[mod post] "The time has come, the walrus said, to talk of many things..."
...and so the time has come when we here at je_secrets must make a decision. There will be no cut here as it's something that actually bears noticing/reading. Long post warning, TL;DR (PLEASE READ, THOUGH), etc. etc.
While there's been an amount of comments made both on posts here and on meme about the fate of this comm, I've also received a number of private comments/messages regarding this community and what it has been/meant to people in the Johnny's fandom over the past several years. These comments have affirmed to me that this community isn't only something that I feel passionately/nostalgically about, and because of that it's only fair that I formally open up for discussion the problem of what to do with je_secrets.
Ultimately, for me as moderator, the question of "what to do with je_secrets?" can be boiled down to "why does this comm matter/why is it important?" And at this point I suppose I can really only chalk it up to nostalgia for those of us who remember its glory days. ...Or at least the uber-cynical part of me says that. The sentimental side of me says that it matters because it represents a place where fandom came together/can come together to laugh, to critique, to snark, to have both intelligent and UNintelligent debates, and to discuss Johnny's fandom as a whole, both under their usernames and anonymously, and where we would wait excitedly for 10/11 EST/CST to roll around on the 15th and 30th of the month for the posts to go up. The excitement (and sometimes anxiety) levels were most high when something big had landed in fandom in the period between postings (Think: Jin leaving KAT-TUN, Ohno's pot scandal, Ryo kicking girls out of cabs, Nino running over bicyclists with his car, Kusanagi embracing the Hedonism lifestyle- if only for one drunken night, etc).
Some have argued that Livejournal is just a dying medium and that tumblr's now the place to be with their confessions blogs, but when the most populated fandom's *coughArashicough* confessions tumblr can't even manage to stay alive, it's probably a statement on the overall apathy level of tumblr fandom as a whole (or possibly just fandom in general as a whole), and how that has been fueled by said present medium of choice.
People can say that it's nostalgia-goggles or whatever, but the fact remains we were once a fandom, regardless of medium, that cared enough to submit anywhere from 20-40 secrets a post on average, and who would then comment from 200-350 comments per post. Be it through genuine desire to engage, or just feeding the trolls, people participated in a fandom collective. And agree with it or not, the fact remains that when people stop caring to participate in fandom, that fandom will die.
I'm not saying that the solution to this decline is to submit secrets; if only it were that simple. What I'm saying is that people have to actually want to give a damn about an inter-group fandom in order to maintain it, and what I need here is to see if anyone actually WANTS that to continue existing here.
SO. OPTIONS. These are suggestions I've thought of, ones people have submitted, suggestions made on meme, etc. If you favor any/disfavor any/don't give a rat's ass either way/ or have a different thought or idea I beg you to comment here, anonymous or otherwise. Let me know what you think. Please spread this post to everyone you know for their input. A lot of people in fandom don't even know about je_secrets since the fandom exodus from LJ, but their lack of knowing certainly doesn't exclude them from those I'd like to welcome here. In fact, I'm going to share this on my personal tumblr and public twitter, and include links to the posts here (tumblr) and here (twitter) in case anyone wants to reblog/retweet either of them to spread the request for input.
1. Keep it as it is, fandom will come around to using LJ more on its own anyway.
2. Keep it the way it is but also include/make a "best-of" secrets post when submissions are low. (This actually ties in to something I had thought about while scrolling through old posts anyway, when lamenting the fact that tinypic and other photo-hosting sites have been recycling urls and therefore eating secrets. Unfortunately, a number of the really good ones are already gone, but it might be a way to salvage some of the good ones that are still left as the images would be saved and then reuploaded at imgur/some other site less likely to delete it.)
3. Advertise/post on tumblr instead of LJ/in conjunction with LJ. (I merged these two together since they work well together anyway.)
4. Publicize the posts when they are made in LJ’s ranking systems (I have deliberately kept the posts out of their rankings/public lists up until now)
5. Just give up/let it die already.
6. Let it die, but before doing so open a post for one great-big nostalgia blast. Let people comment on their favorite secrets memories, limitations be damned, ie if you want to talk about previously banned topics/people in fandom, this is your chance to have it. If you're going to go down, you might as well go down in fabulous, glittery flames. Links to previous posts and comment threads welcomed.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
While there's been an amount of comments made both on posts here and on meme about the fate of this comm, I've also received a number of private comments/messages regarding this community and what it has been/meant to people in the Johnny's fandom over the past several years. These comments have affirmed to me that this community isn't only something that I feel passionately/nostalgically about, and because of that it's only fair that I formally open up for discussion the problem of what to do with je_secrets.
Ultimately, for me as moderator, the question of "what to do with je_secrets?" can be boiled down to "why does this comm matter/why is it important?" And at this point I suppose I can really only chalk it up to nostalgia for those of us who remember its glory days. ...Or at least the uber-cynical part of me says that. The sentimental side of me says that it matters because it represents a place where fandom came together/can come together to laugh, to critique, to snark, to have both intelligent and UNintelligent debates, and to discuss Johnny's fandom as a whole, both under their usernames and anonymously, and where we would wait excitedly for 10/11 EST/CST to roll around on the 15th and 30th of the month for the posts to go up. The excitement (and sometimes anxiety) levels were most high when something big had landed in fandom in the period between postings (Think: Jin leaving KAT-TUN, Ohno's pot scandal, Ryo kicking girls out of cabs, Nino running over bicyclists with his car, Kusanagi embracing the Hedonism lifestyle- if only for one drunken night, etc).
Some have argued that Livejournal is just a dying medium and that tumblr's now the place to be with their confessions blogs, but when the most populated fandom's *coughArashicough* confessions tumblr can't even manage to stay alive, it's probably a statement on the overall apathy level of tumblr fandom as a whole (or possibly just fandom in general as a whole), and how that has been fueled by said present medium of choice.
People can say that it's nostalgia-goggles or whatever, but the fact remains we were once a fandom, regardless of medium, that cared enough to submit anywhere from 20-40 secrets a post on average, and who would then comment from 200-350 comments per post. Be it through genuine desire to engage, or just feeding the trolls, people participated in a fandom collective. And agree with it or not, the fact remains that when people stop caring to participate in fandom, that fandom will die.
I'm not saying that the solution to this decline is to submit secrets; if only it were that simple. What I'm saying is that people have to actually want to give a damn about an inter-group fandom in order to maintain it, and what I need here is to see if anyone actually WANTS that to continue existing here.
SO. OPTIONS. These are suggestions I've thought of, ones people have submitted, suggestions made on meme, etc. If you favor any/disfavor any/don't give a rat's ass either way/ or have a different thought or idea I beg you to comment here, anonymous or otherwise. Let me know what you think. Please spread this post to everyone you know for their input. A lot of people in fandom don't even know about je_secrets since the fandom exodus from LJ, but their lack of knowing certainly doesn't exclude them from those I'd like to welcome here. In fact, I'm going to share this on my personal tumblr and public twitter, and include links to the posts here (tumblr) and here (twitter) in case anyone wants to reblog/retweet either of them to spread the request for input.
1. Keep it as it is, fandom will come around to using LJ more on its own anyway.
2. Keep it the way it is but also include/make a "best-of" secrets post when submissions are low. (This actually ties in to something I had thought about while scrolling through old posts anyway, when lamenting the fact that tinypic and other photo-hosting sites have been recycling urls and therefore eating secrets. Unfortunately, a number of the really good ones are already gone, but it might be a way to salvage some of the good ones that are still left as the images would be saved and then reuploaded at imgur/some other site less likely to delete it.)
3. Advertise/post on tumblr instead of LJ/in conjunction with LJ. (I merged these two together since they work well together anyway.)
4. Publicize the posts when they are made in LJ’s ranking systems (I have deliberately kept the posts out of their rankings/public lists up until now)
5. Just give up/let it die already.
6. Let it die, but before doing so open a post for one great-big nostalgia blast. Let people comment on their favorite secrets memories, limitations be damned, ie if you want to talk about previously banned topics/people in fandom, this is your chance to have it. If you're going to go down, you might as well go down in fabulous, glittery flames. Links to previous posts and comment threads welcomed.
Thank you for your time and consideration.