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.