fandom and migration

I don't know if anyone would be all that interested at this date, but I did a few meta posts in 2003 right after I came to LJ (Novmeber 2002) about the transition between mailing lists and LJ (and in fact, I was usenet in 1999, so I was in the last three major jumps). For some people who have expereinced fandom only as LJ, I think this entire thing may be kind of bizarre and a little frightening, which yes, it is. I transitioned usenet-onenet-egroups-yahoogroups-diaryland-livejournal and away from archives, though I've always had a webpage. Every time there was a major change, it was disconcerting and confusing.



Livejournal and Mailing Lists Take One and Take Two. I don't know how helpful or informative they are at this point, but they were referenced in someone's thesis or something at one time (I think on social networking?), so there might be something that may be useful in them if you're wondering about fannish migration.

My history started on usenet in Voyager, with parallel membership in a private mailing list that didn't move to onelist until 2000. I was mailing list primary from 2000 until 2002, diaryland for about eight months, then came to LJ in November 2002. Even then, it was disconcerting--what I thought fandom was became redefined very fast, and became to me explosively large. For me, that fandom was relatively stationary for so long is kind of surprising.

The thing is, fandom hasn't been internet-based for all that long--I want to say 1994-1996 was when it started to take off, but taraljc and liviapenn and probably Due South and Highlander and Sentinel and X-Files and Star Trek people would be better able to give context to that. In our time on the internet, we've been in LJ for a really long time. And when LJ came, there was abandonment of mailing lists, and that, too, may be making people nervous. LJ also dominated, for a lot of fandoms, all other social networking and journaling sites.

OpenID is changing that kind of choice for people, and if anyone is worried they'll be left behind because they don't want to move their primary location, I don't think this will be an issue.

How to follow someone who has moved to Dreamwidth by zvi_likes_tv, mirrored here on Dreamwidth. This is a comprehensive explanation of OpenID and various ways to continue to interact with people going to Dreamwidth, or for that matter, anyone on different journaling sites.

[And keep in mind, a lot of us will be crossposting or referencing between. I may not post every post in both--but if I don't feel like doing a full crosspost, I'll likely link at least. No one is going to have to make a binary choice. The choices will be legion.]

I navigated getting an OpenID myself, so if you're having problems or just don't understand or it's not working for you, please, please email me and we'll get on AIM or YIM and I'll walk you through the process myself. Trust me, I had problems until I realized that in LJ I still use s1 for my base and it didn't automatically create me an OpenID to use. So trust me, it's not like anyone who is having problems is the only one; I was getting really frustrated with the process myself.

I don't know how many invite codes will be available to account holders when Open Beta starts--and to clarify, right now is Closed Beta, because there are still bugs that are being fixed, and hey, I spent a few hours last night updating my dw style to match the new code added, so seriously, Closed Beta is closed because they are literally in a testing environment stage right now and that does require users who don't mind being testers and betas and who are zen with recreating their styles from scratch. *g* Which I am.

Right. If I don't have you friended and you want to try Dreamwidth and you don't think you'll be able to get an invite code because your flist doesn't have anyone beta'ing it or for whatever reason, I'll be offering them when I have them. I'll be buying an account, so I assume there will be more than one, and I've promised a couple already if I have them, so. I'll post on the thirtieth or the first if I have extra, and take first come/first serve.



If anyone else has any posts on fandom migration, or changes in fandom between mediums, etc, please, please, please link in comments, especially those of you who wrote them, and I'll add them at the end of this post.

Crosspost to Dreamwidth.

Comments

[transtempts.livejournal.com]

I remember being on mailing lists when BTVS, A:ts, and Roswell aired. And I think it was Lar that gave me an invite code to livejournal.

[malkingrey.livejournal.com]

I posted briefly about the migration phenomenon here (http://malkingrey.livejournal.com/491506.html): nothing especially profound, but there it is.

[telesilla.livejournal.com]

I've been pondering a post about the two migrations I've been part of and the fierce resistance to each of them, but then I got bitten hard by a plot bunny. Maybe this weekend....

[annaalamode.livejournal.com]

You sound like fandom's grandma, ie Fannish Gramma Jenn, tell us again about the flame war that ended the Wolverine/Rogue shippers list!

(Also you are making me remember ATXF and feel old!)

(PS You aren't going to tell me to sit up straight and/or tell me that I have "such a pretty smile" are you?)

[seperis.livejournal.com]

*sniffs* BOFQ would be a workable title. But without the bitter. Mostly the resigned. *g*

[annaalamode.livejournal.com]

But, having met you in person, I do not think you are imperious enough to be a BOFQ. (But I can pretend if you want me to!)

[cofax7]

atxfc veterans (or is that survivors?) represent!

[annaalamode.livejournal.com]

Nowhere else can one find flamewars over headers! We were so naive in those days!

[logovo.livejournal.com]

Hah, this made me curious to see what wonderfulness I thought LJ brought to my fannish life. They're locked, but a quick look at the first week's posts gives me:

"LiveJournal---I'm not so sure about this"

and

"So yesterday I'm thinking of getting a paid LJ account. Of course what we had yesterday was LJ crapping out YET AGAIN. How do people stand it? Blogger never has so many problems. Still, all these people I like are here, so yes, I want to stay. But I'm not too happy about it."

And auspicious beginning!

[boji.livejournal.com]

Not so zen with re-creating my style code from scratch over on DW *g* but am zen with the waiting. Keep discovering little things that I adore, like the import function and the multiple icon import function.

And comments imported, which I don't think they did when I stitched together my back-up IJ the summer before last.

Oh and my fannish history? TXF Usenet as meta poster, fanfic reader and lurker extraordinaire. Then Yahoo!groups which were onelist if I remember correctly and latecomer to LJ. My personal love remains the fanfic archive. But then gossamer was my first introduction to fic based archives and so I'm imprinted to crave that kind of fic depository. Yes, am waiting for the archive to come out of beta.

[abbylee]

As long as you're using an S2 style on LiveJournal, you don't have to start from scratch at all! Just import it as an S2 core1 style, and that should be that. Any problems, report a bug.

Anyone who tells you that you need to use core2 is wrong (see the first point in http://dw-styles.dreamwidth.org/2454.html). core2 is so that you can create a new style from scratch without having to over-ride a whole heap of functions, and so that upgrades to one official style can be more easily reproduced in another. core2 is way better as a core, but if your style is written using the version of core that LiveJournal has, then just keep on using it.

[digitalwave]

I started out with print zines waaay back when, then was on Genie with dialup during the early days of Due South and X-files fandom. We thought that was pretty hot stuff.

I was overjoyed to find Livejournal back in 2003 and I couldn't believe all of the wonderful friendships I made. Yourself most definitely included.

I'll keep posting here for the friends who don't make the migration but I have to admit, I'm pretty darned excited about all of the possibilities of Dreamwidth. :)

[ratcreature]

I remember that I did a lot of disgruntled whining on mailing lists, because everyone was moving to LJ and I thought the topic and fandom based mailing lists were better for discussion (still do in many respects). Also it is much much harder to get yourself read and seen on LJ compared to mailing lists, especially if you don't write fanfic but are just a fan who likes talk and discuss stuff sometimes. You need to build a network and reputation and credit to be read by anyone, and need to post consistently to not be forgotten, whereas on mailing lists you may not have creditbility, but you can just join, post and are likely to be read (at least for discussion) by a decent portion of a huge audience. So I found LJ much harder.

I tried having a blog on my own site for a while, but nobody commented there (okay, two or three people did), and that sucked. Even after having an LJ I tried just posting links to my blog for a while because I didn't want my stuff on a site that wasn't mine, but that was an exercise in futility, because still nobody would comment in my blog so I eventually caved.

[monanotlisa.livejournal.com]

This is a good point: everyone can start a discussion in a mailing list setting, but establishing a Voice in a blogging system is harder and depends on a variety of factors.

That said, now I recoil from mailing lists because they are not pretty enough - what? It's true! - and because they don't allow me the full spectrum of interaction, which is ultimately what I am interested in: I like the mélange of life & fannishness.

who likes talk and discuss stuff sometimes

[ender24]

that is not entirely true.
I have got a friend, true, she likes to discuss, she has a tiny flist, and does not do the entire networking thing, but still, this is why having the LJ infrastructure, as we have is so convenient.

she wrote a an essay about slash slash_pov: here, but as I said, she does not do the network nor self pimping thing, so I just linked her to metafandom, and she instantly got several reactions.

you don't really have to have a reputation, or credit or whatever.

Re: who likes talk and discuss stuff sometimes

[ratcreature]

But what you describe is a situation in which LJ sort of "mimics" the ML function through topic-centric communities, or newsletters. In this situation a huge number of people have subscribed to a community for a topic, where your content appears (either posted by yourself or collated by volunteers) to reach a premade audience. But that is a secondary infrastructure put on top of LJ, and those weren't really there yet to the same extent when I first joined LJ. When I got mine in 2002 there was no metafandom (that started in 2005 or so?), no newsletters (except maybe the dueSouth one, that was early before there were communities even, but I wasn't in that fandom) and no noticeboards either. So what you describe had no chance to happen when I was disgruntled over joining LJ.

And it doesn't extend to your conversations, because on LJ these are always buried within the entry. Of course the system has advantages too, like that you don't need to join an entirely new thing for every fandom or pairing.

when I was disgruntled over joining LJ.

[ender24]

ahh, i see what you mean!
i didnt think of that, because i was recently told, that actually the yahoo clex groups, that i first joined and were my first fandom experience, were founded by LJ users, so I somehow concluded, that since the founders came from LJ, that at that time LJ already had those kind of coms available.

thanks for correcting my false impression!

[out-there.livejournal.com]

Huh. That's making me think about my fannish history. Finding fannish websites was first, way back in 1997 (I mistyped 1197, but I'm pretty sure the internet wasn't around back *then*) when dial-up modems of 24.4 were such an improvement on the slow old 12.something models. It was a few years of anime fandom, mainly through mailing lists and websites.

Then I dropped away from anime. And it was a couple years before I discovered that yaoi had an UK/USA-TV counterpart called slash. I think there was another mailing list, although I can't remember details. I do remember a lot of posting to MBTV/TWOP (Are they still TWOP? I haven't read there in forever, but at one stage, I was pretty religiously checking the posting boards) and a lot of reading you on Diaryland and reading Te on... whatever blog-system she was posting to then. My main interactions came from reading fic, replying to occasional blogs, and I think posting a little to the SV archive.

And then there was LJ. Which a few friends on the Australian slashers mailing list (aha! I did remember it) mentioned, and someone offered me a free account code to give it a go, and I remember starting it and being pretty sure it'd just be this tiny little page that I could use as a starting point for when I wanted to read a couple of blogs-on-LJ. That was way back in 2002, and I've been surprisingly happy here on LJ (and it's been one constant part of my life for the last seven or so years. I'm kind of horrified at how fast that time has passed me by -- and I have a secret suspicion that if I added up all the hours spent reading LJ, I could have done something really productive with my life, like cure cancer or knit the world's longest blanket -- but I have enjoyed it all.).

The weird thing is that everyone's a little concerned about change -- understandable -- but DW is still basically an LJ-model of fandom. Moving from mailing lists or specific boards to LJ, which is inherently multi-fannish and driven by force of personality rather than purely by fandom or pairings (although like always call to like, it still seems), was a big move. It was a shift in how fandom interracted,a nd suddenly fandom wasn't the fifty people who subscribed to this list, but the 300 people who all *might* be reading your flocked posts, commenting back personally, starting to get to know you in a more rounded, opinions and personality-based way plus everyone else on LJ who might randomly read their friendsfriends list or be pointed in your direction. That was a big shift and suddenly fans weren't a little group hiding away by email, they were everywhere on LJ.

It's like... walking to school and then getting a car. The shift and the big change comes from the mode of transport. LJ and DW are just different makes and models of cars, but the actual trip is still going to be pretty much the same. But with slightly better suspension.

[ender24]

this is too fun, I was just quoting and linking to your essay re: yahoo to LJ migration like 3 days ago :D

[harborshore.livejournal.com]

According to this (http://dw-news.dreamwidth.org/3332.html) piece of dreamwidth news, everyone who gets an openid and validates their email address will get an invite code come April 30th. So I did that. *grins* Also, awesome post--I'm kind of fascinated by how the internet has evolved and produced these kinds of communities, you know?

[archaeologist-d.livejournal.com]

My experiences with fandom started with yahoo groups which was troublesome at times since yahoo could be a pain. Then came mailing lists. As you said, the mailing lists do guarentee that people see the post but getting people to read them or more importantly reply to them remained a problem.

Then I discovered fandom websites and honestly, I found them to be the most useful. You could get really good discussions going and they couldn't get buried among all the other crap that went on. Plus all the stories were there and you could easily scroll through them to find something you liked. I happened to be a Star Wars fan and the site I'd go to (theforce.net) was incredibly easy to navigate and the people there were welcoming. I learned quite a lot about writing from them.

At the same time, I was directed to LJ. I find it frustrating at times since a lot of discussion is buried in posts that I can't find or are flocked. On the other hand, you can talk about off-topic things here or really anything.

However, I'm also frustrated because I'm not computer literate and find the thought of moving to Dreamwidth (if people and fic migrate there) to be distressing. I can barely do mood themes (it takes me hours and someone has to tell me how) or anything else that people seem to breezily handle. I'll follow if I must but... it wouldn't be my first choice.

[awehla.livejournal.com]

Saw a link to this on sv_ledger. In the UK things may have started later since I know I didn't get on the net till 1998 and that's early compared to some people I know.

Lisa
x

[klangley56.livejournal.com]

My fanac started in the era of mimeo fanzines. I expanded to include the Internet without problems (except the increased time demands), enjoyed the e-mail discussion lists and fiction archives.

LJ? Still not fond of it. It's a pain-in-the-ass way to access fan fiction for me, and an ever-more-fragmented way to carry on discussion. My LJ is just an account, not an LJ; the only reason I have any icons is that a friend sent me some of hers; and I still haven't look at how to do an LJ cut or anything else related.

So will I follow the next fannish migration? Who knows? Frankly, I'm old and it all makes my ass tired. Possibly I'm a fannish Luddite. :-)