It's past time to cut through this fucking buillshit.

[tzikeh]

I have stayed out of the OTW insanity since it began. I didn't even know how to begin to talk about it, and I didn't want to wade in while things were shaking out, and I didn't want to read things that were going to make me angry, because I knew it would just cause me impotent rage, since there was nothing I would be able to do.



I HAVE NO PROBLEM WITH PEOPLE WHO DON'T LIKE/DON'T WANT TO PARTICIPATE IN THE OTW IF THEIR PHILOSOPHIES ARE IN DIRECT CONFLICT (bolded now for those who fail at reading comprehension and think I'm defending OTW, instead of what I'm actually doing, which is bitching about people who hide their identities so that they can say nasty things about OTW), but I am so done with people who are against the OTW with absolutely no facts to back up their opposition. They are the Teabagging Party when it comes to OTW: frothing at the mouth with blind hatred, but they have absolutely no fucking facts and they just believe whatever their mental, seething leaders say without bothering with critical thought, or fact-finding of their own.

In case anyone reading this thinks that I'm somehow part of the OTW "machine," let me be crystal clear. I have no part in OTW. I'm not on the board, I'm not a beta-tester, I'm not a coder, I'm not part of the PR department, I'm not anything at all when it comes to the project. But I am DONE with this fucking insane bullshit Teabagger-mentality ignorance that has spread through some sections of fandom that are just spoiling for a fight with the OTW, because they've heard from someone who knows someone who said something they didn't like.

I have fucking HAD IT.

Whiny, shitty fucks who bitch about the OTW, but create sock-puppet accounts to do it so no one who knows them will know it was *them*, can shove it up their own asses. Cowards. Bullies. Those of you who have a beef with the OTW and have created sock-puppet accounts just to write about it? Show your faces, you craven pieces of shit. How dare you hide so that nobody who knows you finds out what you think. Afraid of conflict with people you know? Coward. You want to dish it out while not having to own it. Put up or shut up.

Comments

[ficangel.livejournal.com]

Okay, gotcha. That's...well, I'll be frank, that's interesting, not necessarily in the flattering sense, because Yuletide is and was the biggest pan-fandom social event of the year well before it was pulled (inadvertently or no) into the politics of the OTW*, but I don't have any reason to disbelieve the assertion that the old servers had had about all they could take. However, if AO3 was genuinely the only server remotely capable of handling that visiter load, and those who deleted their stories would be those who disagreed with the OTW that they would be highly unlikely to participate again, anyway, then the mods gotta crunch the numbers and do what's necessary. I can respect that. It's unfortunate but probably necessary, and I hope that the anti-OTW guys can put together their old challenge and that there's lots of cross-reccing next year.

*I don't mean "politics" in a pejorative sense, and if I was going to hate on astolat, then surely I could find a better reason than her membership in the OTW. But it has been a major bone of contention in fandom over the past couple of years, and ignoring that would be disingenuous. Again, I don't mean that to be any more than a factual statement; elynross in particular has made comments to the effect that, yeah, the Yuletide mods got that before they proceeded forward.

[lydiabell.livejournal.com]

but I don't have any reason to disbelieve the assertion that the old servers had had about all they could take.

Bless you, seriously, because I have seen people speculating that they are lying about the impossibility of continuing on the old software*, and that is more than I can take.

* It's mostly a software issue, and AFAIK the AO3 code really is the only software that's up to the task. Certainly I've not seen anyone suggest a viable alternative.

[the-shoshanna.livejournal.com]

Oh, pshaw, Lydia! If astolat really cared about fandom, she would've totally pulled a third fully-featured archive program out of her ass, just for Yuletide.

[lydiabell.livejournal.com]

::flails:: Apparently! I don't know!

(ETA: totally not directed at you, ficangel)

[ficangel.livejournal.com]

No worries! If either mod had a rep as a liar in fandom, that would be one thing, but they seriously don't, so....even not allowing that I believe in believing the best until proven otherwise, one of these options is far more simple and thus more likely than GRAND OTW CONSPIRACY OMG.

[lydiabell.livejournal.com]

::giggles::

I KNOW, RIGHT?

[harriet-spy.livejournal.com]

Yuletide is and was the biggest pan-fandom social event of the year well before it was pulled (inadvertently or no) into the politics of the OTW

Yes. A "social event" created and sustained by enormous quantities of time, effort, and money on the part of the mods (in case people don't know, it was astolat's creation in the first place). A free and voluntary yearly gift to fandom from the mods and the coders. It's their project. If they choose to move it to another server, it's really their business. If they chose to shut it down altogether, no one should have word one to say against them. It's a present to fandom. Yuletide is not some independent fandom institution in which we all have some ownership, and it's certainly not being hijacked by the OTW.

People are entitled to a reasonable degree of control over where their stories end up, which it seems to me the Yuletide mods intend to provide. They are not entitled to have Yuletide stay the way it was, forever. Especially when I don't see any of them stepping forward to offer the huge resources that would have been required to rescue the archive from collapse this year.

I'm not trying to pick on you in particular, I'm just responding to the assumption I see embedded in a lot of complaints that somehow they are being unjustly deprived of something they have a right to just because Yuletide is choosing to take advantage of space donated by the OTW.

[ficangel.livejournal.com]

'Kay; I won't take it personally. It is an enormous effort being lifted off of the ground by two people all on their lonesome, and that astolat and elynross have made room in this particular instance for dissenters to the OTW and AO3 to back out does back the OTW's* claim towards egalitarianism and transparency. My objection, before policy was clarified to me, was in people not being able to control where gift-fics wound up (which I could see an argument being made for, but it would depend on answering a lot of questions concerning recs, the value of feedback by those other than author, and outside archiving after the reveal that don't appear relevant to the discussion as it's shaping up) that seem to be handled (elynross's clarifying comment in the thread I linked comes on 12/9, and while I formed my opinion early in December 2009, I certainly hope that I did so before that; I've been made of reading comprehension FAIL before, but not to that extent). I mean, I hope that that deletion doesn't mean that you're done, period, and people are able to write a NYR or something similar to regain eligibility if Yuletide should move again, but I can't see that coming any more than the mods could have seen the move to AO3 coming when they first conceived of Yuletide in the first place.

Um, honestly, you've brought up something very interesting in the Yuletide-as-gift argument, but I haven't had a chance to think on it very deeply, and honestly all arguments that I can come up with off of the top of my head involve superheroes as thought experiments. Ah, astolat and elynross are undoubtedly very cool, do a lot of heavy lifting, and deserve their bottles of wine once all the dust settles again after NYE, but I wouldn't go that far just yet. :)

They are not entitled to have Yuletide stay the way it was, forever.

No, my original complaint basically centered around people having signed a contract to submit their stories to Yuletide that, years ago, didn't see the OTW as a gleam in anyone's eye, let alone the move to AO3, having a valid reason to say, "Ah, this is not the same dotted line that was in front of us before," when it looked as though they weren't going to be able to delete their stories at will having a reasonable complaint. "Yuletide is moving" is not the same thing as "Yuletide is moving onto servers controlled by a major fannish bone of contention" are not quite the same thing. If the Yuletide servers had had all they could handle**, then the mods gots to do what they gots to do, and once the dissenters are given a reasonable out it becomes a hell of a lot less of a normative issue.

*I know that OTW =/= Yuletide, I'm referring to Yuletide's being hosted on OTW's servers as a major political reason for some people to dissent. The dissenters' reasoning ought to be entirely irrelevant to Yuletide's response if they hadn't agreed to allow deletion from the archive in this instance, anyway.

**And again: if either mod had a rep in fandom as a liar, that would be one thing, but they don't, so I'm not going to assume that they would bite off their own feet by bringing forth this kind of wank-storm unless the archive seriously really did need to move even if I did have a hate-on for the OTW, and I really don't, and don't understand a lot of the arguments against its very existence. That sounds weirdly defensive, but there are a lot of "FOR US ARE AGAINST US!!!" arguments floating about over the past couple of years since the OTW got off of the ground that make me be like, "For you....? But not while signing away my right to object ever, because that's crazy-pants?"

[harriet-spy.livejournal.com]

I'm not going to assume that they would bite off their own feet by bringing forth this kind of wank-storm unless the archive seriously really did need to move

You know what? It wouldn't matter if they did. It's their project. This is what you don't seem to be processing. The Yuletide archive ran on astolat's code and the collective time and, frankly, money of the mods as a whole. Subject to some reasonable authorial control over location of stories, if they want to move it to a server hosted by NAMBLA, they can. If they want to close it down, they can. If they want to set it on fire, they can. It belongs to them. Not to fandom-as-a-whole. No matter how popular it is.

[klia.livejournal.com]

The Yuletide archive ran on astolat's code and the collective time and, frankly, money of the mods as a whole.

I wondered if anyone would bring this up, because, yeah, I doubt most Yuletide participants give a moment's thought to wondering or caring who's bankrolling their fun -- just as long as it's not them. *fumes*

[tree]

so now that OTW members are bankrolling yuletide ('cause we own the servers, *\o/*) does that mean unhappy fans are going to hunt us down? if so, i might have to rethink my philosophy of pacifism.

[the-shoshanna.livejournal.com]

Hell, I just hope that no OTW members are the sort of people who try to bully meter readers and city clerks and so on by yelling, "I'm a taxpayer! I PAY YOUR SALARY!" *g*

[tree]

so...i shouldn't demand an author write the fic i want because i'm paying for the servers? i don't understand this earth logic!

[klia.livejournal.com]

That wasn't what I meant. I'm just tired of people bitching about events with little or no thought for how they're made possible year after year.

[tree]

err, it was a (clearly very poor *cough*) joke.

[thebratqueen.livejournal.com]

Just wanna say that I've never particicpated in Yuletide other than reading some of the fics after the fact and yet - WORD. EFFING WORD. THANK YOU.

Ahem. Carry on.