The following is a transcript of the OTW Board candidates’ chat held at 1800 UTC 29 September 2012. Elections officer Jenny Scott-Thompson moderated the discussion; candidates Franzeska Dickson and Eylul Dogruel attended.
Claudia R. has entered the room
Eylul has entered the room
Lady Oscar has entered the room
Lady Oscar has left the room
Jenny S-T has entered the room
Franzeska D. has entered the room
Franzeska D.
Hi
Eylul
hey 🙂
Jenny S-T
Hi!
Lady Oscar has entered the room
Jenny S-T
As a reminder, transcript of this chat will be posted publicly. If you’d like us to exclude your name or a particular comment, please let me know.
We’ll start officially in about 5 minutes
Franzeska D.
No, no, anything off color, foolish, or off the wall I say should be preserved for posterity, clearly.
Eylul
actually Jenny, question. if that is the case. can we link our fannish info and real info here without worrying about google?
Franzeska D.
Hi Lady Oscar
Jenny S-T
yes, just make it clear which bits you want me to exclude
and remember that the full transcript will be visible to everyone in the org
Eylul
fannish side, if it happens.
Lady Oscar
Hi!
Eylul
I just don’t want it tied in google and public internet if it comes up. I think most of the people in org who know me knows my DW anyway 😉
Tuulia has entered the room
Franzeska D.
There are actually people here! Yesss!
Eylul
hee
Jenny S-T
So, welcome! I’m the OTW elections officer and Secretary of the Board. We’ll be using our usual in-org convention here of asking people to let me know if they have a question, I’ll let people know when to go so we can follow conversation easily, and please type /done at the end of any comment that spans multiple lines. We’ll have some more free-form chat at the end.
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Jenny S-T
Does anyone have particular questions that they’ve brought? I’m aware the bios and manifestos aren’t yet up, so there will be more information when those are posted next week, but we’re open to questions in the meantime.
Either about the elections process or for our new Board members
Lady Oscar
o/
Jenny S-T
As a reminder, transcript of this chat will be posted publicly. If you’d like us to exclude your name or a particular comment, please let me know.
hele has entered the room
Jenny S-T
Franzi and Eylul, do you want to each give a quick introduction of yourselves as people arrive?
Eylul
sure 🙂 *typing*
Jenny S-T
and Lady Oscar, go ahead with your question when you’re ready
Lady Oscar
I just wanted to make sure that I understand correctly–there won’t actually be an election, in the sense of any vote being held, right?
/done
Jenny S-T
correct, yes
we have the same number of candidates as seats, so it’s uncontested this year
Eylul
Hi, I am Eylul Dogruel. I am an artist and a grad student from Istanbul, Turkey. I have joined the org about 3 years ago. I worked in AD&T and now currently am an I&O staffer and and work with 2 workgroups, as co-chair of Survey, and a staffer of Category Change. Looking forward to answering questions here, or feel free to poke at me later. 🙂
/done
Franzeska D.
Sure. I got into fandom on Usenet in the 90s. (Specifically alt.tv.x-files during the end of the first season, so that would have been early 1994.) In high school, I did a lot of reading in stuff like Highlander, but I wasn’t on mailing lists or active in those sorts of fandoms. At the same time, I got heavily into anime, and I was on a billion and one yahoo groups for every possible combination of gundam wing characters. (*sigh*) I was also in Harry Potter around that time, and while I moved onto LJ in 2002-2003, I really missed the big archive era and the kinds of megafandoms that have multiple archives like HP does (did? I have no clue these days). More recently, I’ve gotten into oldschool zine fandoms and vidding. I go by my real name online and always have. If you find a ‘franzeska’ blathering about fandom, that’s almost certainly me. (And I use my name as my username most places if I can get it.)
In OTW, I was on Content and then Abuse. (And Webmasters, but let us not speak of that dark time. Drupal: my nemesis!) I work in finance right now, but I’m hoping to go back to school.
Eylul
(AD&T -> Accesibility Design and Technology committee, that is responsible for AO3 development, and I&O -> Internationalization and Outreach Committee)
Franzeska D.
And the Tag Wrangling Committee (oh god, where is my brain). Yay, AO3 tags.
Eylul
*grins at Franzi*
Franzeska D.
…and the Category Change workgroup…
foxinthestars
::raises hand::
Jenny S-T
Franzi, you done for the moment or anything else to add?
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Franzeska D.
When talking about me, there’s always something else to… err… yes, I’m done unless anyone has a biographical question?
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Jenny S-T
Foxinthestars, go ahead, then 🙂
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foxinthestars
Thanks. Since you’re both on the Category Change workgroup, could you talk about the problems you see there and what your priorities are in addressing it? /done
hele
:raises hand for after:
Lady Oscar
:question after hele:
Eylul
request for clarification about the question. foxinthestars are you asking about problems of the AO3 categories, or the workgroup or both?
/done
foxinthestars
The problems of the categories, but anything you want to say about the matter would be good. /done
Franzeska D.
Oh my. Well, let’s not beat around the bush: anime & manga is what we’re really talking about here.
Eylul
*lets Franzi finish speaking first*
Franzeska D.
The workgroup has mostly done setup stuff so far. We have not gotten into the meaty part of getting feedback or discussing our own views, but it looks to me like there is some support for tweaking things like what goes in ‘Other Media’, making one single RPF category, and so on. I doubt any of that will be hugely controversial, but the workgroup will be looking at lots of opinions, not just our own, so hopefully, we’ll be able to come up with something that pleases most people.
Anime & Manga on the other hand are a pain in the butt because we have groups who strongly prefer opposite solutions there. (If that weren’t the case, the Tag Wrangling Committee would have taken care of this a million years ago when the wranglers first discussed it.)
I think everyone, inside and outside of the workgroup, is pretty well aware by now that our one-tier system is an extremely poor way of capturing the fandom categorizations people use in fandoms of East Asian media. (Tokusatsu and kdramas and things also come up when discussing anime/manga fandom, naturally.)
That problem extends to other areas of fandom, but it’s extremely pronounced there. I really cannot say what we’ll ultimately decide on for the Anime & Manga category. It will depend on technical concerns too.
Personally, I think it would make the most sense to have a Sequential Art category and to have BD, anime/manga, manhua, komiks, Marvel, etc. under that.
If anyone wants my personal views on comics/sequential art and categorization, I have an endless ranty post in my DW from a couple of years ago I can dig out the link to. But I really have no idea where the workgroup will end up on this issue, and I may well leave it next year.
(Currently, the workgroup has representatives from various committees. Since I am planning to leave all committees to focus on board work, that would make me an awkward fit for the workgroup unless it’s decided that it will be a consistent team of people from now on rather than committee representatives. That’s not up to me though.)
done
Jenny S-T
thanks, Franzi
Eylul
I think that Franzi explained the summarized the situation. I do also personally think that Sequential Art category would be a good candidate as a final solution to this part of the problem.
Another reason I like this solution is because it can be generalized to the other categories that has issues. Basically my point of view on this topic as someone who focuses a lot on the diversity of the organization and its projects is that an ideal solution shouldn’t just firefight but find community-neutral and region neutral solution that will keep working.
What I am trying to mean here is that we shouldn’t just be US-centric and western media centric until causes noise enough to become bad PR. 🙂
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Eylul
Putting my category change staffer hat this is what I plan to push, but putting on future board member hat, I think that it is not the place of the board to just express opinions over a workgroup, so what I will do in that capacity is to support that workgroup as well as all other projects.
/done 🙂
Jenny S-T
thank you, Eylul
Jessica S. has entered the room
Enigel
q
foxinthestars
Thank you!
Enigel
(after people who’ve already registered to ask questions)
Jenny S-T
foxinthestars, does that answer it, or do you have any particular clarifications you want to ask for?
sanders
o/ after enigel
foxinthestars
No, that’s good. Thank you both!
Jenny S-T
okay, hele next
hele
ok! Self interest here as a staffer, but: what do you see as your role as board liaison for committees, and are there particular things you plan to change on that capacity?
/done
Eylul
I think it depends a lot on the committee
some committees are well established and has chairs who are experienced as staffers. With them I think the board liaison’s main job is to support the chair by being a sounding board, giving advice if asked, be also available to the rest of the staffers if they wish to discuss a concern or have questions, to be a resource. I think that a liaison’s job is also to be the link between the board and the committee, as obvious as that sounds.
If the committee is struggling through, especially a chair who needs more mentoring or needs help, board liaison can do that as well. (hopefully with the chair training the volunteer committee works on, it will be less necessary). I am not sure how to answer the part about changing because it seems so far different board members have different approaches to this. This would be my approach as a board member.
/done
Franzeska D.
I have found the liaison role less than ideal in the past because it’s all too easy for that board member to get overloaded or to be ill or away when they’re needed. I would like to see more of a split between general mentoring activities and the flow of information/requests (and maybe this is already happening elsewhere, but it’s not what I’ve done/seen as a committee member or chair). The current way of liaising is good for building social ties and for some kinds of mentoring. I would prefer to see more instances of committees sending a representative (not always the chair–more like whoever’s available/in the right time zone) to the open part of board meetings.
Or contacting the whole board directly if it’s really urgent.
(I’ve seen too many cases of urgent things falling into a black hole.)
As for what I personally will do, I think leaving all committees during my time on the board will give me the time to be a liaison.
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Franzeska D.
It’s more time-consuming than people think. A lot more!
/done
hele
thanks both! (and yes!)
Jenny S-T
hele, does that answer it, or any follow-on questions?
hele
(and I don’t have any follow up questions)
Jenny S-T
LO, you’re up next. Enigel and Sanders, if we run out of time, drop me your questions in email and they’ll go first next time
Claudia R. has entered the room
Lady Oscar
That leads into my question (which I think Franzi’s mostly answered)–Since Board is obviously a huge time commitment, what are your plans for dealing with this with respect to your current Org responsibilities?
/done
Franzeska D.
I’ve already handed off Abuse. I plan to leave the Tag Wrangling Committee at the end of the year. I’ll probably continue to wrangle since that is quite flexible. And I don’t know about the Category Change Workgroup. I’ll *probably* end up leaving that, but we’ll see.
Eylul
*waits for franzi to be done*
Franzeska D.
oops
sorry
/done
Eylul
heh
I am currently an I&O staffer which in itself is manageable with board. The 2 workgroups I am part of: the category change is not a huge time commitment. My concern there currently is, as I mentioned above, is to not be influencing the group in a board member role. Survey… I am exploring solutions to drop it. It is a bit tricky because I took it over with my co-chair Aja in August, and we didn’t have a lot of time to think on successors yet. So work in progress? 🙂 /done
Jenny S-T
LO, does that cover it, or anything else you want to add?
Lady Oscar
I think that covers it, thanks.
/done
Jenny S-T
Enigel, you’re up 🙂
Enigel
for both candidates who are present: what are your top two priorities for the Org, that you will push for as board members? (top one is too restrictive, but top three is too wide 😉 I know it’s early so it’s fair to say that you want to think more about it, or that it will be in the manifestos)
/done
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Franzeska D.
Ha ha ha. I am less technical than Eylul, so I am not a good person to give details in live chat, but I think the suggestions about AD&T and the general structure/workflow/management of improving AO3 and coding new features and such is worth looking at. That was a good post. My top priority is management in general. We are bad at it as an org (like most young orgs), and we spend too much time with our managers doing the work instead of managing. No finger pointing: it’s been everyone the whole time pretty much, as is normal. /done
Eylul
Yes it will also be in my manifesto but I see no harm in writing here a bit 🙂 1) Seeing the organization transition from an organizational equivalent of a start-up to one that is a larger organization. I think that we outgrew our structure and that it is causing a lot of symptoms, everything from some of the transparency issues to volunteer burnout.
I know some of you know the blog post I wrote few weeks back, that franzi also mentioned above. 🙂
that is part of that thought process.
Enigel
follow-up question
Eylul
2) Diversity. As a middle eastern, I do sometimes notice how US-centric and western media centric the org comes across, even when not intending to. My goal is that diversity doesn’t become some thing that is just
something we add after we get the US-centric default done, but instead that we stay at equal distances to many cultures and communities as possible. I am aware it is a tall order but we need to start somewhere right? 🙂 /done
Jenny S-T
We’re just about at our time limit
Enigel
thank you! 🙂
Jenny S-T
Sanders, can you mail me your question for next time, please?
Franzeska D.
WE CAN TYPE FAST
Jenny S-T
Enigel, do you want to drop your follow-up in here?
Franzeska D.
;P
Enigel
I’ll pack my follow up q in an email then
hele
heeh
Eylul
yes we can 🙂
sanders
i can, yeah.
Enigel
or ok
how do you plan on making this startup-to-big-org transition?
Scott S. has entered the room
Enigel
using existing – tutorials, i guess, or devising a process specific to this org?
to account for the fact that it’s still volunteer run, even if the size is larger
/done
Eylul
Enigel, I think some of that change is happening already. Several committees are going through documentation and revision of their processes. I do think that we do need to look at our committees and identify bottlenecks and find solutions. My blog post on AD&T (which concerns AD&T and web directly, as well as any other project that uses technical resources) was identifying a bottleneck and proposing a solution. This is less about people working more “professionally”, it is about setting in structures so that more detailed and fleshed out processes don’t depend on individual processes. I am not sure if that helps answering or confusing more /done
Franzeska D.
The first step is managing rather than doing. (Which is why I’m entirely leaving committee work.) I am definitely thinking more tutorials (or the published literature) than just making up something org-specific. We are different for being 100% volunteer, but we’re not *that* different. These issues come up with every organization in very similar ways. /done
Eylul
don’t depend on individual processes -> don’t depend on individuals.
Jenny S-T
thank you both
we’re at our time limit, but the transcript will soon be posted publicly
and in the meantime, you are welcome to continue discussing in the comments to the OTW election posts, on either the OTW site, DW or LJ – Comms will try and notify us of comments there so we can respond
or email me any questions for next chat – my contact form is on the OTW website
thank you all for coming!