Special Edition: TWM Content Poll

[thisweekmod]

Hello all! After the most recent kerfuffle, I thought I would take this opportunity to ask what folks felt would be the best practices for the newsletter regarding certain sites and types of links.

I have made a Content Poll-- it's not long, and if you don't like any of the options you can totally post a comment here instead. It asks about etiquette regarding Dreamwidth/LiveJournal communities, Fanlore pages, Fanlore-found links, and what to do when an Original Poster is not available for contact.

All these questions assume the post being linked is not locked or private, and that the entity doing the linking is a newsletter.

Edit: Some further context for why linking and linking permissions is so hotly debated in fandom (Fanlore).

My own answers are currently along the lines of: community posts are probably fine to link because they were posted widely to begin with; Fanlore pages made through explicit permission of OP is best, but for certain historical meta it's okay to link anyway; linking to Fanlore to provide further context is fine; no way to ask for permission means no link; if the OP has completely disappeared from fandom and/or online, it's fine to link their stuff.

But I want to know what you think! :)

The comments here are open, and I encourage you all to discuss your thoughts with me and with each other. We've had some really good discussions in the last few days, and I'm interested in seeing what you all think about these specific linking situations.

If you can think of anything else that might be missing from either the poll or the editorial guidelines, please let me know.

Thank you! ♥

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Rather than asking whether it is acceptable to link, might it be worth raising the issue of consent?

When the creative commons licenses first launched, a lot of bloggers (quite self-importantly in hindsight) put up their commercial re-use policies. Might it be worth trying to normalise people expressing their consent with regards to linking?

I mean... The issue isn't so much linking per se but rather what happens when people continue to get linked and scrutinised when they don't actually want to be subject to that level of scrutiny. That is the fail-state we're worried about right?

[cimorene]

Yes, this is a good point. In fact, there has been an effort already in media fandom to normalize standard consent in profiles - IIRC raised by podfic craze some years ago - and many people included link, quote, remix, etc permissions in that consent.

My view is that anyone with blanket permission to link in their profile probably intended to give permission for newsletter links as well, but I suppose you could still stumble onto an exception somewhere.

[thisweekmod]

My view is that anyone with blanket permission to link in their profile probably intended to give permission for newsletter links as well, but I suppose you could still stumble onto an exception somewhere.

Yeah, that's why I've been double-checking with people even if they have an "okay to link" policy if it doesn't specifically mention newsletters, because a newsletter linking often has a different purpose/outcome than an individual linking.