I'm cautiously optimistic and happy about this decision. Meta is a big part of my fannish output/contributions, and despite what others are saying, I don't think it's all that easy to find, since there are really no central archives for it anywhere. It's all up on individual people's websites and blogs, and if you don't know about it, you don't know to look for it.
I think it's going to be tough coming up with the guidelines for what does and doesn't belong on the archive, but I'm hopeful anyway.
10-15 years ago, it would be easier to sort out the things that I personally would consider archive-appropriate meta: "is this something you would post to your website or submit to something like the Fanfic Symposium as an essay? If yes, it belongs on the archive. Is this something you would post to a mailing list or forum as part of a general discussion? If yes, it probably doesn't belong on the archive, but instead should be taken to that list or forum."
It's a lot harder in these days of journals and tumblr, where everyone bundles all their stuff together and most people don't have that sort of dividing line in their head between personal ramblings and public essays, especially since the term "meta" has come to mean "anything that isn't a creative work" for many fans.
But if a balance can be struck, I'd love to see it happen. I do consider meta essays to be fanworks, and I'm happy they'll have a place on the archive. A filterable meta category would be grand.
+1 to this comment in so many ways. Language drift, yes. A large part of the current debate is about pinning down semantics, and with fandom, that's hard.
Thinking about this more, I'm wondering if maybe one thing that might be worth doing is changing the name, for a couple of reasons.
The specific change I'm thinking might work is to use "Nonfiction" instead of "Meta".
First, this may just be me, but "nonfiction" brings with it connotations of things like the nonfiction section of a bookstore or library for written works, where various subjects are explored; DVDs like documentaries; audio like interviews.
It has the feel more of essays, studies, in-depth exploration, rather than just an off-the-cuff "yay, my show is awesome!" post. (Again, this may very well just be me!) And that might make people stop and decide if they really want to post something to the archive as "nonfiction", rather than to their journal because mostly it's just an off-the-cuff squee or rant post.
The second reason beyond my own associations with "nonfiction" is that "meta" as it's being used here is a pretty LJ-fandom-specific way of using it (although it's probably shifting to tumblr as well). For fans who come to the AO3 from spaces that weren't particularly LJ-influenced, "meta" to mean "anything other than a creative work" isn't going to be intuitively obvious.
"Nonfiction", on the other hand, might be more obvious.
Especially if the posting form -- ooh. Suddenly I'm thinking something like this:
Click Post New Work, have a drop-down choice of: Written, Audio, Video, Physical, Multi-media, Other [whatever]
Click one of those and be taken to an appropriate posting form, where the first radio button option is:
* Fiction * Nonfiction [popup help explaining what kinds of nonfic are allowed]
Fiction chosen by default, but selecting Nonfiction deselects fiction -- something can be one or the other, not both.
And then just the regular posting form to fill out, so that everything is posted within its correct category, whatever category that may be.
If it's a fiction/nonfiction radio button, there should be a way to put a choice in the filters for "fiction only" and "nonfiction only", so people can narrow down to just what they want, no?
I know you don't want to clutter that up too much, but the more I think about this, the more I think that a super-top-level differentiation between fiction and nonfiction, with media categories below that, would be the way to go. Because really, meta/nonfiction can and does happen in any category.
Some great points here. I will point out an additional wrinkle: unless you can apply both the fiction and the nonfiction tag to the same work, you would make ficto-criticism or metafiction almost impossible to tag correctly.
I was thinking about that a bit as I wrote up my comment, but I think the distinction between fiction and nonfiction still holds. That's where the meta tag - as a regular tag - would be useful; lots of fiction (and art, and vids...) is meta commentary without being nonfiction. They're experienced differently than an essay or documentary.
That's a great point, though I'm thinking it's even more crucial to works that have more than one medium (story with images, pod_together where story and podfic are published together, etc.) But we do that already with crossovers, right? A work can show up in two fandom categories at the same time. So I think it should be easy to allow something to be labelled as art and fiction or even fiction and non-fiction at the same time. (Though I'm still not sure what works would fall under that, because metafiction to me would be the place I'd assume I'd find fictional works with genuine meta--I'd assume they'd be tagged fiction as category and then meta as tag.)
Yes, all good points, especially with the rise in pictorial artforms thanks to Tumblr.
I agree that most of the examples I've seen are metafiction, but there have been just a couple of ficto-criticisms in fandom, and there are more outside it, so I wouldn't be surprised if it becomes more common at some point. Ficto-criticism is kind of the flip side of metafiction. Where metafiction uses fiction to overtly illustrate/discuss meta issues, ficto-criticism usually combines sections of non-fiction with sections of fiction in order to talk about an issue. I have also read some examples in which scholarly theory is articulated directly through a quasi fictional narrative -- not really fiction, but not a formal scholarly paper either. A really well known example is Plato's Republic.
It's a really cool genre, and I wish there were more of it.
If you walked into a bookstore to buy Plato's Republic, would you look in the fiction section, or the nonfiction section?
That's pretty much what it boils down to for me. It's nonfiction that uses elements of fiction to make its point. There's nothing stopping anyone from tagging it ficto-criticism or fiction or "fictional elements" or whatever else would be useful.
But if someone's saying to themselves "I really want to read a good Steve/Tony story" and they click on the most recent result under Fiction, Avengers, Steve/Tony and instead of a story they get ficto-criticism about whatever issue someone has with Steve/Tony fic, they're probably going to be a little pissed off.
OTOH, if someone is thinking, "I really want to read some good analysis of Steve/Tony", they're probably going to filter for nonfic, and will happily click on the first result, and probably pleased as punch to find ficto-criticism of that person's issue with Steve/Tony.
People who don't filter out to just one or the other will see it regardless, but for people who specifically don't want to see meta, it would probably be maddening to have people start categorizing their critical essays under Fiction just because they have fictional elements, or are presented in a narrative style.
Look, it's rare enough that it probably doesn't matter in a meaningful way. But I do think you're missing the point that I'm talking about a genuine hybrid genre -- if it wasn't I wouldn't have bothered bringing the example up in this context.
I'd look for Republic in the Classics section, then wander around to whichever of fiction/non-fiction was closest and check it first. The few examples I've read in fandom were the equivalent of Steve/Tony, and were also meta just as legitimately.
Sorry for butting in, but using fiction to critically analyze a thing, does not make something not be fiction. Fiction, specially fanfiction can very well be metatextual in nature and be seeking also to comment on certain things. But no, it does not make it non-fiction under any definition in the world. And specially when talking about "meta" which is a fandom term and construction, meta literally means that the writing in question not be written in form of a narrative fiction. If it's written in the form of narrative fiction, no matter how many deep and important thoughts it explores, it's still fanfic, not meta.
I would be very interested in hearing your examples of both fiction and non-fiction. Because while I understand you, I really don't agree with you at all.
These are some good points, but they leave out other kinds of nonfiction works. I'm a tabletop RPG gamer; we have a habit of making worldbooks for our favorite fandoms and other topics. GURPS Gulliver and the Guide to Unlawful Carnal Knowledge are both unauthorized, unofficial worldbooks. They're nonfiction, in the sense that they're certainly not stories, but I wouldn't expect people to want to find them in searches for meta, and people who are looking for that kind of thing won't want a barrage of essays about specific fandoms.
Our Content Policy workgroup is definitely going to be busy in the coming month! As you note, there are a variety of issues that will have to be examined in how meta is defined since this can vary a great deal. The discussion going on in response to your comment is helpful to consider.
Being able to categorize your work in a way that users can find (or exclude it) from their searches is definitely going to be one component of hosting non-fiction (as well as other media formats) on the AO3. We are still in the early stages of discussing how we can best make that work in a way that serves both posters and searchers. But it will likely involve both actions by users and technical options.
Comment on OTW Board Approves Meta Hosting on the AO3
Arduinna Fri 15 Feb 2013 11:14PM UTC
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