An Introduction to the Organization for Transformative Works

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Title: An Introduction to the Organization for Transformative Works
Creator: femmequixotic
Date(s): September 28, 2007
Medium: online
Fandom: multifandom
Topic:
External Links: [1]; archive page 1; archive page 2; archive link page 3; archive page 4
Click here for related articles on Fanlore.

An Introduction to the Organization for Transformative Works September 2007 is a post by femmequixotic, spokesperson for Organization for Transformative Works.

There are 325 comments to this post.

The topic of this post is the plans for Organization for Transformative Works.

"Our primary focus is going to be setting up the archive itself. That's our first priority. In addition, we'll be working on a few other projects, such as a fan history wiki, an academic fan journal, and a legal defense fund."

Some Topics Discussed

  • list of planned committee members
  • many, many notes of excitement and congratulations
  • some complaints that the name has been changed from "fanarchive" to "Organization for Transformative Works"
  • the title, OTW, doesn't take into account RPF
  • some fans are questioning why fandom needs this project, says Fan History Wiki, RockFic, and FanworksFinder are sufficient for fans
  • why is the OTW so slow, why is the OTW so hasty
  • anger that Heidi Tandy is on the legal team
  • discussion about the OTW's statements that transformative fandom being a female-centric space
  • there are many anonymous commenters, including one who ironically gripes about the members of the board not revealing their fannish names
  • negative comments by sidewinder, screwthedaisies, hector rashbaum, Laura Hale (who is angry that no one consulted her), and other mostly anonymous commenters (and a few trolls)

From the Post

The name fanarchive is no more; instead a non-profit organization has been created to oversee the archive project. The Organization for Transformative Works--which you'll see frequently shortened to OTW around here from now on--has been incorporated in Delaware and is currently seeking federal tax-exempt status. (That's a process that will take us a little while--government red tape, after all.)

OTW has a website located at www.transformativeworks.org. Right now it's serving as a placeholder, but our Public Relations committee is hard at work setting up a site that will be informative and helpful, particularly to those outside of fandom.

We're currently in the process of soliciting volunteers for the project--in all areas! Some of you who have previously volunteered may have already been contacted via email last week if we had your email addresses on file. If you have not received an email and you volunteered or you want to volunteer now, please email [email protected] and we'll put you on our masterlist of volunteers.

Our primary focus is going to be setting up the archive itself. That's our first priority. In addition, we'll be working on a few other projects, such as a fan history wiki, an academic fan journal, and a legal defense fund. We'll have more details on those projects in upcoming weeks.

A lot of people have asked about the possibility of OTW setting up a fan journaling service. While this has not been ruled out, unfortunately setting up a site like that would be very resource-intensive and would involve us in two heavy software coding projects at the same time. Because of that, it's not likely to hit our project timeline for at least another year, perhaps two. However, the archive itself will give fans the opportunity to house some of the content that might find them TOS'd in other places.

In its mission statement, the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW) defines itself as a nonprofit organization established by fans to serve the interests of fans by providing access to and preserving the history of fan works and culture in its myriad forms.

We're dedicated to doing everything possible to protect and archive fanworks across the board. Our goal is to be as inclusive of fandom as we can possibly be; our legal team is determining how best to protect fannish works that fall into non-mainstream genres. We as an organization want to celebrate fannish activity, to work for legal and societal recognition of the legitimacy and creativity of fannish works, to protect fanworks legally, to nurture fandom and fan creations, and to give all fans as much access to fan activity as we possibly can.

In order to do so, a number of committees have been set up under the direction of the board and are staffed by various members of fandom. Below is the listing of the board and all current committee members. All members of the board are associated with fandom, but due to legal requirements, they are listed by their public identities; for privacy issues, their fannish identities will not be overtly connected to their legal names.

We're all incredibly excited about the direction the organization is taking and upcoming projects. Keep your eye on this comm for more updates regarding projects and how you can be involved in crafting a fannish space for each and every one of us. And if you've any comments or suggestions or questions you're curious about, please feel free to comment here. We might not have all the answers yet---the various committees are doing a lot of setup work at the moment--but members of the Community Relations committee would be happy to talk to talk to you guys about what's going on behind the scenes. And if we don't have answers for you, we'll see what we can do to find out. Just be aware that at the moment, some of our answers might be along the lines of "we're working on figuring that out"--there's a lot of back-end stuff that's waiting on outside sources or even the answers to questions we're asking each other internally. :)

Fan Comments

Laura Hale:

Find out why, when the project was planned, when my wiki was linked to, why I wasn't personally invited by the people behind the project. Because seriously, you'd have to be pretty... well, isolated in fandom not to have run across Fan History Wiki and my other fan fiction history type work.

In the mean time, while you get your proposal together, could you please give a shout out to Fan History Wiki at http://www.fanhistory.com/

Tonight. Four months from now. Whenever. If you can, that would be great.

[acchikocchi]: I wouldn't call myself "isolated" in fandom - I've been participating in various fandoms for seven years and I've never heard of it. Perhaps we have different interpretations of the word? What exactly do you mean by that? (Western fandom? Participation in fandom history activities?)
[carmarthen]: I don't know yet whether I want to be involved in OTW, but that assumption sure doesn't make me want to participate in the Fan History Wiki.
[miriad]: Wow, that's pretty arrogant. I've been involved in fandom for twelve years, on LJ for almost 8 and I've NEVER heard of your wiki until today.
Out of curiosity, why did you think that they needed to talk to you before they started their own? Do you own the rights to a fandom wiki? Or did you just want your name attached to the big new thing?
Your argument that because your wiki was linked to that you should be asked to participate holds no weight whatsoever. People link to sites all the time, including wikipedia pages but that does not create some sort of contract or requirement on the part of the linker to make the linkee involved in their posting/e-mail/web site.
Maybe instead of complaining, you could have just volunteered your time. Just a thought.

[absolutedestiny]: I'm not a representative for OTW. I've not been involved in the planning at all. I know as much about the plans as you do.

However, I have my own thoughts on this.

1) OTW has a wider scope than merely fan fiction. fanhistory.com specifies fic.

2) While a wiki can be edited by anyone, a wiki hosted by an individual does not belong to everyone. Without the individual who hosts it, the information, however open and collaborative may vanish and be useless. OTW, by opening ownership to the community, helps with this issue.

[partly bouncy]: So... OTW is talking about doing a fan history wiki, to compete with Fan History Wiki which has over 6,400 pages already that touch at least 1,500 fandoms, touch on the activities of over 1,500 people in fandom dating back to the 1930s. Fan History Wiki looks at people, fandoms, archives, legal issues and more. It covers parts of vidding, fan art and general fannish activity history.
Can I ask how the proposed fan history wiki that OTW is doing is going to be wider than that?
By not editing the wiki and by not offering to assist with the wiki, you're not helping to open it up to the community and not helping the community learn more about its won history. I've done more out reach with the wiki than OTW has done with their project. I've been committed to maintaining the wiki and helping the community since day one. I can't say the same for OTW.
[absolutedestiny]: So, even if (as you say) things like vidding are on the wiki, that is no thanks to the intended scope of the wiki. The wiki makes constant, repeated reference to fic. It's a fic wiki, not a fan activity wiki. It does its own name a disservice. Heck, a search for "music videos" returns Bandfic as the biggest hit. Not vidding. Not AMVs. There is no illusion that FanHistory.com is really, honestly, just about fic and the fandoms revolving around it. There's nothing wrong with that at all. However, thousands of pages does not change the fact that where OTW is about fannish activity in the general sense, FanHistory.com is about fannish activity in a more specific defined sense.
[...]
Again, I am not OTW. This isn't about me. You are pretty quick to judge my contributions to the community, I'm guessing because you've equated here "the community" to FH.com. Saying "if you're not with us you're against us" is nonsense in this debate, imo, as I will attempt to explain.
The fact is that FanHistory.com is not community information in the truest sense of the term because ownership ultimately falls outside those who created the information. Sure, anyone can contribute but what then? If I did contribute to FanHistory.com what guarantee would I have that the information wouldn't be taken offline for no reason, locked by some biased moderator with no explanation or simply just removed by the isp never to be seen again? There is no privacy policy on the site. There is no copyright information detailing common ownership. Am I even allowed to quote the about page like I just did? For all I know FanHistory.com could be collecting information with the purpose of taking it all offline, compiling a book and making money all thanks to the hard work of the poor saps who were "helping the community".
I'm sure that's not the case (I'd hope!) but if there's one thing to distinguish OTW and FanHistory.com (other than scope and many many other things) it is transparency. OTW has been transparent about its development from the very start with the entire organisation (from membership to mission statement) being developed collaboratively, organically, by the community rather than by one individual. It's an organisation established because of the inability to trust externally owned hosting, born out of user/owner clashes with corporations and individuals alike. FanHistory.com, whether run by a fan or no, is no different in this regard. The users that contribute to the information have no control over the final use, access and distribution of that information (as it currently stands).
[partly bouncy]: ::: AHA HA HA HA! No. Seriously. You can't be serious.
Where is the transparency? OTW is a train wreck, waiting to happen. They've made decisions with out consulting the community, appointed themselves the voice of fandom and were silent for months and months while decisions were apparently made with out the community knowing. When pressed for updates, no one could answer.
[...]
OTW's outreach has been horrible, awful, craptastic. I saw no representation on MySpace, Quizilla, FaceBook, AdultFanFiction.Net, JournalFen, FanDomination.Net, MediaMiner.Org, FanFiction.Net, HarryPotterFanFiction.Net, FicWad, DeviantArt administrators or users. I saw almost no outreach to mailing lists. (I think I saw three posts.)
So you would be wrong on both counts.
[...]
Hey, I'm not the one talking about being for the community and by THE community. If I can do the outreach on a wide scale, why can't OTW? It isn't about a pissing contest but OTW's effectiveness at their stated goal. Which, because of their/your lack of outreach, you're/they're probably going to fail.
I outlined eight problems I had with fanarchive way back in June. At least two of your committee members were offered the chance to read it. They were perfectly valid concerns. Have they been addressed yet? Nope and I can't see them doing it. FanArchive, an archive for a community.

[anonymous]: How transparent is OTW when we don't even know the fan identities of its board? I respect their need for privacy, but you can't then turn around and praise OTW for being transparent in its organisation when members are prevented from knowing who its leaders are.
[absolutedestiny]: The irony of posting this as an anonymous user wasn't lost on me, thanks for the laugh.

[partly bouncy]: I call bullshit. I've been after people for years to help me document this stuff. Years. Where were you then?

Why didn't you reach out to me when this whole thing was being discussed in the planning stages? Why didn't you reach out to Steven Savage? Why didn't you reach out to MediaMiner.Org, RockFic, FanWorks.Org, FanDomination.Net, AdultFanFiction.Net, FicWad, SkyHawke, HarryPotterFanFiction.Net, SugarQuill and other large archives? Why didn't you respond when Heather, the founder of FanWorksFinder reached out to you? Where was your knowledge base and research being done that your group decided that years of fandom experience from people who have been there, done that wasn't worth consulting or inviting to paricipate in the process?

Added to that, pretty much anyone can edit FanHistory.Com. Why didn't you edit the wiki to offer another voice? Why didn't you encourage others to edit the wiki to lend their voices to that?

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References

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