[ SECRET POST #2473 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2473 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 012 secrets from Secret Submission Post #353.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

01. http://i.imgur.com/gWYcLIN.png

[(Anonymous)]

yeah you are just bitter. Get over it. One day ao3 will be dead too.

[(Anonymous)]

Awesomely positive worldview you've got there, anon. Not.

[(Anonymous)]

That sucks, it really does, but I don't think it's fair to blame Archive Of Our Own for it. It's more that forums aren't as big these days.

There are still forums out there though, and I'm sure one of them at least has a thread about your fandom.

[ninety6tears]

You can't have much of a "sense of community" on AO3 though, because it's not a social platform. If the fandom died in other forums, maybe it was just dying, but I admit to really wishing the fanfic/discussion was still in the same realms when it comes to the death of LJ, personally.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, there are comms where people post fic by linking to stories on AO3, then discussion can still happen on the comm or forum. Personally, I like this approach because I like the way AO3 is searchable, but I still want fandom discussion and interaction outside of fic comments. If people were flat-out abandoning the OP's forum, it was probably more a lack of interest in the forum than a desire to be on AO3.

[bringreligiontothewamwams]

Online social fandoms started dying when webrings, geocities, and mailing lists fell out of favor. Everything since then has just been one long inward spiral to statements that were either write only or read only. There is no feedback mechanism any longer.

[tree_and_leaf]

I'm really sad about the fall-off of posting on LJ, but I don't really think that one's down to AO3, at least not chiefly. It seems to be more of a consequence of the growth of Tumblr (though I still don't get why people love Tumblr so much, even after having tried it out), the DDOS attack/ reliablity issues, combined with some badly implemented changes, LJ has been having lately, and probably also the split between LJ and DW.

[bringreligiontothewamwams]

I too long for the day AO3 dies, the users of it are just such a bunch of sanctimonious smug assholes. Plus that is where the poison of every fic being a Supernatural crossover/fusion started. It's a worse archive than FF.net ever was.

[(Anonymous)]

No it started on Tumblr.

[(Anonymous)]

But why not keep linking to fic on AO3 via the forum? Or do you mean it was an archive, not a forum, and so it died? It just seems like if it was a fandom specific forum a new fic archive wouldn't kill it.

[mimi-sardinia.livejournal.com]

Some forums can be fanfic forums. In my second online fandom I was involved in such a forum - where people posted chapters to their huge long multichapter novelizations of an RPG computer game with a long involved plot to it.

It was a terrible place if you wanted to track down old chapters because their was always a huge gulf between the archived chapters and the new chapters, which meant that the one time after I drifted away that I came back (lured by a slash pairing), I still haven't read close to 100-150 chapters intervening between Anomen's father dying and the start of ToB.

TL;DR - Forums are not good places for fic. As you say, post the fic on AO3 (or FFN!) and link it on the forum (or LJ, because LJ is not great for storing fic either).

(Note: One of my stalled fics is for the fandom I've been talking about. I was posting both on that forum and on FFN. The forum for audience, FFN for neat storage.)

[(Anonymous)]

People shouldn't be forced to hang around on the forum just to make you feel like the community is "whole"

If they want to shuffle over to some other website, for whatever reason, that's their decision and you get no say in it. Maybe for them, that community is better than one with you

[(Anonymous)]

I love the AO3, but know how you feel anyway, OP. I have a similar bitterness towards Tumblr for what it did to my fandom. (people used to talk)

[(Anonymous)]

*Reblogs aimlessly and then makes coffee*

Yeah, know what you mean.

[silverr]

+1

I agree whole-heartedly and non-anonymously, anon. Several artists I used watch on dA are posting "mostly" on tumblr now, and every day I feel as though Tumblr chips away at the fandoms I used to participate in.

[(Anonymous)]

I love Tumblr, but yeah, its format makes conversation next to impossible.

[ellensmithee]

I have a tumblr that I use more actively than I ever used my LJ, but I still find it baffling that it's almost completely replaced LJ (at least in my fandoms). Fandom has gone from having a sense of community where a discourse is going on among many to a me-centric focus.

[lyndis]

Same. I joined Tumblr because DW is pretty much dead for my fandom now. All the discussion is on Tumblr. :/

can'tbeat'em-join'em

[(Anonymous)]

I don't see how AO3 replaces a community. People on other sites (like LJ or tumblr) post AO3 links but still use other places for discussion...

[tabaqui]

This. A community must be too healthy if posting on a different archive totally kills it.

[(Anonymous)]

I hear you, OP. I miss the days when fandoms had forums and archives that made us feel like an actual group, rather than just someone standing on a soapbox shouting loud enough for any random passer-by to listen.

[(Anonymous)]

SO GODDAMN MANY REASONS TO HATE AO3. YOU ARE NOT ALONE. >_

[mimi-sardinia.livejournal.com]

AO3 is not a forum.

Please reread that line: AO3 is not a forum.

If your forum died because of AO3, you might have been using your forum for fanfic, which forums are terrible for.

If you saw my other comment on this subject, you will know that I have had personal experience with a fanfic forum. I know they are terrible for fic because it's next to impossible to search for old chapters on them.

If your forum was healthy, your members could have posted to both the forum and AO3 - forum for fandom audience, AO3 (or FFN) for storage where a reader doesn't have to dig for old chapters.

You need to look critically at your forum and work out if it's death is because people are just bored or because it is NOT a good place to store fanfic.


But in the long run, sites come, sites go. A new site will lure Fandom away from old sites, and it is not always a good move. I still feel Fandom has been stupid for the LJ-->Tumblr move because Tumblr is very anti-communication. And I love LJ.

[eve_n_furter]

Not AO3's fault. AO3 do have a small user threshold for how to search and sort etc. but once you have learned how to use it, it's very clean and transparent. It is also fan-run and changing with it's user base, something that theoretically should give it a long life.

And forums come and go, with the popularity of their fandom and their platform. Can't do much about that other than to actively seek out new fandom friends and places when you feel that you don't get the feedback you need where you are. My "old" fandoms have died down on LJ, but I have gotten a many new ones after, and some of them are thriving (while people archive to AO3 and discuss on LJ or DW).