Something that's been confusing me about 'recent' changes in fandom:

[hmpf]

fandom seems to have moved to livejournal almost completely, even for those things that aren't necessarily best served by LJ. In fact, very little except the pure socialising part of fandom - which is, of course, an important part, no contest about that! - is *really* best served by LJ. Forums are better suited for discussion, since they allow discussions to stay in the public eye, and thus stay *active* longer, whereas on LJ a discussion will drop off people's friends page pretty quickly, turning discussions into quick, transitory, blink-and-you'll-miss-them things. (Sure, those people who noticed and joined the discussion when it popped up on their friends page often keep at it for days - but on a forum, a new contributor might discover it months after it started, and bring it back to the top by posting to it, and *everyone who contributed until then would notice*, and the discussion would be revitalised. A good LJ discussion goes on for days; a good forum discussion can go on for months.) And archives are much more suited for presenting fan-made content, esp. fanfic, because they don't require the potential reader to first learn about the individual LJs of three or four dozen writers and then search those LJs for fic; also, archives usually allow searching for different categories of fic, *and* they keep stuff accessible. Etc.

But, my general reservations about fandom's near-complete move to LJ (and f-locked LJs, for that matter) aside, my issue here is mainly with fanfic. I find the posting of fic to LJ and *only* to LJ, as seems increasinbly the practice in fandom, a bit antisocial, to be honest. (After turning into one of the official naysayers of Life On Mars fandom, I am now working on discrediting myself in fandom at large... ;-)) And I don't *understand* the attitude behind it, either. I mean, *why* would people not want their fic to find the widest possible readership? And how can they not care if it will still be easily accessible to new readers in a year or two?

The cynical part of me can't help wondering if there's a tendency to move away from fandom as a community and treat it as merely a tool for instant, personal gratification. I.e. as soon as you've posted a fic to your LJ and received an amount of feedback for that fic, you move on to the next fic for which you will get feedback in turn, and old fics become uninteresting simply because they don't generate large amounts of feedback anymore - so why bother keeping them easily accessible? That readers who come into the fandom later might still want read those older fics just doesn't matter, because the gratification to the writer is negligible, and the reader's gratification simply doesn't figure into the equation.

As I said, it's the cynical part of me that came up with that explanation.

Well, no matter what the reasons, it seems to me that the decentralised, dispersed nature of fandom on LJ is a good way to make sure that, instead of amassing a wonderful, huge collective treasure of fanworks for 'later generations' of fen to discover and enjoy, most of our work will simply disappear into obscurity and relative 'un-findability' fairly soon after it's posted.

Am I the only one who finds that perspective a bit sad?

(Also, I dislike the tendency for fandom to happen in a - however slightly extended - big 'NOW' for the personal reason of often being stressed out of my mind. The fact that fandom - discussions, fics, everything - seems to happen so quickly now, and requires you to constantly stay on top of things because you'll never be able to *find* the good stuff again if you don't notice it immediately when it's posted is a considerable additional stress factor. Which is sad, because I'd much rather 'do' fandom at my leisure, and I'm a naturally slow person. So, instead of 'doing' fandom at my own pace, I tend to go into hyperactive fannish phases when I manage to keep up with things for a few months, and then drop out of everything completely for months in turn. Needless to say, that way I hardly know what's happening anymore, and miss most of the good fic, debate etc.)

I've been out of the meta game for ages, so I don't know if this has been discussed on metafandom, recently or at all. If anyone remembers related discussions and can point me there, that would be much appreciated. I'm mostly interested in the question of why people aren't interested in keeping stuff accessible, because that is something I really, truly do not 'get'. So, if anyone can explain that mindset to me... I'm really curious about it.

Comments

[pat-t.livejournal.com]

oh my. well, I only speak from the HL fandom, but this is a subject I have brought up multiple times. On yahoo group lists and in LJ. *But* on the other side.

Usually it starts with someone grumbing that people are posting on LJ and not on lists. Okaaaay. So lets take a look. How many times are the lurkers posting? Hmmmm. None! The groups are dying because people are sitting on their butts waiting for someone to entertain them. The lists only work if they are interactive .

If you look at some of the lists - they have hundreds of people as members. But only a handful - and I do mean a handful post. You don't know how many times I have tried to start a discussion on a list only to be met by dead - earth shattering *SILENCE*.

Or how many times a fic has been posted and met with *NOTHING*. Except when the author doesn't post there next time and you get an abundance of bitching and moaning. Where were those people at when questions were being asked, discussions were being suggested, fic was being offered?

Why weren't they becoming involved then? Because that takes effort. And when people don't put effort into their fandom, their fandom dies. If they don't put effort into their list - the list dies. And that's what has happened.

I didn't post pics to my own fic yahoo list because I was becoming very hurt and frustrated when I spent *hours* capping and fixing colors and lighting and resizing and uploading only to be met with what seemed to be apathy by the members of the list. Almost 300 members and maybe 2 or 3 would come on and say they took the time to look at the pics I had spent an entire evening working on for their enjoyment. So I started posting to my LJ. And I got feedback. It isn't about *instant* gratification. It's about interaction.

Lists = talking to yourself and sending your stuff out into a big black void.

LJ = talking and interacting with friends.

And I'm still the owner and maintainer of a few lists. I urge people and cheer them on to come to the lists and become active members. But is simply isn't happening.

You only get out of the fandom what you're willing to put in.

Preaching to the choir ;-)

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

I still post my fic to lists (it's just not very noticeable, because I only finish a story every other year or so - less often, even.) Though, to be honest, even back in 1998/1999 I wasn't a particularly active list participant; I've always found the forum format more useful for sustained discussion. And my place for fannish discussion of choice is still forums - I racked up a post count of over 1000 in less than a year at The Railway Arms recently, and I'm also a mod at a German sf forum, where I have something like 1500 posts. So, not exactly inactive in those older modes of fannish interaction.

And I do get why people find LJ gratifying. What I don't get is why that would drive people not to archive their fic anymore, in so many cases. That's what my post was really about. Why doesn't it matter to more people that their fic becomes inaccessible to new readers if they don't put it somewhere where new readers may *find* it? I mean, it's not like it takes *that* much effort to post something to an archive (or even to your own website) after you've posted it to LJ... and it benefits both the fandom, by increasing its store of cultural artefacts, *and* the author, because occasionally you *do* get a small trickle of feedback out of it, even if it's only one e-mail per year or so. ;-)

As I said, I just don't get it.

[pat-t.livejournal.com]

Re: Preaching to the choir ;-)

[ithildyn.livejournal.com]

I still maintain my own archive on my website, and I used to archive faithfully at some fandom specific archives before they went defunct.

[ithildyn.livejournal.com]

Or how many times a fic has been posted and met with *NOTHING*. Except when the author doesn't post there next time and you get an abundance of bitching and moaning. Where were those people at when questions were being asked, discussions were being suggested, fic was being offered?

You're singing my song! That actually happened to me in Forever Knight fandom. It was a last straw moment. And I love email lists, I still prefer them to just about anything else, but I know I have to keep up with the times. And LJ seems to be it these days.

Rereading this...

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

>oh my. well, I only speak from the HL fandom, but this is a subject I have brought up multiple times. On yahoo group lists and in LJ. *But* on the other side.

I just noticed, when rereading your comment, that I don't actually understand the first paragraph. What is that 'other side' you're on, compared to me? You seem to be defending older forms of fannish interation, too - after all, you're not advocating abandoning lists but rather, using them. (Though, as I already mentioned, I was never a great fan of lists, because - JMHO of course - they shared many of the less useful features of LJ, namely, exclusivity, difficulty to navigate, difficulty to search for specific older fics, necessity to subscribe and in the process of that get a lot of 'unwanted' mails, too, etc. Of course those problems for the fanfic seeker were alleviated by many lists also maintaining archives, though.)

(BTW, I do not mean to be confrontational here. I realise I may have come over a bit aggressive; that wasn't intentional.)

Re: Rereading this...

[pat-t.livejournal.com]

Don't worry, I didn't think you were confrontational at all!

By the other side, I mean that I take up for the people who are posting on LJ. I like lists. I'm the owner and moderator of lists. But it seems that the argument rears its head every few months or so about people abandoning the lists to LJ. And the problem isn't that people are abandoning lists. Its that the members of the lists are not interacting. They want to have everything dropped into their mailboxes and read and look and do everything but come involved and interact themselves.

Usually after I bring this up there will be a flurry of posting for a day or two and then nothing again. On LJ people are interacting. They are talking and discussing. I've even tried to bring the same discussions to lists that I have on LJ. But you can't have a discussion with only one comment. And that's *if* you get one.

Interestingly enough, I have seen some of the same things on LJ. People grumbling that they aren't getting fb on their LJs. But when you ask, you discover that they don't keep up, they don't interact with others on their LJs. It all comes down to the fact that you are only going to get out of your fandom what you are willing to put in. No matter what avenue you are using to enjoy that fandom. By and large, you may have hundreds of members on a group list, but only one or two that routinely post. You can't have a discussion that way. And what's the point of putting up fic when you don't even know if one person has read it because you have not received any fb?

I do post my fic to my LJ. Tray also puts it on her webpage and announces on HLALLFIC. It's also housed on the HL Archive. Yet, when I offer it on a group list by putting up the link to my LJ (if it's not up on taterville yet), people grumble. Why? All they have to do is put their finger on the mouse and click. It takes them right to the story. But it's on LJ, so the die-hards grumble. Which is silly.

Another problem of lists is that you have to watch every word because if you say one thing controversial, it will be shut down. The same thing if you say something that goes off topic. You get slapped down by the moderator. On your LJ you have control. You can talk about personal things, or not. Fandom or not. If you don't agree with everyone else, you can state that and not fear retribution. It's your corner of the world to completely be yourself. To try out new things. To cry in frustration or squee in excitement.

As much as I encourage lists (especially my own *g*), I see them becoming obsolete and not because of LJ. Because of abandonment. How many of the hundreds on the member rolls actually get emails from these lists instead of going *no mail*? How many of these yahoo IDS are even still valid?

And because of apathy. If you don't care, no one else will either. If you look back over the archives, you see people posting, discussing, sharing. No longer. Now if you post a fic or a picture (and I meant my own Picture Yahoo group - not fic yahoo group - I'm a bad typist), and you get no fb, why in the world would you spend hours preparing a story or pics just to be ignored? Instead you want to be somewhere that you can share and talk to friends. That may be LJ today, it may be something else tomorrow. But the list members have pretty much made sure that it isn't with the lists any longer. Not if they aren't going to interact.

Just my own humble opinion of course.

Inactivity on lists

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

I think the inactivity on lists is actually a lot easier to explain than the issue of archives falling out of use. Lists used to offer a fairly similar mix of things (social interaction and content) that LJ communities do nowadays, with some of the same defects (transience, difficulty to navigate, etc. - I've listed them somewhere around here already, I think.) Since LJ does these things somewhat better than lists did, most of the more active fen have moved to LJ, and do what they used to do on lists on LJ now. Who remains on the lists are the lurkers, who never were very active to begin with. Oh, everybody else is still on there, too, of course - but the people who would discuss things are *also* on LJ and, finding that a more amenable format for discussion, posting fic etc. than the old lists, take all their feedback and discussion urges there.

Re: Inactivity on lists

[pat-t.livejournal.com]

One thing not mentioned is that LJ has made an attempt to make things more accessible with the *tags*. I have my fic *tagged* as fic. All you would have to do is look under the column of tags and click on *fic* and all the fic posts would come up. But as I also said, my fic is also on Tray's website and the HL Archive. Most LJ owners have their websites listed on their user info pages and I really haven't had any problems finding their stories there. Also, you can go to their calenders and look at subject headings and it's actually easier to find some discussions on LJ than trying to sort through old archives at the lists. And once you find the discussion, all the comments are right there together to read at once. On the lists, you have to search through all the days after the initial post and look for responses. Very tedious and you can never be sure when the last post/comment was made. I know this because I just went through the pain-staking task of looking for old discussions at a group I used to belong to. Not fun ;-(

And on LJ we have all the pretty icons *g*