These are my livetweets from Casey Fiesler’s inspiring keynote at the Open Repositories Conference in Bozemen, Montana in June 2018.
Growing Their Own: Building an Archive and a Community for Fanfiction
by Casey Fiesler, JD, Ph.D.Archive of Our Own, a fanfiction repository with millions of users and works, was developed entirely by the community it serves, with a focus on representing the values of that community in its design and policies. Its history is rooted in needs for preservation, advocacy, and empowerment. This talk traces the growth and features of the archive, including grassroots development, design that promotes openness and inclusivity, and the benefits and challenges of maintaining a team of volunteers. Archive or Our Own is a unique example of a repository that has had a transformational effect on a community of content creators, and represents a design philosophy that could benefit other platforms as well.
The theme for Open Repositories is Sustaining Open, a theme that's also highly relevant to open education & open knowledge. #openrepo2018 #oer18 #oer19
— Lorna M. Campbell (@LornaMCampbell) June 5, 2018
.@cgknowles of @EdinburghUni now introducing @cfiesler's keynote on "Growing Their Own: Building an Archive and a Community for Fanfiction" at #openrepo2018
— Lorna M. Campbell (@LornaMCampbell) June 5, 2018
.@cfiesler started working with AO3 when she was a law student in 2009. This is her first opportunity to keynote about the archive. #openrepo2018
— Lorna M. Campbell (@LornaMCampbell) June 5, 2018
.@cfiesler Started out writing Star Trek fanfic on usenet in the late 90's. Fanfic was not invented with the internet. Media fandom started with original Star Trek zines in the 60's #openrepo2018
— Lorna M. Campbell (@LornaMCampbell) June 5, 2018
.@cfiesler in 2007 LJ had a policy change that made the fic writing community feel unwelcome there & many journals were deleted. #openrepo2018
— Lorna M. Campbell (@LornaMCampbell) June 5, 2018
.@cfiesler A great deal of content was being created *for free* and FanLib attempted to commercialise this. #openrepo2018
— Lorna M. Campbell (@LornaMCampbell) June 5, 2018
.@cfiesler The fanfic community has always been predominantly women & queer people, FanLib were all men. #openrepo2018
— Lorna M. Campbell (@LornaMCampbell) June 5, 2018
.@cfiesler Women of the fan community felt they did not have a space of their own. This gave rise to the idea to create a site fic writers could own – An Archive Of Our Own #openrepo2018
— Lorna M. Campbell (@LornaMCampbell) June 5, 2018
.@cfiesler AO3 started out with 3 women who started building the archive, accepting input from the community #openrepo2018
— Lorna M. Campbell (@LornaMCampbell) June 5, 2018
.@cfiesler AO3 now has one and a half million users and over four million individual fics. Fics cover *every* conceivable media. #openrepo2018
— Lorna M. Campbell (@LornaMCampbell) June 5, 2018
.@cfiesler AO3 is an example of amazing design for a community that already existed. The open software was designed & built entirely by women, which is remarkable given small no. of women in open source community. #openrepo2018
— Lorna M. Campbell (@LornaMCampbell) June 5, 2018
.@cfiesler Empowerment, inclusivity, preservation are all important themes to AO3 #openrepo2018
— Lorna M. Campbell (@LornaMCampbell) June 5, 2018
.@cfiesler A core value of AO3 is that the archive was built by users & maintained by the community. Sci-fi author Naomi Novik was one of the drivers of the project. #openrepo2018
— Lorna M. Campbell (@LornaMCampbell) June 5, 2018
.@cfiesler A lot of people commented on how different the user driven Archive is compared to other sites such as LJ. #openrepo2018
— Lorna M. Campbell (@LornaMCampbell) June 5, 2018
.@cfiesler The values of the community are embedded in the site, particularly in policy https://t.co/6Xdswr1qsr #openrepo2018
— Lorna M. Campbell (@LornaMCampbell) June 5, 2018
.@cfiesler Fan fiction is a legitimate art form and the Organisation for Transformative Works is committed to protecting the legal rights of creators #OpenRepo2018
— Lorna M. Campbell (@LornaMCampbell) June 5, 2018
.@cfiesler A specific decision was made to draw a line at legality, not at value judgement. This is enshrined in the terms of service. Content will not be removed unless it is illegal. #OpenRepo2018
— Lorna M. Campbell (@LornaMCampbell) June 5, 2018
.@cfiesler It's important that people are aware what they will come across on AO3 so the Archive uses rating icons so people can avoid upsetting or triggering content #OpenRepo2018
— Lorna M. Campbell (@LornaMCampbell) June 5, 2018
.@cfiesler There's a lot of tension around whether re-mixing fanfic should be allowed. AO3 allows remixing but only if writers link to related fics, and attribute original authors. #OpenRepo2018
— Lorna M. Campbell (@LornaMCampbell) June 5, 2018
.@cfiesler Inclusivity & Openness – AO3 has a diversity statement and is committed to accessibility https://t.co/fbfidRWrLL #OpenRepo2018
— Lorna M. Campbell (@LornaMCampbell) June 5, 2018
.@cfiesler AO3 volunteers translate ToC in multiple languages & fics can also be translated #OpenRepo2018
— Lorna M. Campbell (@LornaMCampbell) June 5, 2018
.@cfiesler AO3 content is categorised using a curated folksonomy. Writers can create any tags they want. Behind the scenes is a complex infrastructure supported by volunteer tag wranglers. #OpenRepo2018
— Lorna M. Campbell (@LornaMCampbell) June 5, 2018
.@cfiesler Managing tag creation for an infinite diversity of sources was important so this tagging system was implemented from the beginning but it only works because of volunteer tag wranglers #OpenRepo2018
— Lorna M. Campbell (@LornaMCampbell) June 5, 2018
.@cfiesler Recently undertook a survey of fandom platform migration over time. Fandom is a platform agnostic community, it migrates with technology. #OpenRepo2018
— Lorna M. Campbell (@LornaMCampbell) June 5, 2018
.@cfiesler Use of AO3 and tumblr is increasing, use of LJ has dropped off precipitously. Every time fandoms move something is lost, e.g. GeoCities #OpenRepo2018
— Lorna M. Campbell (@LornaMCampbell) June 5, 2018
.@cfiesler AO3 preserves not only fanfic archives but also fandom history. #OpenRepo2018
— Lorna M. Campbell (@LornaMCampbell) June 5, 2018
.@cfiesler The preservation of fan history ensures that women's contribution to technology and media does not get erased. #OpenRepo2018
— Lorna M. Campbell (@LornaMCampbell) June 5, 2018
.@cfieslerMany Early creators of fanvids were very afraid of copyright violation so women tended to be wary of central archives. #OpenRepo2018
— Lorna M. Campbell (@LornaMCampbell) June 5, 2018
.@cfiesler FanLore Wiki was created at the same time as AO3 to preserve fandom history https://t.co/t5iHUkbAGJ #OpenRepo2018
— Lorna M. Campbell (@LornaMCampbell) June 5, 2018
.@cfiesler AO3's Open Doors Project enables other fanarchives to be uploaded to the Archive on mass as special collections. #OpenRepo2018
— Lorna M. Campbell (@LornaMCampbell) June 5, 2018
.@cfiesler There is also a tension between preservation & control. Many people want to be able to wipe out their fanfiction instantly. #OpenRepo2018
— Lorna M. Campbell (@LornaMCampbell) June 5, 2018
.@cfiesler AO3 allows users to orphan their fics. Authors can remove their identity from their works. This is permanent, it removes all trace of authorship. People have control without destroying the content #OpenRepo2018
— Lorna M. Campbell (@LornaMCampbell) June 5, 2018
.@cfiesler We have a lack of women in CS in general and Open Source in particular. E.g. Wikipedia has an acrimonious culture that can drive women away. AO3 is not like that. #openrepo2018
— Lorna M. Campbell (@LornaMCampbell) June 5, 2018
.@cfiesler AO3 fosters a loving environment for women developers. Fandom community brought it's own values into technical development. It nurtures literacy & encouragement. #openrepo2018
— Lorna M. Campbell (@LornaMCampbell) June 5, 2018
.@cfiesler There's a long history of people learning HTML and video editing to contribute to fandoms that they love. #openrepo2018
— Lorna M. Campbell (@LornaMCampbell) June 5, 2018
.@cfiesler There are problems though, we have an expertise bottleneck and a high rate of developer burn out because of this. #openrepo2018
— Lorna M. Campbell (@LornaMCampbell) June 5, 2018
.@cfiesler is there something here that's the key to making open source more welcoming to women? I don't know. #openrepo2018
— Lorna M. Campbell (@LornaMCampbell) June 5, 2018
.@cfiesler What I do know is that if you love something enough you can build your own thing and make it work. #openrepo2018
— Lorna M. Campbell (@LornaMCampbell) June 5, 2018
.@cfiesler AO3 is a great example of a successful open repository but it's an even better example of the power of community & everything that can come out of it. #openrepo2018
— Lorna M. Campbell (@LornaMCampbell) June 5, 2018
Thanks to @cfiesler for an amazing opening keynote. #openrepo2018
— Lorna M. Campbell (@LornaMCampbell) June 5, 2018
.@cfiesler's point that inclusive culture is "what makes the thing go" is such an important point. This has to be an explicit, foundational priority for communities. #OpenRepo2018
— Nick Shockey (@nshockey) June 5, 2018
.@cfiesler AO3 has always been pseudonymous, fan communities have always been like this, because there is so much stigma around fanfic. AO3 allows you to link pseudonyms. #openrepo2018
— Lorna M. Campbell (@LornaMCampbell) June 5, 2018
.@cfiesler Pseudonymity is so important, it's almost impossible to imagine AO3 having a real name policy. That's not to say there isn't bad behaviour though. #openrepo2018
— Lorna M. Campbell (@LornaMCampbell) June 5, 2018
Interesting question re use of CC licences in AO3. The Archive itself has a CC licence. Authors own their own fic, but not the characters they write. #openrepo2018
— Lorna M. Campbell (@LornaMCampbell) June 5, 2018
.@cfiesler If authors want their fics to be more open, AO3 points them to @creativecommons #openrepo2018
— Lorna M. Campbell (@LornaMCampbell) June 5, 2018
Love @cfiesler's emphasis on the tension between preservation and control when looking at community archives. Relevant to all remix + #datapres cultures for sure. #copyright #openrepo2018
— Lily Troia (@LilyTroia) June 5, 2018
Interested in reading this by @cfiesler on Archive of Our Own & “feminist HCI and values in design” https://t.co/1pu0UJgkbO #OpenRepo2018 https://t.co/VqIZx7vWW3
— Anne Donlon (@annetiquate) June 5, 2018
.@cfiesler Drawing comparisons between AO3 and Ravelry and asking how communities like this can help and support each other. #openrepo2018
— Lorna M. Campbell (@LornaMCampbell) June 5, 2018
.@cfiesler Like Wikipedia, AO3 shouldn't have been such a huge success. It's one of my favourite success stories of the internet. #openrepo2018 < Mine too!
— Lorna M. Campbell (@LornaMCampbell) June 5, 2018
Many thanks to all at #openrepo2018 particularly @cfiesler. I'll stop spamming your hashtag now :}
— Lorna M. Campbell (@LornaMCampbell) June 5, 2018
