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lyl_devilI've been wandering around and reading a bunch of posts these past few days about the latest fandom-wide 'issues' that have abounded, and finally have reached the point of posting about it, though I don't pretend that I'll make a lot of sense.
If you don't know what I'm talking about, you should pay attention and be aware. This is about fannish privacy and the expectation of discretion and privacy between a fan's real life and their online existence. Plus, added exploitation of fandom as a whole, so we don't get bored.
Essentially, this entire thing revolves around Fan History, an online wiki that was started to try and 'document' online fannish existence. (I won't be linking to the site, and you should probably not google it at all, as the main reason behind this entire debacle seems to be increasing the site hit count.) FH seems to be the brain child of someone called Laura Hale, who has been involved in fandom in some way (though I'm really not sure how, beyond trying to make a profit off it).
The FH wiki is populated by thousands of entries, but how does she get them? Does someone go in and create an article for every author/artist/vidder/fan they know? No. The entire wiki is populated by a bot that has scraped info from ff.net and made hundreds of thousands of stub articles that are mostly useless. The person in charge has decided that if you have ever - anywhere - put any real facts about yourself (like name, age, job, address...) then it's fair game and shall be added to FH, if found. And if it will generate enough wank. Nothing is passed over. Emails, mailing lists, chat room archives, IM logs, even friends lock is not to be respected.
To add to this mess, a fellow LJ-er (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
astolat) who is active in many fandoms, but who I found through SGA, discovered that FH had put her real name and a few other personal details in the article under her pseudoname. When that information was removed (by either her or a friend), the owner of the site reverted the page back. It went back and forth like this for a few days.
This, of course, has raised some people's ire. I'm one of them. We have an expectation of privacy in fandom these days, especially when search engines can so easily scour every piece of available web space for information. There are unspoken rules in the fannish world, one of which is 'don't share other people's personal info, even if they've already done it themselves'. And if somebody says 'please change/take off this personal info from your site', you do it.
But apparently these things need to be spelled out in explicit detail, which makes me want to bang my head against the wall. A lot. Because I've deliberately drawn a line between my online existence and my real life (see [here] for my own personal horror from awhile back), and I know a lot of other people have, too. We have decided that we will share our real names and other personal details with people that we trust, which is why you won't find my real name, address, job or birth date anywhere in my profile. But that hasn't always been the case.
Years ago, back in the day, search engines sucked. (That 'I'm feeling lucky' button on the Google main page is a relic of that era, when Google was the rock star of search engines.) When I started writing, back in 1999, I used my real name to post stories, which has come back to bite me, but really, most people didn't use pseudonames a lot back then. Nowadays, it's common practice. But according to the privacy 'rules' posted by the FH owner, I have no right to expect any kind of privacy because of that? That it would be well within their rights to find this personal info and basically 'out' me to fandom - and the internet - at large? I don't think so.
There are a whole bunch of other issues that link into this, but I really don't want to get into that, so here are some links because I'm lazy:
Dejana's post
Ithiliana's post
svmadelyn's post
The most annoying thing about this - beyond the privacy issues - is this:
Laura Hale: Sole proprietor of a unique marketing opportunity
That's right. FH is all about making her a bunch of money. FanLib anyone?
Finally,astolat speaks out from the road about her 'outing'.
This is how you unite fandoms, people. And it's not pretty.
If you don't know what I'm talking about, you should pay attention and be aware. This is about fannish privacy and the expectation of discretion and privacy between a fan's real life and their online existence. Plus, added exploitation of fandom as a whole, so we don't get bored.
Essentially, this entire thing revolves around Fan History, an online wiki that was started to try and 'document' online fannish existence. (I won't be linking to the site, and you should probably not google it at all, as the main reason behind this entire debacle seems to be increasing the site hit count.) FH seems to be the brain child of someone called Laura Hale, who has been involved in fandom in some way (though I'm really not sure how, beyond trying to make a profit off it).
The FH wiki is populated by thousands of entries, but how does she get them? Does someone go in and create an article for every author/artist/vidder/fan they know? No. The entire wiki is populated by a bot that has scraped info from ff.net and made hundreds of thousands of stub articles that are mostly useless. The person in charge has decided that if you have ever - anywhere - put any real facts about yourself (like name, age, job, address...) then it's fair game and shall be added to FH, if found. And if it will generate enough wank. Nothing is passed over. Emails, mailing lists, chat room archives, IM logs, even friends lock is not to be respected.
To add to this mess, a fellow LJ-er (
astolat) who is active in many fandoms, but who I found through SGA, discovered that FH had put her real name and a few other personal details in the article under her pseudoname. When that information was removed (by either her or a friend), the owner of the site reverted the page back. It went back and forth like this for a few days.This, of course, has raised some people's ire. I'm one of them. We have an expectation of privacy in fandom these days, especially when search engines can so easily scour every piece of available web space for information. There are unspoken rules in the fannish world, one of which is 'don't share other people's personal info, even if they've already done it themselves'. And if somebody says 'please change/take off this personal info from your site', you do it.
But apparently these things need to be spelled out in explicit detail, which makes me want to bang my head against the wall. A lot. Because I've deliberately drawn a line between my online existence and my real life (see [here] for my own personal horror from awhile back), and I know a lot of other people have, too. We have decided that we will share our real names and other personal details with people that we trust, which is why you won't find my real name, address, job or birth date anywhere in my profile. But that hasn't always been the case.
Years ago, back in the day, search engines sucked. (That 'I'm feeling lucky' button on the Google main page is a relic of that era, when Google was the rock star of search engines.) When I started writing, back in 1999, I used my real name to post stories, which has come back to bite me, but really, most people didn't use pseudonames a lot back then. Nowadays, it's common practice. But according to the privacy 'rules' posted by the FH owner, I have no right to expect any kind of privacy because of that? That it would be well within their rights to find this personal info and basically 'out' me to fandom - and the internet - at large? I don't think so.
There are a whole bunch of other issues that link into this, but I really don't want to get into that, so here are some links because I'm lazy:
Dejana's post
Ithiliana's post
svmadelyn's post
The most annoying thing about this - beyond the privacy issues - is this:
Laura Hale: Sole proprietor of a unique marketing opportunity
That's right. FH is all about making her a bunch of money. FanLib anyone?
Finally,
astolat speaks out from the road about her 'outing'.This is how you unite fandoms, people. And it's not pretty.
