I haven't found other platforms that provide meta archives. I haven't found *any* other than the LJ comm hp_essays and a couple of other similar single-fandom forum/communities. When I wrote 6000 words of multifandom meta for kink_bingo, I discovered that there was no community on DW that was open to it; I wound up asking someone to start a new comm because I didn't want to post explicit content publicly in my journal. I would *love* to read meta on multiple topics from multiple authors--there is no archive for such works.
Thousands of meta essays were lost with the Geocities takedown. Thousands have been lost to abandoned sites, disappearing when the host no longer cares about that fandom niche and stops paying for the domain hosting. Thousands are scattered in forums and individual blogs, where the authors would love to have a permanent, central place to archive it.
So I can see a solid reason for AO3 hosting meta. However, I can also very much see a need to keep it *separate* from fic. My (IMHO awesome) 6k-word kink_bingo essay touches on about twenty fandoms; it'd be ridiculous for it to show up in searches for those fandoms. (I haven't posted it to AO3 because of exactly that reason; the current tagging system doesn't support meta.) AO3 desperately needs a "fanwork type" checklist of buttons... this is art, this is fic, this a vid, this is meta, this is filk, this is a gaming supplement, etc. People need to be able to avoid the ones they're not looking for. "Additional tags" is not enough... fics are tagged "art" if the characters plan an art heist; they're tagged "meta" if they break the fourth wall.
Comment on OTW Board Approves Meta Hosting on the AO3
Elf_Herself Tue 19 Feb 2013 03:13PM UTC
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