I know that I am missing stories I would like to read simply because they are buried in several years of posts. And that's really my biggest argument against LJ as an archive. It's great as an advertising site for something new, but really things get buried so quickly, and there are a lot of fandoms with high turnover (book fandoms for example), or media fandoms that have their peaks but still continue on with second, third or more waves afterwards. Anime fandoms tend to not have a definite start and end since the material is made available to various people at various times. It's so frustrating being new somewhere and trying to get started. I know that there are a couple fandoms that I'm interested in, but am not currently reading fic for, for those fandoms, I put the comms on my flist, and bookmark interesting looking fic, because I know if I decide to join the fandom after, I'll have a bitch of a time finding those fics again, and the frustration of trying to join in and find what I want might make me never join.
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. And that's something that kind of confuses me. People talk about how it's so hard to find good fic on archives, but how is it any harder on LJ? LJ doesn't exactly have higher standards than archives (actually, sometimes it's the opposite, since some archives approve fic once they've been checked for spelling and grammar), most comms will let anyone advertise their fics. With archives, you can go into a pairing section and skim through what's available, sometimes use various warnings/ratings/genres to narrow the focus, and then, you have a big list of fics with author's names attached, and summaries, and ratings and # of comments all on one page. It doesn't really get much easier.
If I don't like a fic, I can always hit the back button after a paragraph of spelling mistakes. Exactly! And often, you can tell right from the summary/author's note if you're going to have issues, and you have to do the same for LJ anyways, unless you're going exclusively off of rec lists.
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. *nods* If I want to read a rare pairing, or a pairing that isn't my main pairing, my first place to look is the fandom archive, because I may never want to read that pairing again, or not want to have comms for it on my flist, but I know if there are fics for that pairing, there will be some at the archive. As a slasher, I don't really want a bunch of het or gen comms on my flist, but sometimes? I just want to read het or gen. The local archive is the go-to place.
And I've run out of characters so I'll be double posting you... Sorry. Yessss. I'm not the only one who does it! Although honestly, LJ needs to increase their comment character length. Lets see if I can post this in one comment... *checks* No.
no subject
And that's really my biggest argument against LJ as an archive. It's great as an advertising site for something new, but really things get buried so quickly, and there are a lot of fandoms with high turnover (book fandoms for example), or media fandoms that have their peaks but still continue on with second, third or more waves afterwards. Anime fandoms tend to not have a definite start and end since the material is made available to various people at various times. It's so frustrating being new somewhere and trying to get started. I know that there are a couple fandoms that I'm interested in, but am not currently reading fic for, for those fandoms, I put the comms on my flist, and bookmark interesting looking fic, because I know if I decide to join the fandom after, I'll have a bitch of a time finding those fics again, and the frustration of trying to join in and find what I want might make me never join.
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.
And that's something that kind of confuses me. People talk about how it's so hard to find good fic on archives, but how is it any harder on LJ? LJ doesn't exactly have higher standards than archives (actually, sometimes it's the opposite, since some archives approve fic once they've been checked for spelling and grammar), most comms will let anyone advertise their fics.
With archives, you can go into a pairing section and skim through what's available, sometimes use various warnings/ratings/genres to narrow the focus, and then, you have a big list of fics with author's names attached, and summaries, and ratings and # of comments all on one page. It doesn't really get much easier.
If I don't like a fic, I can always hit the back button after a paragraph of spelling mistakes.
Exactly! And often, you can tell right from the summary/author's note if you're going to have issues, and you have to do the same for LJ anyways, unless you're going exclusively off of rec lists.
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.
*nods* If I want to read a rare pairing, or a pairing that isn't my main pairing, my first place to look is the fandom archive, because I may never want to read that pairing again, or not want to have comms for it on my flist, but I know if there are fics for that pairing, there will be some at the archive. As a slasher, I don't really want a bunch of het or gen comms on my flist, but sometimes? I just want to read het or gen. The local archive is the go-to place.
And I've run out of characters so I'll be double posting you... Sorry.
Yessss. I'm not the only one who does it! Although honestly, LJ needs to increase their comment character length. Lets see if I can post this in one comment... *checks* No.