I do think that "fandom" is potentially a very broad term -- you can be a fan of a certain type of horse, or of a sports team, or of certain academics (or even an academic who is also a fan), so I don't think the term "fan" is a negative or exclusive (ie fanatic). But the issue of sex and sexuality is a major one for fandom (as we're speaking of it, in terms of fangirls and fanboys and fanothers) and that's also a major sticking point for a lot of major bookmarking sites.
One of the first ruckuses I heard, in the wake of delicious, was that diigo was summarily erasing and/or suppressing a lot of the pr0n bookmarks. That speaks to me of marginalization on the grounds that, idk, the internets must be safe for the wimminz and childrunz. I've seen LJ do the same, and tumblr, and other sites -- cut out the sex/sexuality/gender stuff that fans bring, along the way to cutting out the fans and making the place more welcoming for, y'know, "real people" and not those fans with their crazy interests and obscure shows and shota.
That kind of awareness (of previous cut-outs) is the reason I'm also shying away from encouraging anyone (or emphasizing strongly in the reqs) the idea of saving a copy or snapshot of a site. I get the archival interest, but I also have seen one too many times where fan interests -- be it fanart of Harry Potter and Severus Snape, or just meta about shota or outright pr0nfic -- are at odds with investors... and it's always, always, the investors (or the really freaking noisy fundamentalists who scare investors) who win. The fans don't win. And given the law is on investor/fundie sides in terms of "storing" material on servers, it's even more of a stacked deck, currently.
So not archiving onsite is a price I'd be willing to pay for the ability to otherwise have fandom able to access, libraryize, bookmark, and exchange all the links it wants. Yes, it's a trade-off, and like any trade-off, it's not perfect. But setting up an app for fail on account of a known route used by the opposition doesn't seem like a good idea, to me.
In a way, I feel like I'm echoing our party's hosts (dreamwidth) in the sense that I'd like to build something where the fans do get to win. For once. It may mean that what gets built isn't puppies and rainbows of awesomesauce at first, and it may take a little longer to grow itself there, but it's still better than making do with a bookmarking application where fandom isn't just marginalized, it's outright marked for eventual termination.
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Date: 6 Oct 2011 11:19 pm (UTC)I do think that "fandom" is potentially a very broad term -- you can be a fan of a certain type of horse, or of a sports team, or of certain academics (or even an academic who is also a fan), so I don't think the term "fan" is a negative or exclusive (ie fanatic). But the issue of sex and sexuality is a major one for fandom (as we're speaking of it, in terms of fangirls and fanboys and fanothers) and that's also a major sticking point for a lot of major bookmarking sites.
One of the first ruckuses I heard, in the wake of delicious, was that diigo was summarily erasing and/or suppressing a lot of the pr0n bookmarks. That speaks to me of marginalization on the grounds that, idk, the internets must be safe for the wimminz and childrunz. I've seen LJ do the same, and tumblr, and other sites -- cut out the sex/sexuality/gender stuff that fans bring, along the way to cutting out the fans and making the place more welcoming for, y'know, "real people" and not those fans with their crazy interests and obscure shows and shota.
That kind of awareness (of previous cut-outs) is the reason I'm also shying away from encouraging anyone (or emphasizing strongly in the reqs) the idea of saving a copy or snapshot of a site. I get the archival interest, but I also have seen one too many times where fan interests -- be it fanart of Harry Potter and Severus Snape, or just meta about shota or outright pr0nfic -- are at odds with investors... and it's always, always, the investors (or the really freaking noisy fundamentalists who scare investors) who win. The fans don't win. And given the law is on investor/fundie sides in terms of "storing" material on servers, it's even more of a stacked deck, currently.
So not archiving onsite is a price I'd be willing to pay for the ability to otherwise have fandom able to access, libraryize, bookmark, and exchange all the links it wants. Yes, it's a trade-off, and like any trade-off, it's not perfect. But setting up an app for fail on account of a known route used by the opposition doesn't seem like a good idea, to me.
In a way, I feel like I'm echoing our party's hosts (dreamwidth) in the sense that I'd like to build something where the fans do get to win. For once. It may mean that what gets built isn't puppies and rainbows of awesomesauce at first, and it may take a little longer to grow itself there, but it's still better than making do with a bookmarking application where fandom isn't just marginalized, it's outright marked for eventual termination.