Subject: The PPC Census 2017 is here!
Author:
Posted on: 2017-12-12 21:44:00 UTC
In the last weeks of the year, it's finally time again for the annual PPC Census. Credit goes to July Flame for the original questionnaire, and to Novastorme for serving as a Beta for this version.
Link to the Census
(I'm not younger than 13, but I'm still not comfortable with putting it out for folks I don't know IRL to see.)
-Twistey
Hopefully I provided enough info to be sufficient. I promise I'll start reading all those spinoffs and the rest of the Original Series very soon.
-Twistey
-First comment: I've left 'when did you learn to read' blank because...that's a vague question. When did I learn how to start sounding out words? Uh, probably somewhere around...yeah, I have no idea. I think that'd be somewhere in grade 1, so, 7, but I have no clue whether or not my parents were teaching me a little at home first. It's been a while since I was seven, hush.
When did I start reading really quickly, though? Not stumbling over words as much, but really just *reading*? Yeah, right after my eighth birthday. I remember that really clearly. It was awesome. And then I proceeded to devour books whole for years to come. So is that the answer that question's looking for?
I don't know. Take your pick, I guess: unknown or eight. Whatever works.
-Also, about betas and outlines: generally I've used betas for pretty much anything I've actually posted, and a few things that never made it that far (or haven't yet). Outlines...I'm starting to change in that, but the answer isn't never OR only when the work requires it: it's that I never used to, because I was introduced to them in school and found them really restricting, but I experimented with them a little a while back and I'm starting to try out using them more. I've also certainly done a lot of working out how parts should go and then having a ton of notes to work from, even if it wasn't an official outline. So...yet another question that's somewhat difficult to answer.
-You have *no idea* how tempted I am to answer "I'm from the future and technically haven't discovered the PPC yet" etc. *No idea*. :D
-How many of my PPC stories are cowritten? Turns out it's about two thirds. I rounded up to 'most', since there was nothing in between that and 'roughly half', but...yeah. That'll hopefully change by next year, though...either on my part or the census'!
And I think that's it. I need sleep. This was interesting.
~Z
wTo Whoever else liked Haven, have you read Roseveare's stories? I highly recommend her writings. Unless you like fluff. She doesn't write fluff.
I have not read Roseveare's stories, and fluff usually sickens me. I'll check her out! Where can I find her fics?
Roseveare's dashboard
She has artwork and fanvids and podfics of her stories in addition to the fanfics. I know she crossposts on ff.net with a similar if not same name, but I don't think all of that stuff is allowed over there. I don't know. I rarely check ff.net.
This was one of the first ones of hers I read. It's a good intro to the type of body horror she uses a lot. This one is M for violence (no sexual content), but fair warning to anyone heading off to read her stories, a lot of them are NSFW. This particular story is in Duke's POV, but most of her stuff is in Nathan's as he is her favorite.
Body Parts
Summary: Duke and Nathan are taken prisoner together and it will require extraordinary trust for either of them to emerge intact.
Here's a line that I just love from the story. It's early on before the horror: Duke turned to Audrey Parker, one of the few people to whom he could state, "I am being stalked by creepy harbingers of death," who would both know what he was talking about and that he hadn't gone insane. He added, plaintively, "Can't you arrest them for that?"
Well, I don't like body horror. Nor do I ship Nathan/Duke. I really would like to, because there aren't exactly other male characters to ship either of them with where I am in the series. I just can't imagine either of them actually getting together. At least, I can't imagine it as of season 1.
So, yeah... I don't think I'll like Roseveare's stuff. However, I did hear that you like Trollhunters. Any good recs for that fandom?
If you're only on season one of Haven, there aren't too many fics I can recommend. The majority pull from the first three seasons at least, even ones set in season one.
I had never actually thought to look up Trollhunters fics. I don't know why. I mean I've looked up Tangled and Frozen fics, so I'm not anti-cartoon fics. (I seem to have a knack for finding the darkest fics ever written for things like Disney cartoons, so fair warning.) Hmm. Looking through my bookmarks would probably disturb most people. All well written stories, but most of them disturbing.
I have a non-disturbing Marvel fic that would have fit well with the tone of the Earth's Mightiest Heroes cartoon.
Bungle in the Jungle
Summary: Tony and Clint are traipsing through a jungle filled to the brim with mutant cats, mind-scrambling crystals, rope bridges, and man-eating, genetically altered piranhas. What could possibly go wrong?
A gratutious, light-hearted whump fic where everything that could go wrong, does go wrong.
Although I'll admit I'd have liked a 'not yet' or 'having projects' option for the Original Writing questions... and others like it too (And I'm surprised and amused by my presence for Action Thriller).
I am not always able to read an entire novel these days, but I do read all the time. I finish 3-4 good magazines a month, and read news articles daily. Maybe expanded reading questions for next year?
Do you write original stories?
The current answer is "No", but I actually did (when I was young and needed the money).
Do you create outlines for your fics?
The current answer is "never" only because the fics I wrote so far are all quite short, "only sometimes, not everything I write needs them" may actually be more accurate.
How often do you finish any fanfics?
"I finish everything I start" actually means: three short fanfics in three years.
How often does writer’s block hit you while writing fanfics?
"Never", but I may frequently need to fight through it before I even start writing, when the (short) story is already more or less outlined in my mind.
What types of fanfiction do you write?
"Gen" – filling gaps left by the canon author with logic, reason and canon-compliant story-telling. The only AU thing I ever wrote is a Slytherin tapestry in the DA’s garrison in the Room of Requirement; if J. K. Rowling hadn’t explicitly said that it isn’t there, I would just pretend that Harry didn’t notice what happened behind his back.
What was your first fandom? When did you discover fandom?
I went with "Harry Potter, 2007" (when I started to participate, but never "heavily"). Actually I was aware of the existence of fandoms for "Star Trek", "Darkover" and German science fiction series "Perry Rhodan" since the seventies.
How many books do you read on average?
"I rarely read" books nowadays, because I spend too much time reading everything PPC.
When did you start reading fanfiction?
Do the "Best of Darkover" anthologies count? Anyway, there may have been some "Perry Rhodan" fanfic mixed with original stories.
I don’t have any favorite anythings because there’s too much I like for too many different reasons.
Do you prepare an outline for your missions?
I went with "Sometimes". Actually, I did one outline as an exercise for Poor Cynic’s workshop, but didn’t write any missions yet.
HG
The results
Random thoughts:
-It kind of saddens me that the PPC has shifted so much to being predominantly male. Perhaps I just enjoyed being special.
-On the other hand, only a third of us are straight. That sounds right.
-Haha nobody uses IE.
-Nearly half of us don't write original fiction, which is kind of sad - but over a quarter of those who do admit to writing erotica! :D
-On the other hand, no-one writes political thrillers, even though the example is about me. TSK.
-I really hope there's not significant overlap between the non-fanficcers and the non-originalficcers. I like to think of the PPC as a writing community.
-One person claims to finish every fanfic they start. YEAH RIGHT.
-I see that Phobos listed his wife as LOs, but Neshomeh didn't reciprocate... >:D [/stirring]
-Fandom is all the internet's fault. WORD.
-A good half the Board don't get through more than one book a month. o.O I cannot even imagine being that. (Kaitlyn is, because she has not time, and I still can't imagine.)
-Almost everyone reads fanfic! (Now I feel bad...)
-We have 3 2003-vintage PPCers... yep, sounds about right.
-Sweet mercy, half of the PPC is Tropers. I thought we'd moved on from that. ;) ;) ;)
-Two of you are unrepentant TOS-ignorers. >:(
-I've just gone through and sorted the list of 'What spinoff did you read first':
Architeuthis
bjam
Ekwy
Herr Wozzeck x2
Huinesoron x5
Indemaat
Iximaz x7
Kippur
KittyNoodles & Riese
Matt Cipher
Miah & Caddy-Shack
Nenya & Rosie
Neshomeh x3
Scapegrace
SkarmorySilver
Trojie & Pads x7
WarriorJoe
... & My Immortal, which doesn't have a mission.
So Iximaz is neck and neck with Trojie, while I'm trailing in third and Nesh is fourth. We've got a fair number of Legendary Badfics on there... including My Immortal. Somehow?
-I'm not doing the same for favourite spinoffs, but I see myself, Ix, and Trojie in there several times each.
-Apparently there's a Board/Discord split developing, which is interesting to know, because I didn't know. Apparently you lot are talking over there, but not posting here.
Not gonna lie, that kind of stings.
-Yes, the Friday Forum ended because it was too miserable, and because it didn't succeed at sparking discussion, just people posting their own news and wandering off. That's not a conversation.
And yes, I am aware that I haven't yet finished adding 'translations' to the Plort Cyclopaedia. Though I will repeat that they were actually there on the pages Miah asked about.
Okay, sorry. Rant over. Sorry, whoever that was.
-This is a very long survey.
-3/4 of PPC writers have written cowrites. That's good!
Yeah, that's me out.
hS
A good starting point seems to be to list out some of what might be the important differences between the Board and the Discord, and then see if we can figure out how this leads to the different ways people interact with them and why there might be a split.
1. You have to poll the Board, chat notifies you. To find out if people are talking on the Board, you have to open the page or hit refresh and then look. For the Discord, as long as you have the client open, when people are talking, you (unless you've muted the channel) hear a [boop]. There is therefore a lot less friction to becoming aware of activity on the chat. (In other words, compared to the Discord, being on the Board is a lot of work. That will likely keep people from checking the Board too often, slowing things down.)
(In the interests of "technical solutions to social problems", some coding that would allow people to be actively notified when someone posts on the Board would take a few programmer-days or weeks, I suspect.)
2. The Board is significantly more asynchronous. A thread on the Board usually has a maximum response times measured in days, a message in the Discord usually gets all its responses in minutes or hours (depending on what it is and how busy the chat is).
3. Messages to the Discord have a smaller intended audience. The intended readers of a Board post are all PPC members and assorted lurkers, the intended readers of a Discord message are whoever happens to be looking at or near that moment, plus in some cases folks who scroll back later.
4. To me, subjectively, posting on the Board feels like sending an email to a mailing list, while chatting in the Discord feels much more like a bunch of friends sitting around a table talking about whatever.
Now that I've got a bunch of general principles out of the way, let's look at a few of the things people in the PPC do and where they do them.
Publishing writing: Board. There are basically no exceptions. Publishing your work is a situation where you want a whole lot of people to read it ... eventually. You want your concrit with detail and a lot of pondering on the concriters's part. This type of post fits very well on the Board.
Personal rants/celebrations/... (significant things aside): Discord. Again, almost no exceptions. If you want to, to pick an example of mine, complain about how your GRE paper has disappeared into a black hole, leaving you without scores or celebrate doing well on an exam, you'd like reactions near-immediately, not several hours/days later. That sort of thing also isn't historically/doesn't feel like a matter for the attention of the entire PPC.
RP: Depends, in significant ways.
An RP thread on the Board is basically an open invitation for a whole lot of people to start a bunch of RPs that are somewhat asynchronous and last several days. It's expected for people to slowly wander in and slowly wander out a good few days later. If you want that, you post an RP on the Board.
RP is the Discord is smaller and more immediate. The typical sequence of events is that someone pokes #rudis for RP (often with something along the lines of "((waves))" or "((pokes))"). Then, if there's anyone around within the next minutes/hour or two (if you're still around), they respond to your request. There are usually one or two respondents. A few details of scene/characters are often quickly worked out, and the RP starts, and then continues until people run out of ideas or someone has to leave for a longer period of time. Sometimes, a particularly good scene (or one where everyone was in the middle of something and got interrupted) will be restarted later, usually the next day, usually only once.
Sharing news, cute pictures, and the like: Happens on the Board, but leans Discord because the general interaction pattern with that sort of thing is to give a quick general indication of approval/appreciation, and the Board is much less amenable to that.
Heck, just about anywhere people are, posting a "Orange Party wins election in Randomland" article would typically get either crickets or a few "That's good"-type messages and maybe some "That's bad" ones. You don't typically get discussions of that sort of thing. (Similar if "article" above is replaced with "picture of a cute animal" or the like). When you share that sort of thing, you often are looking for social reactions or just to inform (and maybe to spark a discussion, but that's not the entire goal).
Badfic posting: Again, it works differently on the Board and on the Discord. On the Board, you basically post a link to announce the existence of the fic. It's very rarely responded to. Badfic is usually posted to the Discord in the form of a few quoted phrases/sentences/paragraphs, and it is often responded to ("Wait, what?", "Geema why", and the like can often be seen after a block of bold).
All the above is mostly a rambling blob of things that are probably facts. It does, however, now that I've written it, lead me to a hypothesis: our underlying operating system might generally like the chat more than the Board. It gives you more of a social-interaction fix for less effort.
The existence of the dynamic is non-ideal in that people who aren't in chat miss out on a lot of the community's goings-on. But what, if anything, can/should be done is not something I have too many thoughts on (technical solution to a social problem from above aside).
- Tomash
I’ve been waffling about even making this post, mainly because I worry it’s going to turn into me whining about how little free time I have any more. I don’t want it to turn into that, but it’s also unavoidably related to my comparative usage of the Board and the Discord chatroom.
Let me get the doubly embarrassing part out of the way. Some folks here already know this first bit, but the zoo I work at is privately owned, and the owner is a complete cheapskate whose only concern is turning a profit every year. He intentionally keeps each zookeeper team down to the bare minimum number of staff needed to care for their area, to ensure that he’s not wasting money on paychecks, and also to avoid the Arizona law that requires a business to give its workers insurance once it reaches a certain number of full-time employees. Secondly, I’m a naturally slow person—I don’t mean intelligence, but actual physical slowness—so I need to go into work about two hours early each work shift to make sure I get everything done. Between the extra time I spend at work, getting a full night’s sleep every night, and the time I have to spend on shaving, lunch packing, dish washing, laundry, etc, I have very little free time to actually spend on the PPC any more. I’m trying to keep pushing forward (an interlude in the beta stage, a fanmix planned with no cover art yet, some filks on my mind, occasional bursts of archival), but if I’m being honest with myself, I am basically more job than person right now.
The PPC Board is still my home page, as it has been since 2008. But the limits on my time before and after work (if I even turn the computer on after work; sometimes I just pack lunch, eat and go to bed) have turned every new thread posted into a potential time sink that I can’t always afford to engage. If I want to thoroughly read through every post, consider my thoughts, type up a response, double-check it before posting—just kidding, the Leave-For-Work alarm went off before I even started typing, and if I’ve been staring at the computer screen that whole time lost in thought, that means I didn’t get the dishes done, which will now have to be washed tonight, cutting into my sleep time. And, I’m probably not ready to walk right out the door when the alarm goes off, which is going to cost me a small but critical chunk of that early work time, and maybe make me miss some or all of lunch break if I haven’t finished morning animal feedings by then. What I’m trying to say is that my whole work day is so regimented, that adding participation in a Board thread to my already stretched mental to-do list can be a pretty morale-destroying prospect right at the outset of a day. (I’m already upset at myself for drafting this when I still have dinner dishes to wash, and I need to be in bed in thirty-five minutes (down to eighteen as I proofread).) And yes, I could just hold off until the weekend, but then all the interesting Board threads of the week that I wanted to participate in would pretty much eat the entire weekend, and then I would never have time for my own PPC writing, PPC archival, PPC wiki editing, or CD cover design. (I’m allowed one non-PPC hobby, right?)
The chatroom is nice for me because I can have it open while I scarf food without any real sense of obligation to join in. Any time a fandom I don’t know is under discussion, or, you know, just cute animal pictures or memes are being posted, I can simply not join in. It doesn’t feel like an obligation to have long, well thought-out and proof-read responses, I can just talk like regular spoken dialogue when I feel like I have something to add.
I know all of these issues I’m having are entirely on my end, and largely my fault. It’s absolutely not a community problem, nor the responsibility of the community to fix. I just wanted to speak from the place I’m at in life. I desperately want to spend more time on PPC stuff, and I wish I could spend more time participating in Board threads like I used to . . . but I literally don’t have enough hours in a week. And that’s why the Discord has become my base of PPC activity.
—doctorlit, disappointed with himself
I admit I don't really understand it - personally, I've always come to PPC community spaces for the in-depth and detailed discourse, which is why I press so hard for it - but I do understand that for some incomprehensible reason, not everyone is exactly like me (you weirdos). So I'm pleased that the PPC is able to offer somewhere for you to get involved despite your time pressure.
What I don't want (and I may have alluded to this a time or two thousand) is for light and fluffy conversations on the Chat to completely displace in-depth ones on the Board. That seemed to be what several people were saying was happening, and I was incapable of not speaking up.
hS
I hope I can get back to where I was someday . . . but in the meantime, work comes first.
—they call doctorlit a working man
I always hate discussing community-communication issues with you, because I know I'm going to disagree vehement with virtually everything you say, and that makes me sad. :( (This is not an attack on you - it's a statement of different personalities.)
Let the disagreements begin!
1/ It is not hard to check the Board. It takes me about 5 seconds on PC, less than 30 on the phone. We have bright grey highlighting for new posts, even! And, honestly? It's nice to be able to take it at my own pace. One of the (many!) reasons I stay off the chats is because the idea of missing the conversation due to having to do something else for a while is awful.
(You can also get a daily update of all the new posts to the Board, delivered direct to your email. I... hmm, actually I should check if I still have those archived somewhere; might be useful for the Board Archives.)
2/ This is true! And to my mind it's a good thing. The PPC is a community which tends to long-windedness and analysis, so it's good to get to spend several hours - or days! - thinking over your reply.
3/ Yes - directing all PPC conversation to the Discord means you exclude not only the people who don't go on there, but also anyone who doesn't happen to be there right when you post. ... that's a bad thing.
4/ Well, I can't argue with subjective. ^_~ To me, subjectively, chatting in a chat client feels like a bunch of people talking past each other, and getting caught in a conversation I have no interest in but have to read anyway in case it turns interesting again - whereas the Board lets me pick and choose which ones I have to look at.
Moving on to your non-numbered comments:
-Publishing writing goes well on the Board (gasp! Agreement!). Though people don't respond as much as they should.
-Personal rants/celebrations/etc: And yet, we used to do this on the Board. Not for the little things, but the slightly larger ones? Yes! Heck, 'I did well on my exam, here's what it was about, here's which bits I really excelled at and here's the bits that I was weak on' is great - it lets people talk about your topic, but also branch out into their own exams (it's exam season, after all - you just took one). Whereas on the Discord? You can only do one of those options, because the conversation will move on. I'm guessing most reactions are just 'well done'.
-RPs: I don't disagree with your division here. Though in the old days, 'micro RPs' like you describe still took place on the Board - heck, the Snowfight down below is one-such. It makes it more open, letting other people join in if they want to. There's more grey areas here than you're acknowledging.
-Sharing news/pictures/etc: 'a quick general indication of approval/appreciation' is not what the PPC is about. If you lot flood the Board with threads of random pictures, I shall be Upset. >:( The Board - and, to my mind, the PPC - is a place for discussion and debate, not 'yay you still exist and so do I'.
You say:
When you share that sort of thing, you often are looking for social reactions or just to inform (and maybe to spark a discussion, but that's not the entire goal).
I disagree. When I posted this, I was expecting people to comment on which parts of the linked 'story' they found funniest. I was expecting 'there's this other thing like that'. I was expecting people's feelings about Pterry, and memories of him. I wasn't just saying 'I am capable of finding cool things' - I was sharing two things that I thought the Board would react to.
They didn't. So maybe you're right about how people are reacting.
-Badfic posting: So... why don't people do that here? I've never understood this. If you think a badfic is interesting enough to bring to the Board, tell us what's so bad about it! We're not actually a bunch of masochists who click on links just because we're told they're bad.
-Your hypothesis: our underlying operating system might generally like the chat more than the Board. It gives you more of a social-interaction fix for less effort.
I disagree emphatically. Spending time on a chat with more than one other person is a much larger effort than 'click refresh and skim', and much of it is spent on conversations that give me no 'fix' whatsoever.
You are probably right that some people are wired that way - that's why we've had three (four?) successive chatrooms after the previous ones collapsed or faded out. But the extremely prolific history of the PPC Posting Board proves hands-down that there is a massive liking for this style of interaction, common to hundreds of people in the PPC (though most are now gone).
hS
The Board can be very intimidating. Saying anything on here feels like it carries so much weight. Knowing that many people will likely be carefully analyzing every word I post (except in intro posts and silly things like the snowball fight) makes me very nervous. I spend time considering posts and then deleting them.
I apologize for missing those infoboxes on those pages. When I looked at the pages on my computer again, they were obvious. I don't know how I didn't see them. I'm sorry for the annoyance.
(now that PhD applications are in, I can reply)
1. I will agree that the potential to miss conversations (or to only be aware of them by reading after the fact) is a downside to chats.
I would say that the overhead to finding, reading, and responding to conversations on the Board is higher than on the chat (as a general process, you need to figure out which posts to read, click through, etc.). How much this determines the permissible ways the Board's culture can be is unclear, but it's probably not a large factor, given that we apparently cleared the front page in three days back ... way before I got here, I don't think my records have that time.
Also, that's what than link does?? That is completely nonobvious. In fact, the text right below it says "(This will only tell you if someone has responded directly to your post, not the thread, nor will it send a copy of the post to you.)", which is very much not what you described.
So, I propose, as a concrete measure, we find a way to educate people about that feature.
2. I wouldn't put that absolutely as you do, but yes, there are many conversations (like this one) where long-winded, carefully-considered replies are what's good and wanted.
3. I never proposed directing the entire PPC to the Discord? But there are things that warrant a more limited reach. You even said that if some of what goes on in chat flooded the Board you'd be Upset. But there are many people who want a space for these sorts of trivialities with their friends here, and chat seems to be it at the moment.
Agreed on writing and on the low response rate.
Personal stuff: Either my memory must be going or that sort of thread was dying out by my time. We could bring it back? (and you called how this tends to work, yeah. But is that bad?)
RPs: Yeah, there's gray areas. I should note that there is a noted pain point around RPs in the Discord. Namely, once you get four people (either all together or as a pair of pairs) in #rudis, adding more RP gets ... impractical, and this either ends in splits into #other_rp or people being frozen out for a bit. This is definitely not ideal, and solutions are unclear.
As to the autogenerated Harry Potter you posted: I read it, I liked it and thought it was funny, and, for lack of something substantial to say or the inclination to go through the bother of broadcasting my reaction, moved on with my life.
On badfic posting: I don't know why that's in chat and not on the Board. It just is that way right now. But that's cultural norms, and those can be changed.
I accept your correction to the hypothesis, that was too general.
Having read your reply and thought some things over, I'd like to admit that I probably placed too much emphasis on the effects of the Board vs. the chat as media when trying to discuss how they formed different patterns of behavior. (For example, there's another Discord server that's a lot quieter and somewhat less general-purpose than the PPC's.)
I'd say those different patterns of behavior are largely down to cultural norms, and those can be changed. How? *shrugs*. Probably conscious effort on various people's parts.
Now, the thing we don't seem to agree on is "what the PPC is about". The PPC, an a community, has things we do around here (write, like good writing, have these sorts of long nerdy debates like you said, spork badfic, etc.), and we're a place that attracts a certain kinds of people because of that. But, in my case, that's not the entire point of it.
The PPC (actually, mainly the Discord) is one of my main social groups, in roughly the same way that some people have a social group at the local pub or wherever. The chat is where I do a lot of hanging out with these people I know. Heck, almost all my close friends (people I keep in touch with frequently), such as Iximaz, doctorlit, and Aegis I met through the PPC, and more specifically the chat.
Why didn't I have that sort of connection through the Board and not the chat? I don't quite know, but it seems that's not how the Board has been for a while (at least from my point of view).
Can we change that? Probably.
Do we want to change that? Maybe.
- Tomash
It emails the subject, author, date and time of every post from the past day, and a link to each one.
Why the description at the foot of the Board is so wildly misleading, I have no idea. I'll see if it can be fixed.
hS
(PS: Sadly it looks like I deleted all my Daily Updates from back in the day... oh, well!)
Haha you agreed with me I win.
They may have changed the mailing list... I've just signed up, and will report back when I know more. Hrm.
Now, onto your description of what the community is to you... I'm pleased for you. It sounds nice. But it doesn't have a whole lot to do with the PPC, by the sound of it.
As someone who made a lot of friends through the PPC (plus, you know, a WIFE...), I think it's worthwhile to describe how that worked In My Day:
-People post on the Board and you get to know what they're like. Mostly it's 'on topic' (broadly defined - it's the PPC!), but big life events (for students...) also show up.
-You exchange email addresses with people you want to chat with more. This was the heyday of MSN and AIM, and later GChat. I have megabytes of chat logs with dozens of PPCers; some of them were my closest friends when I was in uni.
-Everyone has a Livejournal. This is like Facebook, but not linked to your name, and oriented towards long-winded rambling. You post fandom stuff openly, and lock down RL stuff to your Friends list.
-You don't have to use the Board to get your social fix - you wait for your friends to log into MSN. You can chat with multiple people individually but simultaneously, or put together a group chat. It's... nice.
This was my experience - my life - from joining the PPC in late '03 to getting married in '08. The details changed, but the pattern stayed the same. I drifted away because of lack of time (and inability to answer emails), but I still miss it.
So, yeah: I understand making friends through the PPC. But - even in the post-LJ age - that doesn't mean those friendships have to stay tied to community spaces.
hS
PS: But that's just me. I didn't visit the original Lounge much, but I know they got up to, ah... some things that aren't really to do with the PPC. So yeah, it's not all clear cut.
Sure, people aren't using email for social stuff directly as much as they used to. However, chat services are still a thing. They're just different ones. Instead of MSN, AIM, et al., we have Discord, Slack, et al. (in my experience).
Chat servers, then and now, had, like you said, individual and small group conversations. They also had, from what I know, public chat rooms that you could just join ... sort of like our Discord. A difference is that the PPC didn't have a place on the chat services people used back in your day, but now it does.
I wouldn't say that my friendships are tied to community spaces. I would say they are somewhat adjacent to them (for one thing, Discord is where the PPC chatroom is and also where I'd get my own megabytes of logs from private chats), but if the PPC Discord disappeared, I'd still be friends with a whole bunch of the people from there.
As to waiting for your friends to log in. I know that feeling. That ain't changed one bit.
Now one thing that has changed, I think, is where the PPC is in internet-space. From what I can tell, once LJ died, fandom-y blogging eventually wandered its way to Tumblr and a lot of the long-form communities went to Reddit (? probably). The PPC didn't follow, we just sort of wandered into the Board and did our own thing.
I don't have an opinion right now on whether this is good. I suppose one concern I've on and off again had is whether the people who would want to join/the people we'd like joining have a chance as figuring out we exist. (Then again, we might have a long history of recruiting by "Hey you should check out this community I'm in"?).
AIM/MSN/etc. have fallen away; Discord and whatever else are the next generation of services to fill that demand.
To me, though, it feels different. You can have discussions with a limited number of people in Discord, apparently, but the main chat feels like a big room filled with lots of people talking really fast, and a lot of the time, I can't deal with that—my brain doesn't have enough bandwidth, so to speak.
That's why I prefer the Board, or e-mail. It limits the amount of data I have to process at a time, and lets me take however long I need to digest it before moving on to the next chunk.
That said, I don't think one or the other is inherently better. They each do different things very well. Since people have different needs and preferences than I do, I don't have a problem with PPC community happening in Discord if that's what meets people's needs, as long as it doesn't entirely go away here and leave us low-bandwidth types in the dust. Things the Board does well should still happen on the Board, while things the Discord does well continue happening in the Discord.
The thing is, this divide is one of those perennial things that keeps on coming up, over and over again. It's going to keep being a thing that people who prefer one format are going to miss what happens in the other. That's something everyone has to own about themselves, and try not to judge. Different isn't better, and it isn't worse. It's just different. And we need all of it, in various amounts.
I'm kinda rambling, because I'm at work and I don't have the mental space to think things out as much as I'd like, but I think I said the things I meant to say in there. {= P
Oh, semi-related, because I think this is coming from the Discord: Will someone eventually explain the concept of "toxicity" that's been mentioned several times in the survey? What does that buzzword actually mean in the context of fandom? Because I'm most familiar with it in terms of health fads, where "toxin" means "bad stuff we can't actually define and may be imaginary, but that should totally scare you so you buy our scientifically dubious product/cleanse/magic crystals/whatever." So... it makes me uncomfortable. {= /
~Neshomeh
I agree that a real-time chat generally needs more energy and mental bandwidth than posting on the Board or writing an email. Same as (for me) actual in-person conversation takes more bandwidth than the Discord.
And yeah, different people have different tolerances for how they can use their bandwidth. For example, at RL parties or the like, I'll basically end up taking breaks from the conversation because it gets to be too much after a while. Heck, I'm sort of like this with the chat at times.
And yeah, the Board and the chat are different and good at different things and neither is inherently better than the other.
So I think this is a long-winded way of saying I agree with most of this.
I'd say some effort to keep the Board a little bit more aware of the chat and vice-versa might be a good idea though. (See below about summarizing discussions onto the Board if they get long enough. Or heck, just pasting them on over here might be sufficient in some cases.)
- Tomash
Toxicity is what we call... hmm... Drama. Flying insults. The sort of behavior and environment that is generally regarded as repulsive and pushes people away.
I believe that the term as used originated in the gaming community: that's certainly where I first heard it. It was used there to refer to things like downright abusive barages of trash talk and hateful speech, newbie bashing, and the general screaming classically attributed to games like LoL, DoTA, and CounterStrike.
I tend to have a pretty high tolerance for that stuff myself, but I actually visit 4chan, so it's probably because I'm Insane.
I don't know if any of you participate in inter fandom debates, but here is where it gets really bad. Even within the same fandom, shipping wars generate a lot of hate, X should be with Y because this scene blah blah blah. Unfortunately most XY shippers would blatantly ignore or downplay the importance of scenes with Z, causing XZ shippers to start flaming. This then continues back and forth. Same goes for inter-fandom debates, usually on who is stronger. People often wank different characters, fans grossly exaggerate things from their own fandom and downplays opponents from other verses. A lot of people have outright ignored a lightspeed reaction feat from Naruto; yes, it was a hyperbole, but it still warranted a speed increase. This is especially prevalent among haters.
So yeah, toxicity in fandom boils down to ignoring or downplaying certain pieces of canon, hating on characters despite canonical feats, and/or hating on other fandoms.
Toxicity in video games is a whole other beast...
So basically, what you lot call toxicity is what I call people being jerks. I'm lucky to have moved in respectful fan-circles all my life, so I haven't been exposed to all that, and I'd hesitate to put it down as an inevitable product of fandom, as some of the responses seemed to imply.
It's totally evitable. It just takes people standing up and refusing to engage in it or to put up with it.
~Neshomeh
Like, take Harry Potter. And once you're done with that, apologise to Ginny and have a look at the fandom. Sure, you have a lot of people being nice and raising money for charity and having civilized discussions and all that good stuff... but you also have the Snape Is Trans people, the antigay shipping warriors, the people who make fake nudes of actresses from the films that frankly blur the line of legality, and many more besides.
I think the difference is in scale. Smaller fandoms can effectively be self-policing; when enough people Refuse To Engage with bad actors, they can be forced out or forced to change. However, in a huge-ass fandom like HP, they're more likely to find their own support base of like-minded weirdos/bigots/stupid-white-teenage-girls-who-think-they're-helping (delete as appropriate) and keep on trucking in their own little circles. Maybe that's just me, though.
OTOH, I don't think you could call Pern a small fandom in its heyday, and I don't know if it ever suffered from rampant shipping wars and the other sorts of things you're talking about. One benefit of the author ruling her domain with an iron fist, I suppose: there were standards that came down directly from the top, and everyone was expected to adhere to them if they wanted to participate.
But I was only really involved at the fringes, doing all my RPing on Neopets, which is a kids' site, and therefore everything had to be squeaky-clean per site rules. So I don't know.
But, I think that makes my point, too: if the corner of the fandom you're hanging out in has rules, and those rules are enforced, the nastier elements don't thrive there. They're forced to go off into their own dark little corner and leave decent people alone. This, IMO, is as it should be.
~Neshomeh
Human subcultures are fractal, with the resolution defined by the number of people involved. The smaller a fandom, the less room for subculture. However, the larger a fandom, the bigger the fractures are. It's not enough to find The Fandom, you have to find Your Fandom. Why? Because the warring of subcultures (usually including a number of groups you will regard Hopelessly Confused, and at least one group of Oh Dear Did We Even Read The Same Novels That Is So OOC) means that the top-level fandom in any fandom big enough is a tire fire. Homestuck, Doctor Who, HP, Undertale, Supernatural... the list goes on. I am to a greater or lesser extent a fan of all of those things (except Supernatural, which I have never watched: I hear it is/was good, but the actions of part of its fandom and my hatred for those actions means I will probably never be able to fully enjoy it if and when I watch it. That's on me, nothing wrong with the show or the majority of its fans AFAICT), but I would never willingly participate in The Fandom At Large. Because they're tire fires. Small subfandoms in those fandoms can be quite nice, OTOH.
Also, I don't know enough about the Pern fandom to know for sure, but judging by the sorts of people and cultures I know were involved... I'm willing to bet there were some shadier parts of the fandom.
Yeah. That's why PMs are a thing. And also emails - although nobody ever gives me their email... :-(
OTOH, the discord's name is "The PPC Lounge", and that's largely how it behaves: it's a place where us PPC people talk about largely irrelevant and OT topics with one another, as a group. It functions as a sort of "after hours" area, I guess.
You talk about using MSN and AIM and GChat to keep in touch with PPCers. That idea didn't die, but most of us moved from those platforms to Discord, where there's an additional, community-wide forum.
I do not describe intent, merely how it seems things actually function.
...So I think the problem is that the board's culture isn't encouraging what you suggest right now - which is, quite honestly, what I WANT out of the board.
The problem is, the Board isn't like that at the moment. So people looking for that tend towards Discord. So we need conversation starters.
For badfic... Well. We can get Geema posting on the board, I suppose. That will definitely spark discussion. OTOH, most of his badfic is NSFW. So discussing it may be difficult.
I basically agree on all of this.
One suggestion on the census was "Best of Discord" threads. I'd love to compile such a thing, but sadly, I can't: I can really only use Discord on my phone, Because Reasons, and it's hard to archive from there. But if we can create some kind of voting system, or someone can volunteer, that could be cool.
Because the impression I'm getting is that you're thinking 'things that made us laugh'. Which... would frankly feel like 'look how funny we are/haha you weren't there suckers'. I know that's not the intent, but that's how it would feel, in my poor Elvish heart.
If 'Best Of' instead means 'topics which led to interesting discussions, which got long enough that we'd like to continue them on the Board'... then great! I think the idea of picking up a debate that's ignited the Discord and bringing it here is a fantastic one. You don't even need to Best Of it - just repost the origin and a summary whenever they happen.
hS
...Which we have already been doing in small numbers already ('plith's SW/40k thread began as a post to Discord). We can do that more! We just need to make that more socially common a thing. And also need to decide which things are worth posting to the board.
I may start a thread about the latter issue Real Soon Now.
If there's been a long involved discussion about something in chat, it should probably be summarized for the Board so more people can get their input in and since it's probably an interesting topic to someone.
- Tomash
Miah: "We should expand the reading questions. I read all the time. I am just not always able to read novel length things. I read several magazines a month and news articles everyday."
Delta: "(Although we should probably include more next year about time on Discord v. time on Board)"
- Tomash
... even though it was my idea.
1) What should go in such a thread is a non-trivial problem and sort of a matter of consensus. Actually picking out the best moments of the chat (especially those that would make sense without a massive pile of context) is not an easy problem for one person.
2) The quoting kerfuffle. It feels kinda unsettled when you can/can't/shouldn't grab things people in the chat and post them somewhere else (say, on the Board) and under what circumstances you should/must get the permission of the person you're quoting first. There's a massive pile of gray area around this.
(Hm ... technical solutions to social problems? We could, for example, have a custom emoji you could use to signal that you think something ought be posted to the Board whenever that thread happens next, and post authors joining the vote would be a signal they don't mind this? ... Darn, Discord doesn't let you search for emojis or reactions, so this'd be hard to find. Then again, we have a bot, but he's hibernating at the moment, so eh. Who knows? At least two people think this might be a way to do it though.)
It's not so much a deliberate thing...
Speaking for myself, It's just hard to sort what SHOULD be posted to the board, a place where space is at a premium and we're encouraged to think hard before starting a new thread. Because starting new threads isn't encouraged, there's rarely new content, and because there's rarely new stuff to talk about and while occasionally a cool thread pops up, it frequently dies before a new thread that grabs my attention is posted, leaving me with long stretches where I'm not posting at all.
Okay, so the 'DON'T POST ANYTHING EVER WHY ARE YOU EVEN HERE' message embedded all over the place is a result of the period when we were clearing out the Front Page in about three days, mostly because people were posting six consecutive threads saying 'I found another badfic!'. That is no longer the case.
PLEASE POST THREADS ON THE BOARD, FOLKS.
I thought we'd cleared most of that language out; I know I got rid of it in the Board header a while back. I don't see it in the FAQs... is it in the Constitution?
... yes. 'Never start a thread' is implied in the blasted Constitution.
[Face, meet Palm]
Right. I think it would be worth a Constitutional Amendment to not only remove the Article 21 implication that we don't like threads, but also to specifically point out that the Board will only be fun if everyone works to make it fun - that just lurking around waiting for Somebody Else to do it doesn't work. I'll work on a concrete proposal.
hS
Wait, do I even count anymore?
I started this morning, but ran out of time. I hope I didn't forget anything.
~Neshomeh
If you don't count the Time Travelling Starfish form I filled out (but didn't enter) when I beta'd it.