snowflake challenge #4

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Challenge #4:

In your own space, make a list of things that you wish existed in fandom or elsewhere, and/or that you'd like someone to create or do for you. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

A machine that will write my fics for me! :D Oh, wait, this is not the impossible wish list? Okay, for real then:

Book recs: I really want to get back into reading but I don't know where to start. I really like mysteries (not thrillers though) and the Jane Austen-type books (I also loved North & South).

Comic book recs! I would like to start getting into DC Comics this year but I'm a little confused on where to start or if there are online resources on where to access them. Clark, Lois, and Clark/Lois are my favorites.

More fics, fic recs, fanart/icons, fanvids, and/or fanvid recs for my favorite ships, especially the rarepairs (listed below):
Smallville: Clark/Oliver, Clark/Lois/Oliver, Lois/Tess, Lois/Lana, Lana/Tess
Gilmore Girls: Lane/Dave
Ted Lasso: Sam/Jamie (though I would love Ted Lasso icons in general! Where do people get those?)
MCU: Sam/T'Challa, Sam/Erik Killmonger, Nebula/Rhodey

Better ways to interact with fandom people, especially to squee about ships and fic ideas together. Yes, I'm nostalgic for the peak LJ days. I do miss having a regular beta too. I like Tumblr, but it doesn't work that way, and I am not quite sure where the majority of people hang out on DW. Also, I have no idea how to use Discord. My fellow co-mods over at Rare Femslash Exchange probably know that by now.

Better tagging system on AO3. I wish people would learn that you don't have to tag every ship/character, especially the "past" relationships or ones that you're bashing. I wish we could get a primary and secondary ship filter. That would be cool but I'm not a coder so I have no idea how that would work.

More of a live and let live attitude. The block feature (something else I wished existed on AO3) exists. I wish people didn't feel the need to justify their ships. I hope people are writing what they like, even if it isn't the most popular thing. It is sad to see burn out over lack of interest.

In note to the above, more feedback! I know no one is "owed" comments, but if you like something, leave a quick note. The author will be grateful. And I do kinda wish comments were mandatory in exchanges, but that is a path I don't want to go down right now.

Comments

[silveradept]

Oh, wouldn't it be nice for me to just feed in the idea of a fic and then wait for a machine to turn it something that's perfectly me on the necessary time frame.

Interaction with other fans is difficult these days. It seems like being publicly danish is giving the Algorithm the opportunity to spread your sake to the very people that want to harsh on it. DW had a community base, but even I don't have all that many communities to hang out in. I usually use things like snowflake and other things like it to go out and say hello to other places, and maybe we find people who want to make connections that way. Then again, snowflake is also how I usually talk a lot about fandom, and my regular journaling has almost none of that content.

I definitely would like to see the previous norms about not reading what you're not going to like (and that blocking is a mandatory function for any place that has social features) come back into prominence. And, AO3's tagging system is a really good example for me to point at, when I have my professional hat on, about the benefits and drawbacks of folksonomic systems. A primary and secondary system would be useful. The coding part of it would probably be doable fairly easily, it's the database migration that could be trickier, since that would be new data for seven million plus works to work with.

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Right? It would be perfect! Just somehow translate the images from my brain into words, please and thank you. :D

You really sum up the situation really well. Other platforms just don't seem to have the same vibe. I definitely see that DW has some communities but the ones I've found don't seem to have the same level of engagement. Of course my main fandoms are closed and not as active but even the newer ones don't really seem to have any sort of community base and fans don't really seem to be inclined to start, probably preferring Twitter or Tumblr or even Discord/Reddit. This is my first time doing Snowflake and I do like the opportunity to go into other people's journals and have discussions, but also like you, this is the only time my journal will be filled with these type of posts. It's not my usual content either.

Seconded! People have discussed the negativity aspects of shipping as activism in better ways than I could but it is something that needs to go away. I like the tagging system because it is much more likely that you will be warned of things you don't want to read than you would've in the days of fic being posted to forums/FFN.

it's the database migration that could be trickier, since that would be new data for seven million plus works to work with.
Oh yeah, that's a good point. I am not sure how many people who go back and properly tag their stories either.

[silveradept]

It's a really big commitment for a person or people to run a community on DW, since the expectation will be that there's regular content posting. Someone, I'm sure, has done a thing of "A lurkers products B posters produces C big fans gets Z admins." Without the assistance of the computers deciding what things a person wants to see, it takes a lot of time and effort to build up a community, and that's with a fandom that lasts long enough and eventually gathers enough long term fans to sustain it.

A good tagging system will help, certainly, but it requires a lot of work to do the linkages behind it and syn tags to each other and to the taxonomy so that it's not an entire mess and people can actually use it to look for what they want (or don't).

Going back and tagging is one of those things that people are concerned about when it comes to saying new Archive warnings or other major structures, because then you have to make sensible default decisions and other kinds of things like that. That's not a reason not to do it, but it is important that it be part of the decision making.

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Exactly, the only type of comms I've ever run are the ones where it is more of ship/theme comms which is based on other people posting. The expectation of posting on your own and coming up with a variety of topics does require time and creativity. Definitely not something someone can do alone. I was reminded recently the fictional_fans exist and I should do my part in trying to participate more.

That's true, especially since AO3 has so many fics. And yes, the search function and the side bars and all would have to be altered to reflect the change. It is not something that can be done overnight and there probably would be changes I prefer be made before this one anyway.

Yup, and also a lot of people have orphaned fics and/or left fandom/AO3 behind. I remember going back to FFN after years of being out of fandom and realizing that they put in a 'pairing' option and I edited my fics to reflect that but it had been well over 5 years at that point.