Clarifications, and I love fandom.
Again, post by the wonderful atrana at this LJ post. I love fandom. I love that this comm has existed for a few hours and has almost 500 watchers. I love your ideas and your enthusiasm and your humour and your outrage. I just. What can I say? I love fandom.
A few things keep coming up in the comments, so I think some clarifications are in order.
Q: Is this site going to be only for Harry Potter fen? A: No. Definitely not. I've said it before, and I'll say it again -- I don't think anyone is going anywhere without their f-lists. And there aren't a lot of people who have single-fandom f-lists these days. Or, indeed, who have entirely fannish f-lists these days. (Apologies if my HP-centric icon is giving the wrong impression; my account expired and I didn't renew it and I haven't uploaded any others yet. Will get to that soon.)
Q: Is this site going to be only for fandom? A: No. There is not going to be any kind of process in place for people to sit around deciding who qualifies as a "fan." It'd be impossible, for one. For two, I have a RL journal, and so do lots of other people. I want my RL friends to feel welcome elsewhere, just like my fannish friends do. For three, this needs to be about inclusion, not exclusion, and the wider an audience we can speak to, the better this is going to work.
Q: You know this is going to cost a ton of money, right? A: Yes. I am, perhaps recklessly, not worried about it. Many people have offered to help out financially, and I know that fandom is huge and our pockets are deep and we are generous in our support of the causes we believe in. The real trick is simply going to be making this a cause we believe in.
Q: Why are you posting about the LJ Exodus on LJ? A: My overdeveloped sense of irony? I'd kind of love it if they banned this comm. Posts and comments are all backed up. I have, however, created a mirror comm on GreatestJournal and will be doing the same at InsaneJournal and JournalFen. I'll post links when I've got them.
Q: Is there a timeline for this? A: It's still a little early, but in my pipe-dream perfect world, we can be out of here by the first of the year. We are not ready to jump ship yet, and I don't advocate doing so before we're ready, or we're going to lose the community we worked so hard to build. We need to move as one, and to do that, we have to make sure our new house is ready for us. That's going to take some time.
Q: Okay, so how can I help? A: There are several things you can do:
Watch this comm, or become a member and don't watch. The more significant the headcount, the greater support this project will have. And the more support it has, the more likely it is to happen. See above re: most of us won't leave without everyone else.
Spread the word. See #1.
Are you a web developer? Software engineer? Site producer? If so, leave a comment or send me an e-mail (atrata at gmail.com) that tells me what you're good at. I can code, but the scope of this is, I believe, far beyond one person.
Keep talking. Keep bringing up concerns and raising issues and debating the law and suggesting new features. Talk about advertising, about the organization of nonprofits, about the copyright laws in Taiwan. Talk about S2 styles and JournalFen and tools to extract your old LJ posts. Talk, talk, talk. I may not respond to everything, but I am sure as shit reading everything.