schneefink: River walking among trees, from "Safe" (Default)
Personally, I often find it difficult to criticize the OTW. I think it's because I'm not proud of my own time as an OTW volunteer: I did some good things, but I didn't do as much or as well as I should have, or at least the person holding the position I did should have done more and better. So to criticize other OTW volunteers who also don't do as much or as well as they should in their positions feels somewhat hypocritical.
(I'm slightly more comfortable criticizing the Board, because it's an elected position. I don't want to put too much responsibility on the Board when I know that their influence is limited, but it's still their responsibility to figure out how to effectively function.)

But. Not only have they not made progress regarding the anti-harassment measures they promised, they have 1.5 million dollars as reserves and still no clear plan regarding hiring people. That is not just a slow pace, that is glacial. At some point doing something becomes more important than doing it perfectly, and that point was probably months if not years ago. I'm disappointed.
Most of the discussion seems to be on Twitter and other places that I am not very adept with, but [personal profile] naye has a good post with links on the topic of the OTW and their insufficient anti-racist actions here.
schneefink: River walking among trees, from "Safe" (ahsoka)
Good things first: The NY Riveters won their second game against Boston! They were horribly outshot, but Nana Fujimoto was magic in goal. Apparently they are copying the Rangers' strategy. It's not sustainable in the long term, but the NWHL season is shorter... The Pride are playing very well.

Now... okay, I don't even know how to classify what just happened. I was almost done writing a post about the complete and utter bullshit that were the most recent decisions of the OTW Board, in which I expressed my confidence that the situation would get resolved. (I'd heard people complaining about the Board, but I honestly hadn't realized it was this bad.) Then, a few minutes ago, maybe three hours after the initial clusterfuck, the whole OTW Board resigned. Holy shit. The only appropriate reaction, but I did not expect it to happen this fast.

We still have two Board members - the two elected in the last election who were not yet voting-eligible - and now... I guess there will have to be a new election? I feel so sorry for the Election committee, they are already exhausted.

More info on Tumblr, Twitter, ff_a and other places. I should have gone to bed an hour ago, but wow would I have missed things, so probably not quite now yet. I wonder what I'll wake up to tomorrow. Staffers who haven't been online the past few hours will get quite a shock.
schneefink: River walking among trees, from "Safe" (Moya)
Epbot has a post Do we need a new word for "geek"?" in response to discussions around a video by Felicia Day in which she says that geeks need to "reclaim" the word.

I think she's right that the meaning of the word has shifted to something more "mainstream", sometimes a label to "describe a person who is defined solely by liking comics or games or movies or TV", making it easier for firms to market for them and seeing them as a group of consumers. Felicia Day: "To me, "geek" means an outsider, a rebel, a dreamer, a creator, whether it's our own world or someone else's. It's a fighter. It's a person who dares to love something that isn't conventional. The mantra of "geek" to me is "your judgement is not my problem.""

There are some interesting comments in and to the Epbot post around the question "how do we remain an open, inclusive community while still retaining a strong sense of identity": label or no label, geeks and nerds and other stuff, geek as noun or verb, the joys of sharing, who gets to call who a geek, but many more questions than answers.

I think it's a bit strange to use "outsider" as a defining quality of a group, because what do you do when "the others" welcome you? And what does it matter if something you love is conventional? Same with "rebel", why do you have to rebel against something? I like the other parts of Felicia's attempt, but not as anything definitive.

Sidenote: I wonder how much people's different definitions depend on how much they experienced exclusion in school for their interests. It seems to be a stereotypical part of the "typical geek growing up experience", which seems a bit sad to me. I never really felt that - I had few friends in school because I was smart and that made me a bit arrogant, and I'm usually good at finding safe spaces to talk about spaceships and pirates and stuff (although every once in a while I slip up and people look at me funny *g*)

I've been called a geek and a nerd, more often in recent times because I have more friends I can talk about spaceships with, and I'm fine with both, but I don't really care. That's not really how I think about myself. "Geeky", sometimes, as an adjective, but not with any strong conviction.

What's much more important to me is that I'm "in fandom." Not only a fan, many people are fans of something, but that I'm part of a community that loves things and enjoys sharing that love with others and creates other things out of that. Sure, you can have the same discussions about who is part of this community. There are many different communities - Lj/Dw are different from Tumblr is different from ff.net is different from messageboards is different from YouTube and Twitter - but they all have these things in common, loving something and sharing it with others and often creating things to celebrate what you love. I know I'm part of that, it makes me happy, and that's enough for me.

Speaking of, coincidentally *g*: the OTW is currently holding its biannual (I think) membership drive. A lot of what I post about volunteering here is negative because I need spaces to vent, but I still really love the OTW and the AO3 and Fanlore and all of its projects. Even with all of its problem I'm very glad the OTW exists, and I'm convinced it's only going to become more amazing going forward.
Fandom Is Love: Organization for Transformative Works Membership Drive, April 3-9
schneefink: River walking among trees, from "Safe" (Default)

I took the OTW Community Survey!


It's closes on Wednesday, so if you haven't filled it out yet, please consider taking the 15 minutes: it's a lot of valuable feedback for the org, and if there's something that has always annoyed you, here's the perfect place to voice it. (And you can take it even if you don't know what OTW stands for.)

To accompany this I wanted to write something about my two months on an OTW committee, but everything is changing very quickly so it's hard to say anything. In short, it's more work than I thought (because I want to do everything immediately and we don't have enough people), there are some things that aren't perfect (communication is hard), but overall I'm really enjoying it and I feel that many changes are going in the right direction. In hindsight I think the discussion about the election last year was healthy for the org, even though it was exhausting and burn-out is still a problem (recent posts by staff members: sanders, renay, and jennyst.)

The Avengers is already out in Vienna, but I haven't seen it yet because I have so much to do. ...which I haven't actually done yet because I'm so good at procrastination. But I'm sure I would have done even less if I had watched the movie. Maybe. Going to study now.

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