Professional fandom
Apologies for the lack of backstory links, I'm typing this from a phone. I think that's the only comment I've made in what I'm linking other than maybe something about php and ruby.

Otw (organization for transformative works) elections are happening right now, and boy is it wanky.

It was going to be unfunny, as you might imagine when three of the six candidates mention volunteer burn out ( http://facetofcathy.dreamwidth.org/229943.html ) in their candidate statements and one candidate Naomi Novik, founding member says she hasn't noticed.

Well if she hasn't noticed it can't be true right?

http://renay.dreamwidth.org/236955.html

Oh. Oh dear.

Add in that Sanders the candidate of colour has kept her main fandom journal for elections, and has a similar platform to the others, is told that she is too angry and has her friends getting anon comments telling them to tell her to watch her tone.

Then shit blows up when they fuck up the skins for "accessibility" when the new default is grey on grey and lots of red.

http://branchandroot.dreamwidth.org/1255716.html#comments

Apparently this was rushed to get the archive ready for Yuletide. Only Yuletide isn't a otw project.

http://fail-fandomanon.livejournal.com/22095.html?thread=99563087#t99563087

But what really has me gobsmacked is this,
from: copracat
Let me make sure I have this correctly:

The chair of the board has been told by someone/s to stop working on a strategic plan for the organisation because she doesn't have the authority to do so.

I'm going to make a cup of tea now.

-----
general-jinjur (the chair in question)

more accurately, i was told that i was dishonest, conspiratorial, and secretive because:

- i asked for volunteers to help gather info and work on preliminaries in an org-wide meeting (org-wide meetings are attended by a large group of volunteers and staff, including at least one representative from every committee)
- discussed how a strategic plan was on the horizon in at least two other org-wide meetings
- hired a staffer (one who, like all our staff, was unanimously board-approved) specifically to work on stakeholder surveys (beginning of 2011 term) as part of preliminary work (staffer wound up with international outreach, as they were best to start that piece).

by doing the above, i secretly formed a cabal without ever giving anyone a chance to participate. also, i failed to do all the work (research and write-up of a proposal for the plan for the process) myself rather than involving anyone or doing any delegation.

just to clarify. (perspectives vary, of course. this is my perspective on events. i officially don't care to argue its accuracy anymore; i have just enough energy and time left to tie up loose ends and write up documentation of the stuff i did manage to accomplish (in 2010. i'm a little behind on docs).)

http://copracat.dreamwidth.org/596794.html?thread=2267962#cmt2267962

(Read comments) - (Post a new comment)

adevyish
2011-11-13 10:54 pm UTC (link)

I have completely no involvement in this nor am following any of this at all, but I've seen mentions of tag wrangler burn-out months and months ago. The fact there even needs to be a tag wrangler position is very shortsighted, since it's a non-scaling solution. Also, with the AO3 codebase, it seems like there's only a handful of people having to write a huge laundry list of features. When the whole Delicious/AVOS thing went down, there was a lot of "Yeah let's add more bookmarking features to AO3! ... but not within the next year because we don't have any time".

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

lady_ganesh
2011-11-14 12:17 am UTC (link)

Well, the Archive (and OTW) should focus on things in a priority list, not just run after whatever crisis happens to show up, but that's why, say, a strategic plan is a good idea. (And that phrase usually makes me cringe.) If you don't have a plan to move ahead, you can end up in trouble.

Former tag wrangler here who came to the conclusion that the system was just unworkable (we couldn't even get people to agree that a FAQ on tags would be helpful to users, though I've heard that may have changed).

(Deleted and reposted 'cause of wonky white space.)

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	adevyish 2011-11-14 12:52 am UTC (link)
	Oh god design by committee. Cringing right now. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

lady_ganesh
2011-11-14 01:11 am UTC (link)

I don't want to speak for the whole system -- I was never particularly 'involved,' didn't attend the org-wide meetings, etc. But I will definitely say that what some people are encountering (renay's post in particular) jives with my experience.

I will say that when I resigned, I ended up emailing someone who had recently resigned because I couldn't figure out what the protocol was. (It was on the wiki. Somewhere.)

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	cmdr_zoom 2011-11-14 04:30 am UTC (link)
	As a complete outsider, this and other things I've heard suggest to me that we have a bunch of people with a lot of good intentions and very little in the way of an actual plan. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	inkstone 2011-11-14 02:02 pm UTC (link)
	And as the person you emailed, the only reason I knew how to resign was because I got frustrated and emailed Renay directly. /o\ (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	lady_ganesh 2011-11-14 03:25 pm UTC (link)
	♥! I didn't want to speak for stuff in private emails, heh. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	inkstone 2011-11-14 04:14 pm UTC (link)
	Totally understandable! The sad part is that a couple other people later asked me how to resign too. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	khym_chanur 2011-11-14 02:36 am UTC (link)
	Also, with the AO3 codebase, it seems like there's only a handful of people having to write a huge laundry list of features. So they were writing the whole thing from scratch instead of building on an existing open source content management system? (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	anarchicq 2011-11-14 03:41 am UTC (link)
	Yes. To make it Truly Their Own. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	adevyish 2011-11-14 04:16 am UTC (link)
	Not really "from scratch", they're building it on top of Rails. It depends on whether you define "from scratch" as "not on top of eFiction", which really I wouldn't blame them for because PHP sucks. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	khym_chanur 2011-11-14 04:21 am UTC (link)
	Ruby on Rails itself isn't a content management system. They might have saved themselves some effort if they'd used one that itself was built on Rails. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	adevyish 2011-11-14 04:33 am UTC (link)
	Probably, though there's a lot of custom functionality which would have taken a while to hammer into a CMS-friendly model. Then again why is there so much custom functionality I can't. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	athersgeo 2011-11-14 02:37 pm UTC (link)
	My experience is that packages are only quicker if they're going to be used largely as-is. As soon as you start trying to make lots of functionality changes, even in open source stuff, you can get heavily bogged down. I tend to find that packages usually end up adding time into a project rather than making my life easier. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	fourthage 2011-11-14 03:30 am UTC (link)
	Do you mind explaining what you mean when you say the tag wrangler position is a non-scaling solution? I'm feeling a bit slow tonight. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

adevyish
2011-11-14 04:23 am UTC (link)

Theoretically the more works posted a day, the more tag wranglers they'd need. (This is assuming people don't go back and re-tag their works later.) So having tag wranglers is a great solution when they're only getting a hundred new works a day, but if they're having a few thousand* all of a sudden - let's say fest season - they'll need current tag wranglers to work overtime and/or new tag wranglers.

* I am just making this number up; I don't think this number goes higher than a few hundred right now. A few thousand is more FFN's league.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	fourthage 2011-11-14 04:26 am UTC (link)
	Ah, gotcha. Thanks. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	platedlizard 2011-11-14 06:51 am UTC (link)
	That... sounds insane. Personally I would have taken a 'if the users don't tag their stuff then it's not going to be tagged' approached. Yeah, it might make some works harder to find, but that the users' responsibility imo. It's their work, after all. Either that or set up system where it happens automatically. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	ellensmithee 2011-11-14 08:30 am UTC (link)
	I'd be kinda ticked off if they went through and put tags on my fic that I didn't use on purpose. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	msilverstar 2011-11-14 08:44 am UTC (link)
	The idea is to create references so there's some virtual grouping, which is good in concept. Otherwise you get four million confusing Star Trek tags, Doctor Who, X-Men, etc. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	khym_chanur 2011-11-14 09:15 am UTC (link)
	It seems like that they could let the users inform the mods "hey, Tag1 and Tag2 are synonyms", and if they really are synonyms then tell the system that so they'll act like synonyms. That's what the site Stackoverflow does. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

(no subject) -

anonyrat, 2011-11-15 10:48 pm UTC

	ldymusyc 2011-11-15 08:48 pm UTC (link)
	Yeah, I got irritated enough that my "pride" tag on one fic kept getting renamed to "pride - freeform" that I finally deleted the tag entirely. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	ellensmithee 2011-11-15 08:52 pm UTC (link)
	Ugh. I checked and all of mine seem to be intact (for now), but that would really annoy me. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	anonyrat 2011-11-15 10:51 pm UTC (link)
	To be fair, I think that's automatic in order to distinguish the freeform tag from some random character or fandom tag that's also "Pride". The tag wranglers can't change tags that appear on people's fics. I don't think basic filtering terms should share the same free-text system as the rest of the tags, but that's another issue. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

(no subject) -

ldymusyc, 2011-11-15 10:58 pm UTC

anonyrat
2011-11-15 10:55 pm UTC (link)

Tag wranglers don't add or change tags, they only group and sort tags behind the scenes so that, for instance, if someone clicks on the "hurt/comfort" tag, they also get fics tagged with synonymous terms like "h/c". If a fic is uploaded untagged its going to remain untagged.

It is still going to require increasing numbers of volunteers as the archive gets bigger, and to make matters worse it's often hard to wrangle tags from a large fandom if you don't know the fandom.

(Reply to this)(Parent)

(Read comments) -