The only thing that we can currently be certain of is that the addition of further text works is unlikely to have as big an impact on the archive as it would if we were prepared to host multimedia works, which is still a part of our future plans.
Do you really think so? I understand that meta doesn't present the technical problems that hosting multimedia does. However, podfic and vids aren't likely to overwhelm fandom categories, because of the time involved in their creation; there will never be as many podfics or vids as there are stories. But I think you're underestimating the degree to which a flood of meta reposted from LJ, DW, and Tumblr is going to affect the experience of people who are here to read fanfic.
I want to echo the voices of other commenters here and say that there needs to be a mandatory way to categorize works, and that the faster that's put into place, the less of a mess there will be in the long run. If people post high volumes of meta for ... weeks? months? ... without being required to tag it in some way that allows readers to filter it out, I think it will become hard to ever fix the problem in a way that makes it possible to browse fanfic and only fanfic easily.
I'm curious as to why you think a flood of meta will be coming in just because it's being officially allowed now. I write a lot of meta, but I doubt I'd post it here, because I like to have it in a place where I can keep an ongoing discussion with everyone.
I can see why some people really want meta, but I'm interested to know why you (and others) feel so strongly that there will be a huge influx of meta that has already posted at other communities.
Personally, because I'm seeing meta appearing in my fandoms on AO3 where no meta used to be, and my experience is that things snowball once they reach an initial critical mass -- if it becomes "a thing people do," especially for people who mainly post to Tumblr where there's not really the same opportunity that there is on LJ/DW to host a discussion in one place, I think we'll see a lot more of it.
I'm hoping not, unless there's a way to cordon it off from fic! But I'm not betting on that.
Ah, I see. The fandoms I follow are relatively small, so I haven't seen any changes since the announcement. There's meta there, but it's stuff that's been there for ages.
To be honest I feel like you about my own meta and discussions and think that there are many people who probably will think like that and leave most of their meta in one place. But I've seen "meta" pieces pop up in one of the bigger fandoms I'm reading in - a fandom that is already hard to search because people are using so many different canonical and higher level meta tags - and it was mostly about defending OTPs and preferences.
As of now nobody can know what will happen - as we do not know what the final definition for allowed meta will be in the end (and I'm sure wherever the line is drawn there will be discontent).
Because meta can be hosted directly here already, I expect it will be posted more than the other media fanworks that can only be linked or embedded like fanart, podfic, vids already. These non-textbased fanworks will be entirely swallowed, I expect.
All of this isn't new. People have asked for the media categories for a long time now (as well as better bwosing functionality and filters).
I do think that with adding another media type, possibly before implementing a way to put fanworks in mandatory categories for easy searching and browsing that will also mean that later down the line when the categories may be implemented, nobody will go back and do a thourough clean up. It makes sense to implement this sooner rather than later or at least start planning on how this will be done, before starting on the meta policy.
Comment on OTW Board Approves Meta Hosting on the AO3
Penknife Mon 18 Feb 2013 05:29PM UTC
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kelcat Mon 18 Feb 2013 09:14PM UTC
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Penknife Mon 18 Feb 2013 09:56PM UTC
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kelcat Mon 18 Feb 2013 10:08PM UTC
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navaan Mon 18 Feb 2013 10:53PM UTC
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