silwritersguild | SWG Tumblr Satellite: Lingering Questions on What We Will Allow

Thank you to everyone who has participated in the discussions thus far about our Tumblr satellite. To recap, here are the posts so far:

Setting Up an SWG "Satellite" Group on Tumblr

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

I want to begin by saying that, going forward, I will be presenting certain issues as settled when a strong majority of discussion participants have reached an agreement. However, if you have a concern with the decision as it stands, please bring it up. We can reopen discussion on that issue.

The last post asked what content we want to allow on our tumblr. The following issues were agreed upon by a majority of partipants:

Posting stories will not be allowed. Posting Silmfic directly to the SWG tumblr will not be allowed. There were several issues raised that led to this consensus: 1) the inability to enforce SWG etiquette guidelines on reblogs (and so the introduction of incivility into SWG spaces, which is not cool) and 2) questions over whether the original author could edit/delete her/his own content.

Likewise, discussions will not be hosted on our tumblr either for the same reason of being unable to enforce our group's rules on a site that allows reblogs and comments by non-members.

Posting links to stories by someone who is not the author (fic recs, link roundups, etc.) will not be done. Link roundups, it was widely felt, duplicate what is already available in the newsletter. In addition, several people expressed discomfort with having links to their work posted on Tumblr. While the ability to link is the nature of the Internet, I also strongly feel that I do not want the SWG to enable anything that makes our members uncomfortable.

Links to one's own stories will be allowed (SSPs). Where there is not consensus is whether those links can point to other tumblrs or if they must point to outside archives/groups/websites. The SWG guidelines do require work to be presented with at least minimal care: "While SWG is intended as a place for authors to get constructive feedback on their work, and works-in-progress are welcomed, authors should nonetheless observe minimal standards of professionalism when presenting their work. Work shared on our site should be proofread by the author, run through a spell-checker, and organized in manuscript format. (That is, stories should be separated clearly into sentences and paragraphs.) While everyone makes the occasional error and we do not require perfection, we do expect that these minimal standards be met." This is something to keep in mind as we make a final decision on the shape we'd like this to take.

We will allow announcements from other groups about Tolkien-related events/challenges/etc.

Posting artwork that is not yours will not be allowed. This is a copyright violation that is against both the rules and spirit of the SWG. (Whether posting your own artwork should be allowed remains to be decided--see below.)

The question of whether we should we accept "asks" for questions about the texts generated a lot of discussion and different opinions. Feelings on this range from, "Yes! This would be a cool resource!" to "No! We don't want to get in the business of being seen as trying to be arbiters of canon!" with everything in between, including ideas of how such questions might be used to open discussions on LJ or become a component of the newsletter or the Reference section on the site. I'll be breaking down the various proposals and concerns with each for discussion on a later post, although do feel free to keep discussing it in the meantime, if you want.

So the lingering questions from the last round of discussion that I'd like to figure out answers to in this round are:

Will we accept submissions of visual art (traditional art, digital art, animations, videos, etc.) by the original artist?

Will we accept links to stories posted anywhere, including Tumblr? Or must the story be posted on an archive outside of Tumblr? (The "minimal standards of professionalism" already required on the SWG will remain in place for our tumblr as well. A comment I wrote about SSPs on the last discussion post would hold true: "an SSP ... is intended to call attention to a piece that the author thinks is at a point where it publishable quality.")

Will we post links to articles of interest to the Silm community? If yes, would these articles be only off-Tumblr, or would we allow links to interesting articles/posts on Tumblr as well?

We'll tackle asks next time and then I might actually be ready to start drafting some guidelines for people to gleefully tear apart! :D Thanks again to everyone who has participated so far!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

dawn_felagund

Tumblr to me is like a megaphone. It's mine, I personally own it and control it, but I wouldn't put anything on it that I wouldn't shout out with a megaphone into a crowd. I am constantly surprised at the things people are comfortable putting out there given that Tumblr Is Forever.

in Tolkien fandom there's five main books and well over a dozen supplementary texts

Yes. We've talked about something similar before, I think, when you linked me that awesome article about how Silm fandom felt different to someone who had participated in the broader Fandom-with-a-capital-F. Our canon is ridiculously complicated. Tolkien meta is rather like advanced math--you have to show your work! :)

Hence my Aelfwine meta there instead of a peer-reviewed thing

I was probably going to bug you about that when I started my renewed effort on the Reference section ... ;) Of course, I do understand if you want it to stay on just the archive, but I had to chuckle since when I think "Reference section," that essay is one of the thoughts that percolates into my mind ...

From:

independence1776

I think there's a false sense of security because of how fast the site moves. Just because it's there-and-gone on your dash doesn't mean it's actually disappeared.

Our canon is ridiculously complicated. Tolkien meta is rather like advanced math--you have to show your work!

We have! And we do. I don't understand how people don't get that. Sources might be annoying to do, but they're for your readers' benefit.

Of course, I do understand if you want it to stay on just the archive,

Lemme think about it. I'm more likely to say yes if it can be posted in its entirety in both places. (Which I wasn't clear on, given how all the other Reference essays posted in the archive proper are links rather than text.) But I still look at all the Reference essays and go, "…Mine's short, mostly cites, hardly any analysis, and nothing like any of those. It doesn't fit."

*looks at the above comment* We have gone completely off topic at this point, haven't we?

From:

dawn_felagund

Yes we have! :D I stopped using my mod icon when I realized I wasn't really speaking as a mod at all anymore ...

You have time on the essay! I'm not going to even think about working on References until I get this Tumblr thing out of the way and get B2MeM off to a decent start. I don't see any reason why we can't keep the essay in full in both places; we usually put in the redirect so that if you want to make edits, we only have to fix it in one place and it will reflect changes across the site. (This is less an issue with the essays than with the character bios, since they are also posted in the newsletter; if I had to fix one typo, then I had to edit four files. So I started using a PHP include to pull in a single HTML file of essay/bio wherever it was required. But since the archive would probably choke and die if I used a PHP include there, then I forced in a redirect to the Reference section instead. This all sounds like I treat the website very violently, doesn't it? :D) But using the redirect instead of keeping a copy on the archive is certainly not something I'm going to stomp my foot down on and give up an essay that I'd like to see in References. ;)

It might be shorter than most of what's in there but it succinctly addresses what is really (in my mind) a pivotal issue to understanding all of the texts but especially that ever-misused L&C.

And (I'm replying to this comment backward, I think ...) I have found most of the posts about me on Tumblr from doing a vanity search on Google for "dawn felagund" (which I try to do every few months for myself and the SWG so as to hopefully see any possible drama coming before it explodes on our site ...) and discovering Tumblr posts mentioning my name. So yeah ... they're not only findable but not that hard to find, for someone who does the right search.

From:

independence1776

And now I'm wondering if we've scared everyone else away, given the lack of activity on this post. :P

You have time on the essay! I'm not going to even think about working on References until I get this Tumblr thing out of the way and get B2MeM off to a decent start.

Oh, good. Then I'm not going to think about it until the new year myself, what with Nano, a holiday fic exchange I signed up for, and the community reread to get off the ground.

I don't see any reason why we can't keep the essay in full in both places; we usually put in the redirect so that if you want to make edits, we only have to fix it in one place and it will reflect changes across the site.

Awesome. At this point, the only edit I can think of may be to delete a sentence that makes the essay a bit more wishy-washy than I'd like, but I'm not worrying about it right now. (Which, I'm not in the habit of changing anything after I post stuff, anyway. Once it's up, it's done.)

I wondered about why the redirects are there. Thank you for answering my unspoken question!

Heh. You may convince me yet.

I can't do a vanity search; too much stuff about the Revolutionary War comes up. Which is actually one of the many reasons I like my sceenname, though I hadn't thought about that when I picked it ten years ago. (At this point, I have the feeling if someone called me "Indy" in person, I'd probably respond…)

From:

dawn_felagund

And now I'm wondering if we've scared everyone else away, given the lack of activity on this post. :P

:D I'm not surprised that this post is much ... calmer ... than the last. That one asked for much more general feedback, which invites more commentary that encourages one to share their general views on Tumblr ... which are quite passionate, often, it seems! :)

This post's questions are boring in comparison; not likely to provoke the same kinds of strong opinions.

Once it's up, it's done.

That's me too! I reach a point where I no longer allow myself to make even minor edits on pieces (like AMC, which has now been revised, I think, three times).

I wondered about why the redirects are there. Thank you for answering my unspoken question!

You're welcome! It was our slightly awkward way to link References with the archive. :)

Heh. You may convince me yet.

>:^))

At this point, I have the feeling if someone called me "Indy" in person, I'd probably respond…

When I was still participating in SCA, the first time I got called into court, I was called as "Dawn Felagund." >.

From:

ladybrooke

I think Tolkien meta is worse than advanced math. :P At least with math, there's a right answer. With meta, regardless of citations, it's all screwy. Some people will think you're 'right'. Other people will think you deserve to be chased down and thrown in a dumpster because you're 'wrong'. And other people will start playing the Swiss national anthem. Granted, I do (to some degree) like both of advanced math and meta, for different reasons, so I'm probably biased. /OT rambling

From:

dawn_felagund

You went with my metaphor! That makes me unreasonably happy for some reason. (Probably because--speaking of meta and citations--I have spent most of the day hunting down citations for the paper I'm presenting in December, having a habit of putting in things like CITE or SOMEWHERE IN CH 2 for citations while I'm in a good groove writing and don't feel like stopping to hunt through books.)

At least with citations, you might get thrown into that dumpster, but dangit, at least your argument can't be dismissed as having no basis in the texts! :D

From:

ladybrooke

I like your metaphor! :D (I've spent most of the semester writing out ASA style citations, it feels like. And there's still a few more to go. I hope finding the citations went easily, at least.)

Well, it can't be dismissed as having no basis if people stop and think. There's still always that one person, but I'm used to 'that one person' from uni.

I could whine about how, after a semester of both my prof and me talking about my project at least once a week in class, my classmates still couldn't even come up with a guess at what a content analysis was. And then a few of them laughed while I was talking about mine...I have the feeling a few of them think it isn't 'real' research. :P People can be silly.