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branchandrootAh, fandom! Yet another round of total idiocy over AO3, I see; you never disappoint me!
/heavy sarcasm
I have little sympathy for casual whining that it isn't perfect yet. It's in beta; that's why it isn't open enrollment. Presumably the people who sign up for it now know what they're getting into, and if they don't they should.
I have even less sympathy for pure idiocy. In fact, yes, the project admins know what copyright and IP law is about, even if they don't agree with you personally (or with the RIAA et al, which is more to the point). Fancy that, it is indeed possible!
I also, frankly, have very little sympathy for those trying to shoehorn distinct fandom cultures (for example anime/manga and comics) into a single, undifferentiated category, especially when their reaction to predictable resistance is to suggest that everyone in resistance is Just Wrong and Thoughtless.
This does not mean I am unsympathetic to the problem. Indeed, the root problem there is one of inclusiveness and I'm right behind that. As supercategories, anime/manga v comics do not make room for, eg, manhwa, and this needs to be fixed. The answer however, is clearly not to dump everything into a single category and call it done. That just perpetuates the invisibility of all those fandoms in the eyes of Western TV fen who run around talking about 'fandom' as though that means just their corner, which is already a source of resentment and hostility.
(Try visiting a femslash comm and finding out that they aren't including or even accepting F/F stories from non-Western fandoms, despite low posting rates. Try doing that when your fandoms are all in the anime/manga corner, and you'd just been hoping for a little girl-on-girl fic community action. See how you feel. When AO3 sent out tester invites, as the numbers did and still do demonstrate, they were slanted overwhelmingly toward Western TV fandoms. Consider what that does to development, when there isn't enough diversity in any other area to produce robust design suggestions from the user end. I think we've just had an example.)
Actually, I think the problem here is that people are thinking too small; it is my opinion that this has been a besetting problem of archive design from day one. A supercategory of Serial Art and Animation is a fine thing... provided it has subcategories that respect the distinctions between fandom areas. Subcategories are love, and will make navigation simpler, and I have little doubt that most of the other supercategories will have need of them eventually. I suggest that, on the top Fandoms page, each supercategory show all its subcategories underneath and that each subcategory show, say, the three or five top fandoms within it followed by the "see all" link. Not that big a change from the current arrangement, just with more flexible category structure.
Incidentally, I also suggest that, on the category navigation page, the alphabet be flanked by links to "view all" which will result in a page that contains all the fandoms for that category. ETA: Glorious day, this has already been fixed! *hugs Yvi for pointing it out* Now I don't have to avoid that page any more!
And, while I have no patience with whining over the general navigation, which is more or less the same as the navigation of every other archive under the sun, I do have a lot of sympathy with the people who are weirded out by the tags.
*sighs* The tags. Oh dear. I honestly believe that if there is one thing that is going to sink this archive, it's the tag design.
The initial idea was lovely! That everyone should be able to enter genre and character names and so on just in the form they please, and that these variations would all be linked on the back end, so that clicking on one variation gets you results from all of them. Sweet! Unfortunately, it requires way too many person-hours to keep up, as has just been demonstrated by the way the rush to wrangle Yuletide tags suspended work on other areas. This is only going to get worse as the archive grows, and without that connection being made between variations, the whole thing falls apart completely and becomes unsearchable. Once again: thinking too small for something that wants to be pan-fandom and everyone welcome.
I can only see two possibilities that may work. One is to ditch the mutable tags for fandom and character names, and, when a new fandom is entered, have an archivist go through once and enter everything in a single form that everyone gets to use, like it or lump it. (Just like every other archive under the sun.) The other is to open up tag wrangling to the users in general, and give the archive some kind of interface wherein any user can attach their tag to whatever group of variations is appropriate. The current half folksonomy and half not thing isn't going to work when the archive hits significant activity levels. Let us all remember the law of participation inequality, please.
I also do have sympathy for the people who are trying to read Yuletide and can't. I don't honestly think that the archive was ready, yet, to host a major challenge. It's still too beta. On the one hand, if the old site was even worse, and the choice was between awfully-beta and totally-broken, I can see why the mod plumped for AO3 anyway. On the other...
Well, here's the one thing I have the most, the deepest, and the most frustrated sympathy for: the people who are browsing with IE. Because it still isn't supported.
I had a problem with this from the start. You do not make a web-service like this without designing layout compatible with the single biggest web-browser out there right from the getgo. I hate IE as heartily as the next designer, and I too wish it would just go away, but failing to support it is not going to make that happen. It's just going to mean a majority of your potential users can't use the site. This should have been the priority at the top of the list a whole lot sooner.
So you see! I have sympathy for everyone but the crazy people engaging, as Hambly has so pithily put it, in recreational hysteria! Go me. *jams on the halo of heavy sarcasm* In the short form, a lot of things still need work. Some of them are really big things. None of them, however, involve dark conspiracies, so please to be sliding back under your dank rocks little trolls.
/heavy sarcasm
I have little sympathy for casual whining that it isn't perfect yet. It's in beta; that's why it isn't open enrollment. Presumably the people who sign up for it now know what they're getting into, and if they don't they should.
I have even less sympathy for pure idiocy. In fact, yes, the project admins know what copyright and IP law is about, even if they don't agree with you personally (or with the RIAA et al, which is more to the point). Fancy that, it is indeed possible!
I also, frankly, have very little sympathy for those trying to shoehorn distinct fandom cultures (for example anime/manga and comics) into a single, undifferentiated category, especially when their reaction to predictable resistance is to suggest that everyone in resistance is Just Wrong and Thoughtless.
This does not mean I am unsympathetic to the problem. Indeed, the root problem there is one of inclusiveness and I'm right behind that. As supercategories, anime/manga v comics do not make room for, eg, manhwa, and this needs to be fixed. The answer however, is clearly not to dump everything into a single category and call it done. That just perpetuates the invisibility of all those fandoms in the eyes of Western TV fen who run around talking about 'fandom' as though that means just their corner, which is already a source of resentment and hostility.
(Try visiting a femslash comm and finding out that they aren't including or even accepting F/F stories from non-Western fandoms, despite low posting rates. Try doing that when your fandoms are all in the anime/manga corner, and you'd just been hoping for a little girl-on-girl fic community action. See how you feel. When AO3 sent out tester invites, as the numbers did and still do demonstrate, they were slanted overwhelmingly toward Western TV fandoms. Consider what that does to development, when there isn't enough diversity in any other area to produce robust design suggestions from the user end. I think we've just had an example.)
Actually, I think the problem here is that people are thinking too small; it is my opinion that this has been a besetting problem of archive design from day one. A supercategory of Serial Art and Animation is a fine thing... provided it has subcategories that respect the distinctions between fandom areas. Subcategories are love, and will make navigation simpler, and I have little doubt that most of the other supercategories will have need of them eventually. I suggest that, on the top Fandoms page, each supercategory show all its subcategories underneath and that each subcategory show, say, the three or five top fandoms within it followed by the "see all" link. Not that big a change from the current arrangement, just with more flexible category structure.
Incidentally, I also suggest that, on the category navigation page, the alphabet be flanked by links to "view all" which will result in a page that contains all the fandoms for that category. ETA: Glorious day, this has already been fixed! *hugs Yvi for pointing it out* Now I don't have to avoid that page any more!
And, while I have no patience with whining over the general navigation, which is more or less the same as the navigation of every other archive under the sun, I do have a lot of sympathy with the people who are weirded out by the tags.
*sighs* The tags. Oh dear. I honestly believe that if there is one thing that is going to sink this archive, it's the tag design.
The initial idea was lovely! That everyone should be able to enter genre and character names and so on just in the form they please, and that these variations would all be linked on the back end, so that clicking on one variation gets you results from all of them. Sweet! Unfortunately, it requires way too many person-hours to keep up, as has just been demonstrated by the way the rush to wrangle Yuletide tags suspended work on other areas. This is only going to get worse as the archive grows, and without that connection being made between variations, the whole thing falls apart completely and becomes unsearchable. Once again: thinking too small for something that wants to be pan-fandom and everyone welcome.
I can only see two possibilities that may work. One is to ditch the mutable tags for fandom and character names, and, when a new fandom is entered, have an archivist go through once and enter everything in a single form that everyone gets to use, like it or lump it. (Just like every other archive under the sun.) The other is to open up tag wrangling to the users in general, and give the archive some kind of interface wherein any user can attach their tag to whatever group of variations is appropriate. The current half folksonomy and half not thing isn't going to work when the archive hits significant activity levels. Let us all remember the law of participation inequality, please.
I also do have sympathy for the people who are trying to read Yuletide and can't. I don't honestly think that the archive was ready, yet, to host a major challenge. It's still too beta. On the one hand, if the old site was even worse, and the choice was between awfully-beta and totally-broken, I can see why the mod plumped for AO3 anyway. On the other...
Well, here's the one thing I have the most, the deepest, and the most frustrated sympathy for: the people who are browsing with IE. Because it still isn't supported.
I had a problem with this from the start. You do not make a web-service like this without designing layout compatible with the single biggest web-browser out there right from the getgo. I hate IE as heartily as the next designer, and I too wish it would just go away, but failing to support it is not going to make that happen. It's just going to mean a majority of your potential users can't use the site. This should have been the priority at the top of the list a whole lot sooner.
So you see! I have sympathy for everyone but the crazy people engaging, as Hambly has so pithily put it, in recreational hysteria! Go me. *jams on the halo of heavy sarcasm* In the short form, a lot of things still need work. Some of them are really big things. None of them, however, involve dark conspiracies, so please to be sliding back under your dank rocks little trolls.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-04 07:46 pm (UTC)I've been following this in kind of a half-hearted way up until the past month or so, now I kinda' wish I'd paid more attention.
Hope things even out some, whatever that ends up meaning.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-04 08:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-04 07:55 pm (UTC)Isn't that already what happens if you just click on "All TV shows" etc.? http://archiveofourown.org/media/TV Shows/fandoms and so on? Or are you thinking something different?
Unfortunately, it requires way too many person-hours to keep up, as has just been demonstrated by the way the rush to wrangle Yuletide tags suspended work on other areas. This is only going to get worse as the archive grows
I think that's pretty much where I disagree. Yuletide is an evil thing to tag wrangle - lots of new fandoms and characters. The day-to-day doings will bring less new fandoms, as can be seen on http://archiveofourown.org/works - not a lot of small fandoms, many already wrangled things and so on. In fact, on the first page of that I am right now only seeing major fandoms (Stargate, Buffy, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Harry Potter), which are likely not to require an work at all. Also, an increased userbase should at least bring in some new volunteers. Whether they will be enough, time will show, but I am not convinced that it will get much worse.
As for the IE... Yeah, bad decision. At least IE8 is not that bad, I think (Linux user, so I have no experience).
no subject
Date: 2010-01-04 08:07 pm (UTC)*considers* See, it's the lack of 'smaller' fandoms that I think is a major weakness of the archive at the moment. On top of that, while Western media tends to limit its cast of major characters, it isn't uncommon for very popular anime/manga properties to have major and recurring characters running up into the dozens. In the extreme cases, like Prince of Tennis, it's around a hundred. And a/m is extremely seasonal. There will always be a new set coming along.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-04 10:33 pm (UTC)As for tags, I sympathize with those who have librarian brains and are thus not happy with the rather anarchic results of letting every user tag their own way. However, again based on personal experience, I suspect trying to figure out, and then enforce, a uniform tagging system, even if we broke it down into unique systems for each fandom, would not actually save any manpower currently expended in wrangling non-regulated tags. We would just shift focus from filing to customer service. Personally, I much prefer filing, and would not volunteer to do customer service.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-04 10:42 pm (UTC)This, this this! Thank you. That.
*fishes around for her coherence again*
*wry* I have to agree that, having set out to make open tagging, the repercussions of going back to the standard controlled vocabulary would likely be... notable. Which is why I'd personally favor going all the way and letting all users wrangle at least their own tags. It would be a bitch to code, but it would open up the field a little further, maybe enough to prevent hideous bottlenecks.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-04 10:59 pm (UTC)I've been thinking hard about how to articulate some of the issues I have with the current system of categorization, so I'm glad that what I see as the major problem makes sense outside of my head. *G*
Someone suggested that users at least be granted the option of suggesting a category for any new fandom they input. I am quite fond of that idea myself. If users were able to at least provisionally wrangle their own tags, tag wranglers might still have to approve and edit said wrangling, but we'd be able to do so with more information about any given author's take on her own work. Based on some of the discussions that have arisen on the wrangler list, I'd say that would be a huge benefit to us, and streamline some processes considerably.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-04 11:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-04 11:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-05 01:04 am (UTC)♥ This is my new favourite phrase for such behaviour! *giggling madly*
no subject
Date: 2010-01-05 01:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-05 02:40 am (UTC)I really wish AO3 would use subcategories. It's already getting a little unwieldy to start scrolling through huge lists of fandom names. I know I can just search for stuff, but sometimes it's fun to see if there's anything unexpected.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-05 02:51 am (UTC)I totally think subcategories are the way to go! For all the supercategories, really, because if it's already this unwieldy imagine what it will be when the archive opens up... *quails at the very thought*
no subject
Date: 2010-01-05 02:56 am (UTC)IE is my browser of choice, and I've been able to do what I need to do there, for the most part. It does make me wonder if I've been missing anything, though.
I'm probably the only person on the planet who couldn't care less about Yuletide and am tired of hearing about it. XD
no subject
Date: 2010-01-05 03:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-05 03:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-05 08:21 am (UTC)Been There, Done That.
The rest, I have not much else to say but a big heaping helping of "Word" for you.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-05 05:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-06 12:21 am (UTC)showrant), but...yeah, what you said. It's frustrating when one of the larger femmeslash comms won't accept your fics or art because it's not a Western fandom.no subject
Date: 2010-01-07 10:58 am (UTC)I digress. On a pure design note, the idea of user-generated tags kind of gives me hives. (Ask 5 fans to spell Shusuke and you'll get 5 different spellings. Let alone capitalizations. Or punctuations. Or spaces.) But I guess we'll see.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-07 08:14 pm (UTC)*laughing* The variety of spellings we're going to wind up with makes me either cringe of laugh, depending on my mood. It's definitely going to make work for the wranglers.