Quote:
Originally Posted by Worldwalker
... aspired to become the gatekeepers of fanfic ...
"The OTW is an organization created to advocate for female-dominated transformative media fandom and its artworks. That is its purpose."
I would prefer that it not present itself as representative of all fanfic writers.
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They don't claim or attempt to represent all fanfic writers. They're not trying to be the gatekeepers of fanfic.
They're trying to host a stable archive, one that won't change its policies based on advertiser preferences, that won't delete content based on "someone finds this offensive," that won't vanish overnight because the moderator broke up with her best friend. They're trying to inform fanfic writers & pro authors what the legalities of copyright law are, in regards to fanfic. (As far as anyone can tell: it's blurry. Very blurry.)
Oh, and they have an academic journal, because a lot of the founders are in academia, and they think that's a fun thing to do. (At least, that's what I can figure out the purpose of the journal is. It's volunteer-run and pretty much self-sustaining; it's not like aca-journals are a major drain on anyone's server resources.)
They're not preventing other archives from existing -- quite the opposite; they're creating open-source code that anyone can use for an archive, and including features they're not using themselves. (They're coding in restriction possibilities they have no intention of using.) They're not judging what is and is not "real" fanfic, or "real" transformative works.
There's a whole lot of opinions among the membership, but none of those is definitive for the organization itself. Part of the reason for having a nonprofit org is to prevent any one person or tiny clique's opinions from becoming law.