Talk:So I’m on AO3 ...(the forgotten history of disclaimers)

I like how this page has a variety of experiences from people with different relations to the history discussed. However I think that some of the quotes are repeating information that's also in longer quotes while not actually adding any personal experience that hasn't already been shown in other quotes. Since there are a lot of quotes on this page, I think we should consider removing redundant ones, which would help the page be more readable. I'm going to collect some examples and post them here to show what I mean. GoldenFalls (talk) 18:51, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

Examples (first bullets are which quotes could be removed, nested bullets are which quotes already cover that info and perspective):

• • "[awesomeavocadolove] Back in the day, I was on several board of directors for Dragon Riders of Pern online Weyrs. We played our own characters, but still had to get permission from Anne McCaffery’s representatives ahead of time. Shit was no joke.[33]" and "[smartass-telepath replied to jathis It wasn’t just fanfics too! Anne McCaffrey used to send C&Ds to people RPing Dragonriders of Pern. You needed to have your site/etc approved by her personally or it would get shut down. She backed off in her later years, but yeah, this shit happened. #ooc" and "[silensy] Way back in the compuserve days, to run a Pern RP forum, you had to a) get permission from Anne McCaffrey and b) only use Turns and Weyrs that were not featured in the books. The whole thing was plastered with reminders that it was fan works and not authorized or official in any way. #old fandom"
    • Already stated in "[catpella] I’m still in a Pern RP that was approved back when one of McCaffrey’s team insisted on approving all new play by email Weyrs. We still have a lot of Anne’s list of rules in place because at this point they’ve been there 16+ years and we’re used to playing within them and some of the club runners think shedding them would be weird. I remember us having to password-protect our online post archive because we didn’t want to violate the “no fanfiction online” rule, and we were hoping that “must be a club member to read” and “locked behind member password area” would help it. Now our archives are open to all and it’s awesome. #fandom history #maaaaan i def remember pern RPs having to have So Many Rules #and I remember all the disclaimers"
    • also stated in "[silensy] Way back in the compuserve days, to run a Pern RP forum, you had to a) get permission from Anne McCaffrey and b) only use Turns and Weyrs that were not featured in the books. The whole thing was plastered with reminders that it was fan works and not authorized or official in any way. #old fandom[37]"
    • Also stated in "[boxfullofcats] Oh man. Pern fandom brings back memories. Yeah, I helped a friend do one by the book. Did regular emails back and forth with her son (forget which one - not the one I think took over her books tho) to get it the official approval..." plus more info
    • Also stated in "[monstersonmidnight] I remember playing in the Dragonriders of Pern fandom in the late 90’s. There were sanctioned RP groups and you couldn’t use any characters from the book series, and everyone else was threatened with suing. It was a dark time. Then I found the underground HP slash fandom and never looked back."
    • Also stated in "[overlordrae] Yeah. It wasn’t just Ann Rice, either. Anne McAffery INDIVIDUALLY APPROVED and micromanaged Pern RPs for the longest time. Marion Zimmer Bradley is the reason many authors are contractually not allowed to read fanfiction, and so on."
    • Also stated in "[jade-ramblings] Hah, I remember feeling so lucky whenever I stumbled onto that rare Vampire Chronicles fanfic. Also, they reversed their decision on this some time ago, but Anne McCaffrey used to forbid Dragonriders of Pern fanfiction. No one could write fanfic, but she did allow RPGs that took place on Pern as long as her Weyrs and characters weren’t mentioned. I mostly stuck to PBeMs because that felt most like writing and reading actual fic to me, but I remember there were endless lists of places to go play Pern RPGs..." and more perspective
    • Also stated by [bones-and-struts] in "Anne McCaffrey had Official Storytelling Weyrs, each of which had to be approved by her and had to abide by her rules. There was a HUGE kerfuffle when a member dared to argue with her. That member’s entire Weyr was shut down and forbidden from reforming. Meanwhile, she made her rules even stricter. Some Weyrs adjusted while members axed or rewrote noncompliant characters. Some Weyrs died because too many writers said ‘Fuck that’ and left. But it was her sandbox, and in order to be allowed in, we had to abide by the rules."
    • Okay I'll stop on this one, I think it's clear the info has already been covered, with multiple perspectives/experience even
  • "[cassi-misc-art] Anne McCaffrey got FFN to remove their Pern category and fully ban Pern fanfic from their site. #fanfic#fanfiction #fan fiction #fan fic #Anne McCaffrey #Anne Rice #Pern #Dragonriders of Pern #Vampire Chronicles[34]" and "[felixan replied to ioystercakes] Anne McCaffery didn’t calm down last I recall, fanfiction.net didn’t even have a section at her request."
    • already stated by [disease-danger-darkness-silence] "Dude the Anne McCaffrey thing was so weird to me when I got into the online fandom in the mid-90′s. At first it was “no fanfic,” so if you wrote it you had to hide the shit out of it or keep it to yourself (a lot of this had to do with the fact that in the 90’s no one was really sure what to do with the Internet because compared to today it was so small. There were actually legitimate concerns of someone confusing a fanwork with something AM herself had written, because 1. No one knew how to deal with the Internet, as stated before, and 2. Anne McCaffrey’s website was garish until her dying day so someone confusing a Geocities site with it was not out of the realm of possibility). Then it was “No fanfiction except on my specific archive, on my website, which has to be approved.” Which was so fucking weird because that was when FNN was really popular, before the Purge and AFF, well before AO3. FFN had to take down all of the Anne McCaffrey-based fic. Simultaneously the shit was going on with Anne Rice so FFN had to pull her shit too..." plus more info
  • "[ironbite4] Fandom History lesson always welcome on my dash. Also I find the Ann McCafffery rules just so deliciously ironic considering all Dragonriders except for Queen Riders were men and Greens were females. Horny females. Guess what happened to their riders when Greens rose to mate. Go on…guess." and "[ironbite4] It’s like looking into a…hold on a second. Ann McCaffrey’s rules for fanfiction included “don’t make it gay”? Did…did she not realize she made all the dragon riders save the Queen riders men? And that the greens were females and were prone to going into heat at the drop of a hat? Like literally? This was the jumping off point for the second fucking book. Don’t make it gay my ass." and "[aerinalanna replied to a-kingdom-or-a-fencepost] The funniest thing about Anne McCaffrey’s “nothing gay” rule was that there was canon about riders of blue dragons often being bi or gay or of flexible sexualities in the first place."
    • already stated by [lunararcher] "Okay, this is all very cool and very interesting (I’m glad I only ever read Interview with a Vampire, because the Anne Rice mess sounds toxic) but I do have one thing to say about the Pern rules: No GAY?! 98% of her dragon riders were male for most of their history and when the female dragons (green and gold) go into heat, THEIR RIDERS DO TOO. And guess what? Only gold dragons were ridden by women until the very most recent books. So where does that leave the (male) green dragon riders? That’s right! GAY! It was canon!! For heaven’s sake, that’s just ridiculous"
    • also stated in "[whitmerule replied to soupernabturel] … I’m still stuck on Anne McCaffrey saying it can’t be gay when she literally has socially institutionalised gay sex because of green dragons? (which is technically dubcon at least in most cases but hey consent was not her forte)"

Since many of these quotes will never be found again and cannot be archived via the WBM, I'd like to find a way to preserve them to reflect the full diversity of our historical experiences in our original voices without editing or filtering. While repetition may seem to be not useful to the casual reader, it will illustrate that there were common experiences and perceptions. Perhaps adding a sub-page with the ones we remove as "additional reading". So, yes to pruning the main page for readability, with giving the reader the option for more in depth history as a sub-page. We've done this on other pages (breaking out more detailed comments and analysis of single stories in zines or convention reports). MeeDee (talk) 20:18, 27 October 2018 (UTC)

That sounds good to me! I don't know how that works exactly, but since it would preserve the quotes while streamlining the main page, I don't really see a downside. Would it be like making the whole McCaffrey section its own page with those quotes in a section at the bottom for further reading, and pulling some quotes or summarizing the major points on this page, or would it be a separate page just for the additional quotes while keeping all the others directly on this page? Also, after looking at these quotes a lot I think that either way the McCaffrey section could have some subsections, grouping together quotes on similar topics like her rules for RPs, the litigation against fan creations, and fan experiences relating to LGBTQ stuff and her rules. (Probably the same could be done with other sections but I haven't looked at them as closely.) Does that seem like a good change to make? GoldenFalls (talk) 01:22, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

Do what makes it easier for you? Most of the McCaffrey quotes have a purpose - usually found in the secondary or follow-on lines to highlight different aspects of what fans experienced. So subsections would be visually helpful to the reader and would also help people navigate to the section via the table of contents. And if that turns out to be too much work..... you could pick a few main quotes from the McCaffrey section and link to the sub-page. Summarizing the remaining sub-page quotes, if you have time or energy. Keep in mind you don't have to tackle the whole thing (ex: you could offer select quotes + summary + link to the full subpage for one section and just quotes + subpage link for others). Bottom line: as long as we keep the current content in a linked/findable location, I think you can experiment with various workflows.MeeDee (talk) 01:53, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

Some additional info: the quotes about McCaffrey and Pern could go in this section: https://fanlore.org/wiki/Dragonriders_of_Pern#2017_Fan_Comments. I see that some are already there. If you put a "See more comments from this discussion" link on the history of disclaimers page directly to the link on the Pern page, that could preserve them. The only issue with that is there may be other 2017 comments not from that discussion to add later, but I think as long as the footnotes are intact for each, then fans can figure it out. Thanks for working on this, GoldenFalls and MeeDee. --MPH (talk) 13:17, 28 October 2018 (UTC)