Meta links post

[melannen]

Every so often something goes around DW talking about how there aren't any good fannish discussions on DW (from younger fans) or how much metafandom is missed¹ (from older fans.)

Every time it happens I go "But there is tons of fandom discussion on DW! More than I can keep up with! It's all right there on my reading and network pages!"

I've been meaning for awhile to post a collection of Meta Posts That Wandered Across My Reading Page in X Time Period, as evidence thereof, and since I happened to have gotten a whole weekend behind and had a stash of tabs open, this seemed like a good day to do it. If you need more thoughtful fan discussion in your life, you could do worse than add some of these people.

So under the cut, DW meta posts that earned their own tabs in the last 24 hours. (This is not all the meta that went by, but sorry, people posting about shows and books I don't know, I may have skimmed your post. It is no reflection on the cleverness of your thinking.)

carmarthen: That Meta Essay About Polyamory In Fic
thatyourefuse: [proposal for a Vorkosigan Saga ficathon]
carmarthen: You know what fandom needs more of? [Answer: SCA AUs].
aethel: Alternative Library Literature 1992-1993
starlady: BBC Sherlock, and a question
petra: Psychic Wolves for Lupercalia: Pup of a Psychic Bitch (Year Two) - Brainstorm, Cheerlead, &c.
marginaliana: dentist - someone who does car body work [Top Gear RPF intro]
ysabetwordsmith In Which JSTOR Is A Vanity Press
brownbetty Fandoms I Have Loved [Fantasy of Competence stories]
naraht Thoughts on Generation Kill
beccaelizabeth Trying To Take Religion out of Fantasy Kingdoms
otw_news The Rebellious Pixels Chain of Takedowns
fandom_secrets: Secret Post #2203
kaz: Tolkien Meta is the Best Meta
doctor_and_master Discussion Question/Poll: What's your favourite Doctor/Master episode/serial?

(if you want your post off this list, of course, just ask.)

¹I think there were problems with the way metafandom was working, especially by the end - mod burnout and the way it facilitated some bad aspects of mob behavior being two of them - but I miss having a good source for meta links outside my reading list. I have occasionally dreamed of there being a meta recs/links community that's sort of a combination of the way fanart_recs, bestthingever, and poetry are run - people sign up to take a week, and during that week they post links to any interesting meta they should come across that week. It doesn't have to be the best meta, or all the meta, just the meta that they find interesting that week. And then next week it's somebody else, and a different perspective on what makes meta interesting.

It wouldn't solve all the problems with the metafandom model but I think it would bypass several of them. And it would be fun.

Of course if I started half the community ideas that I think might be fun, I would never do anything but start communities.


IN OTHER NEWS: I am messing with tag wrangling at the moment (and liveblogging it into the empty tagwranglers chatroom, if anybody wants to pop in and be entertained). One of the fandoms I have recently assigned myself (on the rule of "If you have written it and it has no wrangler, take it on") is British Comedian RPF.

However, I am having an issue with this fandom. That being: that it makes me unhappy to have to wrangle people like Dara Ó Briain and Ed Byrne (not to mention Rich Hall and Sandi Toksvig) as British Comedians.

I mean, they are unquestionably part of the British Comedy fandom - they do British-style comedy in British contexts with other people who do British comedy - but something in me still quails at calling Dara Ó Briain or Ed Byrne a British comedian. (I wouldn't, after all, call John Oliver an American comedian, even if he mostly does American comedy in America for Americans now.)

So, fellow British Comedy people who read this journal: what do you think? Is it worth the hassle of asking the higher-ups to change the fandom canonical to "British Comedy RPF" instead? Or does it bother nobody but me? Or is "British Comedy RPF" just as bad and I should change it to something else/wrangle the expats into the fandoms of their nationalities?

(There is an "Irish Comedian RPF" category but it currently has no people attached to it. And no wrangler.)

Comments

[cathexys]

You know it's so funny, but that's exactly how MF got started with fabu and mmwd and I posting links all the time anyway and lim saying, hey, lets make this a com :)

Metablog was actually the precursor, so to speak. afai remember, anyone could post links, but yes, it was a different kind of animal.

By the time I left, we'd just installed a great software model via delicious (I know we used it for sga_newsletter too), but I have no idea what people use now...
Im' still thinking about how to get continuity and not have it rest on a few shoulders. Bc IMHE that's alway how it ends up...a few doing all the work and when they stop, it ends...

[melannen]

I know, I was following you for your linkspam before m_f was conceived. :D

And what do you mean by "continuity"? I what I'm asking is - do you need continuity? With setups like crack_van and poetry , the "mods" basically just manage the sign-up list; everything else is up to the assigned part-timer. And there is a lot of variation in what gets posted and how, but I guess I see that as a feature, not a bug - if this week's reccer is into fandoms you hate and annoys you and posts in purple font*, next week's probably won't, etc. And if you start getting burnout in a small group, it's a lot easier to recruit new people to "post X things over one week" than "take on an indefinite obligation as a mod".


*okay I would probably ban purple font, yes.

[cathexys]

Nono, not in content. Just that it happens. But I guess the mods provide posters who provide content, so it's a lot of work for a short while or less work over a longer time. Actually a good method... I'm in if you do it. :)