The wiki project could be interesting/useful. After I made this post, I read that there is already one here. I haven't really looked at it yet, but I book marked it. I really hope that they have a lot of the fandom/net acronyms on it. I hate it when people say things like DJSIEC, and I have no friggin' clue what the heck they're talking about. It took me about a year to find out what OTP stood for, and for the longest time I thought FTW was a polite/sneaky way of saying WTF (since it's backwards). Sometimes the context just isn't enough.
I should also say that I do not enjoy seeing the really nasty responses to OTW - I think some people need to realise that even if it's not for them, they don't have to get vicious about it -- instead, they should get over it, and accept that because fandom is so diverse, OTW will work for some people, not work for others, and leave others still with mixed feelings I think that stems from the fact that the OTW is trying to some extent to be a representative front. Even if it's acknowledged that they aren't within fandom, those outside fandom won't see it that way, and people are afraid of being misrepresented. The person that left the link to the wiki commented that:
OTW suffers from the fact that the majority (if not the entirety) of the upper level (board +committees), as well as most of the supporters, are coming from extremely similar fannish backgrounds. Female-dominated media-based fandom (I should note that not all fanwork-producing fandom is “media fandom”, many of those of us who write RPF reject that label) focused on LiveJournal.
Not that any of those are bad things. But the view and experiences at the core of OTW are a small fraction of overall fannish views and experiences, and as such they tend to misunderstand/misrepresent segments of fandom they’re not used to. Not necessarily with any ill intent - although I do question why their response to “this doesn’t apply to my experience” or “this excludes me” tends to be “no it’s not, because I say so” rather than an attempt to understand - but it happens all the same.
And so as someone who falls outside their comfort zone, I have one main issue: if, in advocating for legitimacy, they succeed only in legitimizing that which they are currently presenting as fandom, those who are misrepresented are still out in the cold.
I’m also troubled by their disregard for anything outside their paradigm; their contempt and/or ignorance of existing projects (I still have yet to get a good explanation why they intend to create a wiki, when one is already in existence, and fairly successful) has me thinking they are only out to legitimize fandom on their terms, done their way.
It was that comment that really made me make this post, because I kind of assumed that most of fandom either liked the idea or were indifferent to it. To see people complain about it... Of course my response to this person is, if they don't think they're section of fandom is being represented, then join in and represent it. Also, the OTW is fairly new and can only work on so many projects at once, but I think they'd be open to more once they get their first few things done.
OTW Part 2
After I made this post, I read that there is already one here. I haven't really looked at it yet, but I book marked it. I really hope that they have a lot of the fandom/net acronyms on it. I hate it when people say things like DJSIEC, and I have no friggin' clue what the heck they're talking about. It took me about a year to find out what OTP stood for, and for the longest time I thought FTW was a polite/sneaky way of saying WTF (since it's backwards). Sometimes the context just isn't enough.
I should also say that I do not enjoy seeing the really nasty responses to OTW - I think some people need to realise that even if it's not for them, they don't have to get vicious about it -- instead, they should get over it, and accept that because fandom is so diverse, OTW will work for some people, not work for others, and leave others still with mixed feelings
I think that stems from the fact that the OTW is trying to some extent to be a representative front. Even if it's acknowledged that they aren't within fandom, those outside fandom won't see it that way, and people are afraid of being misrepresented. The person that left the link to the wiki commented that:
It was that comment that really made me make this post, because I kind of assumed that most of fandom either liked the idea or were indifferent to it. To see people complain about it...
Of course my response to this person is, if they don't think they're section of fandom is being represented, then join in and represent it.
Also, the OTW is fairly new and can only work on so many projects at once, but I think they'd be open to more once they get their first few things done.