A post to gauge your interest

[lunabee34]

For those of you who don't know, back in the heyday of my Jossverse fannish love, I co-moderated a community called club_joss that was a discussion group for Buffyverse and Firefly fanfic. I think it was a hugely successful comm and I think everyone who participated in our discussions had a positive experience. I abandoned club_joss as a result of both my waning interest in Buffyverse fic and because of time constraints. I've been thinking ever since I got into SPN and SGA that it would be really nice to run a similar comm for one or both fandoms and I'd like to gauge your interest in participating.

Just a brief run down of how the comm would work (and for those of you who were members of club_joss I would do things a little differently to help mitigate the time drain of running a comm):



1. The initial stages of the comm would be devoted to building up a list of stories for discussion. Comm members could either volunteer their own fic for discussion or ask another author for permission to discuss his/her work. For me, author permission is important. I completely understand the argument that we should not have to ask permission to discuss fannish work in the same way that we don't have to ask permission to discuss published fiction, but for me, the most important aspect of my fannish experience has been the community and friendships I've found. Some people really don't want their stories discussed in this kind of forum and I can respect that.

2. Authors can be as little or as much involved in the discussion as they like. In my experience some of the best conversations we had in club_joss took place when the authors did get really involved in the conversation, but I know some people find that author involvement stifles a discussion. I never saw that happen in club_joss, but it is a possibility.

3. Civility is important. Many times people in club_joss were critical of an author's choices or offered constructive criticism or had less than glowing reviews of the fic we discussed. Those things are fine; flaming and unnecessary hostility are not. I never had to delete a comment or step into a thread in club_joss (which I think is a testament to the quality of its membership), but I would not have hesitated to do so if I felt the situation warranted it. So allowing your fic to be discussed in this comm would mean that you have to be open to constructive criticism and/or negative comments about your story but not that you would have to put up with flaming or hateful commentary. (This is a little different from how we set up club_joss; there authors had the option of having their stories discussed critically or only in terms of squee. In retrospect, that option was sort of silly LOL)

4. We would discuss either one or two stories per month. I would make an assignment post letting everyone know what to read and then open a discussion post at a later date. The discussion post would never close so if people find the conversation later and want to add comments, they can. I think one of the mistakes I made in club_joss is trying to discuss too many stories; we had a new discussion each week and people eventually lost interest because they couldn't keep up with the reading.

5. For me club_joss served a variety of functions. It was a rec list; because the comm members were responsible for finding the fic we read, I often found myself reading outside my comfort zone. I found a lot of good fic that way that otherwise would never have registered on my radar. It was also a place to talk about the craft of writing; I think many of us enjoy that kind of discussion and don't often get as much of it as we'd like on lj. It was also a place to talk about stories in much more depth than a simple feedback comment; I often find myself having really interesting thoughts about fic that I include in my rec posts, but sometimes I want to talk with other people about those thoughts.

Here are links to a couple posts in club_joss for an example of the kind of discussion I mean:

http://community.livejournal.com/club_joss/11385.html and http://community.livejournal.com/club_joss/23964.html. Notice that the discussion of each story naturally includes a good deal of commentary on the source material and on topics like canon vs. fanon, etc.

So, questions for you guys--would you be interested? Should I choose SGA or SPN? Or both? (If we discussed two fics a month, one could be SGA and one could be SPN) I know that SGA already has thecuttingboard; given that, would a comm of this nature be welcome in SGA? Would anyone be interested in co-moderating this with me? I'd like another person to share the burden if I do start up a comm. (Remember that moderating this community would take a fair amount of involvement. You'd have to actually read the selection for the month, even if it's not your OTP or something you'd normally read. I also found that discussion was much more fruitful if I helped guide it--posting a comment full of questions to lead off the discussion, interacting with the people who comment to keep the conversation going, etc--which can be a pain.) ETA: Thanks to lyrstzha for offering herself up!

Once I see how you guys (and anyone on your flists you think would be interested) react, if there's enough interest I'll pimp out the idea to the major comms and see what happens there.

Comments

[lyr]

Sure, I'd be interested. It sounds like a fine idea. I like both SPN and SGA, so I'm cool with either one or both, though I tend to read more in SGA. And no, I don't think the existence of thecuttingboard would obviate your comm at all. Also, I think I can commit to reading a selection a month and talking, if you'd like me to help out with co-modding.

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

Yay for interest!

And I agree with you about thecuttingboard; it's been around since 2005 and there's only twenty posts in the comm, several of which are admin posts,so there's nothing in that comm like the level of activity I'm suggesting for this one. I also think the goal of that comm is a little different than what I've outlined here.

I would absolutely adore for you to co-mod with me. :) Thank you so much for offering. And that's exactly what it would be--if we discuss two fics a month, we'd each be in charge of one discussion a month, or if we discuss one fic a month, we'd just rotate months. I think I've learned enough from the mistakes I made in club_joss to make running this comm go a lot more smoothly.

Let's give it a bit and see who else responds, and I'll link this post to the major comms and see what everybody else thinks. If people seem interested, we'll give it a go!

[lyr]

Excellent! Let me know how the responses go!