Question

[paraka]

So, I've spent most of the day reading up on what people are saying about the OTW are saying. Mostly from non-fandom people, and it's kind of making me want to shoot things, but I was wondering:

What do you think about the OTW? Would you like an archive? A written fannish history? A wiki (OMG, I can't tell you how much I'd like a wiki for fandom, although I can see it being vandalized a lot)? Do you think it's a good idea to have a legal defense fund? If the OTW were ever to go to court, would you support them?

I'm planning on making a post sometime about how I feel about it, but I'm really curious as to what other people on my flist think about it. I think so far only one person on my flist has really written about it, but I spent a couple months away so could have totally missed something.

Also, I am having a bitch of a time working on a mysql database, any one know enough about setting up eFiction to want to help?

Comments

Re: OTW Part 2

[paraka]

Er, yeah, pretty much where I stand as well, as someone who's put a lot of time and work into the FanHistory wiki at this point and not inclined to repeat those efforts just for the sake of repeating myself elsewhere.
I tend to look at the fan wiki as I would a newpaper (or new program, or a history book). It's all well and good to have a really great source available to you, but it's equally important to have more than one source. Because no matter how much people try, and no matter how many people work on that source, there's still going to be biases, and certain aspects are going to be misrepresented. I personally wouldn't want people to go in and copy what they've done elsewhere, I'd rather have a new source, that offers yet another opinion, so that when I go out to research something, I have more than one option, and can, instead of copying what someone else has said, take what others have said and form my own opinions.

Also, as I said to hector_rashbaum neither writing down fanish history nor using a wiki format are original ideas. Putting the two together isn't even necissarily an original idea, since there's more than one fannish wiki out there (even if they are fandom specific). Saying that something shouldn't be done, simply because it's been done before isn't really an excuse, if it were, the current fandom wiki wouldn't exist.