alias_sqbr

Ah...good point about you guys not referring to professional transformative works, just fannish ones. The word "fan" appears enough times on the site that I can't claim this as anything but me being dumb :)

And I actually don't really have a problem with the "primarily female space" thing if you're just talking about the fanfic/vidding/fan-art/meta part of fandom, for all the reasons you state.

BUT...what about the other parts of fandom, that are both fannish and not primarily female? Or, for that matter, any that are both fannish and primarily female but are not connected to the whole fanfic subculture?(*) Are they not really OTWs area but you might represent/study them if it comes up? If so I think it should be made clear. Or do you see them as merely off-shoots of the female bits of fandom? Because I don't agree, and even if this were so you're still going to alienate and confuse less historically minded creators of machina etc.

I'm not worried that men are being excluded, I'm worried that everyone from these other fandoms is being excluded by an organisation that on the surface seems to include them. I mean I don't think it's a huge deal if it gets made less ambiguous once you guys have more time to work on your wording, which is why it's not the focus of my rant. But every time I've seen a "OTW is for all of us!" post I find myself thinking "Yes but are they for me(**)?".

And I realise OTW can't cover everything, I'd just feel happier if I knew what was and wasn't covered. To use your example, the "WA" in "WASFF" lets people from Victoria know it's not really for them, if they called themselves "The Science Fiction Association" and you had to dig to find out that they only covered WA, well...that would be less good.

Anyway, whoever you do and don't represent I still think the OTW is a good and necessary thing on the whole. I really don't understand the people bagging on the archive: it's free open source software! Designed especially for fanfic! How is that not a good thing? (I mean I'll understand once it comes out if they have specific holes to pick, but I can't see anything wrong with that in principle :))

NB: I am now at home with crappy aircon which is making me much grumpier than I was when replying to everyone else, sorry if this is curt!

(*)I don't really know of any, to be honest, but they could be out there somewhere :)
(**)As a creator of parody comics and Neverwinter nights modules etc, not just as the creator of more obviously acceptable fanart