Seasonal Spuffy FYI

[rahirah]

I've seen several people on my flist saying that they don't know if they're going to participate in Seasonal Spuffy this time because of the move to DW, since they have no interest in getting a DW account. I just wanted to point out that you do not have to have a DW account to participate. The community has a generic posting account that people

Comments

[ladypeyton]

It's not that that bothers me. It's the feeling that they're trying to herd me over to DW by refusing to crosspost to LJ that galls me a little.

I haven't participated as more than a reader for years, but it looks like I won't even be participating that much any longer.

[snickfic]

For what it's worth, you're welcome to post a contribution to your own LJ and then just post a link from the DW site.

[ladypeyton]

Yes, but that link won't be cross posted to the Seeking Spike LJ so if someone does that those of us who only read on LJ will never know what has been posted.

It's not the move that I object to. It's the refusal to cross post entries to LJ that I find upsetting.

[ladyofthelog]

those of us who only read on LJ will never know what has been posted.

That's why we've created a separate account, sspuffy_dw, so that folks can follow the RSS feed on their friendslist here.

[gillo]

I had a lowering feeling that this might happen - at least one person who never misses is saying she is unlikely to be contributing this year. I understand the rationale of going to DW, and the rationale of not allowing crossposting, but it does make me sad. The fandom really doesn't need to fragment. More.

I know the mods have gone out of their way to make it possible for people not on DW to post, but some folks have an almost visceral resistance to DW.

::sigh::

[rahirah]

I hope that if more people find out about the RSS feed (which I'd forgotten about myself, or I would have mentioned it) it'll lessen the feeling that the comm isn't going to be readable on LJ. (The only potential problem there is that I don't think that RSS feed posts are archived permanently like posts to a regular journal are, but I may be wrong about that.)

[unbridled_b]

I understand moving the community to DW, what with all the DDOS attacks on livejournal lately. But why isn't cross posting allowed? (Sorry, I've been away and missed a lot of what is going on.)

[rahirah]

See above - it's not possible at present to set a community to crosspost the way a personal account can. (As I understand it, there's a possibility that this may happen someday, but apparently there are some issues around communities crossposting that don't apply to private journals.)

[unbridled_b]

Ah, okay. I thought it was a decision made by the community. I didn't realize crossposting literally wasn't possible. (I have a DW account but am a total noob in regards to how it works.) Thanks for clearing up the confusion.

[cindergal]

I'm with LadyPeyton. It's not the move to DW, it's the lack of cross-posting to LJ that annoys me. I have participated in similar ficathon-type thingies in the past that have decided to move to DW, but there was always cross-posting of at least a link to LJ.

ETA: And by cross-posting, I mean that the mods would manually cross-post a link to the day's fic in the LJ comm. Which is a little more work, of course.

But I haven't participated as more than an occasional reader in the last few rounds, so I should just shut up. ;-)

[ladyofthelog]

Having the mods manually crosspost a link is actually an option we hadn't considered, and one we're discussing now - thanks for mentioning it!

[cindergal]

You bet! :-)

[ladyofthelog]

The main reason we hadn't thought of it is that we DO have, as we mentioned, an RSS feed of the DW community at sspuffy_dw, which people can friend and follow that way. If you have that feed on your flist, you'll see everything outside the cut tag on each entry posted to the DW community, which is more information than you'd get from us manually linking to each entry, even with a summary.

We are going to do a longer post when we have the DW community fully set up (I didn't initially think we'd be able to back up the LJ community over there, but we are going to be able to) and we will poll people about their options. We absolutely want to make sure that EVERYONE can follow the community, post to the community, and comment on entries regardless of whether or not they have a DW account.

[rebcake]

For me personally, LJ or DW doesn't make much difference. I am concerned that the decision was made without any input from the membership. It makes the comm feel like less of a community. This is a drastic move, one that will have lasting impact, for good or ill. It seems weird that nobody asked. Because of the way it was handled, I don't know if I have a lot of confidence in the maintenance of the comm, long-term. I'll be posting to my journal, with a link. I'm positive that comments will be way down this round, which is sad for all concerned.

[cindergal]

I suspect that if the mods had gotten input from the membership, the comm would have stayed on LJ - and obviously the mods wanted to make the move. Their comm, their rules I guess. :-)

[rahirah]

I'm torn about that. On the one hand, a community is made up of its contributors, and for various reasons, there is a strong pro-LJ sentiment in a lot of Buffy fandom. I could have told them that moving to DW would automatically lose them half their contributors/commenters. I wish that the mods had done some PR work first, and not just announced this as a fait accompli.

On the other hand, I think that the people who are willing to produce things for the rest of fandom to consume, whether it's by modding a community or making icons (and doing it all for free) deserve some slack. As someone who may spend weeks or months working on a story, it's a little depressing that many readers won't take five seconds to click through one extra link to read it.