Mailing List Culture and Critical Discussion of Fanworks
| Meta | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Mailing List Culture and Critical Discussion of Fanworks |
| Creator: | Flamingo |
| Date(s): | February 1, 2003 |
| Medium: | online |
| Fandom: | |
| Topic: | |
| External Links: | |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Mailing List Culture and Critical Discussion of Fanworks is a 2003 essay by Flamingo
It was posted to VenicePlace, a closed Starsky & Hutch mailing list, and posted on Fanlore with Flamingo's permission.
Related Essays by Flamingo
- Convoluted Writing Thoughts (2000)
- The Art of Fanfic Critique: who and what it is for (2001)
- Mailing List Culture and Critical Discussion of Fanworks (2003)
Some Topics Discussed
The Essay
It has been a chronic problem on VP -- people are *afraid* to post. But a discussion list can't exist with disagreement, without questioning, without criticizing -- without posts. While the list members are certainly welcome to discuss list policies, and list policies may change to reflect the concerns of the list members, this is not a democracy. List policy, ultimately, is my decision. List policy on VP has always been that any fiction published in a public forum, whether it is zine or net, is available for discussion. Period. We ask that people respect the privacy of writers by being cautious in the use of their *names* -- since these days it's impossible to know if an author's name is their real name or a pseud, we ask people to err on the side of caution -- use a first name, or a first name and a last initial or both initials, but unless you know for sure that someone has no concerns about their full name/pseud being used on the net, use some caution in that area.
However, the reality is that many people are made uncomfortable by discussions of fiction if anything even vaguely critical or negative is brought up. Friends of the writer worry about the writer's feeling. Fans of the writer worry about whether the writer will be discouraged from writing. Fans of the fiction get offended if their favorite stories are criticized. Someone who is no longer on this list once posted, in regards to the should-we-should-we-not discuss fiction on the list, that she had come to believe that while the internet fostered discussion *lists*, the truth is, the internet does not foster discussions, that the minute any meaty discussion begins, it will be halted because of personal feelings that get in the way of the debate which, ideally, is an intellectual exercise -- the kind of exercise fans at gatherings and on phone calls or exchanging personal emails are used to. But for some reason, we're just not capable of maintaining this kind of thing in a public forum. As the list mom of a discussion list, I cannot tell you how this frustrates me. We have done whatever we could to foster discussion on fiction, from going as far as to ask writers to voluntarily offer their work for discussion, from declaring that public stories will be discussed and if you're not comfortable, don't get involved, to trying to have a formal structure for these discussions. Nothing, really, has worked. I'm out of ideas.
There's no reason at all why we can't agree to disagree on things. No reason at all. Except that, perhaps, we take as extremely personal what is not meant as personal and INSIST that that is the only way things were meant, when they weren't meant that way at all. Email comes directly to us, directly into our personal computers, so maybe that is why things feel so very personal.
I will say again, by all means debate the merits of fiction. I will not tolerate rudeness or personal attacks, none of which encourages any kind of reasonable discourse. There's no reason that disagreement can't be kept dispassionate. However, I expect the truth is a whole crop of recent VP'ers are now discouraged from meaningful discussion. This list frequently lapses into protracted silences for this reason. There was absolutely nothing wrong with the topic, and there was nothing wrong with the topic veering off into another area, until personal attacks were brought into it. But I don't think we can change basic human nature, or the nature of the internet. Even I'm not brassy enough to think I've got that kind of clout. But we *can* decide not to take things to personally, we can decide to give someone we think is insulting us the benefit of the doubt, we can explain our point of view and take the high road even when we think we've been insulted and wait to see what happens, and we can wait before firing back in anger.
We have to accept that because people don't agree with us, doesn't mean they are criticizing us. Unfortunately, there's also a lot of history here and on other SH lists about strong discussions that have made others feel that what *they* prefer is less valuable than what others prefer. This is the "agree to disagree" area. I think it may be hard to view any discussion without recalling the history that thread has brought up in the past. Many of us who've been here for years tremble at the thought of discussions dealing with story warnings, styles of fiction, what is "good" or "bad" about "hard" or "soft" fiction, because of things that have happened before. But not everyone on VP has been here for years; many of the members are relatively new. They don't know anything about this history or the history of the fandom in general. I think it would help if we could let go of the past discussions and try to remember that topics will come around and around again, and that's normal. To some of us, the discussions are new, to some it's old territory. We need to try to focus on the immediate discussion at hand and view it as a new discussion and not carry the baggage of past history with us. For some of us, that may be hard to do. I don't know.
I will not agree to ban discussions on fiction. But I honestly don't know if we'll ever really have them.