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

[bistokids.livejournal.com]

I can only speak for myself, obviously, and my experience is limited pretty much to two fandoms. As far as discussion goes, forums are generally ideal, but as we've found in relation to the end of LoM, when feelings run high on a particular issue, it can be the wisest course of action to take the discussion over to LJ rather than fanning the flames and risking splitting a forum. I know this has come up within the Harry Potter fandom too, so I imagine there are other examples. In this respect, LJ and forums can complement each other nicely.

As for fanfic, I think you have a very valid point. I've only written in the Professionals fandom (which is long established and has fantastic archives) and LoM (which is very new and doesn't' but I hope that ultimately this will be addressed). I've found it easy enough to access previous fics through tags, though.

I think LJ is ideally suited to new writers, or writers who are experimenting with new fandoms, because of the instant feedback. This is great for boosting confidence, as well as learning from others (for instance, through accessing mems pages of writers I admire). As yet, I haven't archived anything in Pros because I don't feel ready to enter that arena. When I've honed my skills to the extent that I feel confident in myself as a writer on a larger stage, I shall start archiving for posterity!

[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]

[amonitrate.livejournal.com]

THough I enjoy LJ fandom, having come rather late to the active participation in fandom (after ten years as lurker) I do agree with some of your points. Especially the notion of the archive. TO compromise, I've set up an index post to my own writings, and put that on my LJ userpage. I guess that is akin to having a personal webpage, which has also been part of fandom for awhile, so that isn't so different than the old days.

I personally hate the format of conversations on email listservs and have always found it confusing, both in "real time" and when playing catch-up, so LJ seemed far superior to that. That said, even having never actively experienced the forum format, I do have to say I agree with your point about conversations being more public and getting bumped to the top.

[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.

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.

[6beforelunch.livejournal.com]

(via metafandom) Just speaking for myself here...

The reason I tend to stick almost exclusively to LJ for everything (meta, fic, art, vids, etc.) is because LJ gives you the most control over your fannish environment. I.e. with LJ, I can controll what I see to a greater extent than I can with a forum or mailing list. On LJ, if there's a person whose posts are consistently rude or vulgar or annoying or just boring, I don't have to friend them. Contrast that to a mailing list or forum where, unless the poster actually crosses a line (a line determined most often by the mods who aren't me), I just have to skim their posts.

Obviously, you still face that same problem with communities, but in the way fandom is organized on LJ, you could theoretically have no communities friended and still manage to keep up with a great deal of the discussion and fic just by friending the journals of people you like.

Now, of course, greater control over what I see also means I'm probably missing out on some great stuff, but that's a tradeoff I'm willing to make. YMMV.

LJ also fosters a greater sense of personal connection between fans, IMO, because a lot of people post about their "real life" in addition to posting fannish things. I don't think you get such a blurring of fannish and non-fannish posts on mailing lists and forums. I'll be honest, I get more fun out of seeing someone I consider a friend (or at least someone I have friendly feelings toward) post a great story or art work than a stranger. Doesn't mean I enjoy reading their story more because I know their cat's name, it just means that in addition to getting the satisfaction of reading the story, I like seeing them get feedback. I know them (to varying extents, I'm not claiming to be friends with every person on my friends list, that'd be impossible *g*) so I'm happy to see them do something good. Sort of like when I see an RL friend or friendly acquaintance suceed in something. Just makes me happy.

I so agree with you that it's a little sad that things are so transient on LJ. One reason I still maintain my fic site even though it would be easier to just rely on fic tags is that I want there to be an easy to navigate place to find my stories. And I want someone who's never heard of LJ or fandom to be able to stumble on it. I do hope that archives never become obsolete (and I don't see them doing so, they're still too useful). OTOH, LJ is easy (no HTML skills required) so I can see why some people don't bother with setting up personal fic sites. (Archives run by others, especially auto-archives, are another matter, and I really wish more people used those.)

So, um, I mostly agree with you about it being sad that a lot of fic tends to be exclusive to LJ these days, but I can understand why LJ is so popular with fandom.

[chicafrom3.livejournal.com]

(Here via metafandom

I can only speak for myself, obviously, but as someone who posts fic exclusively to LJ, I guess my word counts for something?

My reasoning is fairly straightforward. Posting to my fic LJ and then crossposting that link around to communities is simple, easy to do, and allows me to expect that a good chunk of people have access to it. Anyone who is intrigued by my newer fic and wants to look at my older stuff can browse through the tags, the memories, or just through the journal itself as I don't keep any personal entries there, just fic and icons.

I used to post my fic on forums as well. But as I'm no longer particularly active on any forums, yeah, I'd feel odd about suddenly popping up on one just to share a fic. I used to post my fic on FFN, but to be honest, dealing with their formatting restrictions is a much bigger headache than it's worth.

I don't see how keeping my fic on LJ makes it that much less accessible than posting it to a forum or archive. As long as the issue of broken links are avoided--and that's just as much an issue anywhere else as on LJ--then it's still findable; I regularly find fics on LJ that were posted months or years ago, read them, necroreview, and go on my way.

I so agree with you about archiving and the pace of LJ.

[trascendenza]

Here from metafandom.

Well, being as I'm a person who's incredibly *obsessed* with archiving and making my work accessible, I probably can't be very helpful. *g* But I do solely archive on LJ (well, I had a brief stint on FF.net, but eventually I gave up on that account).

I think the thing with LJ isn't that people don't *want* their work to be accessible; it's just that it's more work. It's day-to-day maintenance. There's no automated way to have your posts organized, which doesn't work well for people who just aren't organizationally-minded.

But I'm in the process of devising an almost frighteningly comprehensive tag list for my fic, in addition to memorying all of it, AND I'll be bookmarking it all on del.icio.us and do extensive tagging there, as well. And I'm sure there are other authors out there that would like to make their stuff more accessible but just don't have the time/energy/etc. to put into setting up an infrastructure.

God, I just wish more people would do fic indices/tagging/memorying. Even just one of the three (though preferably not solely tagging if any category goes over 100 entries). There are so many communities and personal fic journals that would be about 1,000,000% more useful if they did this.

Although, I have to say another reason I don't post to archives is not because of feedback, at all. In fact, to my numbers-hungry mind, it's MORE satisfying for me to post to an archive that tracks stats and tells me how many views I get per story. But the reason I like and continue posting to LJ is because of the friends network; fanfiction, in many ways, is how I interact and dialogue with people about the characters. I like chatting about my fandoms; coming up with crack plot bunnies; or just the general silliness that can happen in comment threads. It makes posting fic a more social experience, which keeps me coming back to LJ and forgetting about archives.

I do really, really feel you on the frenetic pace of things on LJ. It's really not my typical modus operandi and frustrates me a lot, because I can never keep up. For instance--people apologizing because they comment on a fic a week after it's posted. Um. Hello, feedback is *always* appreciated! And a lot of people are surprised when I comment on their old fic, but I'm one of those people who *will* look back through memories and tags to check out other stuff an author's done if I like them.

I wish more communities on LJ would use the sidebar links feature to link to current discussions (the page summary thing would also be a lot nicer if it were placed at the top of the page like a navigation bar). Or that there was a *way* to keep these discussions more in people's eyes even after they aren't on the most recent entries page. LJ has a transient nature that makes it very difficult to me to feel like I'm ever getting a full comprehensive picture of what's going on.

Accessibility...

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

>I don't see how keeping my fic on LJ makes it that much less accessible than posting it to a forum or archive.

Well, it's not *much* less accessible to people who are active in LJ fandom, know the communities, have some people from the fandom friended etc. But a *lot* of readers simply aren't active in LJ fandom (and I mean *really* a lot; we just don't see them because, well: they're not on LJ. But they're out there, in their ten and hundred thousands), don't know the right communities for the fandoms they're interested in, etc.

Speaking just from my own experience: I'm active in quite a few fandoms, and those that I'm really active in I also have a fairly good overview of on LJ. So, no problem there, or at least not *much* of a problem. *However*, I also enjoy reading in about ten or so other fandoms occasionally - not enough to investigate their structure and organisation in detail, but enough to check out central archives on a semi-regular basis. Anything that goes beyond that occasional checking of archives is, franky, too much work for fandoms I have only a marginal interest in. But I'm always aware that with the way fandom is organised now, I'm probably missing out on most of the really interesting fic in those fandoms (and I have fairly specific reading kinks in all of them, too, so only an extremely small percentage of fics suit my interests there to begin with). You say why don't I check LJ communities for those fandoms instead of checking archives? Simple: a bi-annual visit to a central archive affords me the opportunity to use the search function and check specifically for fics that fit my criteria. True, a *really* well-organised community that makes good use of tags and memories will have a comparable level of searchability. But for the time being, most archives still beat most communities in terms of navigability and searchability. Also, identifying *the* central fic community/ies in a big fandom you're not familiar with and only want to check for a certain type of fic every now and then is considerably more work than entering 'BigFandomName fanfic archive' in Google.

Oh, I love LJ, too, absolutely!

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

It's the best tool for fannish social interaction we've ever had, bar none.

It's just not the best place for keeping our creative output. And I just don't understand the 'either or' mentality regarding LJ and other places for posting fic. I mean, why not post first to LJ (for the instant feedback, for the great discussion and interaction etc.) and then post to a couple of archives, too? (Rhetorical question for fandom-at-large, not addressed to you specifically, because you do seem to understand where I'm coming from.)

And, using tags and memories intelligenly, a reasonably useful archive could even be hosted on LJ, as a community - it's not so much the independent website format that I'm after here, but the idea of an easily searchable, central place for all or at least most of the fic in a fandom.

[neverenoughjam.livejournal.com]

It's not that I want my stuff to be inaccessible. I want to control it, as 6beforelunch says. I do post my fic in forums/archives other than LJ, but this is MY space and I control what I post here. Maybe someday I'll write a story not acceptable by the guidelines/rules in some archive; I can post it on LJ. Maybe I write an unpopular story, and would prefer to screen out the outraged flamers in favor of people with something constructive to say. I can do that on LJ. For me, it's all about the control. :)

[lim.livejournal.com]

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?

Well, maybe they're shy. Or maybe they don't know about those other places. Or maybe they feel like LJ is a safe little corner where they can post up their scribblings but publishing to archives is a bit scary and final. Or maybe, you know, fandom is a lot bigger these days. Fandom is huge these days. Not everyone can cope with that many people. I can't, certainly. It's too much; I get all stuttery and weird and clam up or spin out. Not everyone is seeking the widest possible audience. Some people (er, like me! *g*) really just want to geek out with some friends and love their pairing and just play.

A lot of people are happy to post to their own journals but never peeped a word on lists. It's a lot less pressured in some ways, because people subscribe to you, you're not just imposing yourself upon a thousand people's inboxes just to ask if anyone recorded Dr Who last night (some people take this even further and are too shy to post links to their discussion in spaces designed precisely for that, but for me this is a bridge too far, really).

And how can they not care if it will still be easily accessible to new readers in a year or two?

I think it... I think it kind of is! Easily accessible, I mean. Easier than trying to navigate groups and stuff. And not all archives are...have you ever used trekiverse (http://www.trekiverse.org)? My god. Ow. Anyway, I think this problem has over the past few years basically been solved by delicious, list-maintainers (as in the LJ-version: those people that maintain large lists of stories by kink/pairing/genre w/e) and newsletters. Also recjournals, memories, and tags! There are tags now, so that's easier, isn't it? Lots of people use them. I think it is pretty easy...

OK, for example: I had a sudden irrepressible craving to read some Snarry time travel epic slash the other week. God knows why, you know, I'm not even in HP fandom; I know hardly anything about it. But I didn't need to know about HP fandom specifically; it was no trouble to quickly bring up the HP/SS (http//del.icio.us/tag/HP/SS) tag on delicious, add +time travel (http://del.icio.us/tag/HP/SS+time_travel) and get a nice selection of stories to read.

And there's the newbieguide, which is very handy for navigating new fandoms (which really we all ought to link in our userinfos, hrm), and there are 130+ newsletters, which, again, if you just pop over to delicious and tap in newsletters+fandom (http://del.icio.us/tag/newsletters+fandom), google "fandom newsletters", there's Haven Links (http://www.selenayhaven.com/newsletters01.htm) right there as the first result.

Or to just look for rec journals, if say, I wanted to read SGA recs from 2005, I'd tap in Stargate:Atlantis+2005 (http://del.icio.us/tag/Stargate:Atlantis+2005), and voila! So it's a different approach to centralised lists, but it has many positives, I think. Much more customisable, really, is the thing. Filters. You don't have to put up with things you're not into and, well, when there's 200 people on the list, it's easy to put up with the odd bit of stuff you're really not into, but when you get to the sort of huge numbers of some of the really popular fandoms, like, say, god, Harry/Draco is just one ship in Harry Potter but I just looked at one LJ comm (harrydraco) and there's nearly 4,000 members. ff.net has something like 250,000 HP stories! I can't cope with that quantity of information without a) going mad or b) going elsewhere.

Anyway, here's a really great post by Sophia Jirafe about LiveJournal (http://sophia-helix.livejournal.com/307952.html) and fandom and some of the issues you've raised here are discussed pretty thoroughly in the comments (and I note that at the time she wrote that entry, there were only a few, very small, newsletters and no delicious).

[danceswithgary]

I would never have started and would not be writing today if not for LJ. I freely admit that I do depend on feedback to assist me in my writing and to keep me motivated. I'm shallow like that.

I would not comment as extensively as I do if not for LJ.

The CLex recs lists I maintain would not exist if not for LJ. What is easy for me to maintain on LJ would be a nightmare on a website. Updates to the list can be found easily on the Master list and by turning on tracking they can be emailed to fans.

I do post everything I've completed to SSA and thus to the forums that support it. I also crosspost to 7 LJ communities as well as maintain comprehensive tags and a linked index entry at the top of my journal for my 2006 and 2007 fiction.

As a dedicated recc'er I have been working on getting fiction archived to SSA or any other archive in addition to LJ because it is disheartening to see some incredible pieces of fiction vanish along with an LJ. I've willingly offered myself as someone who will format a fic for archive on SSA if needed.

That said, it saddens me to see people complain that by posting to LJ exclusively that someone is doing the fanbase an injustice. I'd rather see people writing and posting to LJ than not posting at all because they don't want to spend time formatting fic for archives or websites when they don't feel comfortable doing it. Getting the fic out there is what's important.

Withdrawing to LJ

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

>it can be the wisest course of action to take the discussion over to LJ

Well, we could have withdrawn to a nice, small and private forum, as well. ;-)

(I'm actually a member of a group that did just that, i.e. withdrew to a small, private forum after a huge influx of newbies with an attendant extreme change in fannish 'style' in an older fandom, about five years ago.)

As for archiving - I think you're plenty good enough to archive your stuff *now*! ;-) But then, we don't have an archive yet in LOM fandom... but we're working on that, honest. ;-) And when we're done, we'll be pestering you until you submit your stuff. Mwahahahahaaa!

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.)

Reply (oh, I suck at subject lines *g*)

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

>THough I enjoy LJ fandom, having come rather late to the active participation in fandom (after ten years as lurker) I do agree with some of your points. Especially the notion of the archive. TO compromise, I've set up an index post to my own writings, and put that on my LJ userpage. I guess that is akin to having a personal webpage, which has also been part of fandom for awhile, so that isn't so different than the old days.

You're right, that is basically the same as a website. And if everybody did that, and all those individual LJ fic indices were properly collected in a central place, I could live with that, too.

>I personally hate the format of conversations on email listservs and have always found it confusing, both in "real time" and when playing catch-up, so LJ seemed far superior to that.

I agree. Not a particularly big fan of lists; never was. As I said above to pat_t, they share a lot of the defects of LJ - with none of the advantages of LJ.

>That said, even having never actively experienced the forum format, I do have to say I agree with your point about conversations being more public and getting bumped to the top.

IMO, there's still nothing that beats a good, well-moderated forum for proper, in-depth fannish discussion. I've been very annoyed at Life On Mars fandom in recent weeks, but I do *adore* that the threads that so annoy me on the forum in question in that fandom are still active after, what, six weeks? There are discussions there that have 40+ pages by now... and there are *still* new participants arriving, adding their views and voices.

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.

Re: Accessibility...

[chicafrom3.livejournal.com]

don't know the right communities for the fandoms they're interested in,

I'd put money on there being a comparable number of people who don't know the archives for the fandoms they're interested in. I should know, I'm one of them; I've gotten into new fandoms, checked Google to see if there was a fandom-specific archive, failed, and floundered helplessly.

And then gone to LJ, typed in the fandom of my choice into "Interests", and found communities dedicated to it. As far as I know, there isn't a Black Donnellys-specific archive around, and the FFN pickings are laughable to say the least; donnellysfic, on the other hand, was easy for me to find, it remains easy to navigate, I can sort through it by the characters I want, the pairings I want, the ratings I want, or the authors I want, and when I post my fic there I can be reasonably confident that a good chunk of the fandom is going to be offered the choice of reading it.

I don't know. Maybe I'm just horribly, horribly biased because I tend towards small fandoms. My biggest fandom is probably Doctor Who, which does have a "main" fic archive, whofic.com--but I don't trust the quality there, I have difficulty navigating the site, and most of the interesting fics will pop up on dwfiction or who_daily sooner or later.

In short: I've actually found LJ to be easier to use than most of the archives...for those of my fandoms that have fandom-specific archives.

I understand the popularity of LJ, too -

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

hey, I've been here for five years. I wouldn't be here anymore if I didn't enjoy it. ;-) I just think there are areas of fandom that would be better served if people didn't centre their fannish lives *exclusively* on LJ, that's all. There's nothing that says we shouldn't keep our social interaction here!

I have to admit I don't really 'get' the big problem having to interact with rude or boring people in other formats, e.g. forums, seems to constitute for some people. Firstly, only a very small percentage of people on a good forum will be rude or boring to the point where you *really* can't bear to get near their posts; and, well, it's easy to skim a single stupid post in a thread or even just jump directly to the next, more interesting one. And you can avoid threads started by people you don't like - nobody forces you to read every single thread. Some forums also have ignore lists so you can screen out any participants you really can't stand.

And, secondly, even a person I don't like may occasionally make a really good point in a discussion. I guess I'm very 'topic focused' and less 'social interaction focused' in my fannish life - I really am willing to listen to anyone who makes a good point, no matter if I personally like them or not. I enjoy discussion (of certain topics) a lot and am willing to engage in that type of conversation with absolutely anyone who doesn't insult me or bore me consistently. *g* I'm also very focused on certain types of fic, less on certain authors, and always eager to find new sources for those types of fic - this, also, is not exactly easy to do on LJ.

[carmarthen.livejournal.com]

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?

Personally, I post my fic to my personal site and to LJ (and the Pit O'Voles, every now and then). I post links in communities whenever possible. I have never put anything in other people's archives anymore aside from challenges, and didn't much to start with.

Yes, wider submission would = wider readership. But I want to know that I, myself, can take down most of my fic if I need to for some reason. Fic posted to archives is at the mercy of the maintainer, who may drop off the face of the 'net, or who may not respect removal requests.

So there's one possible reason. If I didn't have a personal website, my fic *would* only be on the Pit and my LJ (I am very multifannish and tend towards small fandoms; most of my fic isn't appropriate for the vast majority of archives, as well).

[rushin-doll.livejournal.com]

From metafandom

Two things. In order of brevity!

First, I think you're operating under an assumption which may not be entirely warranted: that people write fic for a general audience. While I think this is true in many cases, I also think there's a growing movement toward writing for smaller and smaller (and more and more specialized) communities (I rambled about this in my own journal (http://rushin-doll.livejournal.com/7697.html)). LJ has been huge in facilitating this. Maybe it's not a good thing (since it raises barriers to entry into those specialized communities), but I'm not willing to say it's bad yet.

Second, I think that there are some significant advantages to the short life-cycles of discussions in LJ to go along with the disadvantages. One of the big ones is that the topics worth discussing come up over and over in many different contexts. And in each one, no one is expected to be familiar with what has come before. In some ways this is bad: it means you retread the same ground over and over. But in some ways it's very good: you're not locked into the conversational material that's come before.

Consider for example: in a lot of forum discussions the initial post could spark several different conversations. The first reply or two generally locks in only one of those as the one being undertaken. While in LJ the topic will likely come up again and one of the other conversations can be had, on a forum where you have the single thread those other conversations are likely never had. With organizational unity comes the silencing of voices. Some people won't get involved in a thread because the discussion has veered off in an uninteresting (to them) direction.

Of course by decentralizing things (a la LJ) you also tend to end up repeating yourself an awful lot. Because we don't have expectations that you've read other similar discussions, we can't just say "go read what I said there".

I think that ultimately the part of me that wants to know everything that's going on is upset that we don't have things in a more forum-like environment, but the part of me that wants to encourage dynamic and growing and evolving communities is glad that things are so decentralized.

I love discussing how interfaces shape interaction,
Ana

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*