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Ah, the benefits of deciding to finish something else before writing about the latest note on OTW: other people have already stated my position succinctly in the first few comments.

Which is to say, saying that "If you expect us to act like a nonprofit org, you have to treat us as a nonprofit org" by offering constructive criticism via centralized organs of communication is assuming that the OTW has shown sufficient evidence of professionalism to justify such an attempt. This is, I will allow, a difficult thing to do, precisely because the organization has such a lot of deeply unprofessional and bad-communication history to overcome.

But that history isn't going to go away, and it's firmly attached to the organization's name and continuity. The fact that the complement of people in charge is somewhat different, now, than it was for years worth of deeply frustrating failure to respond to constructive and productive criticism does not erase those years or the suspicion they engendered. There may be more avenues of communication open, but they are still not being advertized as forcefully as they need to be. There may be changes in the internal structure of the org, but no one outside, and apparently precious few inside, of it can tell because those are not well publicized either. Except, I would note, in a lot of unofficial entries that do an end-run around the official outlets.

So, no. The members and contributors who have already given good faith and had it broken are not going to give it again easily. First, there has to be some more sustained demonstration that good faith will not be just one more heartbreaking investment of good emotion/time/money thrown after bad.

The most good faith the organization has earned back from me, so far, is to wait and see.

*drums fingers*

The more I think about the idea of a display-name/alias for canonical tags, the more I think: it's going to have to be a new table.

I'm pretty sure that it would be faster to store any given story's aliases in a single field of the Story table as a string of key-value pairs. But those pairs would need delimiters that would not ever show up in the aliases themselves and that... that's not something I really want to bet on, when it comes to fandom, names, and the evolution of pairing syntax.

It would also be more accident prone during the canonizing of the tags. (I'm starting to feel like I should capitalize that phrase. Like the Running of the Bulls or something.)

So. Separate table, nice and simple, with columns for story id, canon-tag id, and alias. I'm thinking story id should be the primary key. The most frequent use is going to be producing story-blurbs, and I'm guessing this sucker is going to have to be partitioned. So, partition by story id range and crank that into the one extra query this will create per story (or at least prepare for it; it might not be necessary yet).

Putting aliases in their own table will also make them far more easily searchable.

petronia pointed out that some fan cultures, for example the Chinese-language fans, will want and expect to be able to search for things like "Sasuke/Naruto" as distinct from "Naruto/Sasuke", and also search for things like "*/Sasuke" (that is, anyone/Sasuke). Putting a specific "search display names" option on the Advanced search, and putting the aliases into a table of their own with one alias per field, will make that a lot more feasible. It won't be perfect, because it will rely on authors to alias, but there should be some significant overlap between authors who will alias like that and authors writing the kind of fic members of that fan culture want to see.

Now the first step of the Canonizing of the Tags is a lot simpler. Relatively speaking. For each story, get the current tags; get the names and ids of those tags; write them to the alias table. That can run in the background as long as it takes, since it won't affect anything yet.

The new posting form has to be prepared next, so that it's ready to present canonicals and "talk" to the alias table. The new code to display story blurbs and pages will need to be done up, but that should be nice and straightforward. Incidentally, I quite like

busaikko's idea of putting Additional tags, possibly labeled Author Tags, under the summary to make them clearly separated from the menu tags and more clearly part of the author's own meta-information about their work. That would prepare the way to possibly show Reader Tags, and make them clearly distinct from anything the author zirself put on the story.

And now the canonization query should run smoothly, as each child-tag id is replaced with the id of its final parent tag, including the ids in the alias table. Which will, after the query runs, match up with the changed ids in the Story table. And without needing any dangerous, and slow, additions like "match any number that comes before X delimiter in this long string". *dusts hands*

Best of all, as

niqaeli points out, this can be considered an improvement in user control of their own content. Users would now be able to absolutely control what canonicals are associated with their stories, instead of being forced to leave that up to the wranglers. (Which must surely be less nerve-wracking for the wranglers too...). The user will still have control of exactly how all the text of their content appears and, since no user actually has control of how the navigation structure appears right now, no one will lose any control they had.

So there is an increase in user control, plus an improvement in searchability, a considerable improvement in stability and performance, and a huge improvement in the efficient use of wrangler time that might let them be more pro-active in populating new fandoms with suitable canonicals ready for author use. This should even, much as it disgusts me, let the OTW leadership avoid Step One from my previous post. So get cracking, people.

So, let's think about the Archive posting page.

(Background for anyone just joining: I am strongly in favor of ditching the tag-synonym structure and selecting from the pool of canonical tags for fandom/character/relationships posting fields. Menus can then be far more simply generated, and malformed tags or wrangling accidents will not make stories un-searchable. This would involve some fairly simple modifications to the current database, and the addition of a few forms and form fields.)

The posting page really does feel like the keystone of the idea. That is the page where workflow would have to change most. So! Let us consider how it might work.

For one thing,

troisroyaumes had a fascinating idea: what if there were a few columns added to the Story table of the database, to hold, not tag synonyms, but alternative link text for the canonical tags? That would require a little more complexity in preparation for the change-over, to create those fields and populate them with the current synonym names, but it wouldn't be all that much more work and would preserve the possibility of user-chosen tag text while not interfering with or complicating (or breaking) navigation. That strikes me as a far more workable middle ground than the current system.

Those fields would definitely require some significant revision to the post-form, though. Here's what I'm imagining so far:

( Rough mock-up of a possible posting form and details. )

Thankfully, the rest of the form can stay just as it is! So, there's a start on the idea. What do people think? Are there other cases that would need to have the logic and triggers worked out? Any form-bits that are missing?

I'm thinking there should also be links to the canonical pools of each field type for the Fandom(s) in question, in case people want to check what's available, but I can't decide what seems most useful and findable: a link under the label, or a link on the far end of the text field. Under/after the label, so screen readers know it's there, maybe?

Also, does anyone know how to let a form take the kind of information it would not normally allow, as long as that information is passed to it by another form? So that, despite the Menu tag fields being limited to canonicals, they could still be populated from the "request new canonicals" form. And also enter those requested tags as "requested" or "provisional" instead of "approved". I'm thinking this is just adding the right id or value and then a lot of "if" statements in the script, but I don't deal with such complex forms that often so I'm not sure of that.

You know what infuriates me most about AO3 (today)? The more I read the little things that wranglers anonymous and not are stepping up to tell us, the clearer it becomes that it could work. I don't mean that in a fuzzy procedural way, either, I mean the actual structure of the archive is completely compatible with changing the archive over to canonical, navigable tags and usable fandom hierarchy navigation and not making the wranglers do every damn thing. IT COULD BE DONE RIGHT NOW. Most of the structure is already in place, it's just completely invisible to the users!

It would not take any extra hand-work on the part of the wranglers. It would not require more downtime than any other commit, or break existing functions. The big change would not even be a very difficult bit of code to write! (Terrifying, perhaps, but not difficult.)

How, you ask? ( Let me tell you, because the top of my goddamn head is about to blow off with the force of my indignation over the pointless ideological stonewalling that's stopping the archive in its tracks! )

Now. That involved only a small amount of new coding, all of it straightforward, and it will fix both server-load and worker-load. The majority of the fix is one query to canonize existing story tags, and a slightly edited form to select new ones, using canonicals and hierarchy that are already established in every case. The rest of it is simply showing users the navigation that's already there. This change-over would not break any existing archive function. It could be nearly seamless. It would even surface things that are currently mis-wrangled but don't readily show it on the front end as the tags stand. And the wranglers would have the far more manageable job of reviewing requests for new canonicals and maybe populating new fandoms instead of trying to make sense of every senseless tag with their hands tied behind their backs. Everything is in place already, to make this work!

It could be done so easily. It could be started right now. WHAT IS STOPPING YOU?

The narrative of "real people" keeps coming back around in OTW-related discussions, along with its close cousins like "appreciation", and there are a few things that particularly strike me about this.

A) This is a blatant red herring, when it shows up in discussions of effectiveness. Of course the organization is composed of real people. I did not actually assume it was made up of an infinite number of monkeys, despite occasional code artifacts that suggest otherwise, nor of sockpuppets, despite occasional communication modes that suggest otherwise. But being a "real person" is not some kind of magical ward against criticism, especially if one is not managing to do the job one took on effectively. The organization's products and organs are not being criticized because detractors are somehow convinced they're speaking about a bunch of improbably advanced AIs. They are being criticized for presenting those products as adequate and operational when they are not (a recent, but alas far from isolated, example).

B) If one wishes to be treated like a real person, it helps to look like one. Let us take the news blogs, for example. On the OTW site, the author of each OTW news post appears. When mirrored to LJ or DW or Tumblr, however, the author's name is stripped and the post appears under a corporate and faceless identity like "otw_staff". Because that worked so well for LJ. The AO3 news blog does not show authors to begin with, even on the AO3 site. Within the body of those posts, the current chair-holders, leaders, or team members are almost never called by name, only by title, and nearly every self-reference is plural. AD&T is working closely with Systems. Strategic Planning welcomes feedback. We are making emergency updates.

When confronted with a nameless, faceless, corporate entity, especially one who often \o/ while Rome burns, people tend to treat it like a nameless, faceless, corporate entity rather than a person. Cause. Effect. Furthermore, if such facelessness and title-naming is still considered desirable in order to distance user/member wrath, it might be time to think about exactly what's causing so much angry response. Hint: it's not because they don't think there are real people who are working hard in there.

C) If one wishes to be treated like a real person, it helps to treat others like real people. Consider that Strategic Planning has felt it desirable to pay for a second, separate survey account with which to survey tag wranglers about their work, so that they could guarantee absolute confidentiality. That's a pretty stern measure to take, for a basic workplace or workflow survey, but it surely does seem that a number of wranglers don't feel free to speak in their own names. In fact, it looks a lot like the real-person feelings and needs of the wranglers in question are being ignored and mis-represented more by cheerleaders than by detractors of the organization. ETA: erinptah notes that one of these comments is hers and she is anonymous only to follow the rules of the comm; this may be true of others as well.

Consider further that the guiding principle of the organization seems to be some bizarre form of Need To Know operational security. Users of the archive must not be shown the actual navigation system. Volunteers must not be able to know the plans in progress that will affect their areas and members must not be able to view the wiki where volunteer activities are documented or even have limited parts of it shown them. There are names for attempts to "protect" people from information, and some more for concealing a group's activities from its own members. None of them are nice, and none of the actions they describe indicate any particular respect for the people in question.

TL;DR: The "real-ness" of people working within or supporting the organization seems only rarely to be a genuine concern of those using the phrase or its synonyms, and even more rarely a pertinent one.

PS, Circle-only comments, see above re the relative respect granted by organization cheerleaders.

PPS, Bonus snark, from the recent anon thread, because it's both alarmingly cogent and kind of a thing of beauty.

So, anyone at all can submit pull requests to the OTW github, now. Supposedly, this way "experienced coders" can help in a drive-by way without having to jump through all the volunteering, form-filling, hoops.

That's nice.

Except for the part where you still need to jump through the hoops to get a development environment, the thing that lets you see the code from the back end. Without a development environment, the only way you can write a drive-by bug fix is by installing a local version of the Archive on your own computer or webspace which effort, the github documentation specifically says, will not receive any help or support. ETA: That's a bit better. A Windows install will not be supported, but there are some docs available for OSX or Linux; the Secretary has also added a link to the new IRC channel, which is entirely laudable.

And why the hell should anyone go to that kind of trouble? In what way is that "casual"? In what way is this actually useful? ETA: In particular, how is this useful given the OTW's history of bad faith and abusing their pool of volunteers, to date? How is a "well, it's better than most" barrier going to convince anyone who's been watching this train wreck for a few years, now, to dip a toe in?

I am seriously out of patience with this run-around, and the misinformation someone is evidently feeding the rest of the org. Whoever first suggested that opening up pull requests alone would open up development in some meaningful way? Lied.

And if there was no active misinformation, then I'm sorry but chalk up another mark for incompetence. I'm honestly not sure which I'd prefer.

From the public minutes, from November’s election up to the June 2 meeting:

Out of 20 meetings, board members were absent for:

10 Francesca Coppa (50% absentee)

8 Naomi Novik (40% absentee)

7 Ira Gladkova (35% absentee)

4 Julia Beck (20% absentee)

4 Jenny Scott-Thompson (20% absentee)

1 Nikisha Sanders (5% absentee)

1 Kristen Murphy (5% absentee)

Your votes at work, ladies and gentlemen. Or, in some cases, not.

FUCK.

ETA, this time with slightly more eloquence: We are screwed. We are all so fucking screwed. Oh my god, even after she made such a godawful balls-up of the archive for her own personal project, she actually still got elected? Oh my god.

starlady has, in addition to writing up her own cogent summaries of why she will be voting the way she will, posted a list of links to other people writing similar reflections.

I strongly encourage anime/manga fans who have any interest in or contact with the OTW to read these, and that goes twice if you're eligible to vote in this election.