I am ENTITLED to hear your thoughts on this.

[tzikeh]

taraljc and I have decided that what the hell, we'll tilt at the windmills a bit. We're putting together a Centralized Fandom Primer website. Once it's up, we hope that people who run lists or have archives or build faqs or run cons or what-have-you will choose to point a link our way somewhere in their cyber-existence. Obviously, nobody *has* to link to it, and we're sure to get our fair share of "who are you to tell us blah blah!?" But between T and me, we have closing in on 50 years in fandom (geez), so we think we have a decent handle on where it's come from and where it's got to. BUT WE WANT EVERYONE'S HELP.

If you would be so kind, drop a comment here and let me know: What kind of things do you wish new folks had a handle on before they arrived in fandom? What do you wish someone had told you when you first got involved? If you could announce one thing to every fannish mailing list in existence, what would it be?

We don't want to preach. We don't want to direct. (Well, actually, I do want to direct, but that's a whole other thing.) All we want to do is lay it out in plain words - "Here's where fandom came from, here's how things generally are in fandom online; here's how we treat one another. You can choose to ignore this - that's your right. But it's easier to be part of a community when you live by the community's generally agreed-upon guidelines. Some of this is common sense. Some of it is common courtesy. You'd think it doesn't need to be said, but - well, fandom's a queer duck, and online life is a queer duck, and you put those two together and sometimes people do things they'd never do if they'd actually sat and thought about it for a minute."

Let me know, guys - and ask your friends.

ETA: There are some great ideas being posted here and I just wanted folks to know that we are reading them all - please don't think if I haven't responded directly that I didn't read / didn't care what you said. I just don't want to pad out the replies with "Thanks!" fifty times.

Comments

[liviapenn.livejournal.com]

Obviously, nobody *has* to link to it, and we're sure to get our fair share of "who are you to tell us blah blah!?"

You might be able to side-step this a little if you present it as more of a *descriptive* primer-- ie, these are the general codes of behavior that most fen consider to be important, not just because this behavior is "tacky" or "rude" or whatever, but because these rules have evolved over the years so *people don't get hurt*, individually and collectively as a fandom. Not "You shall not direct-link screencaps because it's rude," but "We don't direct link screencaps because it costs the hoster *actual money* and might cause her site to go down and not be available to *anyone*." Not "You shall not give vids to Joss because it's thoughtless," but "Historically, we don't think it's wise to give vids to Joss because of X, Y and Z who've been ToSed in similar situations, thus causing their vids/archives/zines to not be available to *anyone*." Etc. *shrug* Just a suggestion.

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

Not "You shall not direct-link screencaps because it's rude," but "We don't direct link screencaps because it costs the hoster *actual money* and might cause her site to go down and not be available to *anyone*."

Absolutely. We're going to be very careful not to make anything a command or imperative. If we present ourselves as asshats, no one will care to read it. :)

[liviapenn.livejournal.com]

Heh. I didn't really mean to imply that y'all were actually going to set yourself up as the givers of the fannish commandments, but I just know some people are going to see it that way no matter how reasonably or logically you express yourselves. ^_^