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

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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)

anonyrat
2011-11-15 10:48 pm UTC (link)

This is how it works, basically, except 1) you're not allowed to contact users about tags, even in cases of clear-cut tagging mistakes (like mispelling a character's name), and 2) there is a LOT of resistance to actually informing users how tagging works, what it's for, and laying down some basic guidelines for how to effectively tag your fic, apparently in the name of not stifling diversity or something. This leads to a lot of unnecessary work for tag-wranglers, who have to go through and make every random misspelling and slight variation into synonyms (which can get REALLY complicated when you move into tags like genres and tropes), and their workload also gets much larger the more works are coming in. Autocomplete has helped a bit, but it's not enough.

Basically, whoever came up with the way tagging works on AO3 can't decide if they want to be a useful searching tool for readers or an additional way for writers to freely describe their content, and it ends up being sort of neither.

/another former tag wrangler. I didn't last long, even though I love tagging.

(Reply to this)(Parent)

	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)

ldymusyc
2011-11-15 10:58 pm UTC (link)

Oh, I didn't mean to imply or suggest someone was making the change deliberately, no. No, my irritation is that "pride - freeform" does appear to be the canonical tag that shows up automatically when I enter "pride". I don't like seeing "freeform" in my tags anywhere (and even coded my viewing skin so that the tag label itself shows up as 'other tags', instead), so my irritation is solely a personal one that the canonical tag is listed that way. I just solved the issue by eliminating the tag.

(Reply to this)(Parent)

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)

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