I never post in news but thought I’d leave a comment to say that this is probably a good idea, to balance out the criticisms you receive. There are a few posts from folks who forget this is an organisation run by humans, for humans, and we all support fandom (though what that looks like might be different for each of us). I choose to believe you’re acting in good faith and don’t believe responding from a place of cynicism is actually going to help much at all.
For other readers who might see my comment: OTW (and AO3) has a difficult job of trying to serve a GLOBAL audience of wildly different politics, cultures, philosophies, and norms. We’re not even united by being fans “of something” - most of us are probably in fandoms that never interact with each other and are for all intents and purposes little countries of their own with their own micro-politics going on. AO3/OTW will (and do) get things wrong occasionally, because no-one is perfect, no organisation is perfect, and it is simply impossible for them to meet all our requests. But they’re not out to destroy anything and they are us. Let’s see if the new policy works. And if it doesn’t, we can critically engage with it and try and build something else. The news comments field has been a mess for a while, so clearly we needed to do something about it.
I was hoping that AO3/OTW would implement a policy like this (Especially when you put spam and harassment into consideration). I'll wait and see if this works out in everyone's favor.
EDIT: I also agree that AO3 isn't the place for politics. If you want to include politics in your fanfic, that's totally fine. But if you're going to comment on a news post chanting a political phrase or a literal call for genocide, that's where the line needs to be drawn. However, at the same time, I also agree that AO3/OTW needs to be transparent about what defines as misinformation. Without a clear definition, there is going to be a problem.
For now, I'm cautiously optimistic about this. We'll just have to wait and see if AO3/OTW can make this work.
This is too true. It feels a bit like the discussions back when tumblr decided to implement content rules. In the end, this is a volunteer-run organisation that lets us use this resource for free. It's absolutely ridiculous to try to turn the internal news section of a friggin fanfiction website into a political forum and thus these rules are needed. I truly don't understand why people don't just go over to social media or Discord to discuss their issues. I mean, X is bad but you can publically converse with the OTW account, so I truly don't get why stuff needs to happen on the Ao3 news. I know why I don't read the news comments anymore. At times they felt like the nasty YouTube comment sections. I love that Ao3 is this big these days, but I hate this development. (Same with the comment sections underneath some fics. It's just plain disgusting. Same with some tags.) People need to remember that behind every account, every fic, every news post and every Mod answer, there are real humans. People should think really hard about whether they'd actually speak that way irl with a stranger. So, thank you, as a former OTW volunteer, to the moderation team. Your job is going to suck as much as what Abuse has to look through. Don't let it get to you. You rock!
Comment on OTW News Post Moderation Policy
MillieMonster Sun 26 May 2024 08:58PM UTC
Last Edited Sun 26 May 2024 09:00PM UTC
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qpuddle Mon 27 May 2024 04:48AM UTC
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Cynical_Misanthrope Mon 27 May 2024 05:27AM UTC
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ninryu Tue 28 May 2024 07:48PM UTC
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ForTheLoveOfAll Sun 02 Jun 2024 01:07AM UTC
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