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

Comments

[pat_t]

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

Preaching to the choir ;-)

[hmpf]

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

[pat_t]

Re: Preaching to the choir ;-)

[ithildyn]

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]

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]

>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]

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

Inactivity on lists

[hmpf]

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]

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