(no subject)

[pearwaldorf]

On curation and communities in a post-Tumblr age

So one of the things I'd forgotten about communities is that they function as central discovery hubs for errybody. So for the first time in, like, a fucking decade, I'm scrolling through a feed and seeing an unending flow of mediocre fanwork and/or things I'm not interested in. This is compounded by the fact that nobody fucking tags properly (and this is an issue of community norms and enforcement, I realize). 

And it was super jarring, because apparently I've spent enough time on Tumblr that I've curated a mix of things so specific to my interests that it isn't something I have to think about much. My dash just goes and surfaces cool interesting shit, and that's something I'm really going to miss. 

I realize some of this will come with time, further platform adoption, and the formation of more specific communities (right now on Pillowfort I'm subscribed to just the broad fandom communities because there's not really any traffic on the smaller ones), but it doesn't give me much joy right now to have to wade through a whole bunch of things I don't want to see to get to the good stuff. 

Comments

[kitewithfish]

... that's fair, honestly.

There's an element of comms where, if they are too small, nobody finds them, or they fizzle out quick. Bigger comms have a lot of stuff that's not for me - it's nice to have the community, and I don't want most of the stuff they produce. I mostly use comms to find people whose work I like and to follow them directly.

RSS feeds from AO3 have helped a fair bit in fleshing out my reading page with new fic.

That said, for me, I was following like 900 blogs on Tumblr, and largely only paid attention to about 5 in terms of personality. So there was a lot of good stuff on my dash! But not a lot of people I got to know. I've had more DW comments *today* than I had in about year on tumblr.

[jamethiel]

This is largely why I didn't do fandom on tumblr. I detested the cutesy headcanons and "oh, but what if all the muggleborns started singing uptown funk?" posts and they predominated the tag so I just... never waded in any further.

(I'm not saying bring back moderated archives buuuuut)

[pearwaldorf]

Not to be prescriptivist, but the tags are the worst fucking place to be on the site. The "proper" way to do it is to either reach out through your current fandom network (friends of friends) or find the cool people in the tags and follow them.

Also, block/mute liberally. It's the only way they become tolerable.

[kore]

Yeah, I tried using search and tags on Tumblr because.....that is how I learned how you find things! Not there, NOPE. I had major FOMO there and it was so frustrating.

[jamethiel]

I ended up just searching art/architecture/cats and reblogging those kinds of pictures. I ended up undergoing a fandom resurgence into an old fandom (Harry Potter) and none of my friends were into it, or their tumblrs were something that I just didn't want to engage with (I support people in getting their kink on! ... so long as I don't have to look at/participate in it.)

I actually ended up participating in facebook for fandom, and discord. Discord's better for conversations, but I get links from facebook and then discuss them elsewhere.

[kore]

Yeah, I can't do Discord and Twitter at all, and I hate Facebook. I really didn't like Tumblr but at least it was a place to find a lot of pretty pictures of current fandoms and even some good meta if I looked hard for it. I hope at least the meta and maybe ficlets come back to DW (although I know a lot of people are already posting those to AO3). It maybe doesn't feel like another great fannish migration yet, but definitely like more fandom fragmentation, and that just tends to make me sad because I inevitably lose touch with people when that happens.

[lunylovegoodlover]

Any suggestions on how to deal with this? I’m also finding it super jarring, especially on pillowfort where I haven’t figured out how to be in a community without every update appearing on my dash.

[pearwaldorf]

Wait until people whose taste you trust join Pillowfort? :D:

Sorry, I got no suggestions other than blacklist tags and block/mute users liberally. Which is difficult when the site is so damn slow >.

[rrrowr]

i agree that that has been the worst part of heading over to new platform. anything that i might post gets lost in the huge amount of traffic that happens in a single community. i feel like the best bet to getting attention is just going to have to be from ao3, which at least allows for some curation of what viewers are looking at

[arch]

I agree with this. I didn’t realize how carefully I curated my tumblr experience until I started trying to find people elsewhere. And Discord is like a whole FIREHOSE.

[pearwaldorf]

Oh god I am absolutely not suited for real-time chat anymore. At least with Twitter and Tumblr I can catch up on my own terms (or not)? It doesn't feel quite as immediate as Discord.

And like. I know that a new platform experience isn't ever going to approach nigh-on a decade of finely tuned curation, but there's so much craaaap [/whine].

(Also, I feel like I must know you from some former fandom, but I don't remember which one it is, so apologies!)

[arch]

(I don't remember either! But I've been following you since at least 2009, apparently! WHO ARE WE)

[kore]

(OMG I can't do Discord either. I remember IM and I'm just like NOOOOOOPE)

[arch]

I’m trying REALLY HARD but, predictably, the one I’m enjoying most is the one where only like five people are ever on at one time.

[lovelythings]

At least I had my (beloved) friends who don't tag their tumblrs ever muted so that I got to choose to click on their posts. It's hard to navigate these things. I just don't want to see everything.

[redstapler]

:wave:

Trying to find people from tumblr on here. You might remember me from such tumblr blogs as dontbearuiner!

For as much as I've lamented the lack of f-lock and filters on tumblr, I'm finding I have entirely forgotten how to use them. Womp womp.

Anyway, glad I found you! Hi!

[silveradept]

That's rough, having to re-find and re-curate everything. If there were an easier way to do it, I'm sure everyone would appreciate it a lot.

[prettyarbitrary]

I've been feeling the same thing, but I recognize a large part of it is my fault. In the interests of...I don't know, 'try everything once?' 'Might as well have SOMETHING on my dash?' I've been adding back almost everybody who follows me. I figure that I can sort through what I actually want to keep there once I get enough content to start making judgment calls.

That phenomenon you mention of overbroad communities is another point, and there's the fact that a lot of people on Pillowfort don't actually know what to do with communities yet, or how to think about them.