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silverflight8OTW approves meta hosting on AO3 announcement
My first reaction was YAY!
But then I realized that there is already a really big problem that AO3 has no resolution to, and this decision is sure to aggravate it: the fact that the filtering system is not good, and adding meta to the mix will make it worse.
In addition to all sorts of analysis springing up on various journals, here's FFA's roundup of links and discussion: http://fail-fandomanon.livejournal.com/50237.html?thread=232275517#t232275517
I confess I love these discussions about AO3. There's something in the discussion of how one should manage a project/resources that really fascinates me - some of it's venting, but there are lots of interesting comments that talk about the lack of existing infrastructure and how that's a problem. It's a great read if you're interested in that sort of thing, and they've helped crystalize a lot of my thoughts.
One of the core problems I actually have with the announcement, right off the bat, is that they said yes, meta is allowed! but they're not ready. They are so unready that they do not have a definition of meta. I know that they want to be more transparent and let us know, but telling us that 'something is approved!' while being unsure of what 'something' is is not actually helpful.
Leaving aside the issue of whether meta should be included*, there are major problems in implementation. The underlying problem of categorization on AO3 is becoming increasingly apparent: the listing of fandom names is unbelievably inconsistent, the anime/manga & comics vs visual media vs sequential art vs I-don't-even-know category name is still undecided, the inability to filter out anything using the tag system, the tag system's essential deception (telling users that they can label with whatever while doing a top-down decision on which tags to connect). All of this contributes to a site which is hard for the reader to navigate.
The thing that AO3 does really well is the writer's side of things: the posting interface is a dream, editing is easy, deleting saves you a copy, it's easy to mark up your fic as this and that. But as a reader, filtering is a nightmare. I'm lucky that I can literally read everything in the archive for my fandom, because it's small; scrolling past all the crossovers is doable. But that's an inelegant brute-force solution, and so is manually filtering out tags by search -faceofcathy had an interesting post on search vs browse: filtering using search means knowing exactly what terms are used and listing them all. Manually. And this is not to mention that filtering had to be taken offline, it was hogging so many resources before. Adding meta to this mess - meta, which is often tagged with every single fandom that the author can think of - will basically spam each fandom in turn, and make it even worse.
Given AO3's reluctance to make users do anything, it seems unlikely that the meta will be findable or filterable. AO3 does not require users use a consistent tag or even to mark their work as anything separate - you can embed videos and art, but there's no way to find them without using some kind of search if and only if (IFF!) the author has marked their work "vid" or "art". If they haven't marked their work as such, good luck wading through! Vids and art are clearly both fanworks. But fic is clearly a separate category from art which is separate from vids, and right now, we don't even have a way to clearly differentiate different mediums. It's all up to the user, and there isn't a clear way to even distinguish that - do you tag? Put it in the title? Put it in the description? Which of these will be indexed? If fic/art/vids are hard to distinguish on the archive now, how will meta/fic be filtered for? They're both text-based; at the moment, a crude way of telling is to filter by wordcount (since a vid or a piece of art won't be 50K), which isn't doable for meta.
There needs to be some way to make them findable, and making that infrastructure to support all this - and it's a fine thought, I don't deny - needs to come before the cheering.
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seperis's post here talks about meta and whether or not it even has a place on the archive, given its status.
My first reaction was YAY!
But then I realized that there is already a really big problem that AO3 has no resolution to, and this decision is sure to aggravate it: the fact that the filtering system is not good, and adding meta to the mix will make it worse.
In addition to all sorts of analysis springing up on various journals, here's FFA's roundup of links and discussion: http://fail-fandomanon.livejournal.com/50237.html?thread=232275517#t232275517
I confess I love these discussions about AO3. There's something in the discussion of how one should manage a project/resources that really fascinates me - some of it's venting, but there are lots of interesting comments that talk about the lack of existing infrastructure and how that's a problem. It's a great read if you're interested in that sort of thing, and they've helped crystalize a lot of my thoughts.
One of the core problems I actually have with the announcement, right off the bat, is that they said yes, meta is allowed! but they're not ready. They are so unready that they do not have a definition of meta. I know that they want to be more transparent and let us know, but telling us that 'something is approved!' while being unsure of what 'something' is is not actually helpful.
Leaving aside the issue of whether meta should be included*, there are major problems in implementation. The underlying problem of categorization on AO3 is becoming increasingly apparent: the listing of fandom names is unbelievably inconsistent, the anime/manga & comics vs visual media vs sequential art vs I-don't-even-know category name is still undecided, the inability to filter out anything using the tag system, the tag system's essential deception (telling users that they can label with whatever while doing a top-down decision on which tags to connect). All of this contributes to a site which is hard for the reader to navigate.
The thing that AO3 does really well is the writer's side of things: the posting interface is a dream, editing is easy, deleting saves you a copy, it's easy to mark up your fic as this and that. But as a reader, filtering is a nightmare. I'm lucky that I can literally read everything in the archive for my fandom, because it's small; scrolling past all the crossovers is doable. But that's an inelegant brute-force solution, and so is manually filtering out tags by search -
faceofcathy had an interesting post on search vs browse: filtering using search means knowing exactly what terms are used and listing them all. Manually. And this is not to mention that filtering had to be taken offline, it was hogging so many resources before. Adding meta to this mess - meta, which is often tagged with every single fandom that the author can think of - will basically spam each fandom in turn, and make it even worse. Given AO3's reluctance to make users do anything, it seems unlikely that the meta will be findable or filterable. AO3 does not require users use a consistent tag or even to mark their work as anything separate - you can embed videos and art, but there's no way to find them without using some kind of search if and only if (IFF!) the author has marked their work "vid" or "art". If they haven't marked their work as such, good luck wading through! Vids and art are clearly both fanworks. But fic is clearly a separate category from art which is separate from vids, and right now, we don't even have a way to clearly differentiate different mediums. It's all up to the user, and there isn't a clear way to even distinguish that - do you tag? Put it in the title? Put it in the description? Which of these will be indexed? If fic/art/vids are hard to distinguish on the archive now, how will meta/fic be filtered for? They're both text-based; at the moment, a crude way of telling is to filter by wordcount (since a vid or a piece of art won't be 50K), which isn't doable for meta.
There needs to be some way to make them findable, and making that infrastructure to support all this - and it's a fine thought, I don't deny - needs to come before the cheering.
*
seperis's post here talks about meta and whether or not it even has a place on the archive, given its status.
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no subject
Date: Feb. 20th, 2013 02:19 am (UTC)i wish there were a category-chooser that forced you to pick something before posting. (like how you have to enter text in the actual thing (how many times have i accidentally clicked post before pasting in the fic, it's always horrifying until i remember it won't paste), only with a drop-down? so there are limited categories? fic, meta, some sort of blanket or individuals for podfic, various visual arts, vids.) and that would then be actually not tooooo hard for sorting purposes i would think. but i am always confusey about non-text-fic on ao3. i am, in general, confusey about everything. there should be a "welcome to the internet; find fandom here and non-fandom porn there and wikipedia in that corner" that we can all reference somehow. a glossary. for the internet. um, index? that's the right one. (a glossary wouldn't be amiss either really.)
on one hand, i can see thinking it's too late because omg so much stuff isn't already categorized. but so much more will come in and that will help a lot. and if there is a tool to mass-categorize existing fics, that would be super easy. and even if not, i am one of those neurotic people who would still categorize all my fic as fic.
sometimes i forget you're not trell and then it's jarring. (not bad. in either direction. just jarring when i realize i am about to talk about something for which you have no context. not that it was related or important. and you have your own contexts! but when will i ever get you two straight in my head; you have unsimilar account names here and everything.)
i am thinking now of (i want to say old-school but it's still going pretty well) harry potter fandom, who (despite splintering all over everywhere because omg) created the sycophanthex archives with (where are the words) subdivisions for different areas. (i know there is a pairing-specific ss/hg, and there's probably still the gen one but the others i can't remember how they've changed. there used to be (back in the day young chap) the non-ss/hg ss archive, and the fem/slash archive, and the weasley family archive, and i think there were others, all like, like, like. ashwinder.sycophanthex.com is the ss/hg one; theburrow.sycophanthex do you know now what i am saying very poorly.) i am thinking that it would have been nice to have meta.ao3.org though clearly i don't know anything about the technical workings of such a thing. and i can't see as it would be too late for that to happen. sure whatever meta's already on regular-ao3 would still be there unless someone moved it but it would keep from extra clogging. and no seriously, i am all for hosting meta, but please keep it the hell out of my fic.
also that i think it is a despicable cheap trick to mention as many fandoms in a meta as possible just to up your tags (or, back in the day young chap, crosspostings). i also get grumpy when people make passing mention to as many background pairings as possible for the same reason. for real, get your fic away from me if all you have of my pairing is two sentences. i like general (mostly genre) meta. i like fandom- or character-specific meta. but i wanna know which it is before i get excited about it.
(one of my favorite metas is basically a stack of pairings in the stargates. but it gives, like, equal space to all the pairings mentioned? obvs not exactly equal for reasons of "some things have just had more screen time" but you know what i mean. i haaaaaaate when i'm like "oh a meta on the jack/sam relationship?" based on tags but then it's just TEAL'C ALL UP IN THE PLACE TEAL'C TEAL'C TEAL'C (a whisper of jack & sam) TEAL'C TEAL'C TEAL'C. meanwhile I love Teal'c (incoming icon!) and would totally enjoy that meta had I not been convinced beforehand that it was something completely different. truth in advertising. can we teach the internets that?
BACK IN THE DAY, YOUNG CHAP.
no subject
Date: Feb. 20th, 2013 02:23 am (UTC)♥
no subject
Date: Feb. 20th, 2013 03:57 am (UTC)...though I totally didn't notice til you pointed it out.
(Sometimes I look back and go "did I really write so many words" and then feel obliged to warn the other person via subject line that there's tl;dr incoming <3)
no subject
Date: Feb. 20th, 2013 03:55 am (UTC)I would like a way to define it. Because like I'm sure someone has a way of making a work both fanart and fic, because artists are like that (and I include writers under the artist category) but for the vast majority of writers/fanartists their works are not the same and it is okay to ask someone to classify their work as something. My problem is that AO3's actions, up to this point, seem to be to allow the user to do whatever they want without regard for the person trying to find anything. They err too much on giving the writer latitude, and expect wranglers/readers to pick up the slack.
Yeah, by giving meta the go-ahead, a bunch of people will probably start posting more meta - without any way to categorize it! Before they can deal with it! Before anything's set up! AHGHHH.
Yes, I would like a segregated archive, or even something like how fanfiction.net does it - one of the things I did actually like about FFN is how they separated crossovers from one-fandom (however you defined fandom; I'm not a comics fan so I don't know how they dealt with the extended universes, but for long-running franchises . I did not have to see them, because I am not generally a fan of crossovers - have nothing against them, just don't want to read them, and don't regard them as purely fic in one fandom.
I think it's all right to tag with 'fandomname' if the meta actually discusses the fandom (eg if I wanted to do a comparison between Sherlock and Elementary and ACD then I'd like to find the meta by browsing any of the fandoms - they would be relevant to me as a person seeking out Elementary or ACD or Sherlock meta.) but not when it's general meta like "idfic" or "how bigbangs influence wordcounts of fandom" or whatever. But I agree - NIMF, instead of NIMBY :P
Is that Teal'c? *belatedly googles* I always thought they were a teal alien, given the name! And I'm sure I wouldn't mind, and neither would Trell <3
no subject
Date: Feb. 27th, 2013 08:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Feb. 27th, 2013 09:45 pm (UTC)