March Meta Matters Challenge

2) I've identified one so far!

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I got as far as my second post in my account only to realize that it would be a nifty meta post if only I did some rewriting. So I decided to go ahead and do that. It's now been redrafted and while there is still a ton of stuff to explore in it, I don't want to spend the month writing it in full.

Instead I've decided that I will upload it to AO3 today and also post it to my Dreamwidth account, since my account here contains all my work in full and it's just different enough to qualify.

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"I don't want to spend the month writing it in full"
Ahah, this and a million alternative demands on my time is why I'm trying to keep editing to a minimum. Which leads to archiving some shoddy damn writing, but oh well. It's gotta be better that than nothing.

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The perfect is the enemy of the completed ;)

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I still haven't found a way to find all the Tumblr posts I added stuff to on reblogging while excluding anything I reblogged without comment.

JetBlackCode's tool to find the stuff where I'm the OP insists on infinite scroll through the stuff I posted more recently in order to get back to where I left off going through my posts. This is annoying.

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Infinite scroll in itself is so annoying :( And not being able to search Tumblr at all effectively was a huge reason why I barely used the site.

Anyone have any ideas re: Tumblr?

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ML meta collection (5739 words) by AlexSeanchai
Chapters: 25/?
Fandom: Miraculous Ladybug
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir, Tikki (Miraculous Ladybug), Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Gabriel Agreste | Papillon | Hawk Moth, Le Gorille | Adrien Agreste's Bodyguard, Alya Césaire, Nino Lahiffe, Master Fu (Miraculous Ladybug), Chloé Bourgeois, Nathalie Sancoeur, Juleka Couffaine, Nora Césaire
Additional Tags: Meta, Nonfiction, Archived From Tumblr, Racism, Gabriel Agreste's A+ Parenting, Stressed Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Designer Marinette Dupain-Cheng, Ladynoir | Adrien Agreste as Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng as Ladybug, Fictional Religion & Theology, Polytheism, Trans Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir, Female Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir, Miraculous Side Effects, Allergies, Nonbinary Anansi (fka Nora) Césaire, Transphobia

I know I have stuff on Dreamwidth I haven't looked for yet, but this here is about as progressed as I'm likely to get re Tumblr unless that "find your reblog comments" tool magics itself up.

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Yay for posts though!

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25 chapters! Wow! :)

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~~yeah but check the total word count and it becomes less impressive~~

and I haven't even added, on account of I mostly haven't found, any of my meta that I reblogged onto some other Tumblr user's OP!

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2)
I've made my dedicated nonfic pseud and moved two posts! I have received kudoses!

I have also done some soul-searching and peering at the AO3 FAQ and decided that a rec/review of one single fic probably isn't the kind of nonfiction that should be an AO3 work, even though it's long and I originally wrote it as a standalone post. But at least it's in my Dreamwidth meta tag, which is a thing I have since last month. *pats meta tag*

AND I'm wondering about maybe crossposting one or more of the "LiveJournal for Scoobies" tutorials. Idk. Maybe if I have nothing better to do. Thing is they're image-heavy, and I hate embedding images on AO3. They keep breaking. Also, I'm not sure if it's fannish enough, and some of the content might be considered ephemeral, and ugh.

Ooh! And! One of the podcast hosts answered, so I shall go ahead (at some point) with transcribing that interview about Buffy poetry.

3)
So, not having problems with anything I'm currently doing, but also idk how to embed an image on AO3 and have it not randomly disappear and reappear whenever it likes.

Also, I'm sure I'll have a lot of problems as soon as I attempt to transcribe a longer text from audio :D, but that ought to work out somehow, given enough time.

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Yay for a successful beginning. And the start of kudos!

But at least it's in my Dreamwidth meta tag, which is a thing I have since last month. *pats meta tag*

Findability of any kind is a step forward!

Well AO3 does explicitly include tutorials as a form of accepted meta/nonfiction. And great news about the podcast.

I can only recall once embedding images at AO3, and all the images still seem to be there: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6749461

(Granted, I've barely looked at the post in the last 4 years but I can only assume the images have been stable)

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"Well AO3 does explicitly include tutorials as a form of accepted meta/nonfiction."
Yeah, "tutorials for creating fanworks". "And many other things." :D

(Mine aren't for creating fanworks, but then, the AO3 TOS FAQ doesn't specifically exclude them either.)

Edited Date: 2020-03-05 06:51 pm (UTC)

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<img src="https://IMAGE URL.png" style="max-width:100;height:auto;" alt="IMAGE DESCRIPTION HERE" />

It can be .jpg or .gif or whatever the actual extension is, but you do need the extension, and you do need the alt text—let me illustrate:

The style part, which I'm only bothering with here on the screenshot of this comment in progress, is a trick to make sure large images don't try to be bigger than the mobile device some folks may be viewing on.

La_Temperanza also has a CSS way to do that better and an HTML and a CSS way to wrap text around images for use on AO3; both CSS tricks involve making AO3 work skins.

Oh, and Discord really really hates being image hosting for anyone who isn't viewing the image through Discord or direct at the URL; an increasingly common fail mode I'm noticing is the image source is cdn.discordapp.com and the image itself works fine if you go direct to its URL. Tumblr works great, though; so does Imgur.

Edited Date: 2020-03-06 02:58 am (UTC)

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Thank you very much! <3 I've been having the Discord problem you describe, except with Dreamwidth and Nickpic. I'll try Imgur! :)

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You can embed images you've hosted on Dreamwidth in your own journal, in other journals, in communities, in comments, and on other Livejournal and Livejournal-based sites like InsaneJournal, but Dreamwidth does not allow images to be embedded on other non LJ-related sites. Discord probably has a similar policy (though since they don't seem to have the hosting space issue Dreamwidth has, I don't know why), and I have no idea what Nickpic's deal is.

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Yes, that must be it! I hope.

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It just occurred to me I forgot something.

What I put in as the image source URL in the failed images above is a legit URL. You can view the image just fine by clicking the link. It's just not the URL to the image itself.

Now, if I want the image to be the clickable thing for a hyperlink, like the words 'a legit URL' are above, I could do <a href="LINK"><img src="IMAGE URL" /></a> and it would work fine—for people who can view the image. Not so helpful for screenreader users or when the image doesn't load.

Here's such an image-as-hyperlink where the image fails as above and there isn't alt text:

And one where there is:

Since this img tag has alt text, one can tell this is a working hyperlink even though the image itself isn't working.

Also, if for whatever reason one wants an image to be present (as a decorative element or whatever) for people who can view images, but not to trouble people who don't, doing like <img src="IMAGE URL" alt="" /> means the screenreader will simply skip it. This is preferable to <img src="IMAGE URL" /> because the screenreader will read the file name, which is most likely unhelpful, and (as you see with my example image) sometimes total gibberish.

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shadowscast

I've made a new AO3 pseud dedicated to meta, and uploaded 10 pieces—backdated to whenever I wrote them, from 2002 through 2019!

https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadowscast/pseuds/Shadowscast_meta/works

To be honest, that might be about it for me. I've never been a prolific writer of meta, and most of what I found while going back through my journals was too short, insubstantial, too personal, and/or closely tied to a passing conversation to seem worth uploading to AO3.

I did receive a few kudos in the last couple of days on the newly-uploaded pieces, which was pretty exciting!

Here's one tagging issue I struggled with: when a piece was dealing with a non-fandom-specific issue (such as: what makes writing fanfic fun?) but drawing examples from a few specific fandoms, I wasn't sure how to tag the fandom. I ended up tagging them with "No Fandom" in addition to the names of the fandoms from which the examples were drawn. Which seems rather contradictory, but it was the best I could think of.

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Yeah, I've run into the fandom issue as well. For me it depended on how it was being used. In cases where I was just using a quick fandom example, almost as an aside, I wouldn't tag for it. But if I was, say, comparing two scenes of two different shows in a more lengthy example, then I would. I'd also use Fandom-Fandom, to if I was discussing things fans do.

I've also tagged for specific episodes a few times, but that was mostly when the comparisons were the main part of the discussion.

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wheatear

2) I've moved five so far! I'm using a pseud for archiving so I can separate it from my fic. I've got a lot more to go but I figure if I post one or two a day, I can get it all done this month.

3) No real problems, had to do a bit of editing and reformatting e.g. for posts with embedded video. The hardest thing is actually the tagging. I don't really know what canonical tags are good to use for meta so I've been looking through the collection to see what everyone else is using.

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Sounds like you're off to a great start!

Yes, tagging can be more of a challenge for meta than fiction, for example. (I'm sure artists run into the same issues). Other than "Meta" and "Nonfiction" for all works, we've got some suggestions in the FAQ but there are definitely going to be a lot of new issues coming up. If you want to mention any examples, we might be able to broaden the suggestions there.

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nrgburst

2. I've also made a new pseud so my subscribers know it's meta going up and not fic. So far I've uploaded one a day!

3. A lot of my GIF references were to blogs on tumblr that have now deleted or changed urls. A bit frustrating, especially since inserting an image on AO3 requires it to come from somewhere else on the internet- you can't just upload the image yourself! I tried working around this by uploading a new GIF I made to my DW instead, but AO3 didn't like the html reference because according to the FAQ:
"You can embed images you've hosted on Dreamwidth in your own journal, in other journals, in communities, in comments, and on other Livejournal and Livejournal-based sites like InsaneJournal, but Dreamwidth does not allow images to be embedded on other non LJ-related sites".
Le sigh. So I just combed through tumblr until I found images to fit my meta again.

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Ooh, such progress! I feel quite envious :)

And especially since the image restrictions have been making so much extra work for you. I remember someone else reported early on that she was unable to use her images on LJ anywhere else -- they can't be hotlinked it seems.

I've been using Google Photos but it's involves using another tool to get a workable address for embedding. It's been quite stable but I'll certainly admit it's not the quickest process.

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"Dreamwidth does not allow images to be embedded on other non LJ-related sites"
OHHHH, that explains so much!! :D I'd have been less confused if it didn't work half of the time. [i.e. if they were all broken all the time; what threw me is that sometimes the embedded DW images decide to appear for a while]

Edited Date: 2020-03-06 05:57 am (UTC)

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nrgburst

Yeah, I know, it's weird! The GIF I uploaded alllmost worked, but it was grainy and refused to auto size and I was like ??? why are you on drugs? WHATEVER I GIVE UP. *goes grumbling to tumblr*

I might just make an image dump post on my own tumblr. Just for ease of reference. But tumblr also randomly deletes things, which is annoying AF. I'd do the google images thing mentioned above, but I want to keep real-me and fandom-me separate.

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"why are you on drugs?"
Heeee! Exactly.

alexseanchai just recommended Imgur, upthread. Hope that'll work for us. :)

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Yes, it's sad to think that the problem you bring up about Tumblr deletions only contributes to the problem of content loss in other places.

If you do decide to go the Google Photos route, you can set up a new account for just fandom use with a pseud. And let me know if you have any questions. The workaround tool that someone else shared with me is https://ctrlq.org/google/photos/

You get the photo link from G Photos, put it in there and it generates the image embed code for you. Because the direct photo link doesn't work for embedding. An extra step, but I have had no problems with it.

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leahandillyana

1) I really don't. Usually I back away unless I absolutely have to do the thing.
2) I transfered everything I deemed worth transferring in December 2018, and all further meta was mirrored on AO3 immediatelly after posting.
3) No, never had.
I was wondering about various meta topics, but everything new I could come up with are either "this has a simple answer that makes the question stupid" or "somebody else wrote about it in a way more verbose than I could". Like...
Q: Why are there so few non-Japanese characters of colour in manga and anime?
A: Japan is the most homogenous large nation in the world, and we are not competent enough to actually discuss Japan-typical racism.
Q: But the Stormtrooper Rebellion!
A: We already wrote about it.
Q: But VLD was recut at a very late stage!
A: We know. There's a whole website dedicated to discussing it.

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1) Haha, I suspect a lot of us are the same. In my case, I think I just try not to think about the whole task and just focus on some small starter steps.

Just a thought regarding (3) -- what about a meta that explored a few of the characters of color who do appear, and what was done well and what could be improved about them?

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eidolonlathi

1) How do I motivate myself when I’m facing something daunting or overwhelming?: I remind myself that not every piece has to be finished instantly but that it’s okay to need a few days for every piece. And I’m making smaller steps out of the entire transfer process, like this finishing every step feels like a small success already.

2) How many works have I identified for future transfers, or have I now moved to AO3?: I moved one piece to AO3 so far. A second piece is ready to be moved as soon as I have the time. The process of gathering together smaller meta snippets together looks to be complete. Next will be ordering them into fitting themes. And then writing new works based on those themes. Hopefully the material will be enough for 3-4 new pieces!

3) Am I having any problems moving my meta?: So far everything is going well.
For now I avoid the question of finding a new hosting place for the images in my meta by making good use of the fact said meta is all located on tumblr: 1) Open edit mode on tumblr for the meta I’m transferring 2) highlight entire meta while editing mode is on, and then copy it over to AO3’s rich text editor (it's important this and not html is in place when inserting the copied text). Like this the images embed in tumblr will be copied over quickly.
The problem stays that should the tumblr page in question ever vanish, so will the images (but not the text!). But seeing that I still have a small pile of meta to transfer over, I decided to let this be a question that needs solving for another day.

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Good advice! I think for me, I'm also realizing that my original goal of getting through 3 years of posts may not work out this month. I took a week on just my first few posts I reviewed, although I'm satisfied with getting a newish post drafted and released.

Next will be ordering them into fitting themes. And then writing new works based on those themes. Hopefully the material will be enough for 3-4 new pieces!

This is probably going to be my process in coming weeks too. I got the loveliest comment today on my new meta post over on LJ, it's really inspiring me to work on some more :)

Your decision about Tumblr seems sensible, and as you said -- deal with the problems when they happen. A good tip for anyone else making the same transfers, thanks for that!

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merryghoul

I’ve moved over six works to AO3 so far and working on a seventh.

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