Cognitive Resonance

As you can read in a post on the OTW blog, in light of this year's election going uncontested (three candidates for three seats), I am happy to confirm that I will be joining the Board next year along with Franzeska Dickson and Eylul Dogruel. (In a moment of parochialism, I would just like to note that Eylul and I make four total Board members, past and present, furnished by the Internationalization & Outreach committee.)

I look forward to serving, but I'm also struck again by the amount of work before us. I'd like to thank everyone for their support and patience with that process in advance - I'm quite certain we'll need it. 

Who, as we all know from cleolinda's immortal prose, gives zero fucks.

I admit that the last few months of general doom and gloom posts about the state of the OTW from various quarters have generally left me non-plussed. From my vantage point on Internationalization and Outreach, I have been, and remain, cautiously optimistic for most of this term. (On the other hand, I think every single one of my friends and family members has heard me rant about the OTW at some point by now, usually with alcohol involved. I prefer to rant rather than stew.) So the "everything is terrible!" posts have often put me into a loop of silent panic that goes something like this: what don't I know that other people do? Am I just that out of touch and isolated? IS THIS A SIGN?

Having just completed something of an ad-hoc second quarter review with my committee members, though, and having found it to be fairly successful (reach, grasp, etc, but I don't need heaven anyway, I would just like a few specific features and changes, yesterday), tonight I am thinking that regardless of whether the fact that my phlegmatic perspective is a sign of I&O's isolation, my perspective is still valid.

So, yeah, these thoughts have been inspired by this post, and while I highly doubt I have any readers who would do this, let me say: please don't go over there and bother the OP, who is entitled to her thoughts. I'm curious, though, by way of the Board expansion, how not doing anything to solve a purported "much deeper and more fundamental problem" will solve said alleged problem. I would also like to say, in response to this paragraph:

I'll admit flat-out that the only part of the OTW I personally interact with / use is the AO3. Apparently this makes me a horrible person in the eyes of the OTW. But we have so many other projects! Great. Still rarely giving any shits. I wish I could! I really try to give shits about their other stuff. It sounds really cool! I think it's awesome that they have these big other projects underneath their umbrella! I just don't have as much of a use for the other ones, personally. To me, the AO3 is the most important and the most valuable. Sorry guys.

As a committee chair, no, only using the AO3 does not make you a horrible person as far as I'm concerned. I don't care if people only use the AO3. No one should feel guilty for only using the AO3. I care whether people a) know about the OTW's projects besides the AO3 and b) whether the OTW itself values its other projects besides the AO3. As for the rest, be like Loki and do what you want! 

I am beginning to have a weird perspective on the OTW's staffing issues too. To make it clear: in the past five weeks I have met a whole slew of OTW people on two continents including current Chairs, former Board members, workgroup leaders, and blog writers, and I have treasured all of those opportunities. The OTW has a lot of awesome people working for it, let me tell you. On the other hand, I have so many current friends and former colleagues whose involvement with the OTW ended immensely painfully for them, and as much as I am glad they did what they had to do I am angry that the Org could not preserve them, for its own sake and for theirs.

But you know, it's okay to not be an OTW volunteer. Being a volunteer or a staffer is a lot of work, and to be frank, I suspect it always will be a lot of work. Nor do I resent people who don't want to take that on in the first place, or who find, for whatever reason, that it's become too much. I am not trying to guilt you for either of those responses! Your guilt does nothing productive for anyone. Self-preservation should come first, and you are the best judge of that for yourself, not me or anyone else. And yes, I have spent all of my time on I&O (except for my initial forays on Translation and my recently concluded stint as a tag wrangler), and there are committees you could not pay me to serve on or chair, even if hell freezes over, the Eagles win the Super Bowl, and everything about them were changed to match exactly my own personal thoughts on how they should be run. And no, I"m not telling. 

One common response I get to my aforementioned in-person rants is "Why do you put up with this?" or "Why are you still involved?" The only answer I have is that, by whatever quirk of brain chemistry, personality, or fate, I haven't hit the bottom of my capacity to deal with crap and keep working, at least not yet. And I believe in the OTW. I believe in the OTW despite everything, despite the fact that I don't think the OTW can or should try to be all things to all parts of fandom (NB: I don't find that statement to be in conflict with the basic mission of I&O).

I am invested in the OTW, and that's me, and I could give you a whole list of reasons why but they would all boil down to a sob story seasoned with my own cussedness and the fact that I am good at what I do and I know it and also I love us and what we have done like burning and finally despite everything I still find the bargain I make with my commitment to be, personally, worthwhile. I am better placed on the inside than on the outside, and I don't see that changing any time soon. 

We can be better, and we should, but that is as much for our own sake as for anyone else's. 

I mentioned recently that I had received a travel grant to attend AdaCamp DC, a project of the Ada Initiative, and I have just returned from that trip. Short version: too short! I had a great time in which I learned a lot, and as other attendees mentioned, it was great to be among a group of people who, by and large, get it.

I traded shamelessly on my position as a committee chair for the Organization for Transformative Works in my application, and I was really grateful that the organizers decided to take the "open culture" part of open stuff seriously - they wound up accepting not only me but several other OTW staffers, as well as a number of fans, and one of the most interesting sessions I attended (it being an unconference, all programming is user-generated) discussed how to bring fandom into the open culture movement in the minds of fans themselves, as well as of open stuff people. I don't have any silver bullets for that problem, other than talking about each side to the other, which is part of what I tried to do at AdaCamp. But I do think that the open stuff (and particularly open source) movements have a lot to teach the OTW in particular, so here's a brief stab at trying to summarize what I learned, or what AdaCamp made me think about.

# "90% of open source is about communication, not about code." It's been common knowledge for about a year now that the OTW needs to move to a more sustainable, procedural organizational format. One of the things this means is writing documentation (and, for my part, acknowledging my part in the OTW's current lack of adequate documentation). Another is that, as another session reminded me, we need to…

# Destroy all silos. Open stuff is not served by people not communicating, or by people remaining in their (literal or metaphorical) bunkers and silos working solely on their own thing. That's pretty much the opposite of open stuff, and for that matter, the opposite of participatory fandom too (you're totally a part of fandom if you're a lurker!). Everything everyone contributes to a project should be viewable to the other people working on that project, who ideally should be empowered to check and make needed changes to those contributions.

# Being involved in open stuff is about motivation and staying power. Or, in other words, people may have high initial motivation, but open stuff needs to be set up so that they feel like they want to stay. This ties straight back into sustainability.


This is probably old hat to people who are more familiar with open source and technology than I am (or, for that matter, more used to thinking about open culture as such than I am), but one thing's for certain: AdaCamp was a fantastic experience in a supportive environment in which I was able to meet some really awesome and wonderful people. I generally find that whenever I go out among tech people I learn a ton of things and come back with new ways of thinking about the world, and this unconference was no exception. I really hope that there are more of them in the future, and that I can go again.

Also, I got an Ada Lovelace portrait sticker, and it is now on my iPad case. Win.

One of the things my committee, Internationalization & Outreach, has been working on for a while went live today: the Fan Video Diversity Showcase on the Archive of Our Own! 

Our original idea was to come up with a sampling of global fan video traditions to publicize the fact that the AO3 now accepts video embeds from external sites, and our in-house vid expert Natacha Guyot has put in a ton of work on this project in particular. You can read her post about the Showcase here.

Congratulations, N, it looks great! 

Stand with EFF and OTW



Read more about the 2012 exemption proceedings here.
The OTW and EFF need fans, vidders, remix artists, and others to show their support for maintaining and expanding DMCA exemptions for remix video. There are 3 ways to help:

1. Sign the Rip.Mix.Make petition; and/or


2. Submit comments as described in this post from EFF; and/or


3. Help spread the word (you can cut and paste the banner code from this OTW post).

Comments are due by February 10 at 5 p.m. Eastern Time.

(c&p'd from juniperphoenix)

I've been thinking about this at several points over the course of the ongoing OTW Board Election discussion, so here it is: the Organization for Transformative Works is unquestionably by the fans, for the fans, and of the fans, but as a non-profit organization incorporated in the state of Delaware and granted federal IRS 501(c)3 status, it is not the same as any other mass fan project, and unfortunately, it cannot be run like any other mass fan project. It just can't.

I say this in particular with regard to two things, the first being the recent discussion over volunteer membership, which on some level I couldn't quite understand why people kept bringing it up. After reading ellen_fremedon's post OTW Elections: Signal Boost, Endorsements, and the Volunteer Membership Issue, which discusses the now-disbanded Election Committee's rationale for rejecting the concept of volunteer membership back when it was reviewing and creating membership structures as part of its work (ellen_fremedon is a former Chair of the Elections Committee), I finally understand my own lack of comprehension. Volunteer membership is very much a fannish, cashless economy, sweat-equity model: you have a stake in the thing you have worked on because you have worked on it, and in principle there should be no barrier to you having "ownership" of that stake.

What it comes down to, from my perspective, is that the OTW is not a fannish entity; it is a non-profit entity, and as such, not all of its work can be accomplished within the rubrics of fan culture, which at its best strives to be inclusive of everyone. In a perfect world, every volunteer who's put in the work but can't afford the $10 USD membership donation or who doesn't have the requisite personal financial methods to make it would receive membership in the OTW anyway. But the world of U.S. non-profit law and IRS regulations is anything but perfect, and it's most certainly not fully accessible to everyone regardless of income or geographic location. The OTW operates in that world by its very nature, and at the end of that day to function there the Org has to play by its rules to some extent. We can't do all the things, and we can't have all the members. I wish it were otherwise, but it isn't and we can't.

This doesn't mean, of course, that membership--even on the current paid model--can't be made more accessible, and I am absolutely in favor of the 2012 Board exploring alternate payment methods or letting people make cumulative donations towards membership or whatever. I am even in favor of revisiting the volunteer-membership model, provided that people do it with the clear acknowledgment that the OTW is not a fannish entity, but rather a non-profit organization that needs to be managed according to sustainable principles, rather than jury-rigged ad hoc, or even acceptable fannish, methods.

I've long felt, and have written in my forthcoming TWC article, co-written with Alex Leavitt, that the "amateur/professional" or "fan/industry" binary is no longer adequate to describe the complexity of the interplay between fandom and non-fandom, or of the people and structures that straddle the grey zone between them. The case of someone like lim, who put in 14-hour days for months on end to code the latest AO3 deploy, is particularly telling in that regard: that's not an amateur or no-profit level of work and commitment, and even though lim herself needed to work alone so that she could contribute to the project, her coding should have been managed so that the end results met the minimum standards for accessibility in website design, and she should have been managed so that she knew that she had other options and the support she needed to not resign in the face of personal criticism that was not justified, if she so desired. That's not what happened, unfortunately, and as a variety of posts written over the past day or so have illustrated, the OTW's management, and in particular the management of the AO3 project, is shockingly deficient. skud, a professional software developer herself, has analyzed the AO3's code commit history in Github, transparency, and the OTW Archive project:

This does not seem, to me, to be a well managed project. This is a project where the project lead is acting as a gatekeeper, commiting huge swathes of code (sometimes on behalf of third parties) with inadequate documentation, and allowing extremely poor branch hygiene (skins project mixed up with other changes, for example) to infect the main branch, leading to a buggy release. This should not have happened, and, I suspect, would not have happened if the OTW’s technical leaders had had, or had sought the advice of people who had, experience with distributed open source software development projects and the tools they typically use.

In short, the OTW isn't able to avoid the pitfalls of increasing professionalization and complexification, and I believe that we need to develop structures that will maximize the advantages of that fact, by supporting the people we have who are already putting in a professional level of effort. In light of Lucy Pearson's withdrawal of her candidacy for the Board, I'm endorsing Betsy Rosenblatt along with Julia Beck, Nikisha Sanders and Jenny Scott-Thompson. All of them have given me more than sufficient reason to believe that they have the passion and the needed grasp on the OTW's problems to make significant inroads towards solving them.

To quote ellen_fremedon again:

This is both a vote for these four candidates, and-- inevitably, given the seat-to-candidate ratio-- a vote against Naomi Novik. My reasons for both of these choices, for wanting to see Julia, Jenny, Sanders, and Betsy on the board and for believing that it's time for Naomi to step down, boil down to one thing: Naomi's plans and priorities for the next term, as she has described them, all focus on completing existing projects-- that is, on the AO3. And that's something she can work on, quite possibly better, as a staffer and volunteer coder. Every other candidate has a vision for larger-scale change and outreach which will require the board's authority to see it through.

I have immense respect for what Naomi has done in getting this organization off the ground. Under other circumstances, I would be happy to vote for her to continue as a board member. But the OTW's current circumstances, of massive volunteer and staff burnout and a desperate need for international and pan-fandom outreach, call for immediate and thorough change in the organization's internal and external communications and its volunteer policies, and making those changes is not Naomi's priority.

I might add that there's no a priori reason that Novik should make these issues her priority; it's clear, especially from her latest post about the election, that she values the AO3 above all else. This is a legitimate position, if one that I cannot endorse either personally or in terms of the good of the OTW as a whole. But the AO3 isn't going away no matter who gets elected to the Board, and we need to elect people to the Board who recognize that the way the OTW operates needs to change.

Voting begins 16 November 2011. Thank you, for reading, and for participating in the election.

Or, who I think you should vote for, and why.

Disclaimer: The following reflects my own personal opinion, not the official position of any committee of the Organization for Transformative Works.

I've been an OTW volunteer since January 2009; since January 2010, I've been a member of the International Outreach committee, which has just been renamed Internationalization & Outreach to better reflect its goals and purview, and I've been a tag wrangling volunteer since the Archive of Our Own went into open beta in November 2009. As a writer for the Transformative Works and Cultures Symposium blog, I'm also a subsidiary member of the Journal committee.

I believe in and care deeply about the mission and potential of the Organization for Transformative Works as a radical panfandom experiment, as a venue in which all fans who choose can find a cross-fandom home with diverse resources for their needs. I'm exceedingly proud of what the OTW has accomplished so far, and of my own small part in it, and I am convinced that this Board election in particular finds the OTW at a crossroads. We as an organization need a Board that will be responsive, flexible, and supportive of us as volunteers and staffers and as fans with diverse, valid interests and desires for the OTW.

Without divulging any confidential matters, I don't think it'll be much of a surprise to people with an interest in the OTW when I say that volunteer burnout has been a huge issue for us over the past two terms or so, if not longer--I can only really speak for the length of time in which I’ve been involved with the organization. Just over the past term my home committee, I&O, has seen a lot of good people depart because they didn't feel like the committee’s efforts were being valued, or that they themselves were being supported in their work at the organizational level. (Julia Beck, the current chair of I&O, definitely has first-hand appreciation of the fact that the OTW desperately needs to serve its volunteers better.) Looking around, volunteer support and retention is one of my biggest priorities. If the OTW can't build itself a sustainable volunteer infrastructure now, it will eventually self-destruct. I'm not exaggerating when I say that I believe the future of the OTW and its projects is on the line in this Board election, and this issue is why.

Like a lot of people--at least, I can say for certain, like Julia Beck--I am deeply frustrated by the OTW's track record on representation. This is basically the issue that I&O was created to address, and it's deeply frustrating and mortifying to me that after nearly two years as a committee we're still having to fight for almost every step towards increased representation outside the mainstream of (Western) media fandoms. There are a lot of concrete examples I can't mention here, but I know that for me personally the issue is reaching the make-or-break point: if there isn't real movement on issues of representation in the next term, I don't know that I'll be able to continue to justify my involvement in the OTW to myself. Moreover, I believe that an OTW that isn't better representative of fandom globally would, on a fundamental level, be betraying its own vision of itself. This Board election is critical for the OTW in light of its ongoing problems with representation.

Transparency is a related concern for me as well. I can't put it better than via_ostiense, a staff member and the 2012 chair of the Volunteers & Recruiting Committee, put it in her post:

…considering that the OTW is raising money from fans under the banner of being an advocate for fandom, I think we had either damned well prioritize transparency and having permanent, active channels for discussion open or else return everyone's donations. Someone who's curious about the OTW's projects or has a concern about them should not have to join as a volunteer or staffer just to find out what's going on and to have their concerns taken seriously.

Board candidate and current I&O chair Julia Beck has more thoughts on (Why) Management Matters:

When I talk about the importance of processes and guidelines, I don't mean "let's pile on more tools/requirements/hoops to jump through, harr!"

What I mean is: let's whittle down those processes and choose our tools so that they're as intuitive and simple as possible. (This is hard. I'm so unhappy with the translation process atm, let me tell you. But we'll keep trying.)

What I mean, most of all, is: clear structures, consistent guidelines and transparent processes are crucial, because they help create an equal environment. They translate to lowered barriers for participation. They mean that you don't need to be personally influential, know the right people, or secret pathways in order to create a successful initiative. (As an example: if the structure is clear, purview becomes clearer, so you know who to turn to and ask for support or collaboration. It also fosters accountability.)

[…]

We can't wait for people to struggle their way to the top -- not least of all because it's a selection process that is detrimental to diversity. No, really. Think about it. It's not only about certain personality- and neurotypes prevailing -- it's also that advocating for non-mainstream perspectives always, always takes more energy. So simply saying that everyone is welcome without adapting internal structures to match? Doesn't cut it.

And despite everything I wrote above, the OTW has still, overall, been the happiest and most supportive working environment I've even been in. And -- yeah, here my starry-eyed idealism is showing, but -- if people are willing to put in the work, they deserve to have that opportunity, an even chance at making their experience inside OTW satisfying and meaningful.

If, at this point, you're still not sure about the basics of the OTW Board election and how it works, facetofcathy has an excellent post laying out the information: A look at the OTW Board of Directors elections and the candidates. facetofcathy's post is more or less unbiased.

The rest of this post isn't.

So let me say, before I go any further, that I fully intend to support and work with the Board to the best of my ability no matter who wins the open seats. That said, it's my passionate belief that no Board election, and especially not this one, should be a popularity contest. Some of the candidates have a lot more name recognition and visibility than others. Neither of these factors necessarily correlate with who among them will produce the best Board for the OTW.

Links
Here are candidates' statements about why they're running for the Board and what they hope to accomplish.

Concise candidate chat transcript provides the edited version (just the Q&A) from the first candidate chat.
Here's the full transcript, with text and screenshots.

After the first candidate chat, the candidates were asked follow-up questions and had 24 hours to respond in writing. Here are their answers.

I believe in the OTW, plain and simple; that’s why I’ve stuck around this long, when I have at multiple points been so, so tempted to just quit and take my complaints to the critical masses outside--which, let me be clear, I believe the OTW needs to listen to and needs to learn from. I have a lot of friends out there on the critical horizon--many of whom, moreover, were once OTW volunteers themselves or who have tried their damnedest to meet the OTW or the AO3 halfway and been, frankly, almost totally stonewalled or stymied.

A lot of them don’t feel comfortable speaking out on this, for various entirely valid reasons; troisroyaumes, however, has posted about why she’s voting in the Board election, from a position of utter dissatisfaction:

What upsets me is the total dependence on one or two individuals in the first place! From what I've gathered, this problem is systemic to the organization and not just limited to AO3. Again, I know that there are some active efforts to work on this issue and why a lot of OTW staff have been talking about sustainability, but I'd like to know that the new Board will prioritize it (as well as the other two issues I name above) for the upcoming year. If there are not enough volunteers with the right skill set, then the organization should invest in training and actively recruiting volunteers who do have the right skills. (Seriously, sometimes an organization can't just wait for volunteers to walk in the door. E.g. if AO3 needs coders, maybe someone should try to directly contact fans who know Ruby and ask them to volunteer.)

I've been involved in volunteer organizations offline that had this same problem: it is extremely frustrating and often leads to implosion and leadership vacuum when the one key person burns out or gets sidelined by other commitments. There needs to be collaboration, delegation and procedures for transferral of leadership. To put it abstractly, a robust network needs to build in redundancy and crosstalk in order to tolerate perturbations. That's why biological systems have paralogs and epistasis, people!

To be frank, I haven’t had time to completely digest troisroyaumes’ post, but I strongly agree with Julia Beck’s post noting her criticisms:

I'd just like toss out there: you're a random fan who likes the idea of giving back to fandom a little through volunteering. You get involved in the OTW. You evolve to the level of staffer! (Score!)

But then you realize you have even less say than before because you've traded in the right to publicly criticize it openly for a chance to make things better. But the structure is not set up in a way that allows you to effect much change.

So. What do you do?



This is why critical outside voices (or bold internal ones like via's) like these are so vital at this point.

I'm not saying I have all the answers, or that I agree with everything they wrote. But I don't need to -- I just need a willingness to listen, to take this very, very seriously, and take a lot of notes.

I believe in the OTW, and I believe that the OTW can, should, must do much, much better. Furthermore, I believe firmly that some of the candidates, in their statements and answers to questions, have demonstrated a dangerous lack of understanding of the nature and scope of the serious problems facing the OTW today, and what the Board needs to do to address these problems in the immediate future.

( Institutional structures, and why I do not endorse Betsy Rosenblatt )

( Transparency, and why I do not endorse Naomi Novik )

For all of these reasons and more, I cannot in good conscience endorse either Novik or Rosenblatt’s candidacies for the Board, and I would ask that those who believe in making the OTW more sustainable as an institution and more responsive, representative, and transparent as an organization not endorse or vote for them either.

I can and do, however, endorse the remaining four candidates for the Board in the strongest possible terms:

Julia Beck (julia_beck)

Lucy Pearson (lucyp)

Nikisha Sanders (sanders)

Jenny Scott-Thompson (jennyst)

Other people have written posts going into greater detail about what makes these four candidates great choices for the Board; I’ve already made this post too long, so let me link to other people who have also endorsed some or all of them:

hl, 2011 Board member: OTW Election
renay, 2010 Tag Wrangling lead, 2011 Tag Wrangling Co-Chair: OTW 2011 Board Election
via_ostiense, 2012 Chair of Volunteers & Recruiting: OTW Election Stuff
stultiloquentia, OTW Elections
boundbooks, Snippets from the OTW Board Chat Transcript

Between the four of them, Sanders, Beck, Scott-Thompson and Pearson have the needed experience, perspective, ideas, and grasp of reality to potentially transform the Organization for Transformative Works in the best possible way. For that reason, I am voting for them in the 2011 Board election, and I urge you to do the same.

I know I have a lot of org members and volunteers on my reading list. As a committee member, I'd like to take this opportunity to implore you, if you're a volunteer, to consider attending the all-org meetings. Your presence really does make a difference, and the next meeting is Sunday 25 September at 6pm UTC.

lian has a post on what the International Outreach comm has been doing lately; she also links to jennyst's recent post on things going on within the Org.

It's getting to be OTW Board election season, so let me say: if you care about the direction and sustainability of the OTW and its projects (such as the AO3, Fanlore, TWC, etc), join the Org now. $10 USD gets you full voting rights for a year. If you join by 17 October 2011, you'll be eligible to vote in this year's Board election. Voting in the Board election, particularly this one, makes a very real difference to the OTW's future.

I'll be posting more about the Board election as it gets closer; though I haven't had time to review all six candidates for the four open seats, let me just say that Julia Beck and Jenny Scott-Thompson have my voice, vote, and full support.