On That Meta Community

[melannen]

So that idea I threw out a few posts ago - about starting a meta links community that works like a crack_van/poetry-style recs community, where people rotate in and out as the person who collects and posts the meta links - seems to be fairly popular.

So consider this a post for brainstorming/recruiting/planning (and please link it around to anywhere else there might be interest!)

First, a really basic interest poll:

Poll #12630 meta recs community

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 142

View Respondents

If there was a community like that, I would be interested in:

View Answers

following the community
137 (96.5%)

compiling a week's meta links every once in awhile
26 (18.3%)

being a co-mod/assistant mod
5 (3.5%)

being the lead mod
1 (0.7%)

none of the above but you should start it anyway
3 (2.1%)

not sure but I want to keep an eye on your plans
25 (17.6%)

this is probably a bad idea but I'll still be around to point and laugh when it goes up in flames
1 (0.7%)

Here are some very rough draft proposed community rules and guidelines that I wrote up a few months back for said community (I have a whole folder of guidelines for hypothetical DW communities, guys, it's an illness.) If you're interested, read them over, and come discuss in the comments.

Also the working title for this community in my notes is fantechnicon (from pantechnicon, because I think I'm terribly clever) so that's what appears in the notes, but I'm open to other suggestions. :P

Admin/sticky posts would be a) a basic rules/about post; b) a sign-up post; c) a more involved post with optional advice for drivers; d) a post for non-drivers to drop meta links they've found; e) a talk-to-the-mods post.

What is the Fantechnicon?

The Fantechnicon is an organized recs community for meta, sort of a combination of crack_van and metafandom, where every week or so, somebody posts a list of interesting discussions about fandom.

How does it work?

People sign up in advance to drive the Fantechnicon for a week. During that week, they collect links of interesting fandom-related discussions they see, and then post the collected links to fantechnicon.

How do I sign up to drive?

You go to this post, and leave a comment saying you would like to drive. An admin will go down the list in order, offering people weeks. Anyone can drive! The only requirement is that you sometimes see interesting discussions about fandom that you would like to share with other people. If you sign up but later decide you can't do it, simply reply to your sign-up post with "I need to cancel". For more details, read the guidelines on the sign-up post.

HOW TO BE A DRIVER

1. Go to the sign-up post, and add a top-level comment stating that you'd like to drive. Track replies to that comment in some way.
2. When your comment gets to the top of the list, an admin will reply to your comment asking if you're available for an upcoming week. Reply to this comment as soon as possible, either confirming a week when you will be driver, or stating that you are not currently available. (If you would like to drive again, add another top-level comment to the post, to get back in line.)
3. If you are not a member of fantechnicon, join. You will be given posting access before your week begins.
4. Start collecting links to meta, however you prefer to do that!
5. During your week, post!


Part of the goal of fantechnicon is for each week's driver to reveal their own individual experience with and sense of fandom, so the actual rules for posting are pretty minimal. Take a look over the existing posts to get an idea of the range of things which are possible!

But here is the absolute minimum you are agreeing to do if you sign up as a driver:

1. You will make at least one post to fantechnicon during your week;
2. Containing at least three links to fandom meta content;
3. Of which at least one will be on DW;
4. At least one will be in English;
5. At least one will be by someone other than yourself;
5. And at least one of which will have had activity during your week.
6. You will provide some method for readers to contact you directly, whether through PMs, comments, or e-mail.

"Meta" is for these purposes defined as "whatever you think counts as meta", although please don't just post recs to fic or art that have no particular connections to meta or invitation to discussion - there are other communities for those recs.

If you agree to a week and don't manage to do this minimum, please consider carefully before signing up again; however, no-one will be banned

What you are agreeing not to do:

1. You will not link to any post that is not publicly available to the entire internet (even if the security filter it's under has open membership; however, posts under an age restriction, as long at they require no registration or provision of personal information, are allowed.)
[2. You will not link to any post authored by a person who is on the list in the filtered post of people who have requested not to be linked.]
3. If the author of a post requests that links to their post be removed, you will remove them.
4. You will not knowingly duplicate a link already posted to fantechnicon.
5. You will not make any post to fantechnicon that does not consist primarily of links to meta-related content posted elsewhere (and descriptions thereof), without prior authorization from the admins. (Though we define "meta" very broadly.)
6. If you allow comments on your post, you will be responsible for moderation of those comments.
7. You will not delete any entire post you make to this community.
8. You will try not to be an asshole.

If you have to remove a link from one of your posts, because the author has requested it be removed, because it has been retroactively locked or deleted, because you've been informed it's a duplicate, or because you have decided in your own judgement that it should not be linked, you must remove all references to the actual URL, and if requested, also the author's name and the site where it was posted and any direct quotations. You may decide whether to simply remove the item, to replace it with a notice that the item was removed, or add a notice that the link and identifying information were removed but retain the rest of the description.

Every link posted to fantechnicon should include:

1. A link to the post or comment thread.
2. The name provided for the author of the post or the OP (if it is anonymous, 'anonymous' should be listed as the author.)
3. If not on DW, a statement of where the content was posted.
4. A description of the content of the link, which includes:
a) keywords which someone trying to find the content might look for, including the fandom name, if it's about a specific fandom;
b) a notice if the linked content itself includes warnings for triggering content (you as driver may choose to add additional warnings to a link, if you so desire);
c) a notice if a link contains non-worksafe content;
d) a notice ['old post'] if a link has not had substantial activity or content added in the past two week;
e) a notice if the linked content consists primarily of non-textual content (images, video, audio, flash, etc.) for which text-only alternatives are not available, or which autoplays.
f) a notice if the post contains major spoilers for a story that has not been publicly available anywhere in the world for more than a month; any spoilers in your description should be under their own cut.

The mods' jobs would basically be to manage the sign-up list, recruit more drivers if necessary, make sure a week's drivers have posting access, and handle any disputes that are brought to them. (Possibly also to fill in for a week if a driver has to cancel at the last minute.)


There are other things we could do too - like special events or meta-fests or open posting periods - but I'd want to get the basic comm structure rolling before we got into that.

Comments

[cathexys]

Put me down tentatively as a potential comod. And you don't have a vote on the name, but I'd kind of suggest something simpler and easier to remember?.

[melannen]

I didn't put in a vote for the name because I didn't really have any great ideas - "metalinks" was the only other one that came to mind, but it's so boring, and a lot of the variations have already been used - fantechnicon would at least give it some branding. I was hoping people would bring it to the comments and come up with something brilliant. You have any suggestions?

[zellieh]

fandom_discuss could also be good. It avoids 'meta' (which some people may not understand or use) but also sounds a bit like an essay question, without bringing in scary words like analysis or theory.

[melannen]

I think I like the idea of "recs" (or "links"? or something like that) in the name - it makes it clear that the discussion isn't happening here, we're just linking to discussion elsewhere.

(Also anything starting with fandom_ sounds like one of the jf communities, probably also something we should avoid..)

Something like fan_meta_recs seems like it covers it, though, if so utilitarian. (I have a thing about names, if you haven't noticed.)

[zellieh]

On the rules, I think they cold be tightened up a bit

5. And at least one of which will have had activity during your week.
I'm not sure if I agree with this one. What if you want to do a round-up of meta classics like some of the old Mary Sue posts?

Also, a pre-emptive plan telling people how to discuss locked content or posts they aren't allowed to link to, but that contain ideas they still want to talk about -- i.e., write your own meta post and link to that, don't use the names of the original poster, don't link to the original post, don't plagiarise the content, and try to avoid quotes if you can.

And for [2. You will not link to any post authored by a person who is on the list in the filtered post of people who have requested not to be linked.] it might be wise to include an age bar or limit, to protect kids from getting dog-piled and harassed.

I really like this idea! ::bounces::

[melannen]

5 - the idea here is that people will want to be following the links and then commenting, and commenting on old posts can be awkward (also that we do want it to cover what's going on in fandom now, at least a little.) But the driver could certainly also do a collection of meta classics if they wanted. The idea there was that you had to have at least one link per week which was new, but I can see it might read that you have to have one link per post which is new, which I didn't mean.

Pre-emptive plan for locked discussions - I think that might go in the proposed "post for optional advice for linkers" which I haven't really worked on yet. I wanted to keep the base rules as short and sweet as possible to avoid scaring prospective linkers away, but we should probably have a longer version somewhere for people who enjoy reading instruction manuals. (Other things that might go in there: examples of the wide range of things that count as "fandom" and "meta", emphasis on how you aren't expected to find all the meta for your week, advice for what to do if someone criticizes your posts, a posting template if you want to use one, tips for how to collect links, places to look for meta if you can't find any, etc...)

For [2]: I don't really like the idea of an age limit for linking? Checking for age on every post can become an annoying barrier in some cases, and on sites where people rarely give their age, it can mean people avoid linking to anyone at all, and it's just a drag on activity. Plus some kids have really cool things to say and want to participate fully in fandom! And are way more mature and capable of dealing with harassment than some adults!

Honestly I think if dogpiling/harassing becomes a problem, I vote we just put the whole community on pause - a linking community that causes more problems than benefits for most of the people being linked is not a net good. I'm hopeful that using a crack_van/recs model - where the person choosing what to link is constantly changing, and where there's no pressure to link "everything important" - we can avoid some of endless feedback loops of negativity that can lead into that kind of problem.

[elf]

thinky_thots_of_fandom (we can do that many characters, I think?)
fannish_inquisition
not_just_yaoi
daily_meta (can't do this unless we're fairly sure of lots of regular content)
bring_on_the_meta
metaweb
too_many_tabs_open (abbreviates to the memorable and easily-pronounceable TMTO; what could be better?)

[melannen]

fannish_inquisition is awesome, but, uh, we probably want to avoid being the fannish inquisition that nobody expects, actually, that's probably the opposite of what we want to be. :P

And DW community names can be very long, but short and sweet is still probably better ...

[alexbayleaf]

Please not "metaweb"! That is a company I used to work for.

Rec-It Ralph

[executrix]

I *like* fantechnicon! But, our_meta_recs? recs_in_meta? meta_2_read?

Re: Rec-It Ralph

[melannen]

*clings* SOmeone who likes the one that is still my very favorite yay!

[staranise]

I'm trying to think something that has "fans" and meta-ish (but not "meta") words. fan_salon? (I have a heartmark for the salon culture women of the French court created.)

Other discussion words: chat, yak, gab, talk.

[melannen]

I love fan_salon as a name, but I think the issue I have with all of those is that it's not meant to be a discussion community? It's meant to be a recs/links community for discussion elsewhere. So a name that's about chat might lead people in the wrong direction. (Several of the ones above were making me go 'eh' for that reason, too.)

[kindkit]

Initially the idea of a "new metafandom" made me cringe a bit, but I think the way you're structuring the community as recs, rather than as an attempt to be comprehensive and therefore link to everything however faily/wanky, is a good idea. And I like that people can ask not to be linked to and for links to their posts to be removed. (Not that I'm still bitter from that time when I requested that a comm--not metafandom, it was the DW one--remove its link to a post of my that I'd decided was just not a useful contribution to the discussion, and they refused. Nope, not bitter at all.)

Also, I like the name "fantechnicon" better than anything else anyone has suggested.

[melannen]

Yeah, I think we'll want to really emphasize the 'recs' aspect in a second draft. I think part of what went wrong with metafandom was the trying to be some sort of impartial arbiter of important-ness and seriousness. This community should be the opposite of impartial.

Also, if we ever get a stretch where everything is faily/wanky, I will take over and do a week of nothing but posts on how to draw unicorns. :P

[calvinahobbes]

I am definitely intrigued by this idea, but I know (I know) that some people are going to hear about this comm or see it and want to run screaming for the hills.

I would definitely appreciate it if the comm guidelines favored OPs over reccers very strongly -- I like your safety measures of entirely opting out of being linked, as well as the possibility of removing links upon request.

I'm wondering whether there should be a 'strong suggestion' that reccers notify OPs that they have been/ will be rec'd. Remember being flooded by strangers commenting on a post, being like "Surprise! You've been linked! Here are my thoughts on yaoi"? See above re: hills.

As for something more nitty-gritty, 4a specifically: streamlined tags/ keywords please? It might be a minor issue, but for transparency I would want fandoms to be spelled out rather than identified by acronyms. And for searchability I would probably not want everyone to be able to create tags randomly. (IDK if this is a possible comm setting? If you are given posting access are you also automatically given ability to create tags?)

[melannen]

Well, there's already a comm on DW for linking your own meta. It's called fandom_meta. It's just that nobody ever posts there. Because in my vast experience of fandom, I have learned that getting people to rec their own stuff is like getting them to pull their own teeth. So I don't really think that's the way to go (It's also not really the way to get a broader idea of the meta that's out there? Because that way you only end up with the same six people who are willing to rec their own stuff, and thus have already crossposted it everywhere..)

I think structuring it very strongly as a recs community rather than a newsletter will help with the run-for-the-hills part, though. In the final version I think I will try to emphasize the recs community aspect a lot harder. People don't expect a warning when a fic gets rec'd, after all (although posting a comment that you're going to link a post is certainly something we'd suggest as a courtesy, especially for posts that might not be intended for a wide audience.)

And if it gets run-for-the-hills-y quickly, I think the plan will be to just shut down. But I hope we can get something like this running these days with it immediately going bad. I guess that's the experiment. (I've had the fandom-is-invading-run-for-the-hills experience more often post-metafandom than during, anyway. At least with metafandom I knew where they were coming from.)

Tags/keywords: This is something I would want the eventual mod team to work out in detail, because while a well-organized set of tags is the ideal, in a community of any size, keeping them up becomes a full-time job for someone, and it's a matter of balancing whether it's worth it or not. When I wrote out that guideline, DW search was up, and the idea was that people could just search the community in fulltext if they wanted something very specific, and we'd use an extremely limited set of tags. But journal search hasn't worked for me for awhile now, so who knows...

[staranise]

The rules setup is making me think: does this mean we could sign up to do themed posts? For example, "I want to link to a recent spate of posts comparing fandom to women's literary culture in the high middle ages, as well as these older essays on the same subject"?

[melannen]

Yes and no?

What you would do is you would sign to up do "some posts in x week", and as long as you linked to one DW post in English that was active in the last week by someone other than you, the rest of your links could be whatever the heck you felt like, themed or otherwise.

So yes, except you wouldn't have to bother mentioning the theme when you signed up, because the mods aren't going to bother tracking that. :P

[busaikko]

Where would discussion happen? It sounds like the drivers(?) will be mostly posting links to older discussions (like, the Red Hen's Harry Potter essays), instead of solely pointing the way to discussion that are happening now. Will discussion of the recced essays happen in the comments of the rec post? It would be kind of weird for an older post - perhaps one in a fandom the author's not in any more - to suddenly become active.

What about anonymous sources? Most of the really good fan discussions I've seen recently are on fast-moving anon memes.

How do you define meta? What, for the purposes of this comm, is meta? Would a picspam count? What about a chatlog?

Also, f) a notice if the post contains major spoilers for a story that has not been publicly available anywhere in the world for more than a month; any spoilers in your description should be under their own cut... While it's true that books can generally be legally purchased and mailed around the world to reach readers within a month (yay Amazon), it's not realistic (or kind) to expect people in film or TV fandoms to somehow mysteriously procure canon before it hits local markets. It would be greatly appreciated if the spoiler notice could be extended, or even made part of the generic header. As well,many people pick up new-to-them canons, and it wouldn't take a minute for the reccer to just note, "spoilers through HP Book 7", "spoilers for DS seasons 1-2", "spoilers for The Hobbit (book)". To be kind....

- brought to you by Japan's exciting new download laws and our last-in-the-world release date for The Avengers (I was spoiled for *everything* by then).

[melannen]

1 - that would be up to the reccer, I think? And some reccer/drivers probably would post mostly new stuff; some would post mostly old stuff. Putting the warning with a link if it's to older meta would be meant to let people know before following the link that it might not have a place for active discussion.

A reccer who was posting a lot of older meta could encourage discussion in the comments on the community, or link to a post in their journal encouraging it, or not have any facility for extra discussion at all - after all, when the original Red Hen essays went up, there weren't comment sections either. In that case people can read the old stuff and think about it and then if they really want to say something, post some new meta on the topic in their own space.

(Heck, people will even be able to link to tumblr posts, speaking of sites with no helpful built-in capacity for discussion. *grumble*)

2 - Linking to anon memes would be allowed, either to a whole meme post or to a particular therad. The OP of record for an anon thread would be "anonymous". I've seen some really good meta link posts that were all threads on f_fa; I don't see why it wouldn't work.

If people start wanting to link to discussions that are going to automatically disappear shortly - like I dunno 4chan threads or something - we might have to make different rules, but I think that's a cross-that-bridge-when-we-come-to-it.

3. I think we will have something in an admin post that throws out a bunch of ideas on how one might choose to define 'meta'? Or alternatively, try to avoid using the word "meta" in the final guidelines at all, because tbh these days sometimes I think it's more a dogwhistle for my cohort of fandom than it is a useful definition. But for base guidelines I'd go with "anything you wouldn't post on a fanfic or fanart recs site [unless it's particularly meta fic or art]", with a backup of "if the reccer thinks it's on topic it probably is" - TBH the only time I can see ruling something "not meta enough" is if somebody, say, tries to spend a whole week linking nothing but PWP fic, or is otherwise blatantly ignoring the point. But that would be partly up to whatever the final mod team ends up being. But yes both of those things you listed would definitely count.

4. On spoilers - spoilers are hard. The thing is while you can't realistically expect people around the world (or with different budgetary constraints, for that matter) to get everything immediately, you also can't realistically expect people to track when everything comes out all over the world, but cutting for spoilers for everything indefinitely starts making any kind of discussion really difficult, especially if there are people linking multi-fandom posts that might have spoilers for dozens of different fandoms, some of which the reccer might not even know much about. So a time limit was the best compromise I could come up with.

I went with a month in the rough version based on what I would like as someone who's currently mostly following TV shows that only appear [legally] in her country years after they're out in their home country, if ever. If there was going to be a time limit, what would you recommend?

We could certainly say that if the original post has spoiler tags/cuts, the reccer should honor them in their rec, though. That's definitely a good idea and not too much to ask.

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

It sounds interesting to watch. The rules make sense but ... they would be too hard to follow for me. I've done plenty of linklists, but trying to ensure a lot of this-not-that rules that stack together would vastly increase the time it takes to make such a list. That puts it out of my range, and I'd been thinking about compiling something like discussions on disability in science fiction or gender dynamics in fandom. Eh, maybe someone else will.

Re: Thoughts

[melannen]

The rules are written in a way that makes sense to me, but possibly only me (rough draft!) but really they're very simple: you have to include at least one link that fits four very simple qualifications (not by you, in English, on Dreamwidth, recent) and everything else is up to you.

(The "not" rules are all pretty basic etiquette stuff about what to do if you link something that people didn't want you to link to, and spoiler cuts etc., that's all. I don't know how I'd get them more basic without really turning off a lot of people in fandom. They could probably be written more simply, though.)

[anotherslashfan]

thoughtsbyfans or fans_thinking or fannish_thoughts
metastation
metatrack
traces_of_meta
reflecting_fans

All of these are not quite emcompassing what you seem to be aiming at... but still, maybe they keep up the inspiration progress.

[melannen]

Oooh, I really like reflecting_fans a lot...

[marginaliana]

I guess my major concern is that I think a majority of people writing meta don't particularly want to invite the larger fannish universe into their discussion. Even a public post doesn't necessarily imply that one expects the content to be read by/commented upon by anyone outside one's dwircle/flist. One random person who surfed in via Network view is one thing, but to suddenly have a bunch of random people commenting - I think that will be very disconcerting and will make some people very unhappy. I know you have a rule about removing links at the request of the OP, but I guess I think that's not strong enough and people should get permission first.

[lannamichaels]

I agree, I think permission to link should be required. Meta's a different beast than reccing fic.

[beccaelizabeth]

maybe fanmetarecs for a name? I like fantechnicon but it don't do what it says on the tin.
commenting mostly to vote against mispelled or ungrammatical versions of common words like thots or thinkies
because both compulsive proofreaders and people too used to mentally correcting the spelling as they go along would have trouble linking to it for opposite reasons.

[lannamichaels]

Yeah, at the end of the day, I'm partial to fan(dom/ish)metarecs. Short, memorable, to the point.

[princessofgeeks]

I am so glad you are doing this; I miss metafandom!

Also I must be an outlier, but I really enjoy when random people show up at my journal to discuss things I've posted. That never bothered me at all.

I was part of a "friending meme" recently on DW that was prompted because people expressed a wish for more discussions, more fannish discussions, etc., so I think the time is really right for a meta recs comm again.

I agree that it's way more fun when it's not simply people pointing out fail, although that can be useful/important. Simply being pointed to interesting discussions, inviting discussions, etc. is really a great thing about DW and before it, LJ. And I think if you allow people to opt out and only give permission to be linked to, etc., that would avoid some angst.

I have no opinion about the name, except that somehow it should be clear that it's recs, and not simply directing people's attention to things that are going wrong... Not meant to be primarily about faily events or wank.

Thank you for doing this. I can't commit to signing up to find links but I would definitely read and join the discussions.

[amaresu]

I miss having random people showing up in my posts. It makes me more hesitant to show up in random people's posts now that it seems like no one does that anymore.

[ciaan]

So here is my problem: fantechnicon makes me VERY STRONGLY ASSUME that it is a comm for icons! Like an icontest or something. It does not make me think of meta at all. If I saw that name with no context or without reading the context I would skip it, unless I were looking for pictures. I sincerely doubt I'm the only one who would respond like that and I think that would be an ongoing hindrance to promoting the comm.

[melannen]

Oh I didn't even think of that connection! All right, you convinced me: bad idea. (Now I need to come up with a graphics community to use the name with...)

[stellar_dust]

Ooh ooh, fanopticon!

no wait that's a terrible idea

d-:

[melannen]

YES. YES IT IS.

Especially since a panopticon is a prison. (...that's what the Doctor said.)

[nemonclature]

I wish I'd seen this post a couple of days ago! I've been bemoaning the same lack of meta newsletter-ness as well, and I've actually set up a comm (metanews).

I'm aiming for a more metafandom set up, in that it will hopefully be a collection of current/new meta links, rather than recs from any time frame. So perhaps a merge wouldn't work? But I haven't run a newsletter before though, so if anyone's interested in co-modding, or just giving me some modding advice it'd be much appreciated!

Also, I'm still trying to enlarge the pool I get my meta from, can you recommend any journals/comms that produce a lot of meta? (And would be willing to have said meta linked).

[melannen]

Oh, hey, that's really cool! I hope you have good luck with that! (I modded a newsletter for a while once, but it was in a very small fandom, so I don't think I can have much advice.)

And, uh, the only place I look for meta these days is my reading list. The people who've been responding to this post, mostly... Can I suggest maybe opening up membership on metanews, though? Keep posing restricted, but if you let people join the community, they'll show up on the community's reading list, and then you have a voluntary, ready-made feed of people who are interested in meta.