discussing the OTW's ideal around the value of all (truly ALL) fanworks, I keep coming back to the ACLU, which prioritizes civil liberties, even to the extent of defending the rights of reprehensible people, groups, and causes. Similarly, defense attorneys prioritize the ideals of due process and "innocent until proven guilty" for all persons to the extent that they will use the system to maximize gains for offenders at the expense of victims. I do not think it is wrong to place ideals at the helm and think that ideals-driven organizations and people are necessary to provide the balance needed in a just system. But we also cannot pretend that people aren't harmed when ideals are treated with the greater reverence.

I think many fans instinctually privilege the needs and feelings of fans over the value of fanworks and have trouble viewing issues through the lens used by the OTW. Take, for example, racist harassment. A user posts overtly racist fanworks and makes persistent racist comments on other fans' work. For most fans, the answer seems simple: Ban that person. They are not a benefit to the community, and the harm they are doing to other fans far outweighs whatever benefit their presence may bring.

But when prioritizing fanworks, this person becomes more valuable as a creator of fanworks. Their fanworks and comments become artifacts documenting fan history and culture. After all, racism is a part of fandom; if we are treating all fanworks as valid and valued, this user's work becomes important evidence of a particular perspective, however reprehensible, and is part of the complete picture of what it means to participate in fandom in early 21st century. We imagine future historians, looking at AO3 for evidence of racism, finding none, and concluding there was none because it was deleted from the archive. How often do we look back at historical documents with a sort of detachment, failing to fully recognize how shattering the words we're reading may have been to their recipients at the time?

This is neither a critique nor a pardon of the OTW/AO3. It simply is. It is the organization's mission to preserve, equally, all fanworks. This mission is usually irrelevant to fans, who use AO3 with the same expectations that they might a community archive ... irrelevant, anyway, until it's not, until the fan is the one being harassed, wondering why a userpic featuring a Nazi broken cross doesn't violate the rules, wondering why fanworks that clearly attack fans of color are being allowed to stay up.

Of course, part of this comes from the increasing consolidation onto AO3 in recent years, which amplifies the detrimental effects a universal archive will have on some of its users. It's one thing if AO3 is but one of several places where people go to read fanworks. It's quite another when, for a fan of color, the only place you can read fanworks for your fandom is on a site whose purpose forbids it from addressing works and comments that do you harm. I've heard the argument being made that, since people use AO3 as a social site, then it should shift toward policies more in line with what is expected of a social site; after all, it's not like other universal archives like Project Gutenberg and Archive.org come with social features like AO3 does. There is definitely something perilous in the unbridled archiving of everything coupled with the ability of people to interact over that content. Certainly, it would be the OTW's prerogative to choose to make that shift as a social site, but they've also made clear that they have no plans to do so. Perhaps AO3 should have offered fewer "social" features, but hindsight and all that: They do, and they are committed to their mission as a universal archive.

Some of this too comes from Fandom's history being one of community archives until AO3. The culture around fanworks is not one of universality, even among fans who proclaim openness. There has been no universal archive until AO3; archives were always governed by a blend of specialization (defining what they allow) and restriction (what is off-limits). And this culture remains: just look at any fandom event (many of them hosted on AO3), and nearly all address prominently what is allowed and what is not. Fans are culturally primed to draw these boundaries and not think much of it. It is no wonder, then, that fans come to the OTW and AO3 with this same mindset of "we can say 'no' to this and 'yes' to that." It is no wonder that they are perplexed and dismayed when this assumption is met with, "Actually it is 'yes' to anything that we can legally say 'yes' to."

This is ultimately not a post with solutions. I wrote it across a couple of days to get out of my head the various thoughts that have been swirling and which I've written down incompletely in other places. Usually, this is the point where I make the case for small archives, and I do think that more community archives (of varying sizes) are needed, but that's really not a fair expectation to set right now, when very few options exist for actually building such a thing if you are a fan who is not a coder. As I've said in previous posts, I do think this is changing and I hope to devote some of my summer break to helping that change along, but it will not be the overnight option that I expect many fans want/need right now. (We've had a few people join the SWG in recent days, for instance, with the stated purpose of archiving somewhere outside of AO3, but most fandoms don't have an SWG.) We will likely need to go back to being inventive and organizing around what we want to see in fandom, which is ironically right where we were in 2007, when the OTW was born out of fandom discontent.

Comments

[anna_wing]

Thank you for that very clear exposition!

I opposed and oppose the End Racism on AO3 thing, not just because I too see AO3 an archive, not a social media platform (interaction with other users is incidental to how I use it, not the main point), but because I would be very concerned that a small (relative to the number of contributors to AO3) coterie is trying to arrogate to itself, essentially, powers of censorship over the archive. If someone wants to avoid something unpleasant, by all means let them block or filter, or simply refrain from reading (like everyone else, I'm sure, there are things I saw by accident on AO3 that I definitely wish I'd never seen), but that should give no right to demand that no-one else should be able to see it either, regardless of the author or subject matter.

Not to mention that there are an infinite number of things to which people could object, and there is no reason why US-style racism (and the very ...culture-specific nature of the concerns raised is a concern in itself, since AO3 has contributors from all over the world) will be the only issue to demand privileged status; the modern global equivalents of the Irish Question and the status of Alsace-Lorraine do come to mind immediately.

[alexcat]

There are people on my flist who are demanding Ao3 change... BUT these same people got terribly upset when a girl ran for the board who wanted to 'end child porn' on Ao3. Unfortunately, the very nature of Ao3 makes it a place that 'objectional material' can be posted. That's what the back button is for.

[dawn_felagund]

I wholeheartedly agree that "the very nature of Ao3" makes it open to both types of fanworks ... hence this post. However, I do think that there are substantial differences between not wanting to see "underage" fanworks about fictional characters having sex and not wanting to be exposed to slurs or content that is intended to invoke the kind of real-world dehumanization that allows violence against actual people. The End OTW Racism's Call to Action uses the example of a fanwork used to reenact George Floyd's murder. To fans for whom being killed at the hands of law enforcement is a risk they face every day, I can understand why that is not something they'd want to be exposed to and how exposure to such content is not just a matter of disliking something and clicking BACK.

Incidentally, AO3's rating/warning policy requires tagging for "underage" fanworks but not those that use dehumanizing slurs and other content. I've seen this proposed as a solution to the issue of racially harassing fanworks (that they be required to carry an appropriate tag), and I think could be a reasonable solution that both upholds the archive's core purpose and protects fans from content that is in fact traumatizing for them to view.

[dawn_felagund]

I would be very concerned that a small (relative to the number of contributors to AO3) coterie is trying to arrogate to itself, essentially, powers of censorship over the archive.

I keep seeing this raised and find it interesting, as what might be umbrellaed under "content moderation" is such a small part of what the movement is asking for (and honestly the least likely to be implemented for all the reasons I spent two days writing out here, as well as practical considerations that have been raised elsewhere). Why the fascination with this one small part? For me, the larger issues are that the OTW promised to take action on an issue three years ago and has done nothing (aside from implementing block/mute, which is really more to the credit of the coding team than the Board) and said nothing, and the race-based harassment that users have reported. Both speak to deep dysfunctions in the system, which others have been uncovering. I was not a part of the End OTW Racism campaign. I do find their concerns in these two areas to be very valid.

there is no reason why US-style racism (and the very ...culture-specific nature of the concerns raised is a concern in itself, since AO3 has contributors from all over the world) will be the only issue to demand privileged status

I'm curious where you see this stated in their materials? The incident that incited the OTW's promise to act on race-based harassment was U.S.-based: the murder of a Black American man by a white police officer. I assume most (or all) of the End OTW Racism are probably U.S.-based. That likely does mean that examples of harassment this particular group of five users have experienced is what you call "U.S.-style racism," but I'm not sure why that would produce the assumption that there is any intention to "privilege" those incidents over others that also involve racism, ethnocentrism, colorism, antisemitism, etc. outside of the U.S.

I'm also curious why something being culture-specific (which racism most definitely is not!) would be an issue either, especially when it is the culture of a large portion of the AO3 userbase. Fans have also raised concern about the OTW canceling Weibo access for Chinese-speaking volunteers, for example. Or the matter of antisemitic usernames and userpics, which Indy brings up below and for which the OTW has (rightfully, imo) be criticized. Should those issues not be something that can be spoken out about or acted on because they only affect fans from one country or culture?

[anna_wing]

but I'm not sure why that would produce the assumption that there is any intention to "privilege" those incidents over others that also involve racism, ethnocentrism, colorism, antisemitism, etc. outside of the U.S.

My apologies for not being clear. I am concerned about precisely this. There are plenty of things on AO3 that would be very traumatic to read for someone who had suffered those things in real life. Not just racism. Once censorship for "offensive" content is permitted on one ground, it will be demanded for anything that offends anyone.


Should those issues not be something that can be spoken out about or acted on because they only affect fans from one country or culture?

Anyone can speak as they wish, if they speak through a fanfic, that's the point of AO3; no-one is forced to read. Impose their views as AO3 policy on all other users of the Archive? No, I don't think they should do that.

[dawn_felagund]

Thanks for clarifying! I think a much more viable solution is requiring warning tags for "abusive (extremely racist and extremely bigoted) content" (the language used by End OTW Racism), much as warning tags are required for underage, noncon, and extremely violent content. (I mean, they require tags for Major Character Death! I can see why fans who are victims of "extremely racist and extremely bigoted" attacks in real life are pissed that they can't likewise get a tag on the archive. Censorship would violate the core reason for OTW/AO3 existing, but there are ways to solve the issue of racist/bigoted content without resorting to censorship.

I also think that restoring community archives where the community can set the standards of conduct for that space according to their needs and values is essential. It is totally reasonable to me that fans don't want to encounter hate speech in their fandom interactions (especially when aimed at them!), but we also do need a universal archive (to the point of your last paragraph).

[anna_wing]

requiring warning tags for "abusive (extremely racist and extremely bigoted) content"

I think that would run into the problem of most people not actually thinking that they are bigoted for having a particular opinion about anything. Values are not universal, even within a single society, let alone globally. And allowing third-party tagging would inevitably lead to massive abuses; geopolitical quarrels are particularly fertile ground for that sort of thing, which is why I'm not going to cite modern ones...consider that everyone on all sides of the UK Civil War or the Thirty Years War (to cite just two well-known Western examples) would have considered themselves to be Right and In The Right, and their enemies to have been all points on the spectrum from "Wrong and misguided, but well-meaning, and only needing to be 'schooled' to see that my opinion is the right one" to "evil and perverted heretics who need to be wiped off the face of the earth together with their opinions".

I agree with you that small archives with a clear ideological position are probably the most viable solution. I recall that there were Tolkien archives that were both pro and anti-slash, back in the day...

[dawn_felagund]

I don't see the term "extremely racist and extremely bigoted" (which is End OTW Racism's language in their manifesto but not a policy recommendation they're making) as occupying many gray areas. Is language or the fanwork itself being used to dehumanize a group of real-world people? Yes? Then it's tagged. So using your historical example, a fanwork that represents the first "needing to be schooled" would be okay; the "wiped off the face of the earth" would be tagged. That's not to say that the first fic wouldn't potentially be offensive to some! But issue isn't "difference of opinion"; it's "I don't think people like you should exist."

That's not to say that it's always going to be a black-and-white decision, but that's the nature of content moderation. Underage (which is a required tag) comes with shades of gray due to determining "age of majority" in imagined worlds (If I write a story about a sexual relationship between 40-yo and 1300-yo Elves, is that Underage? L&C says the age of majority for Elves is 50; what if I don't consider L&C canon? What if I'm a Hobbit or LotR writer who has no idea L&C exists?) and trying to figure out if images represent characters over the age of majority, etc etc. And again cultural differences come into play. Same with Noncon, also a required tag. The legal system can't always clearly decide what is "consensual" and we expect a fanworks archive to do the same? The Violence and Major Character Death tags create their complications too.

Tl;dr: Content moderation is always going to be tricky, but you don't do it because it's easy, you do it because it makes the archive safe for fans who have vulnerabilities due to RL circumstances: survivors of abuse, victims of violence, people for whom racism/ethnocentrism/colorism/etc. makes their everyday lives unsafe. Imo, tagging is the best-of-both-worlds solution that keeps AO3 safe for that latter group of fans while also respecting its role as a universal archive that truly does accept everything.

[spiced_wine]

This mission is usually irrelevant to fans, who use AO3 with the same expectations that they might a community archive ... irrelevant, anyway, until it's not, until the fan is the one being harassed, wondering why a userpic featuring a Nazi broken cross doesn't violate the rules, wondering why fanworks that clearly attack fans of color are being allowed to stay up.

In some ways, I think the OTW expected the archive to be used in good faith but if people with racist and other agendas find a place where they know their work will not be deleted because they have (deliberately) written their hate/spite/grudge etc into a fanwork, then they’ll take advantage of that. I can only see more of that type of user feeling that they have a safe space.

E.T.A.

From what I experienced and still am on occasion, I had a thought: The kind of people posting their hate are not what I would call fans. They are ‘bloggers’ who want a platform to shout from, so turning that into fic or art and knowing they cannot be touched leads to their feeling braver.

While it would be interesting historically (as you pointed out) to study, it’s not helpful to those who come across what are racist attacks etc dressed up as fanfic. Fans were never accustomed to this and again as you said, would hardly think about the mission of the OTW. A community archive would deal with this (I hope!) SWG would have, Faerie and before that LOTRFF.com would because they are/were created with a different aim in mind.

We will likely need to go back to being inventive and organizing around what we want to see in fandom, which is ironically right where we were in 2007, when the OTW was born out of fandom discontent.

Yes.

[dawn_felagund]

I think the OTW expected the archive to be used in good faith

I certainly don't think they imagined ever becoming so big and (whether intended or not) a centralized place for fanworks fandom the way they have! I was looking at a timeline on the OTW's formation while working on this post, and Astolat opened the discussion on her LJ in May 2007, the transformativeworks domain was registered later that month, and the OTW was a registered nonprofit by September. That was fast! Of course, it felt like an emergency at the time, but I wonder how much thought was able to be given to these issues, even as hypotheticals. (This is not a criticism of the OTW's process in forming its nonprofit. Just an observation/wondering.)

Now, of course, it is huge, with all the difficulty that comes from maneuvering an organization of that size to do anything, even if its structure/leadership is functional (which growing evidence suggests the OTW's is not). I think back to when we decided to offer the "In-universe Intolerance" warning tag on the SWG in September 2021 (along with several other new warnings) and our worry about how best to introduce a new required tag when a few thousand existing fanworks did not have access to it. Those challenges are compounded many, many, MANY times over on an archive the size of AO3 (11 million fanworks!!!) with policy documents even more extensive than ours and a userbase too large to engage one-on-one. My point in all this (haha) is that the repercussions of not thinking through a policy or hypothetical fully is way more impactful on AO3 than on a small archive, because of the number of works and users affected.

The kind of people posting their hate are not what I would call fans.

I think unfortunately they are. You look at what we've gone through in recent years, specifically, in the Tolkien fandom: the attacks on presenters at the Tolkien Society Seminar on diversity, the hatred aimed toward actors of color cast in RoP, and the repeated leveraging (across decades now!) of Tolkien by the far right, in service of a white supremacist ideal.

Fan studies theory would say that fanworks allow fans to foreground their experiences and perspectives using cultural materials like books and TV and film as the raw materials; sadly, I think we're seeing just that happen. So many places in the world are having this far-right, fascist spasm at the moment, and I think some people are using fanworks and fandom as a vehicle for those views, and those people would very confidently include themselves as fans. Are those fanworks sometimes aimed at other fans with whom they disagree? Absolutely, yes, I think. However, this has always been a part of fandom do; this time, the stakes are just much higher than firing fics back and forth about whether or not Feanor was a good dad.

A community archive would deal with this (I hope!)

A community archive certainly has the tools to do so. I could see it not being dealt with for the same reason that community archives are often prone to spam attacks: absent or time-strapped mods who cannot/do not address it. But by a community archive putting the community's culture at the forefront (versus comprehensiveness), the means certainly exists to say, no, this hurts people in our community and we're not willing to allow it.

[spiced_wine]

Of course, it felt like an emergency at the time, but I wonder how much thought was able to be given to these issues, even as hypotheticals. (This is not a criticism of the OTW's process in forming its nonprofit. Just an observation/wondering.)

At that time, it almost feels like a different Age. People wanted to post their fics or art and that seemed to be ‘it’. I would never have considered fanfic being used to spread hate; it just wouldn’t have occurred to me.

I think unfortunately they are. You look at what we've gone through in recent years, specifically, in the Tolkien fandom: the attacks on presenters at the Tolkien Society Seminar on diversity, the hatred aimed toward actors of color cast in RoP, and the repeated leveraging (across decades now!) of Tolkien by the far right, in service of a white supremacist ideal.

That shower, yes. I mean, of course they are fans of Tolkien but I’ve never run into them in fandom (so far) they seem to also believe that Tolkien shouldn’t be touched; years ago I ran into them on forums but I feel they create nothing, add nothing to the fandom save hate and look on the legendarium as some kind of bible.

But by a community archive putting the community's culture at the forefront (versus comprehensiveness), the means certainly exists to say, no, this hurts people in our community and we're not willing to allow it.

Yes, this!

[dawn_felagund]

I would never have considered fanfic being used to spread hate; it just wouldn’t have occurred to me.

I realized that it wouldn't have occurred to me either, until it started to happen, despite having done fan studies research for several years now focusing on fanworks, and centering the theory that fanworks allow fans to center their own experiences and perceptions in cultural texts that, in many cases, exclude or marginalize them. I've taken issue with how much many fan studies scholars tend to emphasize that motive when I think, for most fans, they would define their interest and love for a source text and a desire to spend more time in that world/with those characters (rather than subverting it/them) as reasons for making fanworks. But I think there was definitely a moment in fan studies scholarship (and fandom more generally) that could be characterized as "yay fandom!" and striving to prove the value of fandom and fanworks. Part of that seems to me to have been centering fans using fanworks for progressive purposes: normalizing relationships beyond cis-het; centering the perspectives of queer characters, characters of color, and women; representing the experiences of characters with disabilities (to name just three). However, it seems just as easy to leverage fanworks to express and represent hate: the opposite side of the same coin. I wonder if anyone has done research on this ...

[spiced_wine]

However, it seems just as easy to leverage fanworks to express and represent hate: the opposite side of the same coin. I wonder if anyone has done research on this ...

I’m inclined to think not, as it seems relatively new to me. It’s not the same as personal attacks which have probably existed ever since fanfic began; this white/right agenda coming in seems very much part of this upswing in the benighted right that has been happening everywhere, as you said. I haven’t personally seen it yet, but staying in a corner which is mostly the kind of people who inhabit the SWG Discord, I’d be surprised if I had. On a broader field, I did read the Fandom Against Racism and saw that it’s seems to be getting more common.

[alexcat]

The problem with community fandoms is this.... they are, for the most part, like Of Elves and Men, gone. E commerce has made it almost impossible to run a small-ish 3-5K works fansite. I had to let mine go because of cost. Ao3 is the only answer for many things.

I have to admit that I have been completely out of any fandom loop for several months. Real life rendered it just another depressing thing to ignore for a while. Maybe I need to be paying more attention.

[dawn_felagund]

I'd love to know more about the e-commerce connection! I'm now exactly two weeks from summer break in the School Year That Will Not End and plan to spend part of that break working on resources for small archives. Currently, the biggest need I've identified is the lack of viable software options for archives that can be implemented by people with relatively few tech skills. eFiction has moldered, no one has ever been able to make anything work in WordPress, and Drupal has a fairly steep learning curve (and can be a real pain in the ass to maintain). I currently host the SWG (which is Drupal-powered and just passed the 5K fanwork mark) on Bluehost at a cost of about $200/year, and while Russa and I have had the occasional wtf encounter with customer service, for the cost, I really can't complain. But if hosting is a consideration for potential new archivists, I want to make sure I'm thinking about it. Am I remembering correctly that your costs went up abruptly and significantly?

I do, sadly, think AO3 is the only option for nearly all fandoms ... and I don't say "sadly" out of any distaste for AO3 but because, as the current situation illustrates, it puts us all in a precarious position to have everything under the control of a single organization.

[alexcat]

The reason I said e-commerce is because the hosting sites that were reasonably priced and catered to both hobby sites and business sites seemed to change almost all at once. They only wanted 'business' sites and suddenly wanted more than a hundred dollars a month for a site like we'd had for 11 years. They forced us to remove our site from all search engines because they claimed our usage was too high with almost no usage at all. We couldn't find another home for it, with the software for self upload sites being so old and outdated and everyone wanting high prices left me no choice but to shut it down. I went to Ao3 after it shut down and asked them if they'd take the archive since it had 3-5 thousand stories, many of which were not found elsewhere. It took forever for but they finally got it all done.

[sauronnaise]

OTW/AO3 has its pros, but it also has its cons. After unfortunate incidents that a friend's friend suffered from, I decided not to make my fics accessible to non-registered ao3 users anymore, in case a moron comes at me using the anonymous feature (hard to get rid of someone this way).

I think a lot of the struggle with OTW/AO3 comes down to the fact that OTW has created AO3 as a universal archive, when what people want (or think they are getting) is a community archive.
I think so, too. There are many instances of an author and a reader derailing in comments and conversing about whichever but being limited to ao3's comment section only, unless they disclose their tumblr/twitter/discord/whichever. Just as there's the need for more regulation rather than making it Tiktok or Twitter 2.0 in the angsty comments and attacks hellfest.

[dawn_felagund]

I wonder, too, at the capacity to moderate a community archive. Among my SWG duties (which are a millionth of what is/needs to be done on AO3), moderating the Discord is by far the most time-consuming and stressful and presents the most gray areas. There are many times where someone says/does something that is right on the border of what we consider okay, and we spend considerable time documenting everything. A friend of mine has written a couple of times on my posts about AO3 about how it took five months for a harassment claim she made to be substantiated, and while that is waaaay too long, it makes sense given what I know of what it takes and the scale of AO3.

I also think that comment sections, back in 2007 when AO3 was first being thought up, look way different than they do now. Not that they were nicer but the nature of the ways people were nasty to each other was different. Race-based harassment would not have seemed as likely (with full disclosure that I say this as a white person, so I could be very wrong and wish to be corrected if so!); I know it is not a policy we discussed on the SWG in its early years as we very likely would if building an archive now.

[sauronnaise]

Another option would be to make it like a physical archive where readers can't comment in the archive itself. This option wouldn't be popular because many thrive off interactions with readers. Moderating a site with the size of ao3 looks like something I sure wouldn't want to do, to put things simply.

How big is the SWG server, now? I left because there were too many people--my little social batteries couldn't keep up haha. I imagine you must have mods from different timezones and continents? Moderating alone is something one couldn't pay me enough to do (I don't want to deal with people's bs). Sounds exhausting in a bigger server.

Not that they were nicer but the nature of the ways people were nasty to each other was different.
It's not that racism didn't exist in 2007; moreso that it didn't have the attention it has today. And who knows, maybe in 20 years, it's not racism that'll be under the radar, but discrimination based on caste, social class or religion, for e.g. How I understand it, that is.

I remember when people used to write 'Warning: this story contains Elvish slash!!' in the author's notes. We don't need to do such a thing nowadays (my friends and I joke that we should put a 'depiction of heterosexuality' trigger warning). I do write Hindu mythology fanfics and writing a non-straight pairing and publishing it is taking the risk to have unpleasant comments in my inbox because no matter what the gods did in Vedic and Puranic texts (hint: very entertaining stories to be found), it's a no-no to many as of today. I can sympathize with older Tolkien fans for what they had to pull through in the 00s :")

[independence1776]

I'm waaay too tired to speak at length, but I think that's a major reason why I've looked at calls for AO3 to take action as useless at best: AO3 has always been clear it wants to house everything. And I probably knew that because I was also in fandom when AO3 began taking shape, so it was self-evident they're not going to change that.

As for usernames? Someone on Tumblr once tried to get AO3 to ban someone who kudosed their fic because their username was JosefMengele. AO3 went nope. This was right around the time I posted my Jewish-convert!Maglor fic, so I was a bit nervous for a while.

I do hope there is some movement toward decentralization in the coming weeks, months, and years and this isn't just a flash in the pan thing.

[dawn_felagund]

AO3 went nope.

Which is mind-bending until you consider that they're likely looking at this person and their offensive username as historically significant and therefore worth documenting. And again, I don't think that level of idealism is wrong, per se, but it sure does suck when the only option for a Jewish fan is to participate on an archive where that is okay.

In exactly TWO WEEKS (not that I'm counting ... :)))) I will be on summer break and hope to do some work toward making smaller archives a more accessible option. Whether people actually build them? We'll see ...

[independence1776]

It definitely did suck and the only good thing I can say is that person never kudosed anything of mine. Also thankfully, given it was Silmfic, AO3 was and is not my only option. I still have fics on SWG that I haven't crossposted to AO3 (though I'll crosspost them to DW when I get my backup fic comm up and running).

Of course you're not counting. Just like I'm not counting until July 4 aka my next workday off. ;)