fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #4306 ]

[ SECRET POST #4306 ]

⌈ Secret Post #4306 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Why are people mad about AO3?

Various reasons. The main ones seem to be.

-AO3 has fundraisers for people to donate money. They are mad about this even though no one is forcing them to donate.
-A03 doesn't ban stuff. A03 is evil because it allows things THEY don't like (non-con, underage, certain ships).

Is that honestly true???

They are mad that a free website asks for donations to keep the lights on?

And the whole point of AO3 was a response to FF.N which didn't allow mature content. Whaaaat

Yes, one comment I saw said something about how AO3 should give away any of the money they earn over the amount they were looking for.

Also, going by their blogs, many of them are personally quite poor and seeing money going by on a large scale irritates them because none of it is heading their way. (I've been stinking poor before: I do understand this irritation.)

They want us to understand that no other public website has any Weird Sex Stuff going on, not Tumblr, or Reddit, or even ff.net (where I've personally seen writers play fast-and-very-loose with content guidelines). AO3 is the absolute worst.

And clearly anyone who disagrees with them is a sexual predator in the making or a horny middle-aged woman. Or both.

Wtf is wrong with horny middle aged women (besides misogyny, that s)?!

No Weird Sex Stuff on Tumblr? Tell that to these porn blogs that keep following me.

offs

Seriously? Wow, people have way too much time on their hands.

I mean, there is a strong argument to be made that donating money to AO3 is immoral, but the same argument could be raised against almost all spending on consumer goods, so I don't really know where that gets you. I think it's possible that people's hearts are in the right place on that one though.

"there is a strong argument to be made that donating money to AO3 is immoral"

How do you mean? Because it's for entertainment purposes not feeding the hungry? Or the complaint about "Mature" content? Or something I've missed.

(Genuinely curious here.)

Yeah, basically - it's the Peter Singer argument writ small. How can you look at *gestures at the entire world* and decide to donate to a fanfiction archive instead?

My personal theory is that the problem really stems from ao3 calling itself a charity when it's not, really - I mean, legally it is, but that's not why people are donating to it and it doesn't really serve morally useful ends. And so you look at people donating money, and you sort of say, why are you choosing to donate to this when the world is burning to a crisp? When the reality is that it's much closer to, like, a Netflix subscription than a charity morally speaking.

"How can you look at *gestures at the entire world* and decide to donate to a fanfiction archive instead?"

Because morale isn't worthless? And community engagement likewise? (I volunteer for a branch of the Red Cross, and they are very clear that both of those things are *important* in maintaining a healthy, resilient community, it isn't just physical charity that they do.) Because it's keeping the history of my craft going and helping maintain continuity with those who have gone before and, given how women-led activities tend to be ignored in history books, that's really important to me.

And. Going by what more, visibly altruistic charities that I donate to are asking for, the occasional tenner I drop in AO3's piggy bank is, it's nothing. Less than a trip to the movies. They operate on a shoestring as it is - it's mindboggling what they do with what their funding is.

**

Thanks for your explanation, nonny. :-)

When the reality is that it's much closer to, like, a Netflix subscription than a charity morally speaking.

Which is, at least in the circles I move in, exactly how people treat it, both on a moral and a financial level. If there's money in their entertainment budget for it and they feel inclined, they'll toss some AO3's way, but it isn't money that would've gone to an actual charity instead. It's money that would've bought a movie ticket, or a fancy coffee, or a book.

Wait, AO3 calling itself a charity? Is it a not-for-profit?

Anyone who reads fics on AO3 should frankly be 110% on board with the concept of donating to them. It's a free service and there are no ads. People forget how much money and upkeep it takes to manage any website, let alone an enormous archive. I can't imagine the site has many full time staff.

OTW and AO3 are both non profits.

It's more like PBS or a library than Netflix, since you don't have to subscribe.

I've seen two wildly different sources of negative opinions about AO3. One is what's been described already from people trying to bring down the site for allowing fic they consider immoral, presumably, because they don't have much to back up the complaints they're making.

But completely outside of the anti mentality, there are other complaints that I, not knowing much about running a website, can't confirm or even summarize very well--but supposedly there's a lot that's fundamentally sloppy about the main code and since they are unwilling or unable to make huge changes to how data is organized on the site, they are continuously having technical crashes that they just fix by buying more servers, until those inevitably aren't enough and they have to buy more, etc.

There are also criticisms that supposedly have come from former members, of the funds being used for not very productive destination meetings, of wranglers having a lot of difficulty keeping up because they can't or won't improve the wrangling system. Another grain of salt: there may be sources for these claims somewhere but for the most part it doesn't seem to come up in namespace, so it's all rumor, but I have gotten the sense from multiple complaints that board members are intensely cliquey, rarely open to any attitude that isn't extremely positive about how things are going, and will shut out people who voice negativity, so that it sort of kind of makes sense that this stuff comes up only discreetly.

For example, an original work called The Course of Honour which has gained a transformative fandom of its own, has been repeatedly denied from getting a fandom tag on AO3 and people think it's because the novel's author has some unfavorable history with the OTW.

The site has been in beta for a ridiculously long time. Bugs happen a lot.

I've seen people make cases that the site is pulling along on an impressively low budget and I believe it, but not all of the problems are coming from bitter puritans necessarily.

It strikes me that these are the kinds of issues that are inevitably going to plague an organization of this type. Of course that doesn't mean that they're not valid, probably they are.

I do take a grain of salt with the technical points, because every technical thing on the Internet always has a ridiculous amount of back-seat driving.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ SECRET POST #4306 ]

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