So there’s been talk about fandom being too decentralized as of late, and I’ve had an idea that’s been rambling around my head for a while now. While it sounds good to me, I want to gauge interest before undertaking our Next Big Thing.
Most people are at least a bit knowledgeable about Reddit – how it’s set up into a main site, and how each individual interest becomes its own subreddit. You subscribe to what subreddits interest you, and you can interact with people on that topic.
Well what if we had something like that, but just for fandom? Here’s basically what I have sketched out how the site would work.
- A subreddit for just fandom discussions
- A subreddit for slash discussions
- A subreddit for things like style guides, suggestions from others on tools to use, etc.
- A subreddit for discussing Fandom 1
- A subreddit for fic recs for Fandom 1 – either for ALL fic in that fandom or for relationship 1 from Fandom1. If we go with the latter, then there would also be:
- A subreddit for fic recs for Fandom 1 relationship 2.
Something like this – except we would be using open source code that works and looks like Reddit – not Reddit itself. If we do this, you would have one place for story recs instead of a multitude of individual fic recs sites, etc.
So questions are:
- Is this of interest to you? Do you think you would use it?
- What do you think of the idea overall? Do you think fandom would use it?
- If you were to use it, do you think you would be willing to assist if need be? Like SquidgeWorld uses quite a few tag wrangers. I’d think we might need some folx in similar fashion, but maybe more in a Moderator type role.
- Other thoughts?
I really miss the days when fandom used forums, so I think this sounds like a neat idea. I’d be happy to help moderate if you needed mods.
Very good idea.
I APPROVE OF THIS 100% THIS IS AWESOME!!! what software would you use for this? like one of the activitypub reddit alternatives or something that doesn’t federate?
I like the idea overall! I’ve been wondering if there’d be a fandom-initiated effort for social/community interactions the way that OTW provides more stability in fic hosting.
I’d be curious to hear more details on:
– How publicly visible are these forums?
– How public are people’s interactions with said forums?
(For example, Discord is less discoverable and makes it harder to just browse; Reddit has a lower barrier to access, but lots of fans are wary of bot scraping or connected activity; some sites have a mixture of privacy levels, etc.)
#3 – I would be happy to help/moderate if necessary.
This sounds very interesting. I’m much more a lurker in these kind of spaces.
Love this idea!! I miss being able to congregate and squee (aging fanlady here)
I think it sounds like a good idea! But I think to make it useable for fandom in particular it would need to have a *filterable* flair/tag system. Right now Reddit has flair but it doesn’t really do anything except let you not open the post if you notice it, being able to hide/mute flairs would be a lifesaver for avoiding topics that will only upset you/piss you off.
Like lately in the AO3 sub there’s been a lot of arguing about whether or not to ban/restrict pro/anti discourse, there’s a flair for it but it doesn’t actually stop it from showing up in the feeds of people that don’t want to see it. Functional muting/filtering would fix that.
I love the idea but worry about management. Every social media site has issues with trolls, scams, hostile posters, and actual crime content. Denise manages because she had years of experience with the exact structure of DW before it went live, and because it stays fairly small. Pillowfort seems to manage by being small and mostly unknown.
Both are aided by not having an app. Don’t make an app; that puts the content under review by Apple & Google’s policies, and both of those have a solid history of “No icky objectionable stuff… unless it’s on an app that’s making us a whole lot of money.”
Squidge Forums (or whatever they’d be called) would start by being mostly unknown; as it gained visibility, it’ll gain problems. I’ve been watching how Bluesky is going, and once they got rid of invite codes, they were flooded by Nazi sympathizers.
Public and private forums are both good. Reddit’s system for that would probably work well – the option of both “entirely private; need an invite to join” and “entirely public” and in between that is “public view but you need to join to post – and joining may be restricted.”
That’s a fantastic idea!! I agree on a lot of the concerns brought up by others, that scaling invitations and moderation would be one of the major issues to tackle because of the inevitable fandom wank that would seep in through the cracks, as well as hosting because of various legalities and social constructs to jump through.
I feel like some tools to aid moderators would help. Not, nor ever, AI, but perhaps some customizable keyword flag system that mods could periodically review for their little pool of whatever? A lot of Discord servers I see use Discord TOS + house rules to establish a system that works for them, so perhaps some general site rules (inclusive of “you’re not allowed to make X kind of rule”, e.g. rules that specifically exclude people on the basis of, like, owning a cat or whatever) and some guidelines on what kind of rules to make for their forum that they’re moderating (a la Reddit?) might be a good middle ground.
I love flairs (and signature blocks!) and also the ability to mute/block people, though for the latter I’m uncertain if it would be beneficial for the blocked user to know that they’re blocked? Some sites do that, some do not, to varying degrees of success I presume are because of site-specific cultures.
I think perhaps the best leverage would be user profiles, where people could link their socials (i.e. AO3 account, tumblr account, etc), because I do see a large section of fandom using Carrd as a business card (the intended product use, to be honest) to communicate large swathes of information about themselves. I believe the closest association to that would be the fanfiction.net user profiles, which AO3 has partially adopted in a different format.
Perhaps it might be useful to find someone good with making website graphics to demonstrate ideas about this visually? Or at least to storyboard the concept to seed discussion points.