I had a thought and have put it here for a discussion

[sealie]

Fandom Content Posting Strike… Break? A Fandom Experiment.

So I have seen A LOT of posts where it is pointed out if people want content they should ideally support and encourage content creators (writers, artists, viders etc etc).

Note, of course, that fandom content creators are also consumers.

To be fair you cannae make people comment/engage, and neither can you make folk create and post. And to be honest, folk still create and throw content into fannish spaces, so people don’t need to comment/engage to ensure content.

But folk don’t need to post. Folk post their content for a lot of reasons as a final hurdle, to engage with people….

Why not organise a fandom-wide posting break, a day, a weekend or even a week, where no new content is posted? Obvs. create to your heart’s content, but no posting. Consume old/previously posted stuff. This gives folk a break, for example, AO3 volunteers can take a breath, archive archivists can relax, hosting media can see how core fandom content is to their franchises.

Maybe we’ll learn something?





Although based on the recent ao3 maintenance, the results would be crying. *woes*

Comments

[ratcreature]

This doesn't seem workable because fandom as a group is too large and disparate and very few people are posting content daily. Meanwhile for others the specific day chosen may be when they can fit fandom in their schedule, and they aren't going to rearrange work shifts or school schedules.

Also many fans have a fanfic tbr pile, so any "supply fluctuations" are evened out, unless it's a very small fandom or rare pair, and then you are used to seeing new stuff only sporadically anyway.

Also I suspect negative reinforcement methods that basically scolds people for not commenting more works even less than the positive methods people are trying to encourage feedback (like feedback fests, feedback bingo cards to gamify feedback, days encouraging feedback in comms etc.)

[sealie]

i'm not really after negative reinforcement. It's just I've seen decades of you need to support creators/you need to engage etc etc and never changes. So was trying to think about different ways.

As an analogy, at work, frequently our small team (less than 1% of the whole organisation) try to figure out ways to get the majority to 'value' us. And it's the same ideas over and over again. And I said way not ask the 'majority' how we can better communicate? The idea fell flat, of course. But sometimes turning things on their head helps.

[ratcreature]

I think the extent to which the engagement has gotten less than twenty years ago, is maybe just because people used to access fandom via computers and now they use smart phones, so typing is slightly more inconvenient, and the posting space, now mostly AO3, has gotten separated from discussion spaces, so it feels a bigger hurdle to comment.

I know that I commented more on LJ stories, and aside from commenting on authors' stories whose other posts I was also commenting on already, the biggest reason for that was, that saving fanfic on my computer took more effort than writing a comment "I liked this" and having LJ send me an email that contained a copy of the post. Now I save fanfic by letting Calibre download my AO3 history every now and then and mostly just click the kudo button, unless I really feel like saying something. IDK how many people backed up their fanfic reading via comments but it illustrates that relatively small convenience issues can have a big impact.

Agreed, the result would be crying

[teridawn]

By creators and readers equally. The problem would likely be that you can't make creators and commenters participate in a content posting strike either. Although, I do get weary on occasion and accidently strike... would that count?

teri

Re: Agreed, the result would be crying

[sealie]

no you can't *make* people strike--if you did it wouldn't be a strike. I prefer a community led protest :-)

I am simply thinking out loud, because this is a question of the fandom ages with no solution (that I have seen). We know the value* of comments. We know comments fertilise fic. Recently, I posted a little ficlit on Tumblr--No traction. I posted it on dreamwidth--No traction. I debated binning it. But I liked it, it was daft and cute. I posted it on Ao3 and I got some lovely comments and wrote sequels, purely off the energy of those comments.

*we use the language of commerce often when exploring this issue e.g. a fic with more comments/kudos/bookmarks is (likely). Paid in feedback/shouldn't expect feedback. Perhaps we should focus more on community-based 'support/encouragment'. I don't know--I'm not an anthropologist. I do know that I like being a fandom with a supportive engaging community more than in one which is distant and divisive and in-accessible.

Re: Agreed, the result would be crying

[teridawn]

I find that AO3 has become the destination of choice for reading pleasure. Glad you had success there!