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

[amaresu]

I went to Fanlore to see if I'd been linked on it at all. The results were surprising, especially on the occasions where my fic was used as an example of a topic.

More importantly I'd forgotten I'd written stuff for idol_reflection, ship_manifesto, and crack_van. It was kind of fun to revisit those essays.

More importantly someone had gone through the trouble to archive and save the response I got from Patricia C. Wrede during RaceFail. Something I'm pretty sure I don't have in my email anymore. It's been 9 1/2 years afterall.

This is why I think linking and archiving public posts is important. People should be able to go back and read what came before. We really don't need to reinvent the wheel every 3 years, despite how much fandom enjoys doing that. But it's also important to remember that if something was posted a decade ago you can't respond to it like it was posted last week.

I'm also of the opinion that if I no longer agree with something I said years ago I can lock the post and go on with my life. People change and outside of sites like Tumblr we can control who can see things. But there should definitely be an understanding that you don't go on a historical post and act like an asshat.