It's almost like the classic coming of age story. Except there are too many initials and no porn--by a classic coming of age story, I mean, a fannish one, with smut.
There's election wank. I don't even know what to do with that. I mean, besides read it.
Posted at Dreamwidth: http://seperis.dreamwidth.org/114404.html. | You can reply here or there. |
I don't know enough about the election thing to comment, but as for the deployment...I have to say, just from what I've seen, I'm pretty appalled by how some people reacted to a couple of bugs that showed up after the upgrade to the AO3 site. I mean. DAMN. I don't communicate like that to our actual vendors that we're paying large sums of money to build and fix custom apps for us.
Edited at 2011-11-15 01:32 am (UTC)
Like, when it comes to a bug or an issue or just something you don't like on free or beta software, you know what you do? You drop a polite note: "hey, this might be an issue or this might make that work better, maybe you guys should peak at it if you have a chance." The correct response is not: "that wasn't broke, why did you touch it? I WANT MY MARGINS BACK. YOU BROKE MY SKINS. I'M CRYING."
Christ. If I were one of the volunteers, my response to that would be to tell them to fuck off and fix it themselves if it upset them that much.
I feel like maybe we need a new word in place of Beta, but I can't think of a short way to say "Use at your own risk and don't act like an asshole if something screws up." The long way may be necessary.
Like, really, I build software for a living and someone people that pay me money to do so are far more forgiving and understanding than these assholes.
I was wondering what was wrong with me that when I'm testing and filing defects, I don't tell the developers to shoot themselves in the face because I don't like the colors.
I don't tell them that when the entire system collapses and I'm working eighty hours a week to test the new deployment. I mean...no.
In other words, they lessened the functionality of the archive for a project that is supposedly not a OTW project, and incidentally hung support out to dry. Users rarely react well to a claimed improvement that fucks up their user experience.
And AO3 is not some sort of untouched gift from above that we should be grateful for any of; it is a non-profit organization which has received 43K in funding in the last year -- and because it's tax-free, effectively some of that money came from the US government. If they were just flailing around as total amateurs I'd have a lot of sympathy (though I would still criticize them for wasting the time and money of various supporters with willfully bad project management), but I hold a 501(c)(3) organization to some standards.
...it's in BETA!
*G*
Suffice it to say that this whole thing involves several areas of professional competency, and that people are going apeshit over stuff they shouldn't be apeshit about.
This has nothing to do with who is elected- it wouldn't change the fact that this whole situation is fucked up.
Fandom: This is why we can't have nice things.
I mean, as a comparison, gmail's new look literally hurts my eyes, makes many things hard to find that shouldn't be (I'm GOOD at tech, I shouldn't be this confused by a redesign of a site I've used for years), and their response to their users is ridiculous. And the kind of money they most likely spent...well.
I guess what I'm saying is I don't expect a whole lot from the internet. The internet giveth...
As someone who's managed an archive and received some flaming for small (and big) coding things, I just...don't understand why people feel so entitled and so goddamn angry when not everything in a site works perfectly.
I'm a former OTW staffer with basically no complaints. I adore AO3; if I could, I'd very happily ditch all other sites and read exclusively there. I just hope the org survives this shit-hitting-the-fan election :/ (but I'm confident that it will :D)
Such stupidity physically hurts me... am I overreacting? I may be panicking here so I think I'll try to calm down before I vote tomorrow.
Of course, this does not entitle people to be rude and ragey, but as someone whose worked in both development and support, I can tell you that every tiniest change will bring users 'spewing vitriol' to Support, only most of the time coders never hhave to see it and the Support is trained to handle it. The nature of OTW means that this wasn't really the case here, and usual user negativity led to a lot more (justified, I grant you!) hurt feelings and well, fandom is known to be extra dramatic sometimes, right?
The thing about elections is slightly different but connected given that all the technical problems which came just now, due to unfortunate timings, were already under NN's purview and are what she has based her current platform for candidacy on. (Read here: http://elections.transformativeworks.org/otw-election-candidates)
It didn't help that due to RL issues she was unable to fully participate live on the chat-with-the-candidates thing and a lot of questions that members had for her candidacy ended up unanswered and un-follow-upped. She hasn't engaged with questions people (both memebers, volunteers and potential volunteers) have been asking, very politely and respectfully, about her plans for the org
(see here http://astolat.dreamwidth.org/239844.html?thread=5696228#cmt5696228
and http://astolat.dreamwidth.org/239844.html?thread=5700324#cmt5700324 )
And this is making many members and volunteers uneasy, given that elections start in a few hours. I am one of her long time fans and massively devoted to both OTW and AO3 and her silence is making me really unsure on what to think about all this. I'm still holding out hope for a possible comment before elections start 12:00 pm UTC today, but please be assured that the questioning people really really do not want either NN or OTW or AO3 to fail and that a lot of these people are members and volunteers as well)
I'm sorry you feel that way. I myself feel perfectly comfortable with her life and choices.
but please be assured that the questioning people really really do not want either NN or OTW or AO3 to fail and that a lot of these people are members and volunteers as well
I didn't realize I'd done that, could you show me where I said or implied anything like that? I can't imagine the need for such a random statement when the question wasn't asked.