otw_news

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Journal Community
Name: OTW News
Date(s): Created 20 May 2007 - Last post 10 June 2023
Moderator:
Founder:
Type:
Fandom:
URL: livejournal

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otw_news is a LiveJournal community for disseminating news about the Organization for Transformative Works. It is the OTW's earliest social media account; it was created three days after astolat's original post, An Archive Of One's Own.

Account History

The community was originally named "fanarchive"[1] and described as "the account for the Archive Of Our Own project to build a major multifandom non-profit archive for fanfic." Initially all members of the community seem to have had posting access and the main rule was "no flames"[2], though posting access and rules appear to have changed by December[3].

Early posts involved a lot of brainstorming and are a good resource for the history of the organization and the original rationale for various AO3 features and policies.

The community was renamed otw_news in September 2007, when a name for the nonprofit was made official.[4]

Use of the otw_news account for the OTW newsletter began in December 2007; volume 1 was posted December 11.[5]

Other venues were created over time to share OTW's news, but most items were cross-posted to multiple venues. As fandom migrated away from LiveJournal, comments on the OTW's LiveJournal community evaporated, but posting continued regularly until June 2023, when the community was closed and replaced with automated RSS feeds.

Community Statistics

As of June 2007, the mods were amireal, bethbethbeth, fanarchiveowner, and xenacryst. The community had 909 members, 1260 watchers, and was a paid account.[2] By December 2007, the mods were bethbethbeth, ciderpress, femmequixotic, mirabile_dictu, otw_owner, shrift, and svmadelyn. The community had 1183 members and 1767 watchers.[3] As of July 2023, the mods are otw_staff and otw_webmasters, and the community has 2,563 posts; 5,309 comments; 1,156 members; and 1,639 watchers.[6]

A Dreamwidth mirror community was created in April 2009, and the same posts were cross-posted to both communities. Around April 2017, when LiveJournal updated its terms of service to comply with Russian law and many LiveJournal users deleted their accounts, the contents of the otw_news LiveJournal community were imported into the dreamwidth community, resulting in many duplicated posts. As of July 2023, the dreamwidth community has 4,229 posts; 6,474 comments; 436 members; and 1221 subscribers.[7]

Closure

The Communications committee, who runs the OTW's various news accounts, decided to close both the LiveJournal and Dreamwidth communities in May/June 2023, presumably to decrease their workload. An OTW News Reader Comment Period was posted on LiveJournal on May 27 asking for input on whether to stop posting to LiveJournal. No one commented, so the account was closed on June 10. Also on June 10, the committee posed the same question to the Dreamwidth community, OTW News Reader Comment Period, where they received a number of comments in favor of keeping the community open. On June 25, the committee posted its decision to the close the Dreamwidth community, Comment Period Closure and Results. Dreamwidth fans were very critical of the decision and the way it was communicated, arguing that the committee had deceived them into thinking that their input mattered and that if the committee had always intended to close the community anyway, they could have said so instead of wasting everyone's time. When the OTW's June newsletter, posted in July, described the incident as "We have dropped manual posting to two little-used accounts—LiveJournal and Dreamwidth—in favor of automated feeds available at those sites.", Dreamwidth users got angry all over again.

The timing of the closures coincided with the End OTW Racism campaign, the 2023 OTW Management Controversy, and AI and data scraping controversy, so emotions were already running high and AO3 users were not inclined to assume good faith. Notably, both the AI controversy and the otw_news closure controversy were instigated by decisions made by the Communications committee, and Dreamwidth is owned by one of the most vocal critics of the OTW in the management controversy.

The communications team closing the DW comm in the middle of all of this reads as really petty. I assume the timing of the review was a coincidence, but since a communication's team job to make the org look like they aren't super fucking petty, they should really have tabled the whole thing for now[8]

The dreamwidth community was officially closed on July 10, but due to the AO3 DDOS Attack the Communications Committee posted again the next day to let fans know that the OTW website and donation form were down and that someone was impersonating them on Twitter.

Links

Other "OTW News" Accounts

See also Where to Find Us on the OTW's website.

References

  1. ^ Archive: update and first call for volunteers, Archived version, dreamwidth copy of astolat's livejournal post, 20 May 2007.
  2. ^ a b Wayback Machine copy of fanarchive community profile, 15 June 2007.
  3. ^ a b Wayback Machine copy of otw_news community profile, 22 December 2007.
  4. ^ In case you were having a puzzled, but I don't remember joining a 'otw_news' moment...., Archived version by 2007-09-21. (Accessed 8 July 2023.)
  5. ^ December 2007 Newsletter, vol. 1, Archived version, dreamwidth copy of a livejournal post by femmequixotic in otw_news, 2007-12-11. (Accessed 8 July 2023.)
  6. ^ otw_news - Profile, Archived version (Accessed 8 July 2023.)
  7. ^ otw_news - Community Profile, Archived version (Accessed 8 July 2023.)
  8. ^ fail_fandomanon comment, Archived version, 2023-06-25.
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