[ where do we go from here ]

[winterlive]

my own cee has said a thing about the exodus which i think you should read. it's about where those of us who are leaving should go, what we should be trying for.

fandom_flies is trying to work up something new, something from scratch. same with scribblit. and i think those are admirable aims, like, i think that's fair, but they've talked to each other and instead of deciding to pool their lumber and their workers and their time to build a big ark, they have decided to diverge. go their own ways. that's not what fandom needs.

the american statesman and orator henry clay once said: I know no South, no North, no East, no West, to which I owe any allegiance...The Union, sir, is my country.

i feel the same way about fandom. the ideal is the same: harry potter fen and star wars fen, artists and vidders and writers, friends and total strangers - we all have one thing in common, and that's that we are all us. of course, we have our insane cousins and crazy uncles and cat lady aunts that we'd lock in the attic and feed fish heads to if we were worse people, but every family does. if there's one thing i don't want, it's to lose the notion that there are dozens of people out there that i just haven't found myself in the same fandom as yet, that there's so many awesome people that will come through my flist soon. you guys, warts and all, are my community. i care about you; no matter how ridiculous you sometimes get, no matter if we fight on the issues of the day, i would miss you if you were gone.

so when we go somewhere, i want to go together.

cee makes a few excellent points about journalfen as a potential place to go. what do you guys think? do you think it's better to start from scratch, or what? wherever we go, i want you with me.

*holds ur hands*

Comments

[winterlive.livejournal.com]

baby. this isn't your home, it's theirs. they allow you to live here, but you don't own a damn thing.

the transition will be easy, gradual. i don't even know quite where i'm going yet. but one day, probably within the year, i'll be gone from LJ. i refuse to keep giving my money to these fuckholes, i refuse to be responsible for bringing them even one hit's worth of traffic more than i have to in order to be comfortable. they fucked over me and mine, they took our loyalty and they betrayed us. i don't cotton to that, drewface, i'm sorry.

[babyofthegroup.livejournal.com]

But, hey, I'm in my current apartment and as much as I get annoyed by the landlord sometimes, it's a much bigger hassle and expense to pack everything up, rent a moving truck, look for a new apartment, debate the variety of apartments available, decide none of them are good enough, pick the least-bad one, realize that most of my friends have scattered to the winds, and end up significantly less happy.

Uh. Apparently I felt stronger about this than I thought I did.

I'm not sure I see the betrayal here; there's clearly some really horriffic business practices going on, what with the non-informing of people as to the relevant rules, but really, this was never a For Fandom, By Fandom space, as the use of the word "betrayal" suggests. The only way I can see a betrayal is in the "they took our money, the bastards, and now they're kicking us off!" line of reasoning. And honestly, since I haven't seen the offending artwork, I'm not 100% comfortable saying they were out of line on the subject matter, though as stated before their communication skills leave a lot to be desired.

[winterlive.livejournal.com]

they do nothing but lie and lie to us, drew. they said no ads when 6A took over. a year later: ads. they say, "oh, we never meant to delete fandom journals in deletegate, we just meant to get child pornographers, fandom is safe, fictional depictions are fine." and then, bam, ponderosa gets the boot for an image that, according to lj abuse, violated OBSCENITY laws. which lj determined by deciding all on their own whether it had artistic merit. with no word for five days as to what the fuck was going on. and today, they deny that they suspend on artistic merit (http://community.livejournal.com/lj_biz/241884.html?thread=12535260#t12535260), which is a total blatant lie. and they can't appear to decide today on what exactly it is that ponderosa was suspended for.

and, my personal favorite, they keep calling everybody who's angry about this morons and perverts. and when we call them on that, they say "he's only human".

i don't feel welcome here, drew. i don't feel comfortable that i can post my fanfic and not get banned for it. i know i won't be seeing any explicit fanart anytime soon, certainly not for a fandom that includes the names of real people who might sue livejournal. certainly not for a fandom that includes incest, which is totally illegal. not when they have plans in the works to put a button on every single page that leads straight to an abuse report. i don't care how nice you are, there is SOME asshole out there that you pissed off one time, and they WILL go through every bit of your journal until they have reported every last bit of info they can find that might be bannable.

smallville's full of minors. clark is fifteen at the start of the show. kiss fanart for that goodbye. buffy, same deal. hell, pick any show where most of the people are in high school.

i'm sorry, drew, but i can't. might as well give my money to an organization that's known to be racist or homophobic. same deal.

[babyofthegroup.livejournal.com]

Hm. I'm not sure I think the ads thing bothers me all that much, because they are not *forcing* ads on anyone (unless you happen to be a Basic user looking at a Plus account... I think?) The addition of ads for the Plus level was, IMO, a convenient way to generate some revenue for the site by piggybacking on people who wanted more services for free.

I agree that 6A's handling of this whole thing has sucked, big-time. I think there's a major crossing of lines of communication between LJ Abuse and the LJ management team, and one isn't informing the other perfectly and vice-versa. I do not think, however, that 6A really has it out for fandom. I just don't. It's not easy to articulate, but I think that text is safe always and forever, unless it is literally child porn with no other story elements. Visual expressions of fandom are probably in a murkier area, but I have no problem with limits on art so long as 6A clarifies what can be pulled for Abuse, which they appear to be doing, however slowly.

synecdochic makes good points [here (http://synecdochic.livejournal.com/149340.html)] and I think there's a lot of stuff that's blown out of proportion. 6A manages a *huge* service here, and I think this caught them by surprise. As Synecdochic says, not everybody understands fandom. It can be really hard to explain to others. So things that we as fen may see and implicitly understand as non-obscene (or non-child porn), others may not see that way. The fact that there is action going on about this whole thing is evidence that SOMEONE reported something to LJ Abuse as being a sticky thing. And while I don't think fandom should go underground or whatever, I *do* think fandom should try to see this from an outsider's perspective -- if an outsider could see the fanart as obscene, I don't have a problem with LJ saying "sorry, we can't host this". Does it mean you can't link to it? No, as far as I'm aware. Just that you can't display it on LJ. And really, that's not a problem, IMO.

I'll believe the abuse button when I see it, but it's not uncommon for a large site with a massive and unweildy customer base to have a "report this to our abuse team" splashed on every page. So... not really surprising. But that will significantly up the load of LJ Abuse Team and I really do want to believe that they're not explicity anti-fandom.

I just... I'm not convinced, yet. It's possible they'll do something even dumber down the road that I'll be like "...well, fine. Okay, that sucks," and I'll leave. But for now, I just bought my permanent account and goddammit, I'm not paying for something else. I really do think LJ has the best infrastructure, and I think there's a lot here that's getting blown out of proportion.

[winterlive.livejournal.com]

there IS a lot that's getting blown out of proportion - all the freedom of speech bs that people are slinging is retarded. it's lj, they're completely entitled to decide what they want to host on their servers, etc etc.

that's not the point.

they're not explicitly anti-fandom. they're not out to get us. they're just bumbling fuckups who don't see ANYBODY on livejournal, fandom or no, as useful or important. we would be just as liable on any other service, just as likely to wind up in breach of the TOS - but maybe somebody else would be up front with us about it. maybe somebody else could make it perfectly clear when asked, maybe somebody else could not contradict themselves in answers to standard questions.

that's the real sticking point, here. we could deal with everything else, if they'd just... not be retards.

[babyofthegroup.livejournal.com]

I still think it's a Too Many Cooks problem -- I seriously doubt that the 6A team has sat down and said "okay, let's hash out a coherent company-wide policy on this and communicate that to LJ Abuse as well as all LJ members in a news posting". So instead they've got little Johnny and little Susie and little theljstaff all saying different things because there is no overarching line to lay down.

Now, since I work in a company and have seen how decisions get made in companies, I am not surprised that they do not yet have something perfectly coherent laid out. But it would surprise me greatly if a coherent platform does not emerge about what LJ will and will not allow. Bits of it have already started popping up. I may not like some of them (uh, the No Warning Insta-Ban provision is not exactly my favorite part, if you get my drift), but they're emerging. I really do want to believe the best from 6A since, like it or not, I've already invested my $.

[winterlive.livejournal.com]

you sure have. and i understand you not wanting to just abandon that money when you've already spent it.

i just don't know what to tell you, man. i don't have as much invested and i'm angry enough to be willing to move. we'll see what happens, but at least you know it won't be finalized for a while.