Housekeeping

[melannen]

1. I saw a link to this acafandom survey for Fandom Olds about how fandom migrates between platforms on tumblr yesterday and it was really fun to fill out and could use some DW voices! (Yes, I did answer the survey that I quit tumblr last year. ... I *mostly* quit tumblr last year okay.)

Have you been part of fandom for at least ten years (even non-consecutively)?

We’re Casey Fiesler and Brianna Dym, longtime fan community members, and also researchers in the Department of Information Science at University of Colorado Boulder. We’re conducting a survey about how fan communities migrate across platforms! So if you’ve used multiple platforms in that time (Livejournal, Tumblr, AO3, Usenet…), we would love to have you participate!

more details on the tumblr post...

Whether you participate or not, please consider sharing this survey with your social networks! And if you’d like to find out more about Casey’s previous research about fandom, see this Tumblr post: http://cfiesler.tumblr.com/post/139029976190/an-archive-of-their-own-a-case-study-of-feminist

Click here to take the survey!

...it took me a long time to fill it out because apparently in my time in fandom I have done ALL OF THE THINGS on ALL OF THE PLATFORMS, but I suspect I'm not the only one on DW who has.

I also appreciate that the link text for that post is "have you been in fandom a long time help us", it sounds like a cry of despair.

2. con_txt is looking for panel ideas for this year! They aren't getting many so far, I think because in this round they want people to agree to mod, and most people's panel ideas, let's face it, are "I would like to attend this panel as modded by somebody else". So if you're a con_text person you should go offer some. (I promise modding con-txt panels is SUPER EASY.)

3. Purimgifts happened! I really love the format - having the posting spread over several days, having it be themed but only very loosely, the *max* wordcount rule, the art requirement that practically includes a permission slip to make bad art if you need to, and, of course, the blanket crossovers permission.

So anyway I did the series I just renamed to Lots of Planets Have A South Downs, which is three ficlets and three comics panels about Crowley and Aziraphale from Good Omens living in the future of the Saga comics, and it was super fun to do, and inspired me to pull out my wacom tablet for the first time in years. (Also I need to stop doing multiple-small-fandom crossovers for fests and then getting sad when they don't have a huge readership.)

And I got The Ankh-Morpork Vampire Ball by RobberBaroness, three ficlets about the women of the Watch at a vampire masquerade ball, with costume images, which was also super fun!

In sum, why did I wait so long to start doing this fest.

Comments

[isis]

I logged into my old Twitter account for the first time since 2012 and wasted more time reading over my old tweets than I did answering the survey questions - oops?

[melannen]

I think Twitter was the only platform on the list that I didn't check!

[lannamichaels]

re #1: I admit that when I saw that post on a friend's tumblr, my kneejerk reaction was YOU FORGOT MAILING LISTS HOW DARE YOU, so not only am I a fandom old, I'm a fandom old who needs a nap ;)

What's your current tumblr name?

[melannen]

Mailing lists are an option in the survey! I think the only things I got mad they left out were IRC and del.icio.us. And websites/webrings. But they had everyhing else!

This is my tumblr name (and I also had a backup at melsmorgue that was just reblogging pretty pictures) but it won't do you much good; I literally have not posted anything there since November 2016 when I was like "there is no way I will be able to deal with tumblr's reaction" and quit completely for three months and then realized my life was happier without it anyway. (I have started occasionally reading it again recently but not anything like keeping up with it.)

[lannamichaels]

Yeah, I judged them too quickly based on the blurb. There's a question "What prompted you to stop using email lists? Choose all that apply.". I think I'm gonna answer "Fucking yahoo broke everything" because that's honestly the truth :P I could also give that answer to "why did you stop using delicious" and "why did you stop using geocities" and....

My tumblr life improved now that I use rss feeds entirely, so I can have folders for various things, and it puts the tags at the top, so I can completely avoid some shit entirely and also have search folders highlight keywords I want to see. It's nice. (Ah, yes, the way to improve tumblr's interface: not use tumblr's interface).

[melannen]

I've thought about trying to send the few tumblrs I care about through RSS but then I keep hearing about how Yahoo and friends keep trying to destroy RSS, and I know that if I finally got RSS set up exactly how I wanted, it would somehow break forever.

(I actually still use email lists because they're required for OTW volunteers but OMG they're SO BROKEN. They use some kind of native mailing list servers, but apparently the options are "set spam filters so strict that half your members can't get posts through" or "be overrun by spam". Whitelisting your members' addresses is apparently not an option? So they're basically unusable for two-way discussion despite the committee heads trying very hard.)

[monksandbones]

I have now followed your link and exhaustively completed the survey as a slightly more junior Fandom Old. Oh, the nostalgia!

[melannen]

You can't be that much more junior, you were like my second ever fandom lj friend!

[monksandbones]

I pretty much got into fandom around when I got my lj in early 2003, though, and somewhere along the line I developed the sense that you used to be involved with pre-lj fandom mailing lists. I didn't have the kind of computer access that would have let me discover fandom until I started university in the fall of 2002, although I religiously read theonering.net on the family computer in grades ten through twelve!

You were definitely one of my first-ever fandom lj friends, though. I feel like we met through some kind of HP fic challenge in the spring/summer of 2003!?

[melannen]

I technically date my online fandom history to when I first picked this username in 1999 on the Keenspot boards, but I didn't really delurk anywhere, or start reading fanfic seriously, until I got to college in 2001. And I didn't get my LJ invite until '02. So you were probably reading fic earlier than me!

I joined HPfGU and Crowley's Angels on egroups because they were still recommended starting places back then, but they were already starting to die by '01, so I never really did much on them, and an XF list a little later because it was integrated with the XF archive, but I was mostly on the fictionalley and keenspot forums before LJ.

I think we got matched by the Sorting Cat on one of mctabby's exchanges?

[sophia_sol]

I made the slightly questionable choice last night to complete that survey while insomniacally awake in bed so I probably wasn't as comprehensive in my answers as I should have been and perhaps also less coherent than I should have been. Ah well. It's a cool survey!

Also it means that I actually looked up how long I've been on certain websites and....it's longer than I though. How has tumblr been ascendant for so long???

[melannen]

I didn't go back and look anything up because it said estimates were okay and it still took me to an hour after bedtime. :P I am still sitting here thinking of things I should have mentioned, though.

Tumblr has been around WAY TOO LONG. I keep waiting for it to die already. :/

[sophia_sol]

I'm just scared that whatever site will take over after tumblr's death will be even worse than tumblr. Better the devil you know, as they say. (I still do want it to die though.)

[hannah]

I just finished the survey. I think having joined LJ back when it used invite codes qualifies me at least for fandom middle-age.

[melannen]

It definitely does! I seem like a Fandom Very Old because I used Usenet, but that is only because XF fandom still used Usenet well into the LJ era. I joined in the LJ invite codes period too.

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

I'm really not sure where I fit into the Fandom eras, but I came online just as Perpetual September was being a thing to bemoan.

I did the thing! But yeah, it didn't mention IRC.

[melannen]

Wow! That's even before me! (I did notice it didn't ask about pre-usenet local BBSes, but I guess there aren't many of those folks on Tumblr these days.)

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

Nah, that was on a mailing list, but clearly my orientation guide was possibly an old hand. I know of BBS but I didn't have a computer in the handset into the modem days.

I see that Fandom Grandma has crossed into the Undiscovered Country.

[melannen]

We had a computer back to the mid-80s but we didn't have any home networking until, oh, probably 97 or 98? I never really played with anything other than the Web until I had my own computer in '01 though.

[tassosss]

I proposed a panel for con_txt, and I've got another idea that I'm gonna wait for the posts that don't require a mod going in, so thanks for the reminder.

I think I'm fandom Middle Age, too. I got to LJ late because I was a lurker, but I remember having "maps" through webrings to find various Buffy and Stargate archives.

[melannen]

Yay, con_panels! I'll have more for "don't require a mod", too.

I used webrings a few times but I think by the time I had good internet access, google was good enough and the webrings were rotted enough that they weren't really worth it any more.

[white_aster]

Ok, wow, that survey made me feel old. 18 years in fandom old.

[melannen]

I'm at almost-19, so yeah!

[derryderrydown]

Filling in that fandom survey reminded me a) that DW exists, and b) it's so much nicer than Twitter.

[melannen]

I am glad you have returned to the light side then! :D

[sgac]

The survey has now closed, because they got too much data!

Oh well, my answer to everything would have been "I don't remember, it was fricking twenty years ago!"

[melannen]

"Too much data!" seems to be a problem specific to fan academica. :D I'm glad we got it a little traction on DW before it filled up, anyway. (I kind of with they'd release the questions as a public meme, though, because people seem to be having a lot of fun talking about it. Maybe I'll ask them on Tumblr.)

[dhampyresa]

Sounds like a very interesting survey!