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

[jacquez.livejournal.com]

I wonder if you might want to bring up some fandom differences. Someone on fca-l this morning mentioned that the firefly vid flap might not've happened in an anime fandom, because in anime fandoms, fanvids are assumed to be available for passing around. So a general "be aware that what is acceptable in one fandom might not be acceptable in another" thing could be helpful, and emphasis on the "better safe than sorry/please-may i-thank you" stuff....

[flambeau.livejournal.com]

Totally yes on this. Fandoms have different cultures, sometimes very much so, and acceptable behavior in fandom A will cause a flamewar in fandom B. And I think that many people who get very involved in their first fandom, especially if it's a large, thriving one, will expect other fandoms to be Just Like It, so they figure they can just skip over the lurk-for-a-while, figure-things-out part when they move on.

[malkingrey.livejournal.com]

No kidding. I've seen people get bitched at for something as simple as replying to a message with the quoted material at the bottom of the screen underneath the new material, instead of at the top of the screen with the new material following. (Or vice versa, depending on the venue.)