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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.
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(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-17 01:09 am (UTC)I am fascinated by the outrage on Tumblr, because I feel like you do, see what you're seeing: Tumblr's already so far out there from our flocked/robot&spider blocked LJ/DWs that I can't believe people are surprised that others would consider their fic Good Reads discussion worthy.
We come across this ever so often (like remember the fic of fic debate where we tried to establish what can be used to transform and what can't or the can you link to tiny LJs and what if you have a huge following, is that ethical), and you nailed what's happening when fandom mores change and different fandom etiquettes clash (or new fans simply invent their own!).
Anyway, thanks for a great post!!!
(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-17 01:21 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-17 02:30 am (UTC)Cool. I'll retumblr then... (Maybe that's part of the problem...folks who think of that, the whole repetition/copy of text/image as the default?)
(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-17 01:48 am (UTC)Now everything seems 'out there' but the understanding is not - recently, I was asked to explain the difference between fanfiction and original fiction (during a workshop) and I think I managed well enough, but clearly the questions asked were born out of false knowledge ("Yes, 50 Shades was fanfiction in origin. No, it wasn't copied from Twilight." etc etc)
Anyway, yes, the tools change us.
Also, can you share your Tumblr name? I'm phantomas37 :)
(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-17 02:51 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-20 02:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-17 01:53 am (UTC)On the one hand, fanfic is not, for the most part, "books" in the sense that Goodreads was intended to review.(Especially not now, with it being owned by Amazon.) GR is a social platform intending to sell books for Amazon, where they didn't have to develop the infrastructure and upkeep is minimal--and part of "minimal upkeep" means "fuck if we're going to bother setting standards about what 'is' or 'is not' a book. If someone wants to post a cereal box and review the artwork and nutritional data text, shrug."
On the other, I can quite understand fanfic authors getting upset that they're getting reviews from people who don't understand canon, who are reading fanfic as if it were commercially-oriented short stories or novels.
On the gripping hand... I am so, SO VERY glad AO3 exists and that the unwanted attention this will bring to fandom (because it'll bring some) will be noted and addressed by the OTW, rather than the owners of fanfiction.net or wattpad or livejournal. That anyone who screams "this so-called book is nothing but copyright infringement of [favorite other book]!!!' will be faced with a whole academic journal and several congressional hearings' worth of documentation that no, it's not.
As far as the data itself being dragged to GR--the titles, authors, a cover assigned by librarian whim, original summary and new commentary... as uncomfortable as that makes some authors, it's not illegal to make lists and links of content elsewhere on the web. GR's a mashup of del.icio.us and Yelp, focused on "books," an undefined topic; plenty of people screamed about their business showing up on either of those sites, and fandom, for the most part, ignored them. If we think it's reasonable to bitch about a hotel because their restaurant service sucks when the customers are in costume, well, the public is allowed to gripe about a story that doesn't make sense if you haven't read a series of novels first.
It doesn't stop being remix culture because the mundanes are doing it.
(The idea of tumblr not being "a public space".... oh ghods my sides hurt from laughing. Just because your stuff won't get noticed in the constant confetti blizzard of LOOKIT LOOKIT LOOKIT does not make it less public.)
(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-17 02:10 am (UTC)*prints this out and frames it*
(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-17 02:32 am (UTC)Yes, brilliant and highly quotable!!!
And yes, I think it's so bizarre that the folks getting upset are coming from Tumblr. I don't post anything there because it IS so public and out there...
/retreats to her flock...
(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-17 03:38 am (UTC)May I quote you?
Everywhere?
(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-17 03:59 am (UTC)Fandom really doesn't have a lock on "share and tweak info with people who will enjoy it."
(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-17 03:49 am (UTC)https://www.goodreads.com/user_status/show/54428714?comment=111100055&page=2#comment_111100055
was that when a reader creates a manual entry they can add info about the author or the story. And this is where many fan writers are (rightfully) concerned when they find their enthusiastic reader has linked to the author's blogs or tumblr accounts etc. The good news is that this info is not auto-populated. The bad news is that it is not auto-populated. which means anything can be added.
Info on the author cannot be added to their profile page by the average user - but if you are a SuperUser (Librarian) you can edit the author's page (and again link to a blog or tumblr). The good news is that once you claim your profile you can eliminate this. The bad news is that you have to know the profile is there.
Think of all the website scrapers running right now that are pulling info from your blog and your tunblr and your twitter and your Youtube account (and yes your AO3 pages which are indexed by Google) and you can see how impossible it is to limit what gets added where. At the very least, GR will remove the info, but most of these other aggregator websites will not. The only way to limit this info is to lock access.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-17 04:05 am (UTC)I'm sympathetic to fans who *do* have to worry about IRL consequences, but no amount of hand-wringing over this-or-that data site is going to fix that problem. It's part of the larger issue of doxxing--and if the courts are still waffling over whether it's okay to publish someone's address and phone number on twitter or tumblr, they're not going to blink at someone's pseud being linked to their nom de plume, whether or not that's their legal name, on a book site.
There are way too many people who think sites have privacy agreements because they keep user data private, rather than having 5000 words of "this is how we're going to share your data around, and if you don't agree with that, don't sign up."
(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-17 09:20 pm (UTC)BTW, love your subtle call out. This concept of posing alternatives in threes rather than a simple binary came out of the Niven/Pournelle world-building for “Mote in God’s Eye”. The new race of creatures (“Moties”) had multiple arms and their language allowed for better than binary thinking unlike us poor left/right symmetrical humans.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-17 02:07 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-17 02:24 am (UTC)Miscellaneous people with accounts on Goodreads are uploading AO3 (and occasionally other places) metadata. And this is not so much to Amazon's advantage (they gain nothing from fanfic being listed, and occasionally will have drama over it), but it also costs them nothing, whereas curating book listings would take a lot of time and effort.
Basically, they're not going to sort out the difference between a story published at AO3 and one published at Smashwords, or one published at NewStoriesEveryDay.com, or whatever other fic-hosting site shows up. Listings take up very little server space, and the cost of curating would be much, much higher than the cost of "just allow everything, and remove individual pages when we receive a creditable complaint."
(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.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-17 02:47 am (UTC)I am not saying fans are using Calibre to sync fanfic lists with GR, but it is an example of how hard it is to maintain separation. And that most of us want ease of access and seamless integration - we just don't foresee how it all plays out (in fact...see the next paragraph).
Another fallacy is that the people who are listing fanfiction and commenting on it are not "fans". I saw this sad post from one GR fan today who said they understood "we" do not consider them part of fandom: http://meeedeee.tumblr.com/post/105403359911/hi-i-hate-bothering-you-but-your-ao3-profile (and yes, I have seen this point made over and over on tumblr).
The comment was made in the context that when the fanfic titles and authors are deleted from GR, all of *the reader's* added content (the lists of what they've read/what they want to read, their comments, their reviews) that are part of their GR accounts are being deleted. It would be like me deleting my blog and taking with it any post you had made in your blog that mentioned me.
examples of how goodread fans are not "real" fans
Date: 2014-12-17 02:49 am (UTC)"[My fan stories] are not meant for casual public consumption, they are fanworks meant to be shared in a specific and protected community."
"Including fan fic in the Good Reads database isn’t against the ToS of Good Reads, but *think* about this stuff before you do it! And respect a culture you are not a member of."
"Fandom migration: It would be different if I actually migrated here and used this platform."
Re: examples of how goodread fans are not "real" fans
Date: 2014-12-17 03:00 am (UTC)Fannish clubs at colleges aren't real fandom; only conventions are.
Zine fandom isn't real fandom; only fan clubs are.
Digital zines aren't real fandom; they have to be on paper.
ff.net isn't real fandom; anyone can post there--you need to be in a zine.
tumblr isn't real fandom; it's just kids pointing and squeeing.
On the one hand, yes, it's bizarre to have Harry/Draco fic being reviewed and judged by people who don't know thing one about fanfic. On the other, it's not like fandom doesn't have its share of sporking reviewers who ignore whatever context the author intended and discuss the raw contents of the fic.
Re: examples of how goodread fans are not "real" fans
Date: 2014-12-17 03:44 am (UTC)"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Re: examples of how goodread fans are not "real" fans
Date: 2014-12-17 04:32 am (UTC)Re: examples of how goodread fans are not "real" fans
Date: 2014-12-17 05:50 pm (UTC)Re: examples of how goodread fans are not "real" fans
Date: 2014-12-17 06:01 pm (UTC)Possibly, not unlike the private pointing-and-laughing turkey reads fans have done for decades. But everything seems to be done in public today. They're doing public turkey reads at some fan events. Public as in "hey everyone gather in my room/lobby and bring your favorite bad fic."
Re: examples of how goodread fans are not "real" fans
Date: 2014-12-17 08:47 pm (UTC)And having those "reviews" in print on a public website isn't quite the same as a one-off RL thing, unless those public turkey reads are being recorded and posted on YouTube (they may be; I hadn't heard about them until now).
Specific and protected community
Date: 2014-12-17 04:22 am (UTC)AO3 is *not* a site for fanworks made for a specific and protected community. Neither is fanfiction.net.
"And respect a culture you are not a member of."
Because, of course, if you were a member of fandom, you would not want listings of your favorite fics on the site where you put rec lists of your favorite reading materials.
... didn't we see this whole argument played out in paper zines when the internet was new, and some people were posting fics on usenet? Can we make a drinking game of it?
Re: Specific and protected community
Date: 2014-12-17 04:47 am (UTC)Re: Specific and protected community
Date: 2014-12-17 04:53 am (UTC)I LIKE protected spaces and locked communities. I was a huge proponent of having a locked only option on AO3 and am very glad it's there (and used by many) for sports RPF, for example.
But you can't have it both ways....
insert image: http://www.toothpastefordinner.com/091106/defeats-the-purpose.gif
Re: examples of how goodread fans are not "real" fans
Date: 2014-12-17 04:49 am (UTC)"[My fan stories] are not meant for casual public consumption, they are fanworks meant to be shared in a specific and protected community." But then they SHOULD share it in a specific and protected community. Open AO3 and f#$%^& Tumblr are certainly NOT THAT. I'm sure we all remember the debates over the access limitations of flocked communities. The bad side was that limitation. The good side was that the subjects in question didn't fall over their fanfic when they vanity googled.
I think what annoys me here the most is that the most vocal opponents are on a platform that is the broadest and most searchable we've ever had. And they themselves constantly copy rather than link material. And to then go and scream foul when the publicly accessible, googleable stuff gets linked? This isn't the debate we had way back when in re to metafandom, where we were worried that a blog with 5 users suddenly got linked and overrun. This is an already widely accessible and linked text that suddenly pops up in the "wrong" context.
Personally, I don't like breaking the fourth wall and having fanfic in everyone's face. I minimize my digital footprint and accept the lack of publicity for certain things as a result. But you can't really have it both ways...
(And I still can't believe what side I'm on here :)
(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-17 04:54 am (UTC)Thanks for the link...
(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-17 05:19 am (UTC)ways - like loving the source and appreciation of the written fan word
"I have NO problems with authors wanting control over any personal information that is posted here, I think you guys are dead right in being upset about that. I think it's a bit creepy and misguided for users to do something like that, even if they did probably have good intentions.
I just hate the way all this came about, and that many of us have been made to feel flat unwelcome in the fandom, as well as lost a bunch of our own content. Many of us had some great discussions on our review pages, and those are just gone, *poof!* with no notification, and no way to recover it.
I know plenty of fic authors who have been caught up in things like FF.net deciding their stories broke whatever rule and were pulled, but at least they were notified first. We got nothing but "GR is evil!" and fic listings and our reviews and discussions tanked.
Maybe next time something like this happens somewhere else, (because face it, it's going to happen again eventually somewhere else) instead of going off half cocked, all "fuck Goodreads!", authors will actually try to find out how the site really works first."
https://www.goodreads.com/user_status/show/54428714?page=2#comment_111104126
(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-17 05:27 am (UTC)I am kind of frustrated by fans freaking out and going after other fans like this. And yes, I'm sure I've done my share of similar things in the past, but...doesn't mean we weren't wrong, just like I think they are wrong now...
(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-17 06:30 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-17 05:45 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-17 06:21 am (UTC)And some of the freakout is understandable, but... it's not like fans are dragging f'locked fic or password-archive stories into googleable blog sites. They're grabbing public, searchable data from one place and posting it in another public, searchable social space.
And this drama happens EVERY time fandom stretches past its current boundaries and spills over into some space formerly not known for fannish content.
Maybe we need a Fanlore page for "When Fandom Content Winds Up In Mainstream Spaces," because the same cycle happens over and over. The only reason it hasn't killed fandom is that the new activity *always* brings in more new fans than old ones decide to go into lockdown mode. (Of course, much of the old guard refuses to recognize the new fans as "real enough" until they've had their own "OMG my fanfic is showing up WHERE" moment.)
(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-17 06:51 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-17 07:22 am (UTC)Because I believe discussions go better with real examples rather than general statements, here are some examples:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15992088-sharp-teeth
(author links visible in the profile attached to the book)author links now removed from the profile, so here is another example: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18103472-asunderhttps://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5027408.DarkEmeralds( a more direct example of an author profile with links)
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23676350-goddamn (an entry with no author info)
Entries pulled from here, so feel free to poke around
https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/14985.M_M_Supernatural_And_J2_Fanfiction
Re cover credit - there is no place to credit the cover art (it is something you have to manually type in the description field which means cover credit is more miss than hit in what I've seen). The cover sizes are small thumbnails which most likely would fall within fair use. Again, on tumblr posts, cover credit also seems to be hit and miss, but that is no excuse.
All these issues are fixable once the author claims their profile (or you can ask a Librarian to fix it). The "data" that is being included is very typical of what many fans put up on tumblr or blogs or websites or tweets when they rec a story. It is the location that is the issue and the location "issue" is not specific to Goodreads but can and will crop up anywhere on the net.
Which is why I agree with elf that it would be helpful to have an FAQ: "So someone has posted something about you on the Internet".
Re the good old days on concrit - well in my day, you did not have to ask permission to submit an LOC or write a review. And even when we migrated to the Internet, reviews and feedback were offered without so much as a by your leave. So clearly the good old days have mutated too. ;-)
(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-17 09:04 am (UTC)It's like if someone creates a facebook profile under my name and doesn't tell me about it. It might be legal, but it sure as heck isn't ethical.
Entries pulled from here, so feel free to poke around.
Thanks for the link. I did poke around a bit. It looks like perhaps the librarians are adding info to the author profiles? Most of them had livejournal, twitter and/or AO3 account info attached.
Gekizetsu is on my flist and I know her, so I looked at her profile. It lists her real first name and quotes about the origin of her name and some nicknames that aren't posted publicly anywhere that I could find, and a link to her completely flocked LJ. I've asked her if she knows about it on twitter. I'll let you know.
Felisblanco is trying to publish The Doors of Time, so I'd imagine that she might be upset to see it already on GR and not under her control? Not to mention that Petit Madame's fanart is included as Felis's profile pic. (Enlarges pretty darned big if you click on it.)
The fic "Twist and Shout" is actually uploaded to Goodreads as a downloadable file. Not sure if the author knows about that one.My bad. I read it wrong. It links to AO3.Fleshflutter's fics all have reposted fanart uploaded as covers that can be enlarged to a fairly large size. 3-4 times larger than a thumbnail. (If you hover over the image on the book's page, it gives you the option to enlarge cover.) The art does seem to be credited though.
The Redemption Road author is listed as "various", no one is actually mentioned by name, so there's pretty much nothing they can do about that fic if they wanted it pulled, and no artist credit for the cover.
There's also these: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/2120086-fanfiction-deletion?page=2&ref=ru_lihp_cm_tp_11_mclk-exp71cell166_exp69cell155-up2043844976#comment_111040928
https://www.goodreads.com/user_status/show/54428714?page=2#comment_111100055
So as long as the GR "culture" is doing stuff like this without people's knowledge or consent, I don't have much sympathy. That's not even getting into making things googleable that might not have been previously. (Most of my friends know about anti-spider and anti-indexing options.) I think it's overstepping bounds, maybe not legally, but at the very least ethically. And just because fandom is expanding and changing, it doesn't make these behaviors right. I think the GR people need to adapt more to fanculture, not the other way around. Their whole controlling "we can do whatever we want, so gtfo" attitude is hugely abrasive and offensive. You don't go into someone's home, take things and then bitch about them when they find out and are unhappy about it. It's just basic common courtesy.
But it all boils down to "you can't fix it if you don't know it's broke." (And that's not even getting into the
evil empireAmazon connection! ;)(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-17 03:12 pm (UTC)In your metaphor of going into someone's home and taking things, you are creating AO3 and Tumblr as personal protected spaces. I know I've made that argument for LJ before, when most of us did spider and index block and conversations on here were quite separate from the non fannish world so to speak. But can we still make that argument? Are the GR readers actually strangers or are they merely other fans employing another interface? And, for that matter, are we actually having a private party here when we frequently cross retumblr back and forth with TPTB?
I fully understand and agree that exposing non accessible information in public places is wrong. I actually even agree that hard to find connections published in searchable in easily accessible places is wrong (i.e., if someone lists their hometown in a random LJ post that doesn't mean it should be put on their GR page). I also agree that images are a different issue, especially when they are fully reproduced and not credited.
But the outrage that I hear in the various posts and see in your comment here suggests that there are distinct communities (fans and GR readers) and that fans exist in a contained space from which GR readers "take things." Leaving aside the entire who is taking what (and again, I'm hugely sympathetic to the argument that taking material from published copyrighted texts and transforming them is not the same as taking material from within your own community and doing the same) , can we really demand that readers not comment on stories, that they can't write reviews?
I know I get very frustrated when people read my (published nonfiction) work out of context. In fact, I've gotten quite annoyed at GR reviews before. But that can't and shouldn't keep that reader from reading my book from the wrong perspective so to speak. I firmly believe that fanfic should be read within its own context and that it can lose much if not most of its meaning when taking out of that context. But "that context" may be as specific as the inside jokes on Tumblr while it's being written. It may be the fannish mood at the moment after a given episode. Different readers, different fans have all kinds of contextual clues that are not always the same and may be quite different from the author's. And yes, lacking those contexts readers may misjudge the works severely. But who gets harmed by that? Someone misread your story and posts it on a platform for other readers. What is the actual harm?
As for the Amazon connection, definitely true. Not sure what that'd mean for anyone still posting on LJ. And who owns Tumblr? Being on DW and AO3 is a moral decision for me, true. But I think fandom has long used commercial platforms just like it has been used by them, and I wouldn't begrudge any community their use of platform (and i'm not sure Amazon truly benefits from fanfic reviews)
Sorry TLDR...I'm trying to sort my kneejerk reactions, because I'm actually very invested in the community created works and the context driven readings and yet I'm amazed why the vehemence of the reactions.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-18 04:10 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-18 04:26 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-18 05:05 am (UTC)I don't mind giving my thoughts, but please keep in mind that they're only my thoughts on why GR doesn't seem like part of "fandom" to me and why it's different to tumbr and other established fandom spaces. I don't speak for anyone else in fandom. Also I am not trying to "determine what interfaces are and are not fandom." I won't argue with you that there are fans on goodreads, but there is a certain fandom etiquette that's been understood since I joined fandom (ah, the old Gundam Wing egroups days) and most of the folks on GR are not just ignoring that, they don't even know or care that it exists. In fact one librarian was openly hostile about it. So there is definitely culture clash going on, but I don't think it's entirely restricted to or caused by the platform. I think it might even be an inevitable part of the mainstreaming of fandom and this is just the latest iteration.
First I am not really sure this is actually an expansion of fandom. On GR, there's no podfic. There's no meta. There's no vidding or pic spams or even much squee. Heck, from looking at the Goodreads TOS I don't think rpf would be allowed on the site. How about Swordspoint fanfic? Or Outlander fanfic? GR is a select, small slice of fandom being extracted for the purpose of critiquing. Can you imagine if jesswave or Elsa Rolle had suddenly started reviewing fanfic? Or Publishers Weekly or Kirkus? NYT? To me that's the same idea taken to an extreme. I don't like it on a big scale. I don't like it on a small scale. (I do not like green eggs and ham!) Goodreads is about promotion, and that's pretty antithetical to fandom, IMO. Tumblr still falls under sharing with friends to me. You have to search out people with commonalities who post things you like to follow on your dash. I personally feel like I know the people on my tumblr much better than my goodreads friends, yet I've been on goodreads probably three times as long. They're strangers, even the people I interact with on a daily basis.
Second of all, the idea that authors (and maybe artists?) should be forced to have a profile on goodreads to control how their work is presented-- could you imagine if all authors were suddenly forced to get fanfic.net accounts? Or a Dreamwidth acct, or tumblr account, deviantart? IMO, it's kind of ridiculous and the sort of thing that makes fandom people shut down, not embrace it with open arms. Fanfic writers being forced to invest time to police and maintain a profile on a site designed to criticize them? And GR prides itself on not removing database entries ever, for any reason. That's pretty absolute. I may not like people pulling their fanfic down to publish it, or because they're afraid of people finding out about it, or even because they've moved on from fandom, but I would never dispute their right to do it. Yet if Felisblanco succeeds in publishing her book, there's already a fanfic entry on goodreads for it that she shouldn't ever be able to get removed? It should be up there forever to compare with the book's reviews? Is that fair? Doesn't seem right to me. So it's not even principally the reviews that I object to, it's the cataloging and permanent nature of the data. Authors should have control over that without being forced to have a presence on the platform. And it should be opt in, not opt out. (Can authors see where hits on their AO3 fanfic are coming from? Perhaps this shouldn't have come as such a shock? I don't know.) Even AO3 gives them the choice to orphan their works.
Finally, I'm not sure how fandom being googleable relates to this. You have to actively enter something to search for in google. It's active participation. I don't know anyone who browses Google. In goodreads you can just browse tags and lists and reviews, look at what your friends are reading, or wander around and stumble across fanfic with no determining action being taken on your part. Everything is interlinked. They promote reading lists on your GR home page unsolicited and suggest related books and you can't opt out of that, afaik. Goodreads is designed to promote things and reach the widest possible audience. Fandom is not. It's about sharing your work with your intimates and maybe their intimates. Word of mouth, if you will, controlled by the creator, not blast determined by the site coding and an algorithm of hit counters and ratings.
My stealing metaphor... I'm not arguing anything about tumblr. I don't like tumblr as a fandom platform either, so you won't hear me defending it. It's a bit of an echo chamber and you can get a really skewed perspective of what fandom is like just from choosing your dash. But I would argue that AO3 is a protected space. People can lock their fics and disable downloads and remove it from searches, make it private. I've seen at least two comments over on GR where people have said they'll read fanfic, but they don't consider themselves a part of fandom and they'd never browse AO3. They only read the fanfic because of their friends' reviews showing up in their feeds. So no, I don't consider those people a part of fandom. They don't want to be a part of fandom. But I acknowledge that there also are fans being born on GR. There was one girl who was really apologetic for her part in adding fanfic entries and she understood the creator's POV when it was explained to her. But right now there's no happy medium, and until there is, I fall on the side of more anonymity is better, control should be in the hands of the creators, and don't assume that everyone wants to be promoted and publicized all across the web.
I do think that your experience with published nonfiction is fundamentally different from fanfic however. I assume you had editors, marketing, a target demographic, the goal was perhaps to make money? You published knowing that it would be reviewed and criticized and judged. I don't think fandom creators have that same mindset, nor should they. They put their works out there for different reasons. Gift economy and all that.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-18 05:31 am (UTC)Lots to chew on here, but please let fan authors know they can get the entries for their fan stories removed. Not only the page removed, but it will reach into Goodread readers' accounts and delete their reviews, their comments, their discussions, ratings and remove the story from their 'to read" lists. That is an unusual amount of "removal" - think of Google removing something from its search engine and then going to your website, tumblr account, blog and email accounts to delete the info there as well. So far around 20% of the Sterek fanfic has been removed - other fandoms are ranging from 2-8% and I expect the numbers to climb. The process is not hard and it will take a day or two. The Goodread Librarians are working hard so please tell the authors to be polite and patient.
There are some good instructions for authors on tumblr - I cannot put my hand on them.
edited to add: here is the contact link to ask Goodreads for removal https://www.goodreads.com/about/contact_us
A GR Librarian explains more here (see comment 59) https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/2120086-fanfiction-deletion?page=2#comment_111042714
if there is one more "signal boost", please reblog this info so that fan authors know they have options.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-18 07:19 am (UTC)If it comes around my social media, I surely will. I don't think I have that much influence, but others reading here probably do.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-18 07:39 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-18 06:24 am (UTC)I found something interesting
In some of the fanfic reviews, readers are leaving...proto-fan-mixes? They link to music that they think fits the story https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/981921945?book_show_action=true
And there are picspams (there are better ones than these examples but it is late) https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/161583784?book_show_action=true https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/363613748?book_show_action=true https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21943305-smile-for-the-camera
(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-18 07:00 am (UTC)And wow! You found rpf too! I'm impressed.
And also people have been using gifs in their book reviews to emphasize their reactions for a couple years now. I would guess that is a bit of tumblr culture carrying over? The MySpace generation growing up? I don't care for it. I like words about words, but they're easy enough to ignore.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-18 06:12 pm (UTC)http://fanlore.org/wiki/%22Crossing_the_Line:_%27Netfans%27_and_%27Printfans%27%22 (sorry I don't have a clickable link)
An excerpt (you really should read the entire essay)
"For me, the point, the heart of fandom is discussion, conversation, and analysis. ..... The heart of a convention like Escapade is not the dealers' room, important as it may be.... it is the panel discussions.
The heart of fandom -- that is, of what *I love* about fandom -- is discussion and analysis. And not just of shows and characters, which analysis is often done through the mechanism and metaphor of stories as well as through explicit discussion, but of fandom itself. Panels on the history of slash are perennially popular. ..... The advent of the net has spurred intense discussion of what makes a fan a fan, and how fans relate to one another and to fandom as an idea.
It's very difficult, perhaps impossible, to do this kind of meta-analysis through stories alone. .... I can't think of any net stories that I would categorize as doing this kind of thing, though. (Which doesn't mean they don't exist, of course; it means I haven't heard of them.) And if net fans are indeed concerned with stories just as product, then they aren't interested in joining analytical discussions, in brainstorming with others, in both *doing* and *reflecting on* fandom."
(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-19 02:29 am (UTC)I mean, I've never produced anything BUT meta (and when I came into fandom that always felt like I wasn't a good enough fan because I didn't write stories...)
(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-19 03:07 am (UTC)I very much hear you on the author pages. That's not a great construct for fic, and I very much understand why writers are unhappy about that. Otoh, I do feel there are various levels of disingenuousness by many fans who do not lock and hide their fic and who regard recs and links and bookmarks other places as a good thing yet here they suddenly want to maintain authorly control. (Likewise, I was slightly bemused by the strong claims of community creation, which I incidentally agree singles out fanfic, at the same time as authors claimed their ownership over their words...)
Anyway, yes, the author pages are a bad thing, but I'm not sure how the suggested related books are fundamentally different from the way many if not most fans use bookmarking sites searching by tags or follow tags on Tumblr. It's not just your friends who suggest and rec and criticize--it's anyone who tags (behold the don't tag the hate battles).
As for my own experience--I wasn't trying to compare fiction and nonfiction, as published text with a work of love (though I'd argue that our book was a labor of fannish love and we are not making any money either :)--but yes, my awareness in readership was there. What i was trying to get at was that the review was NOT necessarily the assumed readership. But by putting something out there I can't control who'll read it. Just like a fan who puts something publicly online can't control who reads it.
I'm not sure how Morgandawn used to feel--I used to be a huge proponent of maintaining closed spaces and keeping fandom away from mundanes, the press, anyone who didn't actively search it out and knew our history...and I think over the last years, I realized both practically that fandom is ever growing and fannish activities have mainstreamed to be point of clear distinction of in and out becoming near meaningless, and theoretically that that is not a bad thing. It feels like a loss to me emotionally, but the barrier to entry into fandom has become lower again and again and that's a good thing. It means our demographics are changing the more mainstream we are, and that's not a bad thing!
Anyway, sorry to preach...I very much hear you on the author page, but everything else, to me, seems like one group of fans demanding that other fans follow their rules. And that can't (and really probably shouldn't) ever work. It didn't work when fans started going online, when lotrips and popslash fans started mainstreaming rpf and HP fans underage. It didn't work when various waves of fans broke the fourth wall and when wholesale copying became the norm on Tumblr rather than linking. (Heck, I remember when fans asked to link and that clearly didn't/couldn't work on the Internet).
Hey, we do agree about Tumblr :) A lot!!!
to answer cathexys question about how I used to feel about fandom visibility
Date: 2014-12-19 03:38 am (UTC)oh and you were forbidden to mention the mailing list online
As list admin, I had to police these policies and as you can imagine it quickly became tedious and then futile as fandom overran us and stampeded online.
Bur for decades I, like most fans, felt we should be playing in "fandom only safe spaces."
Which is why I found LJ so terrifying - you were not just talking about fandom issues - everyone was blogging about their cats, their kids, their SO, their bunions...TMI in the open.
And I still felt we were protected by what I call "herd immunity" (or the "great school of fish in the sea protects the individual fish" - it was not privacy per se, but obscurity we relied upon.
But even obscurity is being eroded more and more with content aggregators linking our identities and activities and selling the info (or offering it up for free for ad revenue). I posted today about a fan who outed themselves to me via their LinkedIn account and that is only one of the many social media outlets.
So my attitude has shifted away from trying to police fandom, to trying to get fandom to recognize the shape of things that are, to trying to get fans to use the limited privacy tools that we have as best as we can, and to stop snapping at each other for something none of us can control.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-19 06:26 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-18 06:51 am (UTC)1) Tumblr's password-protect option seems very much like a matter of "meh, you and your five friends can use this for your cooking club if you want," not like LJ/DW community setups. Tumblr's screwball dashboard and endless stream of NEW STUFF SHINY ALL THE TIME means locked things don't work well as a normal part of the tumblr social venue.
2) Yahoo owns tumblr; they bought it a couple of years ago. Much drama and fretting at the time about whether they were going to lock down all the NSFW content. So far, they haven't, but they have been increasing the amount of advertising and doing other "tweaks" to the user experience without regard to user communities or preferences.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-17 03:30 pm (UTC)Quick note about gekizetsu
The info was pulled from her google searchable website where she lists her names http://gekizetsu.net/about.html
Google has been indexing more and more over the years. There is more out there that we know.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-17 10:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-17 04:52 pm (UTC)but this is not Goodreads "culture" - thus is today's online culture. It sits at the foundation of most corporations and businesses. And it is way beyond anyone's ability to control.
but this is where some good news creeps in - goodreads unlike the vast majority of aggregators *will* allow you - the author - the ability to control your profile in their corner of the world. It may not make much of a difference but it shows that there are more similarities than differences between "their" and "our" culture,
(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-18 02:07 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-18 02:42 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-17 07:44 am (UTC)And regarding the "crit wasn't offered unless you asked for it"... when was that, because there are letterzines going back to the 70's that were packed with unrequested flaming critiques, including declarations of the authors' education, personality and moral standards, based on either their fic or their participation in the social aspects of the zines.
To be fair, the crit was rarely in the same zine as the stories... but critique on GR is not the same as commenting on the story with it. GR reviews are for readers, not for the author--and I very much want review sites to be comfortable places for readers to say "I didn't like this, and here's why." Even if the "why" translates to "because I'm an immature, close-minded bigot, and this story contained ideas that made me uncomfortable" or "because the author supports [cause I hate] on her website."
FWIW, I think posting fanfic on Goodreads is more than a bit ridiculous. But I'm not a Goodreads user; I don't get my book recs or my social activity there. So I'm not comfortable saying "Fandom: they're doing it wrong;" obviously it's not how I do fandom, but if I got to declare who and how is "doing fandom wrong," GR is nowhere near where I'd start.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-17 09:20 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-17 03:14 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-17 03:25 pm (UTC)ABB?
Someone sent me link to the horrific author-reader interactions in the past years on GR and after reading just a little bit, i understand the GR reader vehemence.
I understand the fanfic writer vehemence as we've been living in the midst of it for decades.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-17 03:29 pm (UTC)I've only seen the authors behaving badly thing in passing but that was enough to make me have very angry thoughts... I stand by what I tell my 101 students: if your reader misunderstands you it's more than likely YOUR fault. Not theirs! You can't run after your paper/story/essay/book and tell folks, you're reading it wrong! That's how you should interpret it!!!
(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-17 03:39 pm (UTC)Seriously, turn off Google indexing. The shit anyone can find on you in 5 minutes is terrifying.
Oh and even if you turn it off someone else may be reblogging or quoting or linking to it and that is being indexed. And if you forget to lock it for 5 frigging minutes (yes this happened to me), it will be snatched up. Blogging on tumblr is about as public as you can get. Facebook has more privacy protections in comparison.
Railing at Goodreads readers is like yelling at the one ocean wave for getting you wet. Stick around for another 5 minutes. There will be another wave. And you will be wet.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-17 07:08 pm (UTC)I think this whole thread is so fascinating, thanks for starting it, MD. I guess I was fortunate, getting into fandom right in time to enjoy the zine culture AND the comfort of email lists. I remember someone saying that she didn't like email lists, because she didn't know who those people were, but she'd gladly participate in LJ (which was wide open at the time). As elf sez, we might as well make a drinking game, and sit back with the popcorn.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-17 07:43 pm (UTC)I know, Virgule and the other mailing lists were a wonderfully controlled environment. And then everyone swept past us and pored onto the Internet and the Kraken was released.
mmmmm...thinking of sushi now.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-17 02:55 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-01-09 07:48 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-18 05:39 pm (UTC)Huh. I'm pretty sure I read fanfic reviews at Goodreads when Merlin was still on the air, so reviewing fic there isn't all that new a development. The sky hasn't fallen yet.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-18 06:07 pm (UTC)I think Goodreads officially allowed fanfic to be listed in...2010? The first time I found the Goodreads librarians discussing fanfic in their forum was 2009 (they were deciding whether to remove Cassandra Claire's fanworks for plagiarism, which I think they did.)
So yeah..... no falling sky pieces. But for today - in one corner of fandom - Goodreads = public = bad. I think elf hit it on the head - "Fandom is only where I say it is and only includes those who I say belong" Another variation of " Your platform is not OK, my platform is the only OK." or "Print Fans Are The Only True Fans, Net Fans Are Not Real Fans, Net Fans Don't Want To Build Communities,They Just Want To Consume Fanfic Hidden Behind Their Little Computer Screens".
http://fanlore.org/wiki/%22Crossing_the_Line:%27Netfans%27and_%27Printfans%27%22
(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-18 07:35 pm (UTC)Yes, this kind of stuff is only going to get worse, and no doubt, we'll have fewer and fewer rights, or ways of opting out of anything, but that doesn't mean everybody has to be okay with it.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-12-20 07:40 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-01-03 05:45 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-01-03 05:51 am (UTC)Thank you! I had no idea something similar had happened. http://amplificathon.dreamwidth.org/1165271.html?thread=4697559&style=light http://podficmeta.dreamwidth.org/13417.html?replyto=161897
(no subject)
Date: 2015-03-29 12:57 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-01-03 11:00 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-01-03 11:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-01-04 02:57 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-01-06 03:57 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-01-06 04:27 pm (UTC)Yes, please go ahead and link.