Profiles on the AO3

[sophinisba]

Every once in a while I'll say to one of my friends, "Gah, I wish people would fill out their user profiles on the AO3!" and my friend, despite being a regular user and fan of the AO3, will say something like, "Huh, I guess I should do that sometime" or "There are profiles on the AO3?" This is totally understandable. Nobody really talks about them and they are not very prominent. They aren't linked in the sidebar or from a person's Works page (the one I look at most often). The URL is http://archiveofourown.org/users/USERNAME/profile, and there is a link from a user's main page. I had some trouble with HTML when I set up my account there in 2009 and didn't actually go back and fix it until today, after I'd been complaining about it on Twitter. So, you know, I understand about it not being at the top of everyone's to-do list.

But I would really like it if more people would put a little information there, especially links! The three things I would love to see people put in their profiles are
-Where else they are on the web (like LJ/IJ/DW)
-How to contact them privately
-How they feel about uses of their work (specifically relevant to my current interests: PODFIC).

It's true that, even though most people don't fill out their profiles, I can usually find their LJ or Dreamwidth by googling - that's what I did today. Then again, some people use names like "Sarah" and "Becky" on the AO3, or just other random names that are not the name of their journal, so that doesn't always work. There are no PMs on the AO3 and if they don't tell me how to contact them the only thing I can do is leave a comment on their fic.

And listen, you guys, at this point I really enjoy making podfics and I'm not freaking out all the time about People on the Internet Hearing My Voice, but you know what's still hard? Asking authors for permission. You know what makes it harder? Asking strangers for permission when I don't know anything about them (other than that they wrote this awesome fic for Yuletide) because I can't see their journals. When I'm going to ask an author I don't know about making a podfic, I usually like to ask by email or private message (in case they feel awkward about saying no), but I can't do that if I don't have their information. The most disappointing thing for me is to get to the end of a great fic and see a bunch of comments with no replies from the author, and to know that the only way I have to contact them is to leave one more comment that they probably won't answer. I understand that people have lots of different reasons for not answering comments and that's not really what I'm talking about here. Maybe, also, some people do not want podfics made of their fics, or do not want to have their names searchable in the Audiofic archive or whatever. That's all fine!

But I'm saying, some kind of statement would be nice. It could be "I don't always have time to answer comments but I love to hear from readers" or "If you'd like to write a remix of my fic or make art or a podfic, please contact me to discuss it first" or "These are my stories and I prefer that you not make other fanworks of them." The kind of statement I would be happiest to see is one like what kaizoku has on his LJ/DW profile: "You do not need to ask my permission to remix, podfic, translate, create art for or create secondary fanwork of any fanwork I have posted. You should include a link back to my work, and feel free to share the link to your work with me - I'd love to see it."

(And while I'm attempting to boss fandom around, I would also like it if more people put a statement about transformative works in their journal profiles, stickyposts, and/or masterlists, and if people who have journals on different services like LJ/DW/IJ would link those accounts on their profile pages. Links!)

Comments

OT/thread drift

[elf]

Off the top of my head--I wrote a filk for kink_bingo: My Kink, to the tune of "My Girl."

Is fannish. Is not on AO3. Can't figure out what "fandom" to list, except maybe the original song, which seems ... wrong? Is "fandom" the fandom? Is kink_memes a fandom? (These are semi-rhetorical questions; I'm interested in your thoughts; not seeking an Official AO3 Answer.)

I'm aware that I could put it at the archive and it'd be fine; I just got lost deciding how to tag it. I'm more worried about "AO3 will not get filk, except for mine and maybe a couple of other peoples', because filkers won't be able to figure out that they're welcome & how to tag their songs" than about whether any particular song is okay to put there.

The line between "filk with a fandom" and "original filk" is maybe even blurrier than the lines between "fanart" and "original art." (Or maybe about the same. Is artwork of an original space station fanart?)

Re: OT/thread drift

[franzeska]

Well, my unofficial answer is that I come from the part of fandom where "original slash" and "original yaoi" are totally valid things to list as the "fandom" for something on a fannish archive, so...

I guess I'd probably list 'fandom' as the fandom if I didn't want to mark it 'original'.

AO3 will not get filk in the sense of people uploading until there are more AO3 users/volunteers/staff members who get filk in the other sense. Based on what I've seen people saying about AO3 and anime and AO3 and "original" work, it seems like people don't really look at the TOS or FAQs; they just see what other people have already posted and figure out what's allowed or expected based on that. (Cf. all of the people who are shocked to realize FFN doesn't actually allow graphic porn. :D) On the bright side, once you do figure out how you want to tag, at least other people can look at your example instead of being totally lost. That's my feeling anyway. No pressure! ;D

From a tag wrangling perspective, I see all of the following fandom tags being used right now:

Fandom - Fandom
fandom meta
Meta - Fandom
fan fiction meta
No Fandom
Original
Original - Fandom
Original Fiction - Fandom
Original Work
Original fic
Original zombie fiction

Re: OT/thread drift

[franzeska]

Heh. And my feeling on art is that there had better be some damn clear indications it's not fan art before I want Abuse going anywhere near it. I mean, what if somebody does their nonrepresentational collage of angst over their favorite character getting killed off in canon and it's nothing but dark gray blotches? If they want to tell me it's fan art, who am I to say otherwise? With text, something like a Dear Yuletide Author letter or the author's shopping and to-do lists would be clearly not fic. I'm not sure how that would translate to art... Maybe the equivalent would be something like the artist's vacation photos or a photo of their dog without any sort of added fandom-y stuff.

Original sci-fi art is back over in the same territory with "original slash", IMO. A drawing of a random spaceship isn't really a fanwork, but a drawing of an original spaceship that's made in the context of fandom (published in a zine, posted to a fannish archive, for a fannish art exchange)? People who aren't in fandom write "parody songs", not "filks". I'm having trouble imagining a filk so un-fandom-y that I'd feel comfortable ruling it a non-fanwork and kicking it off of AO3. I can't rule it out, but I sure can't think of anything obvious right now. Filkers don't really make a distinction between a song using proper nouns from a tv show, Banned From Argo, and Julia Ecklar's Temper of Revenge, do they? (I just watched a vid using the latter, which made me think of it.) I'm seeing a lot of gray areas and not a lot of things I think Abuse ought to be getting involved in, personally.

Re: OT/thread drift

[elf]

I am very, very happy with the policy of "it's a fanwork until we've got solid evidence that it's not." And happy with the concept of, if the artist says "that's a picture of the dog that bit Sean Bean in the LotRiPS fic Dog Bites Man, Man Bites Back," that's fanart.

If people start using the AO3 archive as an alternate flickr stream with thinly-veiled excuses, Abuse can look into making more solid guidelines. I don't expect that to happen.

Yeah, in filk circles, there's not much difference between BFA and Temper of Revenge. (And are you familiar with Temperature of Revenge?) They're more likely to be sorted differently as "space opera" vs "fantasy" than "media-based" vs "original subject matter."

I'm less concerned with the original-topic original-tune filk than the meta-filk that spans multiple fandoms, or is about a trope rather than a specific setting, or about fandom & writing.

I have no trouble coming up with songs-from-filk-albums that might be ruled not-fannish-enough--Heather Rose Jones' "Telegraph Fair," on the same album as "Black Widows in the Privy," or half of Leslie Fish's Chickasaw Mountain, which is much more Pagan than fannish. I don't expect it to be a problem; there are other sites for hosting filk lyrics. (Sort of. Dunno if AO3 will be looking into hosting sound files like podfics, which could also extend to filk. Hmm.) Still. Don't expect problems there; am more concerned with "hey, I'd like the archive to have filky stuff, but a lot of it doesn't fit in the current category system."

This probably comes across as more worried than I actually am.