[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
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Sadly (?) though, I think the newer generation of fandom just does not remember the “glory days” of LJ fandom (maybe? I don’t know). They don't remember a time before permamemes filled with distant/disconnected anons. They don't know of, or don't care about, a time when memes were reserved as a rare, quarterly at-most, event- a giant, week to two-week long fandom-wide family reunion of sorts. They don't remember a time before being able to spout their thoughts into the abyss of tumblr and not have anyone comment back, or at least anyone that they could build a solid friendship (or hate-ship) with (not to say that this is impossible on tumblr, just that it’s pretty rare compared to conversation building on here). Some of the best friends I have today I met, or at least developed connections with, on secrets posts. When the next friend meme rolled around we would then use the opportunity to friend each other thanks to having met/conversed on je_secrets. By the same token I found and solidified some of my most disliked people in fandom through their comments on secrets. You could really learn about who people are and what they meant/what motivated them through conversation, and let's face it, you can't really converse, constructively and in multiple party conversations, with people on tumblr (and if you want to argue that you can, then by all means tell me a convenient way to track tags for conversations in Johnny's fandoms).
While a part of me is saying that this community is not worth the effort I want to put into it, the other part of me is screaming that I, for one, refuse to just let this community die off in the face of a muted, tumblr-ized fandom that no longer actually communicates WITH and AMONG their other fans. I miss so very much the days when people from every fandom under the Johnnies and Associates umbrella posted and commented here. In fact, it was through posts here that I first branched out into Kanjani, V6, KinKi, TOKIO, KAT-TUN, and even later Kisumai fandom. Before I discovered this comm I was an Arashi-only fan in 2008 and happy in my little microcosm, but by reading secrets and commentary here I became curious about the other groups mentioned, and learned about them, and in-turn checked them out. For those reasons I’d really hate to see this community die out, but it’s not something I can salvage all on my own =/
I don't know. Am I just holding out for something that's never going to actually happen?
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Er, I think about 90% of comments both here and on meme saying how this comm should stay were by me. I've been pretty outspoken about my nostalgic love for je_secrets and refusal to move to tumblr. I had so much fun making secrets (*coughcough*), that was one of my highlights of fandom life, but I loved this comm way before I became active in it.
And another confession: I'm not very active in the comments section because I usually don't have anything worthwhile to add and I'm bad at making stuff up. I'd love to contribute to discussion because as you said, it's all about a fandom that takes an active interest and participates, I'm just really bad at it.
The thing that worried me the most was whether or not you'd still be willing to put effort into this community. I wouldn't blame you if got fed up with the apathy and "dead" comments. I'm happy to see that you still try to find ways to make this work. Yay! Go you!
Options:
As long as you're willing, I'm against closing down. Leave the community asleep and if, every now and then, someone submits a secret and a new post appears, I'll be surprised and happy.
I also like the idea of re-posting older secrets. It's even educational! Fandom history!
Advertising on tumblr: big yes. The above-cut pic and a link to the post, for example.
Moving to tumblr: ... hm.
What I don't like about it is how hard it is track responses. If I submit a secret, I want to know what people think, and tumblr just isn't made for discussions - or at least not for keeping track of them. Also #it's just impractical to go through all the reblogs #because some users like to comment in the tags #and in contrast to added comments #tags don't show up in the notes.
I also don't like the technical implications for the graphics. Default picture width in tumblr is 500px, so if you want to do this properly and have pictures appear not scaled (I know I would, and from what I know about you, I suspect you do, too) you'd have to change image size rules from 800x600 to 500x[whatever], and 500px width is not much. Keeping the text readable and making sure there's still a pretty picture to see, that's not impossible of course, but I think all in all, the quality of graphics would go down, and that's been one of this communities' strengths - the fact that you have a variety of styles in your graphics (in contrast to arashiconfessions and so on).
On the other hand, if I submit a secret, of course I'd want a lot people to see it, and that works better with tumblr and reblog than lj.
In the end it's your baby. You do the work, you get to decide. I'll back you whatever you settle on. <3
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anyway, I'd hate to see this comm go too and idea #2 seems the best to me with a dash of advertising on tumblr but not completely moving there because as mentioned before, keeping track of comments and conversations there is a real pain.
I am also pretty sure some people who have been around for ages have saved some of the secrets that were eaten by tinypic's url recycling.
/uepon who whines about socks disappearing but is too lazy to log into the right account and post unanon.
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