rpanons | Found the token ace

Found the token ace

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so why DON'T we move fandom back onto dw? there's so many of us here already rping, why not just go back to making personal journals and fandom communities?

i've been seeing a lot of unrest on tumblr lately that's very reminiscent of the first murmurings of the lj exodus. why don't we, the rp community, take the initiative and start building fandom here again?

I think this would be a good thing, but how would we go about doing that?

be the change we want to see! start making personal journals and fandom communities again and actually using them. be active in them. tell people on tumblr. convince those people to come, too.

that's how the exodus from lj to dw happened on the rp front. enough people made the switch and then passed around posts with all the pros and cons of moving to dw, and the people who moved stood their ground and stayed here so that no one could say "well it's not really active over there..."

we can do it with fandom as a whole!! we just have to not be lazy.

It would be a huge overhaul to the current DWRP community. It would be cool, but would require more structure and planning than "be the change".

what are you talking about? this wouldn't affect the rp side of things at all, except for probably bringing in new people. isn't that what we've been yelling for for years?

Because we're all lazy and up against insurmountable odds aka tumblrs numbers

Talk is cheap

but a lot of people on tumblr want to move, they just don't know where to go. people keep saying "back to livejournal" but that's a disaster and a half. and then they're like "well there's dreamwidth but there's like no fandom activity there." if we just start using dw for fandom and tell people that it's finally being used for fandom, they'll come.

They want to go somewhere similar in structure to Tumblr is the problem.

if that was the case, then "what about back to livejournal?" wouldn't be a question that's so frequently asked.

They say that and then immediately shoot it down, dumbass. If they were going back to LJ, they would do it.

you weren't around during the lj exodus were you? of course no one's going back, because no one's going on their own. it takes a concerted effort to get people to move en masse, and the lj exodus took months to get off the ground. not only that, but there were two huge moves because not everyone came over the first time around. it's going to take more than one dipshit on tumblr to wake up one day and be like "i hate this place i'm going to lj/dw/wherever."

i like the basic idea, but be serious. tumblr supplanted lj as the top fandomy space for a reason. their interface is complete shit for rping, but when it comes to imageposting, they're at the top of their game. the interface is also good for posting simple drabbles, which 99% of the time is all the average fandomy person wants to read or write

moving fandom "back" to dw would be a long row to hoe. for one thing, it was never really here on dw (it migrated from lj around the same time we did). fandom communities here are... well, i won't call them "non-existent", but i think you could use "ephemeral" and maintain accuracy. i've certainly never seen one.

i could be wrong, but i would guess the "unrest" you're seeing is just tumblrinas tumblrinaing. the lj exodus happened because lj initiated a series of very unwise decisions in a very short time (release 88, the snubbings, basically everything igrick touched); unless tumblr is dumb enough to do the same (IF ONLY), i see fandom stating right there where it is. people don't make a change unless the status quo is no longer satisfactory for whatever reason

I think the problem with Tumblr is that everything text-based is kind of getting left in the dust. It's good for images, sure, but images have never been all there was to fandom. Back in the LJ days, fandom practically revolved around fanfiction, with art and RP behind it.

Nowadays there isn't really a good community for fanfiction. You just pick a website to post it to. But there aren't really fandom hubs for general interaction, discussion, and OOC friend-making like there were on LJ. RP, too, is possible on Tumblr but not ideal. People only seem to be playing there because Tumblr is Where Fandom Is.

I doubt fandom will move off of Tumblr any time soon, but when it finally does I sure hope it's somewhere friendlier to text. Image-based fandom bores the hell out of me and how a lot of people nowadays seem to participate in fandom exclusively through fanart and gifsets baffles me. I just want a decent, active, RP/fanfic friendly community again.

tbh I think dw just needs tags searchable sitewide like other social networking sites if it wants to ever win those kids over

a lot of fandom communities still exist, they're just extremely dead right now. and it's not quite like lj is completely dead, since a handful of communities stayed on lj and are still fairly active there. (though they're not fandom related, just places like artists-beware or vaginapagina or something.) if the tumblr kids went to lj, they probably wouldn't have too much of a problem imo.

BUT if you want them here, why not go scope out what fandom communities are already available on dw and suggest users make journals and post something? they don't have to make a community if they're not confident about managing that kind of thing right off the bat. just make a journal and post, other people can comment, chat a bit and friend each other, etc. if you want, you can start up a friending meme for the people who migrate over to break the ice.

because i think one problem with asking the rp community to collectively try to bring them over is there are some of us without a tumblr who probably couldn't be arsed to make a tumblr just to do that. i think the tumblr folks have to make the jump to make a journal on dw first, then look for comms to be active in, and from there more penguins might jump into the pool. the dw folks with tumblrs can help out by suggesting comms for them to join and mingle in.

and i'm gonna be blunt, asking us as a group to care about helping tumblr users migrate might be a bit much because some/a lot of people don't... actually care. some of us oldbies have been out of fandom activity for years now. it's just not an important thing to some people right now when we can barely keep up with game tags, lol.

so i totally encourage the dw users who do care about it go ahead and take initiative in directing people over. show them the fandom communities that are aching for active members. show them dreamwidthlayouts and dreamcodes so they can have prettier layouts than the ugly-ass defaults. (and maybe encourage those more css inclined to come by and make layouts, too.) show them how privacy and friending works, how it can be managed, the codes they can use to insert images into their posts, things like that. if they're looking for a place that welcomes diversity and accessibility, show them dw's diversity statement and guiding principles.

stuff like that. i don't have a tumblr so idk what's making them hesitant to hit up dw, but if it's just lack of information/understanding then explaining is probably the best thing to do and, honestly, don't wait for anyone else to do it. because you really can't depend on us.

also i agree with the above two anons that it's probably the global tags and image posts that really keep fandom there. if people want social networking features that connect users together (whether they want to or not), then they're definitely not going to find it here. and, in that case, they probably won't come over no matter how much you might try.

1) global tags would help immensely. There's tags in fandom communities but there needs to be something more to it--maybe in searching the tags instead of DW generating a list of communities they generate a list of "any recent posts anywhere with these tags". that would give more exposure needed to generate more activity. additionally, add in a widget that lets you upload and post images to comments with the same kind of ease tumblr does. lbr i'm pretty sure everyone on tumblr would love to have an organized thread to keep any and all discussion in instead of the mess that is the current notes system, and making it easier to post replies with animated gifs and shit would really set the deal, i think.

2) we start using personal journals as the default method of communication. full stop. this is a huge part of what made fandom popular on lj was people using their voices. right now our voices are all on plurk and this is expressly on a personal level, not on a fandom-community level. plurk would be a great supplement to how aim was for rp-game discussion back in the day, but back in the day we used personal journals for, you know, personal stuff. this will probably be really difficult though since most people don't really want to talk about personal stuff any more, and if so will do so generally in short clipped fashion that frankly works better/faster/easier with a plurk/twitter format.

3) this alone will generate a drive to use dw as a fandom community and the snowball will roll itself from here. communities will be made and used, and from there it should, hopefully, just grow into what lj used to be.

honestly convincing everyone to use personal journals would probably be the hardest hurdle

I've always BEEN here, but I'm just one person.

how to make it happen:

1. dreamwidth needs to have basically unlimited image hosting just like tumblr so people can jump right over and keep posting gifsets and so on like they already have gotten used to doing
2. dreamwidth needs to actually seriously give a fuck about making a good mobile interface and get a real designer(s) to do that
3. dreamwidth needs to actually seriously give a fuck about visual presentation and not just accessibility and get a real designer(s) to make slick modern default visual styles because what they have right now is the same 1990s-looking shitshow other open source projects have because they don't want to invest in good design
4. dreamwidth needs better cross-journal/comm content discovery and sharing mechanisms like global tags and easy instant reblogging

if you're a programmer or designer, get on volunteering to implement that and THEN maybe you can get fandom to move over

i agree with the rest, but i wouldn't call 3 a huge priority. dw isn't insanejournal-ugly

3 is actually a major turnoff for many people though

how many people who are ALREADY here bitch about how ugly the default styles are?

uh. none? i've literally never heard that. i've heard complaints about specific small things (the default having text at 75%, html working weirdly sometimes) but not the layouts being ugly.

so? the default styles on tumblr are ugly as fuck too. no one uses the defaults over there either. as long as people see that dreamwidth can be customized the same way as tumblr, they won't care.

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Found the token ace

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