Just a random person cruising in from a bookmark on my del.icio.us network and I agree enough to comment, though I'm coming in more from the fic rather than the vidding side of things.
Half the time if I want to do that now, I end up having to root someones LJs tags or memories, only to find that the download link has expired. This is one of the great things that annoy me about the lack of archives/personal pages hosting vids. I am a serial monogamist when it comes to fandoms so I am often NOT following as the vids are announced and by the time I find them, they are long gone. It is very frustrating to hunt through tags and recs lists only to not be able to get at the video in the end which happens to me on a regular basis.
Even if the vid is still there, tags really aren't sufficient when it comes to hunting them down. I don't mind going through a LJ if there is a master post, but I'm likely to give up otherwise even if I like a vid by that person. If I have all of them listed in front of me, I'll probably just download them all and then delete what I don't like. I don't really enjoy doing this on YouTube because I can't download decent quality videos anyway.
Because of these two issues, I don't watch many vids anymore unless someone recs one to me, even though I love them. I just can't take the frustration and go back to my old favourites which I have saved to my hard drive.
And it's not just vidders that I've noticed giving up on personal websites, it seems like so many author's have decided that their LJs are the only place they need to post fic.
This is very true. As a replacement for personal websites, as long as the author creates a master post and updates it, LJ works rather well. The problem is that many don't do that. This is especially frustrating for multi-chapter posts since if the tag is missing or misspelled, finding that one missing chapter of a WIP for something posted a few years back isn't fun. This is one of the reasons I think people should post to archives for a backup. Sure, there is badfic, but keeping track of chapters is much easier.
About archives and badfic in general. I hate how archives have gotten a bad rap. I honestly would rather search through an archive of badfic for one good story than try to find it on LJ. Why? Because I can find exactly what I'm looking for without having to search Google, del.icio.us, storyfinders and everything else I can think of with a ton of variations in spelling, pairing etc. and still not find what I'm looking for. I may be just expressing some frustration here after attempting to enter a few new fandoms over the past month and having real trouble finding fic that interests me because everything is so decentralized. There are too many communities, everything is on LJ and I know that I am missing stories I would like to read simply because they are buried in several years of posts.
Turning the clock back a few years, I could have gone to the major archive(s) for the fandom and found enough stories to keep me interested without spending more time digging than reading. I could have gotten a good grounding in the fandom, found all the BNFs and iconic stories, as well as lesser known ones that may have gotten neglected, and built my way up to the continual postings of new fic. Now, I spend way too much time trying to find what I want to read in the first place. If I don't like a fic, I can always hit the back button after a paragraph of spelling mistakes. LJ is fine if you've already worked your way through the fandom and are just keeping up with the new stories, but it isn't so good when you are just getting started or like something other than the *OTPOMGtheirloveissocanon* since they never show up on recs pages.
And I've run out of characters so I'll be double posting you... Sorry.
no subject
Half the time if I want to do that now, I end up having to root someones LJs tags or memories, only to find that the download link has expired. This is one of the great things that annoy me about the lack of archives/personal pages hosting vids. I am a serial monogamist when it comes to fandoms so I am often NOT following as the vids are announced and by the time I find them, they are long gone. It is very frustrating to hunt through tags and recs lists only to not be able to get at the video in the end which happens to me on a regular basis.
Even if the vid is still there, tags really aren't sufficient when it comes to hunting them down. I don't mind going through a LJ if there is a master post, but I'm likely to give up otherwise even if I like a vid by that person. If I have all of them listed in front of me, I'll probably just download them all and then delete what I don't like. I don't really enjoy doing this on YouTube because I can't download decent quality videos anyway.
Because of these two issues, I don't watch many vids anymore unless someone recs one to me, even though I love them. I just can't take the frustration and go back to my old favourites which I have saved to my hard drive.
And it's not just vidders that I've noticed giving up on personal websites, it seems like so many author's have decided that their LJs are the only place they need to post fic.
This is very true. As a replacement for personal websites, as long as the author creates a master post and updates it, LJ works rather well. The problem is that many don't do that. This is especially frustrating for multi-chapter posts since if the tag is missing or misspelled, finding that one missing chapter of a WIP for something posted a few years back isn't fun. This is one of the reasons I think people should post to archives for a backup. Sure, there is badfic, but keeping track of chapters is much easier.
About archives and badfic in general. I hate how archives have gotten a bad rap. I honestly would rather search through an archive of badfic for one good story than try to find it on LJ. Why? Because I can find exactly what I'm looking for without having to search Google, del.icio.us, storyfinders and everything else I can think of with a ton of variations in spelling, pairing etc. and still not find what I'm looking for. I may be just expressing some frustration here after attempting to enter a few new fandoms over the past month and having real trouble finding fic that interests me because everything is so decentralized. There are too many communities, everything is on LJ and I know that I am missing stories I would like to read simply because they are buried in several years of posts.
Turning the clock back a few years, I could have gone to the major archive(s) for the fandom and found enough stories to keep me interested without spending more time digging than reading. I could have gotten a good grounding in the fandom, found all the BNFs and iconic stories, as well as lesser known ones that may have gotten neglected, and built my way up to the continual postings of new fic. Now, I spend way too much time trying to find what I want to read in the first place. If I don't like a fic, I can always hit the back button after a paragraph of spelling mistakes. LJ is fine if you've already worked your way through the fandom and are just keeping up with the new stories, but it isn't so good when you are just getting started or like something other than the *OTPOMGtheirloveissocanon* since they never show up on recs pages.
And I've run out of characters so I'll be double posting you... Sorry.