silwritersguild | SWG Tumblr Satellite: What to Allow on Our tumblr??

[Those who initially expressed interest in helping set up a tumblr for the SWG have agreed to hold the discussion here on LJ. Anyone is welcome to participate, whether you are part of the group that said you'd help out or not.]

I would like to kick off our discussion of the SWG Tumblr satellite by beginning with the points that were brought up on the first post about the Tumblr satellite. Before we begin, a few points of clarification will hopefully be helpful in keeping the discussion from drifting off in unproductive directions. :)

This will be an SWG group, run under SWG guidelines. We have always strived to create an online fannish space that is both welcoming and inclusive, as well as civil and open-minded. As such, any decisions made about the Tumblr satellite have to be able to accommodate existing group rules and these goals that are as old as the SWG and indeed one of the reasons I founded it.

This satellite is not intended to replace any of the other SWG satellites. Tumblr is good for some things and not so good for others. Part of our purpose should be figuring out what it is good for and how we can best use that to allow the SWG to reach more of the Silmarillion fandom.

Any submissions to the SWG tumblr by non-admins will be moderated, i.e., will have to be approved by an admin before appearing on the SWG tumblr.

I think a good point to begin discussion is: What kinds of content do we want to allow on the SWG tumblr? At a minimum, the tumblr will include group news and announcements from admins. (This would include links to the newsletter, any events we're running, etc. ... the kinds of stuff that we mod-types already post to our satellites as a matter of course.) This is sort of the baseline, and it may be that we decide that this is all we want. However, the original discussion suggested the possibility of including the following as well:

Silmarillion-based stories

links to Silm-based stories

Silm-based artwork

discussion posts/questions

questions (i.e., requests for canon/research/language/etc. help)

round-ups of links to updates on the archive

round-ups of links to posts/discussions on other SWG satellites (LJ, DW, and Yahoo!)

announcements from other groups relevant to the Silm fandom (challenges, etc.)

links to interesting articles/resources (related to Tolkien, fandom, writing, or all of the above!) outside of Tumblr

links to interesting articles/resources (related to Tolkien, fandom, writing, or all of the above!) within Tumblr

Anything else you could see going on the SWG tumblr??

Several concerns were brought up in the first discussion with enough frequency that I think they bear addressing here as well.

Reblogging. The nature of Tumblr is that anyone who belongs to the site can reblog anything posted to the site, adding their own comments and presenting the original content to a whole new audience. This means that, while we can require content posted to the SWG tumblr to conform to site rules, then we have no control over what happens to that content once it is reblogged. For example, if we allowed stories to be posted to the tumblr, a person could reblog that story and add nasty or mocking comments that would not be allowable under the SWG's etiquette guidelines. A discussion that starts on our tumblr could be reblogged and devolve into incivility or insults lobbed at the original poster. There is nothing that we can do about any of these things.

The SWG has become a safe space for many people, who know that they can post stories, questions, ideas about the canon, etc. without being attacked, mocked, or treated cruelly. That doesn't mean that we don't have heated discussions and disagreements sometimes ... we do, and this is a good thing. But I like to hope that we also maintain a level of civility in those disagreements where people do not feel attacked or piled upon. I think it is essential to keep this group (even on Tumblr!) as a safe space and a civil space.

Inability to edit/delete. Once something is posted to the SWG tumblr, my understanding is that the original poster can no longer delete (or edit?) it. Certainly, once something is reblogged, even if the original post is deleted--because we would certainly honor any requests to delete content posted to the SWG tumblr from the original poster--then those reblogs remain in place, and so the content is still publicly available, presumably in its original (unedited) form. This could become a problem for some content, like stories, where the author might be inclined to remove or edit a piece down the road.

So I think the main goal of this first post is to figure out what we want to allow on the SWG tumblr. Of course, any other points of discussion that you want to bring up here are welcome too!

Comments on this post will be publicly viewable. If you have something you'd like to say off the record, our door is always open: Email the SWG mod team at moderator@silmarillionwritersguild.org.

ETA: There has been a lot of productive discussion on this post. Thank you all. I will be holding off on posting the next discussion topic until the beginning of next week, since many people use the weekends to catch up on stuff like this. I am still very much interested in hearing the opinions of our members on the questions above. (Many of the comments are discussions on comments; keep in mind that relatively few people have actually responded! :) Nor are you obligated to wade through 70+ comments in order to participate. I'm interested in hearing thoughts on the questions above, even if you don't have time to review what's already been said.