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Pluralstories: Why We Did It Like That
Pluralstories: Why We Did It Like That
Summary: "Librarians are the secret masters of the universe. They control information. Never piss one off." --Spider Robinson
Word Count: 3450
Notes: Winner of the fan poll this month and sponsored by our fans at LiberaPay and Patreon! Derelict from a "plurals in video games" academic paper that didn't end up happening.
We first got the idea of making a catalog of plural stories in 2009, back when we were in library school. People seemed to want one, and we heard plenty of complaints along the lines of, "I just want to read a story about people like me!" but at best there were lists of a few favorites on a blog or (later on) in an itch.io collection. Arguably the closest thing to a comprehensive catalog was Nita and Anita's now-defunct Multiple Personality and Dissociation Book List, which after a decade in existence listed 161 books with keywords and reviews. However significant, it had major flaws: it was limited to books from a medical standpoint, used only vague keywords like "fiction" and "psychiatry", gave no description of what the books were actually about, and kept the reviews (the only place to find content descriptions) siloed off and organized by reviewer name, rather than book title. Something more comprehensive and searchable was needed.
That was our original goal: a broad, searchable catalog of stories for spirited/many-selved people and their friends to enjoy, one that could be searched by genre, medium, disability access, price point, and many-selved-specific themes (for instance, imaginary friends or inner romance). We also wanted it to be something people could submit their recommendations to, so it wouldn't just become a catalog of Stuff LB Likes. Finally, we wanted a project we could stay on top of, despite impairment and lack of direct pay.
Our original idea was a database of multi books and comics, but our lack of programming experience defeated us. We considered creating an in-person multi library in 2017, like Sarah K. Reece did in Australia, but housing instability made this impractical. We also considered creating a plural merch collective, only to realize that the financial details and logistics of hauling wares around were beyond our capacity to manage. We grew increasingly frustrated.
Then Sneak hit on the idea of creating a digital catalog by monkeywrenching Dreamwidth's "community" function. This would cause no housing or financial difficulties! Ze started drafting on paper, then created pluralstories on Dreamwidth. After seeding the catalog with 25 entries, ze went public in July 2022. At time of this writing, almost three years later, there's ~225 entries, ~95 Dreamwidth users who follow the project, and an unknown number of folks following by RSS or manual checking. We are currently the sole maintainer, but have no trouble staying on top of it. The project is a humble success.
In short: familiarity. Dreamwidth communities were originally built for groups of people to post about and comment upon shared interests, but people had monkeywrenched "DW comms" previously for community back-ups (such as multiplicity_archives), or for individual artists working on their own personal creative projects (such as everwood). We had used Dreamwidth for many years, and its predecessor Livejournal before that, so we were intimately familiar with the site's strengths, weaknesses, and idiosyncrasies. The following made it excellent for our purpose:
* RSS ability. People don't need a Dreamwidth account to keep track of it.
* Accessibility. Dreamwidth is screen-reader and dial-up friendly. Mobile access is clunky, but more for posters than readers or commenters.
* Transparent sorting algorithm. Dreamwidth always shows posts in reverse chronological order, making it easy to keep track of what's new.
* Anonymity. People don't need an account to comment or submit a story--very important for harassment-prone demographics.
* Defensibility. Any multi project or creator must be prepared for harassment, spam, and trolls. Many websites like Twitter and Facebook profit from "enragement = engagement" and thus are designed to make it difficult to protect oneself, but Dreamwidth has many useful anti-harassment settings, making moderation easier.
* Searchability. Dreamwidth's search function is clunky and restricted to those with accounts, but it works, lists things solely in reverse chronological order, and has no ads.
* Tagging system. Dreamwidth tags can be batch-renamed or merged, making maintenace easier. Posts can also be cross-referenced by multiple tags, using AND or OR. Thus, a fastidious archivist who uses the tagging system well can make a catalog that can not only be searched, but sorted by tags. (Alas, there isn't a function to simultaneously search and limit by tags.)
* Archivability. Dreamwidth natively allows for easy (though clunky) download in XML of a month's worth of posts at once, and the Python script LJdump (updated for Dreamwidth by user garote in 2024) can archive hundreds or even thousands at a go. If the site goes down, we could within a few minutes download the entire catalog and reupload it elsewhere.
Each individual post on pluralstories is an entry into the catalog, and thus one story. There are a small handful of posts that are not catalog entries: one explaining the tags, one pinned to the home page explaining how to use the catalog, a "submit a story" post, and a complete index listing all of the stories in alphabetical order by creator last names. (For works with multiple names behind them, they get listed under every name, except for video games and movies with large teams behind them.)
Users can look for stories on any one of four axes:
* Creator [last] name: kept in order on the story list.
* Time posted: either browsing the posts in reverse-chronological order from the homepage, or from a month/year of the user's choice (from the archive page).
* Tags: accessible through https://pluralstories.dreamwidth.org/tag, can be cross-referenced using Dreamwidth's native functionality, or the handy code page that Phosphor of Hungry Ghosts created.
* Search: using the search bar available on the community home page or any individual post (though only if they have a Dreamwidth account),
This suits users who want a specific genre, theme, or creator, along with regular users checking to see what's new since last time.
We are currently the only user allowed to make, edit, or delete posts or tags. This allows for easy tag maintenance. An open call is out for another cataloger, but we can stay on top of the archive on our own, if need be.
Each catalog entry has a comments section open to the public, including anonymous users without an account. Dreamwidth shows threaded comments in chronological order, so when the cataloger posts an entry, they immediately comment first (and thus pin to the top) a list of thorough content warnings. Users can add on to the warnings by responding in that thread. This method for content warnings has proven satisfying both to people wanting no spoilers (they just don't read the comments) and people who want thorough warnings. It also had an unexpected bonus, allowing helpful users to suggest their own warnings without requiring constant edits to the catalog entries themselves.
The "submit a story" post's comments are open to anyone (including anonymous visitors) to recommend a story's addition to the catalog, using a copy-pasted form in the post body. The cataloger can then respond to ask for clarifications or state that the story has been added (or why it's been denied).
The rest of the comments are a free-for-all for reviews ("I love this one!"), corrections ("this link is broken"), questions, and other comments. Since it is a catalog, rather than a social group, interaction has been minor. Interference has not been a problem, but should the comments become flooded with spam or malice, Dreamwidth allows for comments to be easily restricted to specific users with the check of a settings box. As the project's sole maintainer, we also have the power to ban anyone causing a problem, delete their comments, screen them so nobody can see them, or freeze them so nobody can respond to them.
We learned from previous plural media projects like the Multiple Personality and Dissociation Book List, and also our own experience as the catalog went on. From the start, there were a few pitfalls that we wanted to avoid:
* Completionism. The catalog would become bloated with mediocrities that nobody enjoyed, or stories that had only the most tangential relevance. (We called this the, "it's only one minor character in one episode but it's so good though!" problem.)
* Focus on philosophy, academic theory, self-help, etc. A noble goal, but not for this project.
* Recommendations of impossible-to-find or private/friends-locked works.
* Community-specific jargon. This was to avoid polemic turf wars and improve newbie usability. (This one had to be modified; see below.)
* In-fighting over whether a story was "plural enough," "good enough," or "good enough representation."
* Vanity. The catalog would over-represent one creator's work, either a beloved favorite of the maintainer/s, or someone/s who submitted everything they'd ever made.
* Focus on specific "legit" plural groups. Though we at first were stricter about what counted as "plural" for catalog's sake, we quickly discovered that this invariably led to a focus on white medical multiplicity... the exact narrowness we hoped to avoid.
* Harassment of creators and comm members. A plural stories catalog could easily become a dossier of targets.
We worked around these problems by establishing the following rules for the catalog:
1. Stories must be publicly available (or easily piratable).
2. People can not submit their own work, only others', and it cannot be work obviously made by minors (who can be easily forcibly institutionalized). We also currently have a four-work limit per creator.
3. The submitted work must be a story (with exceptions made for avante-garde or personal experience works).
4. Spirited/many-selvedness (however broadly defined) must be core to the story. (Our rule of thumb: if the many-selvedness is removed, does the story fall apart?)
5. We list things that have made the catalog in the past (spirit marriage, mediumship, medical multiplicity, plural stories, realms and people from fiction and the imagination, etc.), while also leaving the definition open-ended. Rather than give the submitter hoops to jump through, we instead ask: why do YOU think it's a good fit for this catalog?
6. Finally, whoever submits the story has to state why it is worth peoples' time. This allows us to avoid in-fighting, moving from a paranoid reading of the work ("is it good enough?") to a reparative one ("why do I want other people to know about it?").
We specifically wanted our catalog to have room for what we call "Cheez Whiz" stories--stories that are by no means "good" or "politically correct" but nevertheless delight and satisfy a need, much like spraying processed cheese product directly into one's face. Marginalized populations are often expected to constantly perform respectable perfection, and we wanted there to be room for works, genres, and characters often looked down on, like trashy romance/porno, fanfiction, or delightfully evil alters who allow for wish-fulfillment: what if we could indeed just dropkick all who oppose us? Judging by the submissions and comments, this has been a success, leading to a more vibrant and diverse catalog.
No plan survives contact with reality. Of course we had to make changes over time.
This proved harder than we expected. Though everyone mocks jargon, a lot of it exists (or at least once existed) for an important purpose: to describe unusual but specific things not discussed in mainstream culture's everyday language. Catalog tags have to be short, and it is a lot easier to say "fictioneer" (a term from Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series) than it is to say "a character in the story who is fictional even in the context of that story." Terms that would work in real life, like "story people," completely fall apart in a catalog that is entirely made up of stories with people in them. At other times, we chose to use terms like "median," despite their checkered history, because it was still better-known than its predecessor, "midcontinuum/midcont," and politics take a backseat to usability.
When we do use jargon, we define it in our "tag explanations" post. This is regrettable but inevitable when describing an otherordinary experience.
Originally, the catalog allowed for creators to submit their own work, but we revoked it when we realized that one self-aggrandizing incompetent could flood the catalog with endless drivel. (Thankfully, this was instituted before any such thing happened!) It also resolved concerns of future quality control--if someone is willing to recommend a story to the catalog and say why it's worth someone's time, then by nature it is good enough to merit inclusion.
We come from a generation where being openly multi is tantamount to bleeding in the shark tank, and we've weathered many troll campaigns from groups like Encyclopedia Dramatica, Fandom Wank, KiwiFarms, and garden-variety jerks. We were unprepared for young people throwing in submissions openly identifying themselves as plural minors with specific triggers and controversial opinions. We regretted having to put in the "no work by people-easily-identified-as-minors" rule, since many minors make wonderful work, but we refuse to run a catalog that can easily lead to someone getting institutionalized or trolled to death.
Similarly, there was the issue of when to tag a creator as plural or not.
Sneak (our main cataloger) created the "plural creator" tag with the first catalog entries, but many a plural creator may not want to be openly identified as such! So we made a rule, to avoid harassment or malicious submissions, that said tag must only be used if the creator themselves consent to it, or if they state it either in the work itself or in easy view of it (like a public interview). Lack of said tag doesn't necessarily mean the creator is singlet! It just means no public statement has been made.
As other forms of spirited/many-selved experience were added to the catalog (Vodouisants, for instance), "plural creator" seemed inappropriate, so Sneak created the "creator speaks from experience" tag. But this created a false binary, similar to so many turf wars determined to differentiate the "true" plurals/multiples from the "fakes," so ze finally merged them under a single "creator speaks from experience" tag. This has proven much more satisfying.
Like all projects that rely on online data (and many catalog entries are tiny, self-published works), link rot and data loss are ongoing problems--many a work disappears within less than a year! We ended up having to create a rule that a work must reach a satisfactory conclusion point before being submitted, to avoid the "one week webcomic" problem, and we also created the "lost media" tag for works that are missing parts or get deleted post-cataloging. (We have chosen to keep these catalog entries for posterity, despite the retroactive violation of the "no non-public works.")
After the first time this happened (the nigh-complete loss of the webcomic Princess and the System), Sneak made it a point to save local copies of every online catalog entry feasible. (Ze skips massive files and webcomics with hundreds of pages.) Ze also took to putting back-up links (from Archive.org or Archive.is) in every relevant catalog entry. If the work is live online but not archived on either site, ze creates one. If a work is out of print, has no ebook version, and we procure a rare paper copy, then we either textually transcribe it (if short) or (if long) feed it into a library book scanner and have it OCRed by Orion Scribner. Then we rehost the files ourself. If a work is extremely short (such as Spider Robinson's final verse of "Puff the Magic Dragon"), then we type it up ourself and put it in the comments of the relevant catalog entry. This serves to not only stave off entropy, but to make works more accessible to blind, overseas, or dial-up readers.
We attempted to reach out to creator/s, asking permission to rehost lost works, only for them to overwhelmingly respond with no: they deleted the work for a reason and didn't want it publicly available. In one case, it was due to their (free) work being stolen and resold; in other cases, we suspected that contact with us was distressing, reminding the creator/s of horrible times. So for now, we are retiring the queries. This catalog is supposed to be a celebration, not a misery hole.
However, this has left us in the sad, surreal position of being in (possibly sole) possession of lost many-selved artwork, honor-bound never to rehost it or put it online. But then, what to do with our local files, made at the time of cataloging? Many of these works are beautiful, moving works of art. It breaks our multi librarian heart to lose them. And so, we keep them for ourself. Who knows? Perhaps one day, the creator/s will change their mind again, and if so, we will be here.
This is probably the most laborious, heartbreaking part of cataloging, but it is a matter of personal pride that after two years, two hundred submissions, and many deletions, the only works that are irrevocably missing pieces are Princess and the System (the first loss), and Gemini and Silverwolf (which had both been missing pieces for over a decade and were cataloged in their incomplete state, in deference to their historical import). Though other works have been removed from public viewing, none have been completely lost at this time.
At first, "plural" seemed a good enough umbrella term for the catalog, but over time, as people delighted in submitting stories that truly pushed the boundaries of what many-selved could mean (such as a webcomic involving networked AIs who come from an original source file, or a radio show epsode about how Mel Blanc, after a car accident, regained the voice of Bugs Bunny before his own), it became limiting. Although "plural" was originally coined by Vicki(s) in 1997 as a coalition term to fight the gatekeeping of "multiple," it has become an identity and culture all its own, ironically replicating the same gatekeeping problems of "multiple" before it. It also had the logistical problem of putting that section of the tags (and probably what people looked at most) at the very bottom of the page! After much head-scratching, Sneak of us chose to batch rename those tags as "1+", solving both problems. "1+" was a descriptor, not a culture or identity (yet, hopefully ever), and it bounced the tags to the very top.
There was also the issue of where the plural/singlet line lay, and how to handle it. This manifested in a couple different situations:
1. Creator/s who speak about their own experiences, but don't use the term "plural" for it. (This includes people like Korean mansin, Haitian Vodouisants, or just people outside the specific current-day online plural subculture.) Maybe it'd be rude, mean/racist, or just plain wrong/imperialist to slap a "plural" label on them by including them in the catalog. Should we include them?
2. Singlet authors. Should we include them at all?
The answer to #2 made the answer to #1 easy: yes. In fact, we argue that one cannot have a truly plural catalog without including singlets.
Why? Well, first of all, it's easier to prevent harassment if creators might well be singlet. A plural-creators-only catalog is too easy to use for ill (maliciously submitting someone's work to out them, inviting arguments as to whether a creator "counts," creating an easy target list), and it punishes creators who can't afford to publicly announce themselves... that is, most of them. By making a catalog where jerks can't make easy assumptions about the creator, we hope to protect people from harassment while still spreading their work.
But more importantly: there is no hard line between plural and singlet. A truly inclusive catalog for many-selved people must include people who are closeted, must include people who are sometimes, partially, previously, or possibly plural, and thus must include singlets. We've known folks who defy all categorization, and they tend to make the coolest stuff. The whole point of making the catalog in the first place was to have something more expansive than just another MPD/DID book list! We choose to resist that urge to homogenize as best we can, even though we know we will inevitably fall short. (One obvious shortcoming: the catalog unavoidably slants Anglophone.) If other people find our catalog too expansive, the contents are all under a Creative Commons license; there's nothing stopping them from producing or reproducing their preferred catalog.
Though its name is now a little outdated, we are pleased with how the catalog is going, and hope to continue maintaining it. Even if we are unable to and the project languishes, though, it will still stand usefully.
Summary: "Librarians are the secret masters of the universe. They control information. Never piss one off." --Spider Robinson
Word Count: 3450
Notes: Winner of the fan poll this month and sponsored by our fans at LiberaPay and Patreon! Derelict from a "plurals in video games" academic paper that didn't end up happening.
We first got the idea of making a catalog of plural stories in 2009, back when we were in library school. People seemed to want one, and we heard plenty of complaints along the lines of, "I just want to read a story about people like me!" but at best there were lists of a few favorites on a blog or (later on) in an itch.io collection. Arguably the closest thing to a comprehensive catalog was Nita and Anita's now-defunct Multiple Personality and Dissociation Book List, which after a decade in existence listed 161 books with keywords and reviews. However significant, it had major flaws: it was limited to books from a medical standpoint, used only vague keywords like "fiction" and "psychiatry", gave no description of what the books were actually about, and kept the reviews (the only place to find content descriptions) siloed off and organized by reviewer name, rather than book title. Something more comprehensive and searchable was needed.
That was our original goal: a broad, searchable catalog of stories for spirited/many-selved people and their friends to enjoy, one that could be searched by genre, medium, disability access, price point, and many-selved-specific themes (for instance, imaginary friends or inner romance). We also wanted it to be something people could submit their recommendations to, so it wouldn't just become a catalog of Stuff LB Likes. Finally, we wanted a project we could stay on top of, despite impairment and lack of direct pay.
Our original idea was a database of multi books and comics, but our lack of programming experience defeated us. We considered creating an in-person multi library in 2017, like Sarah K. Reece did in Australia, but housing instability made this impractical. We also considered creating a plural merch collective, only to realize that the financial details and logistics of hauling wares around were beyond our capacity to manage. We grew increasingly frustrated.
Then Sneak hit on the idea of creating a digital catalog by monkeywrenching Dreamwidth's "community" function. This would cause no housing or financial difficulties! Ze started drafting on paper, then created pluralstories on Dreamwidth. After seeding the catalog with 25 entries, ze went public in July 2022. At time of this writing, almost three years later, there's ~225 entries, ~95 Dreamwidth users who follow the project, and an unknown number of folks following by RSS or manual checking. We are currently the sole maintainer, but have no trouble staying on top of it. The project is a humble success.
WHY DREAMWIDTH?
In short: familiarity. Dreamwidth communities were originally built for groups of people to post about and comment upon shared interests, but people had monkeywrenched "DW comms" previously for community back-ups (such as multiplicity_archives), or for individual artists working on their own personal creative projects (such as everwood). We had used Dreamwidth for many years, and its predecessor Livejournal before that, so we were intimately familiar with the site's strengths, weaknesses, and idiosyncrasies. The following made it excellent for our purpose:
* RSS ability. People don't need a Dreamwidth account to keep track of it.
* Accessibility. Dreamwidth is screen-reader and dial-up friendly. Mobile access is clunky, but more for posters than readers or commenters.
* Transparent sorting algorithm. Dreamwidth always shows posts in reverse chronological order, making it easy to keep track of what's new.
* Anonymity. People don't need an account to comment or submit a story--very important for harassment-prone demographics.
* Defensibility. Any multi project or creator must be prepared for harassment, spam, and trolls. Many websites like Twitter and Facebook profit from "enragement = engagement" and thus are designed to make it difficult to protect oneself, but Dreamwidth has many useful anti-harassment settings, making moderation easier.
* Searchability. Dreamwidth's search function is clunky and restricted to those with accounts, but it works, lists things solely in reverse chronological order, and has no ads.
* Tagging system. Dreamwidth tags can be batch-renamed or merged, making maintenace easier. Posts can also be cross-referenced by multiple tags, using AND or OR. Thus, a fastidious archivist who uses the tagging system well can make a catalog that can not only be searched, but sorted by tags. (Alas, there isn't a function to simultaneously search and limit by tags.)
* Archivability. Dreamwidth natively allows for easy (though clunky) download in XML of a month's worth of posts at once, and the Python script LJdump (updated for Dreamwidth by user garote in 2024) can archive hundreds or even thousands at a go. If the site goes down, we could within a few minutes download the entire catalog and reupload it elsewhere.
FORMAT
Each individual post on pluralstories is an entry into the catalog, and thus one story. There are a small handful of posts that are not catalog entries: one explaining the tags, one pinned to the home page explaining how to use the catalog, a "submit a story" post, and a complete index listing all of the stories in alphabetical order by creator last names. (For works with multiple names behind them, they get listed under every name, except for video games and movies with large teams behind them.)
Users can look for stories on any one of four axes:
* Creator [last] name: kept in order on the story list.
* Time posted: either browsing the posts in reverse-chronological order from the homepage, or from a month/year of the user's choice (from the archive page).
* Tags: accessible through https://pluralstories.dreamwidth.org/tag, can be cross-referenced using Dreamwidth's native functionality, or the handy code page that Phosphor of Hungry Ghosts created.
* Search: using the search bar available on the community home page or any individual post (though only if they have a Dreamwidth account),
This suits users who want a specific genre, theme, or creator, along with regular users checking to see what's new since last time.
We are currently the only user allowed to make, edit, or delete posts or tags. This allows for easy tag maintenance. An open call is out for another cataloger, but we can stay on top of the archive on our own, if need be.
Each catalog entry has a comments section open to the public, including anonymous users without an account. Dreamwidth shows threaded comments in chronological order, so when the cataloger posts an entry, they immediately comment first (and thus pin to the top) a list of thorough content warnings. Users can add on to the warnings by responding in that thread. This method for content warnings has proven satisfying both to people wanting no spoilers (they just don't read the comments) and people who want thorough warnings. It also had an unexpected bonus, allowing helpful users to suggest their own warnings without requiring constant edits to the catalog entries themselves.
The "submit a story" post's comments are open to anyone (including anonymous visitors) to recommend a story's addition to the catalog, using a copy-pasted form in the post body. The cataloger can then respond to ask for clarifications or state that the story has been added (or why it's been denied).
The rest of the comments are a free-for-all for reviews ("I love this one!"), corrections ("this link is broken"), questions, and other comments. Since it is a catalog, rather than a social group, interaction has been minor. Interference has not been a problem, but should the comments become flooded with spam or malice, Dreamwidth allows for comments to be easily restricted to specific users with the check of a settings box. As the project's sole maintainer, we also have the power to ban anyone causing a problem, delete their comments, screen them so nobody can see them, or freeze them so nobody can respond to them.
INCLUSION/EXCLUSION CRITERIA
We learned from previous plural media projects like the Multiple Personality and Dissociation Book List, and also our own experience as the catalog went on. From the start, there were a few pitfalls that we wanted to avoid:
* Completionism. The catalog would become bloated with mediocrities that nobody enjoyed, or stories that had only the most tangential relevance. (We called this the, "it's only one minor character in one episode but it's so good though!" problem.)
* Focus on philosophy, academic theory, self-help, etc. A noble goal, but not for this project.
* Recommendations of impossible-to-find or private/friends-locked works.
* Community-specific jargon. This was to avoid polemic turf wars and improve newbie usability. (This one had to be modified; see below.)
* In-fighting over whether a story was "plural enough," "good enough," or "good enough representation."
* Vanity. The catalog would over-represent one creator's work, either a beloved favorite of the maintainer/s, or someone/s who submitted everything they'd ever made.
* Focus on specific "legit" plural groups. Though we at first were stricter about what counted as "plural" for catalog's sake, we quickly discovered that this invariably led to a focus on white medical multiplicity... the exact narrowness we hoped to avoid.
* Harassment of creators and comm members. A plural stories catalog could easily become a dossier of targets.
We worked around these problems by establishing the following rules for the catalog:
1. Stories must be publicly available (or easily piratable).
2. People can not submit their own work, only others', and it cannot be work obviously made by minors (who can be easily forcibly institutionalized). We also currently have a four-work limit per creator.
3. The submitted work must be a story (with exceptions made for avante-garde or personal experience works).
4. Spirited/many-selvedness (however broadly defined) must be core to the story. (Our rule of thumb: if the many-selvedness is removed, does the story fall apart?)
5. We list things that have made the catalog in the past (spirit marriage, mediumship, medical multiplicity, plural stories, realms and people from fiction and the imagination, etc.), while also leaving the definition open-ended. Rather than give the submitter hoops to jump through, we instead ask: why do YOU think it's a good fit for this catalog?
6. Finally, whoever submits the story has to state why it is worth peoples' time. This allows us to avoid in-fighting, moving from a paranoid reading of the work ("is it good enough?") to a reparative one ("why do I want other people to know about it?").
We specifically wanted our catalog to have room for what we call "Cheez Whiz" stories--stories that are by no means "good" or "politically correct" but nevertheless delight and satisfy a need, much like spraying processed cheese product directly into one's face. Marginalized populations are often expected to constantly perform respectable perfection, and we wanted there to be room for works, genres, and characters often looked down on, like trashy romance/porno, fanfiction, or delightfully evil alters who allow for wish-fulfillment: what if we could indeed just dropkick all who oppose us? Judging by the submissions and comments, this has been a success, leading to a more vibrant and diverse catalog.
LESSONS LEARNED
No plan survives contact with reality. Of course we had to make changes over time.
AVOIDING JARGON
This proved harder than we expected. Though everyone mocks jargon, a lot of it exists (or at least once existed) for an important purpose: to describe unusual but specific things not discussed in mainstream culture's everyday language. Catalog tags have to be short, and it is a lot easier to say "fictioneer" (a term from Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series) than it is to say "a character in the story who is fictional even in the context of that story." Terms that would work in real life, like "story people," completely fall apart in a catalog that is entirely made up of stories with people in them. At other times, we chose to use terms like "median," despite their checkered history, because it was still better-known than its predecessor, "midcontinuum/midcont," and politics take a backseat to usability.
When we do use jargon, we define it in our "tag explanations" post. This is regrettable but inevitable when describing an otherordinary experience.
SELF-SUBMISSIONS
Originally, the catalog allowed for creators to submit their own work, but we revoked it when we realized that one self-aggrandizing incompetent could flood the catalog with endless drivel. (Thankfully, this was instituted before any such thing happened!) It also resolved concerns of future quality control--if someone is willing to recommend a story to the catalog and say why it's worth someone's time, then by nature it is good enough to merit inclusion.
PREVENTING HARASSMENT
We come from a generation where being openly multi is tantamount to bleeding in the shark tank, and we've weathered many troll campaigns from groups like Encyclopedia Dramatica, Fandom Wank, KiwiFarms, and garden-variety jerks. We were unprepared for young people throwing in submissions openly identifying themselves as plural minors with specific triggers and controversial opinions. We regretted having to put in the "no work by people-easily-identified-as-minors" rule, since many minors make wonderful work, but we refuse to run a catalog that can easily lead to someone getting institutionalized or trolled to death.
Similarly, there was the issue of when to tag a creator as plural or not.
Sneak (our main cataloger) created the "plural creator" tag with the first catalog entries, but many a plural creator may not want to be openly identified as such! So we made a rule, to avoid harassment or malicious submissions, that said tag must only be used if the creator themselves consent to it, or if they state it either in the work itself or in easy view of it (like a public interview). Lack of said tag doesn't necessarily mean the creator is singlet! It just means no public statement has been made.
As other forms of spirited/many-selved experience were added to the catalog (Vodouisants, for instance), "plural creator" seemed inappropriate, so Sneak created the "creator speaks from experience" tag. But this created a false binary, similar to so many turf wars determined to differentiate the "true" plurals/multiples from the "fakes," so ze finally merged them under a single "creator speaks from experience" tag. This has proven much more satisfying.
FIGHTING ENTROPY: DATA LOSS AND LINK ROT
Like all projects that rely on online data (and many catalog entries are tiny, self-published works), link rot and data loss are ongoing problems--many a work disappears within less than a year! We ended up having to create a rule that a work must reach a satisfactory conclusion point before being submitted, to avoid the "one week webcomic" problem, and we also created the "lost media" tag for works that are missing parts or get deleted post-cataloging. (We have chosen to keep these catalog entries for posterity, despite the retroactive violation of the "no non-public works.")
After the first time this happened (the nigh-complete loss of the webcomic Princess and the System), Sneak made it a point to save local copies of every online catalog entry feasible. (Ze skips massive files and webcomics with hundreds of pages.) Ze also took to putting back-up links (from Archive.org or Archive.is) in every relevant catalog entry. If the work is live online but not archived on either site, ze creates one. If a work is out of print, has no ebook version, and we procure a rare paper copy, then we either textually transcribe it (if short) or (if long) feed it into a library book scanner and have it OCRed by Orion Scribner. Then we rehost the files ourself. If a work is extremely short (such as Spider Robinson's final verse of "Puff the Magic Dragon"), then we type it up ourself and put it in the comments of the relevant catalog entry. This serves to not only stave off entropy, but to make works more accessible to blind, overseas, or dial-up readers.
We attempted to reach out to creator/s, asking permission to rehost lost works, only for them to overwhelmingly respond with no: they deleted the work for a reason and didn't want it publicly available. In one case, it was due to their (free) work being stolen and resold; in other cases, we suspected that contact with us was distressing, reminding the creator/s of horrible times. So for now, we are retiring the queries. This catalog is supposed to be a celebration, not a misery hole.
However, this has left us in the sad, surreal position of being in (possibly sole) possession of lost many-selved artwork, honor-bound never to rehost it or put it online. But then, what to do with our local files, made at the time of cataloging? Many of these works are beautiful, moving works of art. It breaks our multi librarian heart to lose them. And so, we keep them for ourself. Who knows? Perhaps one day, the creator/s will change their mind again, and if so, we will be here.
This is probably the most laborious, heartbreaking part of cataloging, but it is a matter of personal pride that after two years, two hundred submissions, and many deletions, the only works that are irrevocably missing pieces are Princess and the System (the first loss), and Gemini and Silverwolf (which had both been missing pieces for over a decade and were cataloged in their incomplete state, in deference to their historical import). Though other works have been removed from public viewing, none have been completely lost at this time.
BEYOND PLURAL
At first, "plural" seemed a good enough umbrella term for the catalog, but over time, as people delighted in submitting stories that truly pushed the boundaries of what many-selved could mean (such as a webcomic involving networked AIs who come from an original source file, or a radio show epsode about how Mel Blanc, after a car accident, regained the voice of Bugs Bunny before his own), it became limiting. Although "plural" was originally coined by Vicki(s) in 1997 as a coalition term to fight the gatekeeping of "multiple," it has become an identity and culture all its own, ironically replicating the same gatekeeping problems of "multiple" before it. It also had the logistical problem of putting that section of the tags (and probably what people looked at most) at the very bottom of the page! After much head-scratching, Sneak of us chose to batch rename those tags as "1+", solving both problems. "1+" was a descriptor, not a culture or identity (yet, hopefully ever), and it bounced the tags to the very top.
There was also the issue of where the plural/singlet line lay, and how to handle it. This manifested in a couple different situations:
1. Creator/s who speak about their own experiences, but don't use the term "plural" for it. (This includes people like Korean mansin, Haitian Vodouisants, or just people outside the specific current-day online plural subculture.) Maybe it'd be rude, mean/racist, or just plain wrong/imperialist to slap a "plural" label on them by including them in the catalog. Should we include them?
2. Singlet authors. Should we include them at all?
The answer to #2 made the answer to #1 easy: yes. In fact, we argue that one cannot have a truly plural catalog without including singlets.
Why? Well, first of all, it's easier to prevent harassment if creators might well be singlet. A plural-creators-only catalog is too easy to use for ill (maliciously submitting someone's work to out them, inviting arguments as to whether a creator "counts," creating an easy target list), and it punishes creators who can't afford to publicly announce themselves... that is, most of them. By making a catalog where jerks can't make easy assumptions about the creator, we hope to protect people from harassment while still spreading their work.
But more importantly: there is no hard line between plural and singlet. A truly inclusive catalog for many-selved people must include people who are closeted, must include people who are sometimes, partially, previously, or possibly plural, and thus must include singlets. We've known folks who defy all categorization, and they tend to make the coolest stuff. The whole point of making the catalog in the first place was to have something more expansive than just another MPD/DID book list! We choose to resist that urge to homogenize as best we can, even though we know we will inevitably fall short. (One obvious shortcoming: the catalog unavoidably slants Anglophone.) If other people find our catalog too expansive, the contents are all under a Creative Commons license; there's nothing stopping them from producing or reproducing their preferred catalog.
Though its name is now a little outdated, we are pleased with how the catalog is going, and hope to continue maintaining it. Even if we are unable to and the project languishes, though, it will still stand usefully.
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Reading the why behind it all is also very interesting as an archivist-in-training, with so many things to consider that might not seem obvious at first glance. Also agreed, having used Dreamwidth for over 10 years now, we would've put it here too.
-The Silvermoon Team
(Also also we were somehow not subscribed to it before? That has been rectified!)
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