Tynwald Day Tag Tidy and the Tolkien Kerfuffle of 2012!

[curiouswombat]

I had today off work - it is Tynwald Day - our equivalent of July 4th, more or less.

I fear I did not go to Tynwald to hear the laws being promulgated.... I spent the day being fairly lazy; it was the first not-raining day for ages, and I did some washing, hung it out, sat reading outdoors for a while, and then went shopping. S2C spent the day in bed, as he was at work last night and tonight, and D-D was busy with friends. I was happy with my own company - life at work the past three days was hectic and mentally tiring.

But I have also spent time tidying up my tags, so that all the Returnverse stories are now actually tagged 'Returnverse' as well as with their individual names - just in case anyone wants to read them here. Although, to be honest, it is probably easier to do so at TtH or Faerie. But I feel so much more organised for having done it!

Within the Tolkien fandom there has been a very polite and restrained kerfuffle - at least by the standards of some other fandoms I could mention... resulting in the organiser(s) of the big awards event pulling the plug on everything.

This is a bigger problem than some of the similar things in Buffydom, for example, as the MEFAs had eaten all other awards up - they are the only ones. Or were. It was a very short lived kerfuffle, too - from the first mention of a new ratings system - which is what annoyed people - to the 'Thank you and Goodbye, this Group/Community is now closed' posts took less than a week, I think!

I really think those involved with the organisation must have been pretty stressed out by running something so big, before anyone questioned the new rules, so that it was almost a relief to them to take their ball and go home. Otherwise it would either have been resolved or died down...

On the community that had sprung up about two days before that, to discuss the rules changes, someone basically said "OK - there's no point in just going 'Oh Dear...' Do something about replacing them!" So, being curious, I have found myself following it all, chipping in here and there, and am now fascinated by the way that a group of over 40 people are getting themselves into task forces, discussing policy, categories, ratings, finance and so on in an intelligent and organised fashion...

And you know me - can't keep out of something like that - so have joined a task force, or maybe two.

If anyone in the Tolkien fandom is interested the community is HERE. I really hope it will all come together - even just watching all the workings being done in public is fascinating.

Comments

[azalaisdep.livejournal.com]

I'm on LJ so rarely at the moment that when I happened to pop in, I thought "Oh dear, I've obviously not been following this..." and when I double checked the MEFA community, was like you taken aback at how quickly the whole thing had come to a head. Clearly there must have been stresses going on behind the scenes that those involved weren't sharing publicly.

The new community's ideas about delegation, deputies, training on the assumption that no-one will hold a volunteer post for more than a year or two, and above all, building a site on a publicly available and known platform so that it can be easily passed from one site maintainer to another, seem very sensible. I must admit that while I've every sympathy for the outgoing volunteers, I am a bit baffled by their apparent assumption that they owned the MEFAs, and that they got to declare them dead rather than, quite justifiably, saying "We've had enough, we quit, someone else take it over." Volunteer projects are always going to experience turnover, and they ought to be managed in ways that enable that.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I think proprietary code and paying for hosting means that they did own the MEFAs. Which is fair, IMHO, although I know others wouldn't agree. Open source code and crowdsourced funding will give the new awards community ownership in all senses.

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

I think proprietary code and paying for hosting means that they did own the MEFAs.

Although they had some of it passed on to them, as I understand it - they could have offered to do the same thing if anyone was willing to take it from them and take over the costs. But anyone doing that would have then had the right to rewrite the rules, of course.

But yes, it was their ball, they could take it home when they wanted.

[azalaisdep.livejournal.com]

I accept that means they owned the website. (Though personally I wasn't aware that the site was run on that basis, probably due to my own indolence in keeping up - though I wonder how many other participants were aware either...)

Totally agree that building a non-proprietary, crowdsourced new awards is the way to go forward.

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

Hi! Lovely to see you!

It blew up so quickly - as I would have been on the ratings panel I have a copy of the new 'content advisory' rules which was e-mailed to me on June 23rd - pre-release I think.

My own first thought, to be honest, was that they were going to be almost unworkable as they contained phrases such as contains more violent content than is expected for the characters (i.e. non-soldiers, less violent races, etc.)

That would make a story ineligible - so... the ents at Isengard...? Hobbits scourging The Shire?

But that date shows how fast it all blew up and then imploded.

Hopefully something really good is going to emerge - and all the discussions being open to all should iron out a lot of the problems. I can see a point where actual wordings of policies etc will be done by task-force members 'behind the scenes' - but the whole thing feels so much more inclusive! (For example; if the members of the previous years' ratings panels had been asked about wording for the rules changes for this year - which I know they weren't - they might have been better worded, as they were the ones who would have had to decide where something fitted if there was any doubt.)

Hmm - totally new topic - as you've not been around much you may not have noticed The Right Kind of Shield, Part Two (http://curiouswombat.livejournal.com/318925.html?view=9336525#t9336525)... where I picked up on the wagers between the males. A bit different to part one - it probably wouldn't have made it into the MEFAs as they stood, put it that way! (I was actually thinking of e-mailing you the link because I know you liked part 1 - but it is really good to see you dropping by instead!)