A little disappointed in Metafandom...

[gaudinight]

Of course when Hth’s rant about the entitlement of SGA’s McShep fans hit the airwaves, I wanted to see the original post which prompted the rant.  I thought it was interesting that Metafandom linked to Hth’s post when the rant was based on an unsourced original post.

Metafandom is great so I’m not being critical of it as a whole. But occasionally

Comments

[cathexys]

It seems to me there are two things you're objecting two:

(1) You suggest that Metafandom's purpose is to "disseminate substantive meta." The fact is, however, that the community has never defined itself as such. Here's the user info description: This community is for linking to interesting discussions in fandom, any fandom, on LiveJournal. I was the one who memoried the post, and if I'm sorry about anything, it's for putting Hth into the spotlight like that, but I'm certainly not sorry for putting a post in that offered an "interesting discussion

[gaudinight]

In my opinion, so much of her post was dependent on her paraphrase of the original post and many people who responded to her post were commenting based on her characterization of the post that it detracted significantly I think from the "interestingness" of the discussion as a larger discussion of fannish entitlement

[cathexys]

But that still presupposes that the post *was* heavily dependent on the post she references, which I contend it wasn't. In fact, just skimming the first 20 or so comments, most did not even reference the post but rather responded to Hth's actual point which took off from but was not limited to this one specific instance of unnamed rage

[gaudinight]

I think we see things differently. I saw lots of people responding specifically to her characterization of the original post. And huge number of the comments were discussing whether or not there was a group of "McShep Assholes" in SGA fandom and who they were. People were giving the original post as an example of the terrible behavior of McShep fans. It wasn't tangential. She gave this as an example. If it isn't example then what is

[inalasahl]

First, thanks for illustrating metafandom FAQ question #11. It's appreciated.

Just to be clear, I'm speaking solely on behalf of myself from the perspective of my own opinions.

I don’t want Metafandom to shy away from controversy but I do want Metafandom to link to posts which have a chance to be a real public discussion. If the original post isn’t linked then it isn’t possible for there to be a genuine public discussion.
While hth_the_first's post was unusual in that she flat out said that her post was inspired by a specific someone else, it is not unusual for posts linked to in the comm to be responses to other posts without link backs. I would guess (without actually doing any toting up) that over half of the posts featured on metafandom begin with "I wanted to talk about that discussion going on in fandom right now about X" or "I saw this post the other day that made me so ..." and nary a link to be found. If, for some reason, metafandom chose to require that all posts that were inspired by or responses to something else include links that would severely limit

[gaudinight]

Metafandom has very few rules. I wasn't suggesting that there ought to be more or different rules. Or that the mods broke their own existing rules.

I'm saying that in my opinion that linking to this particular post was a mistake of judgment. In this case it mattered that there wasn't a link back.

Technically the rules in FAQ inoculate the mods from any critique. Because the only criteria for linking is the post is public and the mods find it interesting. That's it. So technically, yeah, it's fine.

But actually the mods could have chosen not to link to Hth's post. They could have decided that it's not interesting. Lots of things that get attention aren't interesting. So I'm critical of the mods' judgment in this case.

[zvi_likes_tv]

how is "gets attention" equal to "not interesting"? If it got lots of attention, then it seems to me that it was interesting to people (many or all of whom, of course, may not be you.)

What is your definition of interesting? As far as I can tell, the metafandom mods have defined interesting as "discussion we would guess a number of people in mediafandom would participate in, if they knew the post existed."

[gaudinight]

Hmmm. I couldn't find that definition in the FAQ. As far as I can tell the mods linked to this definition: rousing or holding the attention.

Interesting is a totally subjective notion. What holds my attention or your attention or their attention? All different.

For me it's NOT interesting to read a discussion which is based on people talking about something they haven't read but are voicing opinions based on what someone else has said about the thing they haven't read. That's not interesting to me. It's....well...boring and stupid. Which is why I'm complaining.

Clearly that is interesting to the mods and other fans. Which is fine. I'm not saying I'm oppressed. Just saying I don't find it interesting and I'm disappointed that mods found it interesting. I'm lamenting.

[sophia_helix]

Hm. I get having problems with Hth's post (I sympathized with her, but still cringed at the traditional 'someone said something somewhere' format which inevitably leads to exaggeration and miscommunication in the ensuing comments), but the whole point of metafandom as I have always understood it is just to link interesting discussions, period. (And considering where it started, I do feel like I have a good idea of its purpose. *g*) It's not MF's job to suss out and link the original post, just to point people to where the discussions are happening. Linking outsiders to ongoing discussions does have a natural consequence of distorting the conversation if people come without context, but that feels kind of unavoidable online anyhow, since you can't read everything.

[gaudinight]

Clarification: I wasn't suggesting that the mods suss out the context themselves. I was only saying that they should link to things that provide links where links are needed. And pass over posts which don't provide adequate context.

And I say that because I read Metafandom so I don't have to read everything. It's a kind of trusted filter. I like the posts they usually link to because when I click on them I have enough information when I read them to get what's going on.

When I clicked on Hth's post, I was surprised. The post was heavily based on specific information in another a post which readers did not have ready access to. She might as well have linked to a locked post. It's boring. I want to be able as a reader to have what I need to understand what's going on. And usually the posts on Metafandom are fine that way.

[sophia_helix]

But see, I feel pretty strongly that the purpose of MF is more to follow the ensuing discussion than to read the intial posts... and to get to where the action is. As you can see in the link above, I was complaining that I did want to read some of the "wanky" stuff linked in Fandom Wank, except without the "wank" label which seemed to automatically make those discussions devolve into arguments because that's the expectation the posters were coming in with. I don't actually work for MF, but I've assumed they're still operating with the idea of "here are interesting/active discussions," rather than "this is the best of meta out there." It's a pointer to discussion, not a guarantee or indicator of quality (which was the whole point, not to qualitatively judge).

(Any MF mods reading, please do clarify if I'm mischaracterizing the mission statement.)

Frankly, I'd rather discuss the framing of the post in question as poor/suspect debate tactic than talk about whether other people should link to the discussion.

[gaudinight]

Well, in this case a lot of the ensuing discussion was based on Hth's characterization of the unsourced post so for me it was just boring because it's pointless for people to talk about something that they haven't read based on someones characterization of it. It's like gibberish, Greek.

To me it's a minimum standard. Unspoken. Like the minimum standard that the links on Metafandom are written in English. So I can understand them.

Yes, the framing of the post was a poor/suspect debate tactic. Absolutely.

[canlib]

I kind of agree for slightly different reasons.

I don't think Hth was making a post that was supposed to have a point other than emotional venting. I can see why it ended up on MF because if you separate her post into the emotional upset and the interesting point, than the interesting point was worthy of discussion. But they weren't separate, so what started off as a personal emotional rant got a lot more wanky because the rational meta discourse standards were being applied to it.
In the grand tradition of the squee vs discussion post debate, I do wonder whether emotional rants should be considered discussion/meta any more than emotional squee is.
OTOH, the wankiness of the rant shouldn't obscure the interesting discussion possibilities.

I'm torn

[gaudinight]

That's an interesting point. Is a rant like squee? I think you can make an argument that a lot of rants aren't any more meta than squee is.

I don't mind if meta is wanky as long as it's meta too. Sometimes meta is wanky and that's okay. I just want to be able to have access to the source material being discussed.

Metafandom

[paradise_city]

I'm sitting right beside you on the sort-of-agreement fence, particularly when you compared rants and squee to meta. Both rants and squee can contain elements of meta, but they're inherently meta. In those situations, I think what's called for is a case by cases judgment from the mods as to that particular post's inclusion.

Unfortunately, that's a slippery slope. Personally, I think that MF has a tendency to link to posts that are more likely to induce wank than discussion. But what's the difference? Where do you draw the line? And what do you say to the people whose posts aren't included because they more easily meet a nebulous definition of "wank" than they do "discussion." The mods are essentially damned either way. And while I'd prefer MF not link to foul-mouthed rants as legitimate discussion, I suppose it's the price we may for an open linking policy.

This does raise some interesting questions about how the roles people perceive in fandom, though. Lots of food for thought here.

[zing_och]

I don't think Hth was making a post that was supposed to have a point other than emotional venting. Yup, that's what I think, too. (And what a lot of the responding people thought, too, judging from the replies.)

To me, it was just a rant, and I was surprised to see it on metafandom. In my eyes the rant more-or-less obscured the serious discussion. (Sort of like the much-discussed original post.) But... that might be because I was biased against her point. So ... fence-sittig for me, too!

[fairestcat]

One more metafandom maintainer chiming in, mostly to second what lim and cathexys and inalasahl have said above, but also to add one bit of info that I think slightly changes the nature of the conversation.

I was not involved in any of the linking this time because I was out of town and then running a thing-a-thon, but normally, when I link to something that references an unnamed other post, I make at least a bit of an effort (not always successful) to track down the original post. However in this case, even if I had found the original post (which I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have) I still wouldn't have linked to it.

For two reasons. One, that post isn't in my opinion an interesting discussion in fandom. But more importantly, it was made in JANUARY. Metafandom links to current discussions in fandom, a post that is over 3 months old really doesn't qualify in it's own right as such.

[gaudinight]

Interesting. I love the fact that Metafandom often links to lots of posts that are discussing the same thing or were inspiration to each other. So I appreciate that you do that.

The post that Hth referred to was an episode review and not the kind of thing that gets linked in Metafandom and it was from January so it wouldn't have made sense for Metafandom to link to it, I agree.

And I guess I haven't been clear. I don't think that Metafandom mods should track down links. Unless like in your case, the mods themselves are interested and want to. What I was saying is that Hth's post shouldn't been linked at all because it was heavily based on a post readers didn't have access to. It should have been passed up for the same reason that an episode review gets passed up. Inherently not interesting.