When meta was announced as allowed, I was cautiously optimistic. It made sense to me that users are already posting meta, therefore the archive should grow to support it in a way that makes filtering easier. People who want meta can find it, people who don't want meta can avoid it, which is better than people sneakily posting meta when it's not really allowed, and some people liking it but the threat of it being reported/discovered always there. I think everyone can agree that with proper sorting, everyone wins.
I myself have some meta I might post once this is updated into a workable, functional system. I'm not posting it now because I don't think the archive is ready. I assumed other people would be sensible about this too.
But then something occurred to me which is bothering me a lot. Wank is meta. "Here's a bunch of reasons why Fandom Person so-and-so is terrible and you should hate her" is meta. Cyberbullying is meta. I don't mind thoughtful analyses of themes and character motives and parallels and influences and all that. But I think we all know that if there's one thing the OTW is kind of bad at, it's drawing boundaries. Everything exists on spectrums, and the OTW's philosophy seems to start on one end of the spectrum and be so unable to draw a line somewhere that they end up including all of it. Which means there won't be quality control, because quality control and censorship are antithetical to the mission of the archive. "That episode was bad" is meta. "I hate that stupid bitch I want her to die ugh fucking cunt" is meta.
It's part of fannish culture. But I've been in fandom long enough to know that fannish culture isn't always pretty. If you can't draw a line before meta, you NEED to at least draw a line about meta involving real people, especially non-celebrities, i.e. members of fandom. Positive or negative doesn't matter. That's a can of worms you don't want to open. As much as it may clash with allowing RPF of fandom members in the fiction category.
And if it isn't fair to "punish" people who posted meta in the archive in good faith, is it unfair to likewise "punish" people who publish cyberbullying-wank-etc masquerading as meta before guidelines are established? They'll be posting in good faith on the archive, too. Or will the eventual guidelines of what meta is and isn't be more "well, if you think it belongs here, post it!" equivocating?
The more I think about this plan to open the floodgates without even the most basic of "don't be an ass to other people" guidelines in place, the worse it seems.
I strongly disagree that wank and cyberbullying are meta. They're wank and cyberbullying. AO3 has an abuse committee to whom harassment can be reported. It's in the terms of service. Anyone posting 'so and so is horrible and you should hate her' will have to justify that if a complaint is made and I imagine, in that situation, a complaint would be made.
Wank is relevant to fandom history, so the line would get, well, really fuzzy. Analyses of fandom events or the evolution of fandom culture could involve wank real fast. Even on a purely "let's talk about the canon" level, I know I've written responses to other meta that were...not complimentary to the source. Sometimes you disagree with someone's opinions on canon. When I disagree with someone's characterization in a fic, I might write my own fic about that character, but it isn't derivative of that other fic, it isn't a direct response, so I don't mention the other fic, and our two fics coexist peacefully. With meta, responses to responses can escalate.
As I said, a rule against mentioning real-life fans at all might be the only way to keep this from getting out of hand.
There's also the matter of, with fic, even poor quality fic is still obviously fic, so there's no need for quality control. With meta, there's a fine line between criticism and a manifesto of hate. Having spent time in a fandom recently that constantly hatepukes on female characters, I don't think I want to see pages and pages of "god will someone kill that [fictional] bitch already," even if it has a few sentences of poorly-reasoned excuses for why they hate that character tacked on to make it look like meta or whatever. Meta is basically just people's opinions on things. Some people have awesome, well reasoned opinions that make me see canon in a new light. I'd love to see that kind of meta here. But then I remember what people's opinions usually look like, and my heart sinks.
AO3 has a harassment policy. There are ways to deal with abuse without banning essays. The capacity to post is not freedom from consequences.
I guess I'm interested, since I also find myself in fandoms with a lot of negativity to female characters, how do you propose to deal with all the fan ficton? A large number of post-series Harry/Snape stories start with Ginny having her character blackened as a shrewish cow, often an adulteress. SGA fandom was at least good enough to 'warn' for Keller bashing by using the two tags McKay/Sheppard and McKay/Keller, presumably meant to alert Keller haters to her presence in the story. I imagine this happens in every fandom with a popular m/m OTP and canonical female love interest. People don't have to write non-fiction to hatepuke. (Is there lovepuke? Sorry, it's late and my imagination is running wild. I bet lovepuke has glitter and rainbows.)
My feeling is that just because I profoundly disagree with another fan's opinion about a character or a show, I don't get to wipe their opinion away, no matter how loathesome it is. Much as I'd like to. I do get where you're coming from.
Comment on OTW Board response to concerns about the meta decision
Aiffe Fri 01 Mar 2013 07:25PM UTC
Last Edited Fri 01 Mar 2013 07:28PM UTC
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Who Shot AR (akerwis) Fri 01 Mar 2013 08:52PM UTC
Last Edited Fri 01 Mar 2013 08:52PM UTC
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Vera Sun 03 Mar 2013 12:36PM UTC
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Aiffe Sun 03 Mar 2013 12:58PM UTC
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Vera Mon 04 Mar 2013 10:57AM UTC
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