Feedback Needed for Open Doors Content Policy

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2015-03-30 17:14:43 UTC

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Banner by Diane with the outlines of a man and woman speaking with word bubbles, one of which has the OTW logo and the other which says 'OTW Announcement'

The OTW's Content Policy workgroup is responsible for drafting and updating language for our Terms of Service and other policies involving our projects.

Recently Content Policy has been working with the policy for our Open Doors project. The proposed changes reflect several years of experience with the Open Doors process, and are intended to make our policies simpler and easier for collection owners and Archive administrators to apply. They do not affect individual users.

Per OTW policy, today begins a 2 week comment period from users. The proposed changes are available for viewing in HTML, PDF and Word document formats.

Please leave comments or questions about the changes here. Once feedback has been gathered, Content Policy will use it to make further changes. They'll then seek Board approval for the new policy and make it public as part of the AO3 Terms of Service.

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arrow (esteefee) Mon 30 Mar 2015 08:57PM UTC

This looks great; very clean.
I suggest a language clarification for paragraph 1 of Role of original maintainer (little redundant):
"The original maintainer will be invited to moderate their archive's collection within the Archive of Our Own with all the powers that a collection owner in the Archive of our Own usually has; so, for instance, to decide whether a new story fulfills their collection's rules, or should be removed from the collection."
The only sticky wicket I see in the agreement is multiple owners and some choosing to part from the OTW. I think you guys should insist on a unified decision among the owners. You are setting yourselves up for a pretty ugly situation otherwise where the works creators get involved with the thrash, choosing sides, and asking to be removed in groups... the co-owners should make a unified decision and not split their archive up like slabs of meat. It's really unfair to the works creators, who should have a reasonable expectation of their being one location for the archive (or a redirect to it).

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1. RebeccaTushnet Sun 12 Apr 2015 11:21PM UTC
  
  Thank you for the feedback. That's not part of the current policy changes under discussion, but we'll keep track of suggestions and experience under the current policy. Creators who have claimed imported works are free to remove them, even though that may be a sad result--we don't want to judge anyone's reason for leaving.
  
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hthesecond Mon 30 Mar 2015 11:33PM UTC

Very small note and a question
The note:
In the second paragraph of Role of Original Maintainer, you left in "within" after switching from "preserved" to "imported to".
And the question:
So theoretically, the original maintainer could get a backed-up version of the initially provided copy of the whole archive, even if, in the meantime, individual creators have chosen to delete their work? (I'm not saying they shouldn't, just trying to make sure I understand.)
Does "if available" refer to such changes, or does it mean that there is no policy of saving the initial copy, but sometimes, one happens to be there, and in this case, the Archive is happy to provide it?
Thank you so much for all that you do! I'm in complete awe over how dedicated to doing an excellent job and how skilled every single volunteer at the AO3 seems to be.

Last Edited Mon 30 Mar 2015 11:35PM UTC

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1. RebeccaTushnet Sun 12 Apr 2015 11:24PM UTC
  
  Thank you for the catch!
  It really would depend on when the original maintainer asked and what we were able to retrieve from backups. "If available" means that we do a lot of backups, but can't guarantee that any particular version of the Archive will be backed up, and that includes what comes through Open Doors. So we can't specify in advance.
  
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fred_mouse Tue 31 Mar 2015 08:00AM UTC

I found confusing the constant reference to 'the maintainer', which was fortunately cleared up by the section at the end about 'should there be multiple maintainers'.
Unfortunately, I don't have anything to suggest about how this might be modified, because I can see the logic of why that section is at the end.

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1. RebeccaTushnet Sun 12 Apr 2015 11:25PM UTC
  
  Thank you for the feedback--we'll take another look.
  
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HarmonyLover Wed 01 Apr 2015 06:05PM UTC

The new version seems very clear and concise to me!

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1. RebeccaTushnet Sun 12 Apr 2015 11:25PM UTC
  
  Thank you!
  
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otrame Tue 21 Apr 2015 10:37PM UTC

Not here for comment period but could not find another way to talk to you. There are ads all over the place, including in the stories themselves. While you may feel you need to do this, I am questioning the need to have ads even on this page! Or is someone hacking you? If the former please register that at least one member DOES NOT LIKE. If the latter, I hope you get it fixed so.

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1. AO3_Support (Official) Tue 21 Apr 2015 10:44PM UTC
  
  Hi, otrame:
  Thanks for asking about this issue with ads appearing. We’ve heard of this issue before. In every case, it’s been due to a browser extension or add-on that was changed. We strongly suggest disabling all of your browser extensions or add-ons, and turn them on one at a time until the problem reappears. If that doesn't work, you may need to do a virus scan of your device.
  Because we are fully funded by the Organization for Transformative Works, we do not plan to ever carry ads of any form, let alone this sort of popup. If you have any questions, let us know!
  Best,
  Sam J.
  AO3 Support
  
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2. 1. otrame Wed 22 Apr 2015 12:25AM UTC
    
    Thanks for the quick feedback. (sigh) I have no idea how to get an uncontaminated version of Java script. I guess I'm off to the Apple Store.
    
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