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I don't know how many, if any, of you are aware of the whole RedBootton uproar on fanfiction.net, but I've been encountering rumblings here and there and finally did some digging.
What I decided, after reading what info I could find that came direct from the author, is that I don't like it. Not because of the MA scare that has so many people upset, but rather the failure of the ff.net admins to address the rampant concerns of its members. Not because of the current searching the program is reported to do -- although I think the details of what criteria it uses are far too sketchy for comfort -- but rather because I worry what it will be searching for in three months time. When these self-appointed policemen have reported every MA story, every story in script format, every story that has a 'trollish' percent of grammar/spelling errors, what will they go after next? I've checked the sort of stories the 'Literate Union' consider to be 'shit' (as it was put by one of their members), and they have far fewer errors than what they are, currently, looking to have removed from the site. Will that change? Given the self-righteous nature of the program's author, I suspect the answer is yes.
I could be wrong -- I hope I'm wrong -- but I don't want to be there if or when the escalation happens. I also don't want to post anywhere that I feel I have to constantly worry about a false positive getting my stories deleted -- and I do feel that way. I feel that way, and I don't think I should have to. I feel like... Big Brother is watching, and even if he's not watching me, it's not comfortable to know he's there.
For the record, I acknowledge that the admins are not required to make a statement or acknowledge member concerns; but it is still something I feel they should do. In addition, I acknowledge that ff.net is a public site, and 'Lord Kelvin' and the 'Literate Union' have every right to report stories that are in violation of the TOS. Anyone in violation of the TOS has no room to whine if they get caught: you can think the rules are silly, and you can even decide to break them, but you do so willfully and have to be willing to accept the consequences. Admittedly, the chances of facing those consequences were far more slim before the 'Literate Union' decided to police the site. They grew exponentially with the release of RedBootton. But, the risk was always there. Complaining that it's unfair now is both foolish and overly self-entitled.
However, I also I think this move by Kelvin and the LU is a mistake, and can't imagine what they think they're going to accomplish in the long run. To use an analogy, ff.net is our little suburb, and instead of creating a neighborhood watch, these people have decided to become vigilantes. While super heroes are cool, nobody really wants one patrolling their neighborhood with his xray vision, reporting every minor infraction -- and if one did, it wouldn't really improve our quality of life. People would move away, property values would drop, and the last man out would be left holding the keys to a house he couldn't sell. To top it off, it really wouldn't matter that the vigilante had been obeying the letter of the law, because he'd completely failed to uphold the spirit. He's supposed to protect us, not make us feel persecuted, contantly needing to look over our shoulder for our own good. I don't know about anyone else, but I didn't feel (and still don't feel) threatened by the existence of poorly written fic on ff.net, but I do feel threatened by someone who apparently has a 100% success rate getting stories banned, and seems to have an axe to grind.
Even if he's not waving his axe at me, I don't like his attitude.
So: I will be posting my stories on AO3 over the next few days, and deleting them off ff.net as I go.
ETA: Here's a link to my home on AO3.
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no subject
Date: 2010-10-08 02:20 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2010-10-08 09:04 pm (UTC)From:As for AO3, itt does take some getting used to, but once you become adjusted to the difference, it works fairly well. My biggest complaint would be the site's use of checkboxes rather than a scrollbox, because it alters the users's perception of the choices available. It looks like the fandom list is huge -- bigger than ff.net's -- when it's not really, but since you see them all at once, rather than in 10 or 20 item sections, it seems that way.
I have had good luck browsing either the Rurouni Kenshin fandom or the Compilation of FFVII fandom, and then picking the appropriate relationship under the Relationship section of 'Filter Results'. I don't know if that will help you. ^^; And, admittedly, a large portion of what you will find right now is, um, mine. *face palm*
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Date: 2010-10-09 03:48 am (UTC)From:Yeah, those checkboxes are cumbersone--and those lists get super long and tedious to go through. Not to mention, the redundancy in tags is a little frustrating (both Vincent and Vincent Valentine?).
Thanks for the tips--will try to figure it out. And as for your domination there, well, at least we know the average quality so far is pretty high, then, eh? ;)
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Date: 2010-10-12 03:33 pm (UTC)From:Heya. I help run AO3 in a number of different capacities. I'd be happy to answer any questions if you've got them.
The reason there's both 'Vincent' and 'Vincent Valentine' is that users tag both ways. AO3 lets you put whatever you want on your story: there aren't set character tags like on FF.N. Unfortunately, since there are lots of Vincents in lots of fandoms, we can't make 'Vincent' and 'Vincent Valentine' the same thing. The way it's set up, all of the different Vincents in all of the different fandoms are sub-tags of plain 'Vincent'.
Usually, the most helpful way to search is to filter by fandom and then by 'Vincent' or to filter by 'Vincent Valentine' (and not filter by fandom at all).
We let people use what they like, but the tradeoff is that it's a little messy. The advantage is that you don't have to submit requests or wait. Any time you post something, you can add any fandom tags, pairing tags (usually "A/B"), friendship tags (usually "A & B"), character tags, or other random stuff like "women being awesome" or "fluffy romance" that you want. It doesn't matter if people have used them before or not. (Of course, you can always encourage your friends to use tags that are more specific and easier to search on like full names instead of just given names, but we're not going to put that in the site rules.) This lets us have different tagging styles in different fandoms, like if some people want to use "lemon"/"lime"/"citrus", and some people want to use "NC-17"/"PG-13"/"PG" or something.
AO3 is still in beta too, and we love feedback! (We'd love it if we weren't in beta too, but now is when the site is under development and bigger changes are possible.) If you'd like to submit some feedback, please feel free to use the "Support and Feedback" links at the bottoms of AO3 pages. Comments about searching/filtering and things that make the site hard to use get passed along to the coders/designers/etc.
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Date: 2010-10-12 09:02 pm (UTC)From:Seriously, I love the site! The 'Series' feature is my personal favorite, as I tend to link all of my stand alones together in some fashion. On ff.net, I stuck them all in one 'story', but I'm sure I missed readers because the 'story' was never finished (even though it consisted of 28 or so complete one shots). This way I can have the one shots AND the series. Huzzah!
It's just very time consuming pulling over a hundred stories from ff.net to AO3. ~.~
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Date: 2010-10-12 09:24 pm (UTC)From:Yeah, switching to a new site (or adding a new site to the list of ones you use) is always a big time investment, unfortunately. How is the FFN-->AO3 importer working? I know it had problems in the past, but it's supposed to be working better now.
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Date: 2010-10-13 07:58 pm (UTC)From: