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)

	ekaterinv 2011-11-13 11:06 pm UTC (link)
	So there seem to be a lot of posts saying things like "I was told" and "I was made to feel". By whom? What are the specifics? It's obvious that people are frightened to name names and get into details, and I've been there, but until they do I don't think anything's going to change for the organization. Which from what I can see looks like a complete disaster. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	amadi 2011-11-14 12:07 am UTC (link)
	I think that so long as people are still serving, they're not willing to name names because they have to work with the people they'd be naming. And once people are out, they're just so burned out and broken that they don't have the energy to point fingers and say "You, Jane Doe, you were the one who made this experience so damned miserable!" (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

ekaterinv
2011-11-14 06:44 am UTC (link)

Yes, and I do understand that. Obviously, most people think running around yelling "j'accuse!" is pointless and wanky. But I have seen plenty of communities implode in these circumstances. A bunch of people who are too worn out to talk about it leave, their friends leave, the friends of their friends leave, and at the end all that's left is a tiny circlejerk of BNF-types who think they're too important to pay attention to the little people.

OTW looks to be barely pre-implosion right now, and it doesn't look like the high-ups are taking any notice.

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amadi
2011-11-14 10:17 am UTC (link)

Certain high-ups are well aware of how bad it is. I mean, Allison gets it (outgoing board chair, general_jinjur). Three of the five (formerly four of six) candidates for the upcoming board election get it.

Really, the election is going to be the deciding factor in the OTW's ongoing health; frankly, if Naomi Novik ends up back on the board, well let's just say that I'll be glad that I've been uploading all of my fic to Dreamwidth as well as AO3.

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ekaterinv
2011-11-14 10:23 am UTC (link)

By "the high-ups" I really only meant Naomi Novik and her friend who's on the board now and whose name I can't remember but I am too lazy to look it up atm. It begins with an e, I think. They seem to be the people insisting certain things be One Way, even when that way is messing up a lot of other stuff, and stonewalling when other people try to get things done. Novik's tone has been really off-putting too; I can imagine her airily waving her hand and chuckling about all these silly people who claim there are problems. I doubt that's how she wants to present herself.

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amadi
2011-11-14 10:32 am UTC (link)

Absolutely. And I think that this really awful code push suspiciously timed just as the massive server overload period that is Yuletide nominations is happening says it all.

Who runs Yuletide and moved it to the AO3 over voluminous objection with promises about coding marvels for running fests/exchanges on AO3 that still don't fully exist 2? 3? years later...

If people don't get that, honestly, I don't know how to make it any more clear to them.

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undomielregina
2011-11-14 01:33 pm UTC (link)

What's really stunning to me is that every staff member, every volunteer and every board member I've seen post endorsements, with the notable exception of Francesca Coppa, the other founder, has not endorsed Novik. It's pretty clear to me that the founders are in direct conflict with the vast majority of the organization and need to step aside for people who will not directly impede change because it's not exactly in line with their outdated vision.

That sounds really harsh, and the funny thing is that I generally like both Novik and Coppa when I interact with them, but omg they need to get their heads out of the sand STAT and until they do I don't want Novik anywhere near the board (or Coppa, really, but her term's not up so...).

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amadi
2011-11-14 01:41 pm UTC (link)

I think Naomi has to realize today that the majority of the org is against her, and with good reason, but she's clinging on with the power of a.) being founder; and b.) having the power to push code, however buggy, untested and unready it is (in service of her pet annual Yuletide project, not the org or archive as a whole).

I honestly wish this morning that I had 1/10 of Naomi Novik's exhibited IDGAF capacity. How much nicer must life be when you can just glide through doing whatever the hell you want and let others, like poor Lim, take the heat?

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ekaterinv
2011-11-14 07:12 pm UTC (link)

How much nicer must life be when you can just glide through doing whatever the hell you want and let others, like poor Lim, take the heat?

I have to think that people who do that regularly know, deep down, that what they're doing is wrong, and therefore can't ever be truly happy and satisfied with themselves. I feel like if Novik were confident and content with herself, she'd see that management is not one of her strengths, and be happy enough about her other strengths to step back and let the organization she helped found flourish. If she can't do that... well, she'll probably end up unhappy about OTW, anyway, because it will not reach the potential she sees for it.

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	cmdr_zoom 2011-11-14 08:21 pm UTC (link)
	But it would, if only everyone else would stop working against her and having their own opinions! :p (Reply to this)(Parent)

melannen
2011-11-15 04:30 am UTC (link)

Part of it (and this is one of the problems) is that for a lower-level person, it's hard to know where the stuff is coming from.

I mean, as a tag wrangler, my dissatisfation comes in a lot of directions, but I have no idea whether a particular thing is the fault of the tag wrangling leadership, or the tag wrangling leadership being forced to pass down things they don't like and not saying who made them pass it down (which has happened in the past), or the volunteers committee, or AD&T not being willing to do something we need, or AD&T wanting to do something we need and getting it quashed from elsewhere, or a volunteer wanting to do something we need and getting it quashed by AD&T, or... just a general atmosphere in the interactions I've had that makes it difficult to pin on anyone but is definitely making me feel unhappy and giving the impression that a lot of things are kind of slippery.

This goes back to the "lack of transparency" thing.

Basically a ridiculous amount of OTW-related communications either a) goes on through official OTW channels that are locked away from even most other OTW volunteers, or b) goes on through back-channels like IMs between friends and journal comments which are impossible to collate. So knowing who made the decision and why etc. is very hard.

For example: forums for volunteers were recently instituted. I would like to say that I am unimpressed by the way forums were instituted, in that I still don't have an account, and I don't know why, because I found out about this through a) an e-mail sent to the tag wranglers list by the chairs of that committee which was just passing on information from another committee; b) a wiki post linked to in the e-mail which slightly contradicts some of the information in the e-mail and has no writer of record; c) the forums site itself, which is hosted/organized by VolCom, and which has very little information available if you don't have an account; d) various rumors being passed around about how there were going to be forums; and e) a comment reply to me in someone else's lj by someone who appears to have been involved in the early forums planning, but who did not identify her OTW position, and then when I pointed out that what she said contradicted the e-mail, said 'oh, maybe I had it wrong, I haven't been involved with that lately, you know how OTW communications are'. The e-mail address we're supposed to write to if we have questions is the same blind VolCom e-mail we're supposed to use for anything we have questions about, and gets answered by VolCom volunteers, but only after it's first gone through an unknown amount of VolCom buck-passing.

I was told various things about the forums but I have no idea where the information originated; I was made to feel that the whole forums effort was maybe not too well organized or timed and was probably a mess behind the scenes; I could not name a single name for you that I know to be responsible for any of that.

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ekaterinv
2011-11-15 05:32 am UTC (link)

Yeah, I totally see how someone in your position couldn't possibly know "who". You do have details of "what", though. Figuring out the "why, who, and how" would be the job of managers and, ultimately, the board. (Or a committee appointed by the board.) Unfortunately, when the people whose job it is to fix systemic problems won't even acknowledge that there are systemic problems, inevitably shit like this happens.

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