Scans_Daily

As Awesome New Female Characters Week comes to a close, we’d like to take a moment to remind all our members of the basic community ethos:

Founded by girl geeks and members of the slash fandom, scans_daily strives to provide an atmosphere which is LGBTQ-friendly, anti-racist, anti-ableist, woman-friendly and otherwise discrimination and harassment free.

Bottom line: If slash, feminism or anti-oppressive practice makes you react negatively, scans_daily is probably not for you.

Why now? Several incidents, previous to and during Awesome New Female Characters Week, have left a bad taste in the mouths of the mod team and some members who contacted us to raise concerns. We’re not going to start pointing fingers, or focusing on specific members or discussions, but we feel a general reminder is called for.

Scans_Daily strives to be a feminist space. It is not an appropriate platform for slut shaming, victim blaming, concern trolling, rape metaphors or apologia, to applaud violence against women or express any other anti-woman sentiments. It's saddening to have seen so much of this during a theme week aimed at highlighting the awesomeness of female comics characters.

Disagreements will happen, but Scans_Daily is not the place to employ anti-woman or anti-feminist rhetoric in order to make your point. Members should be aware that sexist behavior that may be accepted or even normal elsewhere, is not normal and definitely not acceptable here.

We realize the vast majority of our members are awesome and we don't need to remind you of these issues. For everyone who's already aware of these concerns, keep on being amazing and thanks for the support!

Comments are locked on this entry. The ethos is not up for discussion, just something we’d like our members to keep in mind.

We have a number of announcements in this edition of the Scans Daily Planet Bugle.

1. Mod Departure

It is with regret that we inform you that longtime mod and Superdictionary fanatic parsimonia/mad is stepping down from the mod team to concentrate on other projects. She will be sorely missed, and we wish her luck in her future endeavours!

2. Seeking New Mods

Accordingly, we are seeking new mods. If you are interested in joining the mod team and have some free time on your hands, please contact us at dailyscans AT gmail DOT com.

3. Tinypic has gone US-Only

According to Tinypic:

Tinypic is no longer accepting uploads from international locations, and links are turned off. If you have content on Tinypic, you can still view the URLs and the content, but only on Tinypic. To upload, share, or link content, please go to Photobucket.com to register an account. You will need to upload your content again to your Photobucket account, but you will be able to share and link your images and videos. We’re sorry for the inconvenience and hope that you enjoy Photobucket, our premier image and video site

And:

Tinypic International is changing. Beginning September 23rd, you will no longer be able to upload content to Tinypic and your links will be turned off. Please begin using Photobucket to upload, share and link your images and videos.

Some alternative image hosting sites:

http://imageshack.us
http://www.actionupload.com/
http://www.easyimage.us/
http://www.ezpicshare.com/
http://www.hostmyjpg.com/
http://www.imagebanana.com/
http://www.imagecabin.com/
http://imgur.com/

*We will update this list, as we find new sites. Members, please do suggest alternatives.

4. Novella Dedicated to Scans/NoScans Community

New author Helen Louise Caroll has dedicated a just released novella to the Scans/NoScans community. Superheroes In The Suburbs, published by Amber Quill Press, is available for download here.

When a secret agent and a superhero move to the suburbs, can they find happiness?

Secret agent Gary has been looking for a home of his own forever. Superhero Cole, aka the Scarlet Bug, just wants to make his lover happy and to get away from being a superhero all the time.

At first, when the men buy a house in the suburbs, they can't help but believe that their dream has come true, that they can finally live a calm, quiet, and "normal" life when they're not on the job.

But Cole and Gary also don't count on over-enthusiastic superhero colleagues helping them move in, or startling guests at the friendly neighborhood barbeque...

The dedication reads:

"In grateful acknowledgement of Len Wein and J. M. DeMatteis who gave the world two perfect issues of Mister Miracle and to the Scans Daily community for introducing me to said issues."

5. The Delicious Tagging Plugin

In addition to all the other work murklins has done helping the comm get set up on Delicious, she’s also provided us with a Greasemonkey script that automatically displays the Delicious tags at the bottom of any entry.

There are versions available for both Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox over at her scripts page. While Chrome has built-in Greasemonkey functionality, Firefox users will need to install the add-on, available here.

There can be slight conflicts due to Delicious' latency and your browser's local cache, which can delay any new tags displaying immediately, but it can still be an invaluable resource.

Now, due to a backlog we’ve been experiencing, the plug-in won’t display tags for the last month or so because they simply don’t exist. The mod team has been struggling to keep up with the on-site and Delicious tags, but has found the workload more than four people alone can handle. We’re always looking to recruit new tag-wranglers, while also looking into ways we can automate the process of Delicious-tagging. In the meantime, if you’d like to lend a hand, please send us an e-mail at dailyscans AT gmail DOT com and we’d be happy to get you set up as a volunteer.

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As always, thank you for your cooperation and support (as well as your cracky scans!), and continue being your awesome selves.

The mod team can be reached at dailyscans AT gmail DOT com. Don’t hesitate to contact us with questions, concerns or suggestions!

schmevil, angelophile, sandoz_iscariot, kingrockwell
The Scans_Daily & NoScans_Daily mod team

As this year's One Perfect Moment Week comes to a close, we'd like to thank everyone who participated. A week doesn't seem very long, does it?

We're handing over to our members now. Got an idea for an upcoming theme week? Why not suggest it? Want to run your own? Go for it! The mods will happily support any suggestions (within reason)! There's always room for a rotating custom banner heading the community or for complete spontaneity.

Again, many thanks to all those who posted their Perfect Moments and shared their love with the community. It was great to see!

(Crossposted to NoScans_Daily)

After discussion, the mod team have decided to try a new approach to mod communications! Rather than spam the community with every announcement, we're going to be trying a new newsletter format to update our members with any developments with the communities, posted (semi)regularly and drawing attention to the great, the good and any changes in mod policy.

So, here goes with our very first Scans_Daily Planet Bugle!

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SD_Admin:

First up, you may notice we're still using the SD_Admin account for this post. We understand the concerns about the facelessness of the SD_Admin account and, as we've stated, the Modbot will be retired on matters of discipline to preserve transparency. All matters of discipline continue to be group decisions, but individual mods will be more visible handing out mod notes and warnings. We will, however, still be using the account for mod posts, FAQs etc, for the simple logistical reason that it means all members of the moderation team can edit posts at a later date, if required.

Moderator Stepping Down:

It is with some regret that we have to announce that neo_prodigy has stepped down from the scans_daily and noscans_daily moderation team.

We'd like to publicly thank Neo for all his hard work and contributions over the past few months, especially for sharing his experience in the areas of anti-oppression moderation and his aid towards our commitment to making scans_daily and noscans_daily safer spaces for all marginalized groups. His help has been invaluable in clarifying the rules and policies of the community, which the mod team continues to be 100% committed to.

We hope our members will join in us wishing him good luck in his future endeavors.

Suggestions Box and Anti-Oppression:

On the subject of our continuing commitment to anti-oppression moderation, like many of you, many of the mod team are still relatively new to anti-oppression work and we haven't always done the best we could. Part of our reason for reviving the Suggestion Box (SD’s is here, NSD’s is here) was to get feedback from our members on scans_daily and noscans_daily's anti-oppression stance and how we might better work on making the communities friendlier and safer spaces for all marginalized groups to discuss comics.

After taking into account recent internal debates, and the comments in the Suggestions Box, we'd like to publicly reaffirm our commitment to Scans/NoScans as anti-oppression communities and to our doing 101 level work within it. We will be examining the suggestions regarding mod practices over the next few weeks. However, we'd like to clarify that we will not be compromising either community’s strong commitment to supporting marginalized members, nor are there any planned changes to comm policy in this regard. The calling out policy will remain in place and we’d like to remind members and lurkers alike of the warning clearly displayed on the main page:

Bottom line: If slash, feminism or anti-oppressive practice makes you react negatively, scans_daily is probably not for you.

If you are one of those who have expressed concerns about our stance on anti-oppression and calling out being used in the community at all, we’d like to reiterate: the community is most likely not a good fit for you. These are policies that are ingrained into the community’s ethos and will not be compromised at the expense of marginalized groups.

Scans_Daily of LiveJournal: RISE!

The other big news of the week is that scans_daily has returned to Livejournal! Although this won't affect our, now permanent, home on Dreamwidth, thanks to Livejournal's policy of purging defunct journals the era of the strikethrough has ended and Black Lantern Scans_Daily has risen! As the community shuffles back into unlife, hungering for BRAAAAIIIINS, why not check in on the ongoing party post and sate its appetite?

Theme Weeks:

And more big news! One of the things the Mod team are looking to encourage is the return of regular theme weeks on scans_daily. Traditionally, these have been invented on-the-fly by members and we're not looking to change the spontaneity of this. However, to encourage our members to share the love, we're going to be announcing occasional theme weeks ourselves. After the success of last June's "One Perfect Moment Week" (thanks to icon_uk!), we'll be kicking off with a repeat of that theme:



So, if you didn't get the chance to post your perfect moment last year or another's appeared since, this is your opportunity. "One Perfect Moment Week 2.0" will be kicking off this Sunday with an announcement post, so get your scans ready!

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Thanks, S_Ders and NS_Ders and keep on being awesome!

schmevil, mad, sandoz_iscarot, angelophile and kingrockwell
The Scans_Daily and NoScans_Daily Mod Team

Good news!

Thanks to the latest code push from Dreamwidth and the success of our integration with Delicious, we're now in a position to reopen on-comm tagging for the community.

This means that instead of asking members to include a list of suggested tags within the body of your posts, you'll be able to set tags on your entries in the traditional manner. These will then be used as the basis for the official Delicious tagging.

Tagging will be locked to an entry's original poster and the administrators, so that tag vandalism can be avoided.

Thank you for bearing with us during the time that on-comm tagging has been disabled.

Anti-Oppression Resources

scans_daily/noscans_daily strives to provide an atmosphere which is LGBT-friendly, anti-racist, anti-ableist, woman-friendly, and otherwise discrimination and harassment free.

Last August we posted a list of resources, compiled to help members of scans_daily/noscans_daily educate themselves on anti-oppression terms and issues touched on in our Community Ethos. We have expanded this list and are re-posting it.

We recognize that not everyone starts from the same place when it comes to discussions of discrimination, oppression, and privilege. Our hope is that this list will continue to serve as a valuable resource for both members and moderators, and help facilitate discussion and better understanding of topics such as privilege, racism, sexism, transphobia, ableism, homophobia, and other forms of discrimination and oppression.

As a medium, comics are extremely diverse and wide-ranging in terms of their content, style and subject matter. We believe it is important to provide a safer space for all fans to discuss, criticize, celebrate, and enjoy comics, which is why we strongly encourage you to explore the links provided.


The 101s

These resources are 101 level - they're designed for readers who are new to the anti-oppression conversation, or who are new to particular parts of the conversation. Are you a committed feminist who's learning about transphobia? An anti-racist who'd like to learn more about anti-ableism? Or someone who's exploring this stuff in depth for the first time? This section is for you. ( Read more... )

Privilege

What is privilege? Privileges are rights or immunities which are granted to some, as part of an office, title, or membership in a group (eg. executive privilege, spousal privilege). In anti-oppression conversation, 'privilege' refers to the unearned benefits of being a member of a dominant or advantaged group (eg. white privilege, male privilege). Privilege works to systematically overempower the privileged, while disempowering the dis-privileged. The fringe benefits of privilege are generally invisible - taken to be natural, or taken for granted - by the privileged. This aspect of privilege also makes invisible the disadvantages experienced by others.

This is a short list of resources on privilege. ( Read more... )

Appropriation and Representation

Cultural appropriation: Borrowing symbols, artifacts, modes of dress, myths and other cultural products from another, different cultural group. Think tribal tattoos and First Nations headdresses on the high fashion runway without any context, understanding or respect for their origins and the people to whom they belong.

Representation: Media representations shape our understanding of ourselves and others - representation matters. Stereotypical depictions of disprivileged groups can have wide-ranging, and harmful effects. ( Read more... )

Tone

Feminists, anti-racists and other anti-oppression advocates are often told that "you'd catch more flies with honey than with vinegar." The argument being that more people would listen if you'd stop being so angry, pushy, aggressive, emotional, hysterical, etc. Instead, you should your point calmly, rationally, and without causing undue offense. This is the 'tone argument,' and is used both by concern trolls, and by derailers. It is a conversational tactic, designed to discredit the 'angry' opposition, and their arguments at once. ( Read more... )

Derailing

What is derailing? It is literally, to run a conversation off the rails. Derailing happens when someone comes into a conversation and demands that it change course, stop in its tracks, or back up long enough for them to jump on. Derailing can be deliberate and malicious, or well-meaning and ignorant, but in all cases it makes a mess of a delicate and complicated anti-oppression conversation.

This is a short list of resources on derailing. ( Read more... )

Conversation and Strategies

Finding these conversations difficult because you lack the vocabulary, or need new tactics? These resources are for you. ( Read more... )

Communities, Blogs and Sites

Looking for safe spaces, or places to learn more about anti-oppression theory and activism? We've got some links. ( Read more... )

Exceptional Minority Media

This list is heavily based on member submissions. Please submit your favorites! ( Read more... )

This list is only a start. If there is a resource you would like added to, or removed from this list, please let us know. We consider this project a work in progress to be updated and revised on a semi-regular basis.