several things

[nigeltde]

After a discussion in angstslashhope's journal, moveablehistory has set up a Digg-style link aggregator. It feels like something that could fit perfectly with lj fandom--is there one out there already?--because the dispersed nature of it is something I hear people complain about quite often.

I think this could be a really, really useful tool to keep track of the several major events happening in fandom right now, and I encourage people to spread the word, join, and especially add links! I suppose metafandom serves a similar purpose but link aggregators are perhaps easier to surf than lj, and it has the potential to be aimed at the fanlib/fanarchive and strikethrough2007 issues and the fan activism that has grown out of them with greater breadth and depth. Also, it wouldn't be for just lj links. Posts like catrinella's awesome collection of links are great but can become unwieldy.

moveablehistory has also noted that link aggregators have the potential to serve as a centralised portal for access to decentralised fandom and fanfiction should there be mass migration from lj. In fact it would still probably be useful even if things stay essentially the same. As moveablehistory says, we can use the news one as a proof of concept to see if a fandom-wide one would be feasible.


Other shit you probably already know about: fandom_counts, fandompays. Interesting to see fandom try to take stoke of its numbers and how statistics will translate to resistance. The fandom_counts profile is occasionally breaking! This stuff fits into one my my major essays in ways I can't believe.


And on the season finale of House.....(vague spoilers)

Ha ha ha Wilson bought him a guitar to celebrate their love House's acceptance of change. Seriously though. A GUITAR. They are officially married.

Also, Chase was really really hot tonight, and I loved the rack focus on Cameron during the "easy" business.




oh, god, back to essays I suppose.

Comments

[pun.livejournal.com]

Wait. What makes you so sure it was Wilson? I've seen it speculated that Wilson did it, but how can you be sure?

I want to believe!

[nigeltde]

because I refuse to accept that that long push in towards Wilson at the end there is foreshadowing that Wilson is leaving, that that's the best explanation otherwise :-D It's conjecture, really, but I can't see anyone else buying him a guitar.

Oh darn, I suppose he could have bought himself one. I didn't think of that! Dammit!

[treelines.livejournal.com]

Chase. Man, I'd hit that. I also like to think that the Chase/Cameron kiss was a booty call.

Anyway, I made the same mistake so I caught it here, but it's actually fandompays. I always screw up on underscores.

[nigeltde]

cheers! Fixed!

I've thought he was cute before but seeing him all scruffy was the first time I went, Yowza!!!!

[corvus-coronis.livejournal.com]

re the strikethrough biz, I've been reading a few entries basically saying that (a) we're panicking over nothing (including one by an Aus user who deliberately used a suggestively ch@nnish icon to push her point, which is a bit like purposefully eating animal brains to 'prove' that there's no bse/scrapie/kuru/CJS in the food chain...), or (b) we have no right to panick, because only the evil perverts will go and they had it coming to them for mentioning those things in their interests. But as one US fan writer (who does not do ch@n/rape etc) on my f/l told me, these changes were brought about by pressure from a right wing vigilante group, and a fanatical one at that. Having spent a part of her childhood in such an environment, she knows from experience that if they have one victory, they tend to hang around & keep pressuring for more. I glanced at one of the links someone posted re' someone associated with WFI, which had some extreme homophobic stuff on it. As the friend said, will they stop at ch@n/rape/incest, or will they attempt to go onto slash, kink, & cross-generational & so on. It's possible, deviantart right now doesn't allow sexual images of fandom characters who are children in Canon, even if they are drawn as adults.

*sigh* - it can be a very educational thing to have a liberal-minded American or two on one's f/l whose lives has been affected by fundamentalism...

[nigeltde]

I would hate to see you leave lj! What are you thinking now with the apology, restored communities, etc?

WFI is a completely dodgy group and I would like to see more explanation on why the hell lj listened to them in the first place, and not Perverted Justice etc. But I doubt SA will listen to WFI again; I think that fandom has done a pretty good job in making its voice heard on that one. And I think they'll think twice before deleting any more fan fiction communities; you bring up deviantart and I wonder if art communities are any different wrt lj. Were art communities purged?

[corvus-coronis.livejournal.com]

For some reason, LJ is playing up on me when I try to comment on this post, so I'll do it in sections;

Don't worry, I'm not about to leave LJ, just setting up some alternative bases. there was a discussion in another of my f/lister's journals (seaislewitch) that mentioned that before all this happened LJ had been approached by perverted justice, a legit anti pedophile organisation that works with the police.

Apparently, LJ was at the top of it's list of offender sites for it's apparently easygoing attitude to content, and LJ rejected their proposals (though someone else told me that PJ's letter to them was pretty offensively worded).

part 2

[corvus-coronis.livejournal.com]

It mystified me at first that LJ would refuse a request from a large, police afiliated organisation & cave in to a bunch of vigilantes until someone told me that WFI approached LJ's advertising sponsors when LJ refused to coperate with them, so the deletions were probably a panic move on LJ's part to protect their advertising revenue. The fact that they've apologised & restored some of the suspended journals is probably to protect the paid user revenue, but due to the way they handled things, whether they will get that trust back is another matter. I think fandom LJ-ers really shook them up a bit when we reacted, there's quite a lot of us using their service, after all.

Re art communities, I don't know if any art-only LJ communities had that happen to them, though pornish_pixies does feature art as well as fic.

Re: part 2

[nigeltde]

Yeah, the advertising thing rankles. I have heard that Plus accounts and advertising revenue only make up a small bit of their total revenue, but I don't know if it's true. We definitely deserve more of an explanation.

Re: part 2

[corvus-coronis.livejournal.com]

There might be a good one Here (http://stewardess.livejournal.com/261058.html) & an expanded version of the same post in GJ (http://www.greatestjournal.com/users/stewardess_/683.html). It makes an awful lot of sense.

Re: part 2

[nigeltde]

I agree. The IPO stuff, if was true, and if does happen, will probably be the tipping point for me. I hope it doesn't fuck fandom up too much.

Re: part 2

[corvus-coronis.livejournal.com]

Well, if it does happen you know where I am in GJ.

Re: part 2

[nigeltde]

I have make a nigeltde placeholder account, too!