[ there's no home for you here ]

[winterlive]

not for the first time, i wonder: why is it impossible to have a community that outright focuses on good fic? anthologies of selected works of fiction are published every damn year; what's so wrong with doing it for fanfic?

what if it were moderated by a small panel of people, maybe three people, whose job it was to allow or disallow what was posted there? it'd be unpopular at first, because some people would scream elitist bitchery and most people would listen to that, so it wouldn't even be all that much work. the moderators would obviously have to be people of brass and class, but i wouldn't even care if they were sockpuppets so long as they had good taste in fic.

how easy would it be to, when somebody new gets into SPN, just point them to the community? you want good fic, there it is, fly and be free.

there's only one thing i would want, and that's the ability of posters to delete or edit their own stuff. i considered yuletide for all of ten seconds before i found out that they won't take your stuff down later, even if you ask them. whoo, unacceptable, at least to lil ol me.

is that so undoable? bah. i'm sure it is. god knows we'd all rather open a vein than offend someone, even if the offense taken is totally unreasonable. *hands*


ETA: since this posting, maygra has decided to formulate a project. the parameters of this project are radically different from my little whine session here, and i assure you that she is taking every opportunity to consider the impact of her structure, process and presentation. her guidelines will be available soon for public review, so please withhold judgement on that project until you see them - things have really changed quite a bit. :)

Comments

[winterlive.livejournal.com]

sure, if you SAY "good fic" then people lose it on you, but that's what you're doing no matter how you sugar-coat it, right? recs communities are great for what they are, but anybody can rec, and that's almost the same as anybody being able to submit fic, which leads us right back to an avalanche of fic and no way to sort the good from the bad.

the solution is obscured right now, but the problem is clear, y'know?

[cofax7]

recs communities are great for what they are, but anybody can rec

Depends on the recs site, I suppose. PolyAmorous Recs and (the unupdated and lamented) Bright Shiny Objects have the same reccers all the time. But I agree that the recs somewhere like Crack_van or stargateficrecs are more problematic, because the membership to submit recs is relatively open.

I do recs on my LJ all the time, and nobody's ever (well, okay once) given me a hard time about being elitist. I rec what I like and what I think is good; as do other reccers.

So, if you were to set up a recs community with three or twelve like-minded folks and just start reccing, I doubt there'd be any wank associated with it--unless you were really pretentious about it, I suppose.

[winterlive.livejournal.com]

that would require us to wade through a bunch of fic, like off the newsletter, in some semblance of fairness. no deal!

people would complain about how THEIR fic was never read or looked over or given a chance. if they actively participate by submitting their fic for review, they have the chance to ask questions or get a new beta or, y'know. improve themselves in some way. i don't pretend it'd be totally objective, but it'd damn sure be a step in the right direction, i think. my not-so-humble opinion, maybe, but there it is.

[winterlive.livejournal.com]

see next post over for the summation of these comments! :D

[winterlive.livejournal.com]

you are awesome. i give you biggest thumbs up ever.

if i could actually ask you for just one thing, it would be to slap up a post on your own journal pointing people over here to sign up. i'd like the widest possible sampling of people and opinions, not just people who read ME. :D

[winterlive.livejournal.com]

bah! the more the merrier. :)