000. welcome & faq

[tozka]

This Week in Meta is a pan-fandom meta newsletter. It collects links from: Dreamwidth, LiveJournal, Tumblr, Twitter, Youtube, blogs, and anywhere else people may be writing and talking about meta. Newsletter guidelines, linking rules and etiquette, as well as posting policies and moderator accounts can be found here.

Anyone can join and anyone can comment, but only editors can post.

FAQ

What is meta?
"In fandom, meta is used to describe a discussion of fanworks of all kinds, fan work in relation to the source text, fanfiction characters and their motivation and psychology, fan behavior, and fandom itself.

Meta or a meta essay can also be a fan-authored piece of non-fiction writing that discusses any of the above topics."
-- via Fanlore

What is linked here?
Meta about: fandom as a whole/concept, fandom history, fannish activities/experiences, fandom statistics/polls, acafan writings, fandom-wide news and resources.

We will (probably) not link to: memes, headcanons about specific characters or fandoms, episode reviews, book reviews, movie reviews, homework help, troll comments/deliberate wank.

Why don't you link to meta about specific fandoms?
Sometimes we do, if it's the kind of meta that could apply to multiple fandom genres, character types, tropes, etc. Also most fandoms have a newsletter or noticeboard of their own, so if you're looking for meta about one specific show, you can usually find it easily enough.

Who runs this thing?
Right now it's tozka, who started it after realizing that all the old meta fandom newsletters had died several years back.

I want to add my link!
Leave a comment on the newest newsletter post, or email the editor.

I don't want my link here!
Leave a comment on the newsletter post your link appears in, or email the editor.

I have other questions or comments!
Leave a comment on the newest newsletter post, or email the editor.

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-- Last updated January 24, 2019.

Comments

[muccamukk]

The following is from the_rck, who was one of the metafandom mods and wanted to share her experience, but is currently swamped and can't commit to conversation about it at this time. I offered to post as proxy for her.

During the time when I was doing link finding for metanews, the main reason we didn't link much in the way of LJ or DW posts was staffing limitations*. Asking people for linking permission really wasn't a limiting factor or impediment. Nine out of ten people (possibly nineteen out of twenty) responded to a query in the comments, and almost all of them said yes. We'd wait two to three weeks for a response to the request and then, if we hadn't gotten an answer, assume that that meant 'no.'

Some people on DW and LJ have profile statements that include permission to link. We didn't ask for permission for specific posts from those people. We also decided that accounts that were clearly meant as real name accounts for professional authors could be linked without permission because they were intended as a public interface. That only applied if the name on the account was the name the person published under professionally. If the user name was bippitybobbityboo and the name on their books was John Smith, we'd ask permission.

Linking is a lot like demanding that someone throw a last minute party for their kid's soccer team-- 15 six year olds and all of their siblings and parents. Asking before linking gives people a warning to do the household equivalent of making sure the kids' bedroom doors are closed and that there aren't stray LEGOS in the carpet or smelly, dirty dishes in the sink. Some people will say yes. Some people will say no. Some people will pretend that message went to junk mail/got eaten by voicemail because saying no outright is rude and might lead to a panic attack and saying yes would lead to a worse panic attack anyway.

The people wandering into a post and wanting conversation are potentially crossing other social boundaries. Once I have guests in my house, I have an obligation as host. Somebody's going to ask why the refrigerator doesn't match the stove. Someone's going to rummage in the bathroom cupboard and get judgy about what's in there and what isn't. Strangers will argue with each other about politics or fashion or proper parenting practices.

Asking permission to link gives people time to say no privately. It's much harder/more humiliating and terrifying to say no after people are already letting themselves in the door and setting up chairs in the yard. At that point, if one says 'no,' it's in public. People might mock you on FFA or sneer at you in other places.

Going back to the last minute party-- There are knock-on repercussions for saying no and for not behaving perfectly while hosting. If you refuse or botch it and everybody knows, will you ever be able to attend a game or practice again? Will you be able to carpool? And those families will be there at school and for the other sports your kids might want to play.


*metanews was supposed to have link finders who focused on specific potential sources of meta. At the very end, I was doing most of the link finding. My assigned scope was entirely separate from LJ and DW. I might link things there if they were things from within my circle, or I might have a spare hour and figure that looking at one or two journals wouldn't make me more exhausted. We didn't link much on DW and LJ during those last months because we lacked staff even to track people we knew posted a lot of meta.

It wasn't that we were asking and being ignored or rejected. Almost everyone said yes.

Another reason that permissions weren't generally an impediment was that finding obscure meta posted by people who don't write it frequently is very difficult. Link finders can't possibly follow every account that might potentially post meta, can't check every newly created journal to see if there's meta. Going through half a dozen irrelevant posts to get one linkable post is feasible if one's absolutely certain that something will be there. Going through forty or fifty or a hundred posts to find something? That devours time.

Most people who post frequent meta either lock all of it or know that they may be hosting a party each time. A meta aggregating newsletter is more useful when it turns up things that readers wouldn't see otherwise. Someone new to DW or new to reading meta (or to reading it for a specific fandom) may well benefit from seeing links to that new post by person Q; people who've been around longer and/or have broader reading lists will have seen that post linked at least six times and probably follow person Q anyway.

Generally speaking, people who post meta infrequently won't ask to have it linked even if they know they could. There's a fear of rejection. There's also a fear of being seen as demanding/encroaching or-- worse-- pathetically needy. Bringing one's own work to the attention of the link finders leaves open the possibility that the resulting link is a pity link.

[tozka]

Thank you!! And thank you to the_rck for sharing specific experiences and insights to running a meta newsletter. It's great to hear that most people said yes to linking-- especially since I know that other meta newsletters had some issues with, uh. Angry commenters?

[muccamukk]

I will pass that along. I knew she'd done it, and thought she'd have some insight into it.

(I admit that I didn't follow metanews, mostly because I was already following most of the people who got linked there anyway.)

I also, as a separate issue entirely from the_rck's post, wrote about dreamwidth pile ons, and how they've happened in the past: https://muccamukk.dreamwidth.org/1190836.html

I really don't want you to think that I'm not supportive of this project! I think it's great! I'd really like to see it do well.

[tozka]

Thank you! And yeah, everyone's been really excited about the newsletter, which is great-- and also nerve-wracking, because it's a lot of pressure when I'm the only one doing the thing and there's no OTHER thing for people to look at in case they don't like my thing, and there's bad memories from previous things which are making people nervous, and potential for MORE BAD MEMORIES to start with the new thing.

I would like to NOT be in charge of a thing which propagates bad experiences, and while nothing's happened yet (as it's only, uh, three days old), fandom DOES have a bad history of piling on and "calling out" people and it's probably only a matter of time before something blows up.

But I'm trying to think positively, ha. And figure out a set editorial guidelines/policy manual, and post it here for people to see. If anybody is seeing this, and is interested in a still-in-process early version of the guidelines, I have it up here: https://pastebin.com/PmRz2Zc7

[muccamukk]

I like those! I do think it's okay to just link if someone has a "It's fine to link!" thing on their profile.

Thank you for all the thought you're putting into this. I really appreciate it.

[havocthecat]

No one wants that, and I'm sure everyone understands it's a work in progress! I'm sure it'll all get smoothed out and refined as you go on.

[tozka]

<3

[kore]

I personally liked the idea "We'd wait two to three weeks for a response to the request and then, if we hadn't gotten an answer, assume that that meant 'no.'" That seems fair, especially since there's a lot of meta around if you're pulling from all those different sites.

[cathexys]

Sorry to be nitpicky but...metanews wasn't metafandom, and the latter never asked for permission. It wasn't an issue mostly erly on, but as the newsletter grew and especially as THING became WRONG (I loved your differentiation there in your post :), it became more of an issue.

[muccamukk]

WHOOPS! That was me not the_rck.

Metanews, yes. Meta fandom was another project entirely.

[kore]

I really like what the_rck said especially about expectations and social boundaries, and kind of treating it as a last-minute party.

[duskpeterson]

I like all these comments by the_rck. This seems to me to be a sensible policy.