Ramblings about newslettering

[ziasudra]

skuf has an interesting poll here about fandom newsletters. I read the fill-in answers and the anonymous discussion threads with interest, and noticed that a reoccurring "complaint" seems to be newsletters tend to favor toward certain things, be they genres, pairings, or overall bias in reccing.

This got me thinking — and in fact I've had thoughts about newslettering for a long time now (and was great to get to talk about this with other fellow newsletter editors at r_becca's newsletter roundtable at Phoenix Rising) — why do people assume newsletter editors have the time to read every single fandom LJ account in the intarwebs? I'm glad the daily_snitch is not a rec newsletter, because I simply don't have the time to read all the fics that are posted in a day, never mind sifting through them to select recs. But even doing the meta/news/non-fic links alone, each issue takes me hours do compile. I almost always (barring RL busyness) go out of my way to look for links outside of reading my own flist or the Snitch's watcher journal. But I'm just one person, I can't know that someone who posts about RL stuff 99% of the time just happens to post something fannish and linkable today, and oops I missed it but instead linked to posts by "popular" LJers or slashers.

I've said this before, and would probably say it again in the future: if you see something that might be of interest, e-mail the links/recs/suggestions to the appropriate newsletter! Seriously, newsletter editors don't bite. In fact, every single one of them that I've met has been of the nicest group of HP fans I've had the pleasure to get to know.

</rant> (not directed against anyone in particular; in fact, I'm feeling more amused than annoyed)

Comments

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

It bugs me like nothing else. I've left my main newsletter and at least for now stopped my involvement with my other one, b/c I just got so tired of the constant complaints and the entitlement attitude. If you don't post in a com and don't leave a link at the newsletter, how in the world should we ever find it?

*headdesk*

[ziasudra-fic.livejournal.com]

If you don't post in a com and don't leave a link at the newsletter, how in the world should we ever find it?

I think you've asked the million-dollar question. There are times I'd randomly come across posts from reading friends of friends list, but it's rare. Usually I rely a lot on emails and people on either my flist or the watcher journal's flist talking about other noteworthy posts. Emails are love.

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

I've never understood why people feel weird pimping their posts...they're diong us a service, after all. *shakes head*

plus...let's not forget the flip side...i've had enough "do not link to my public post" debates to last me yet another lifetime :D

[ratcreature]

Well, the thing is, in smaller fandoms the newsletters (or rather the watcher account) often do friend and monitor everybody who friends them. Obviously that's not very practical for huge fandoms, but it is conceivable that thoughts of scalability don't enter in the complaint, maybe with the assumption that simply more newsletter editors could still go through all the posts.

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

But the thing is--'my' newsletter, for example, friends *every* community. Seriously, I think they're beautifully nuts, b/c I'd refuse to monitor yet another minor character/barely on screen character one, but they do. And *still* they're getting complaints! (And, as I pointed out, both directions--you ignored my post with one icon; how dare you link to the post I made in a community)

[ratcreature]

With SGA for example I don't really get the complaints because the fandom on LJ is fairly structured. If you dislike community posting for example, and don't want to ask the newsletter to link to you, you can just use the noticeboard and will still get picked up by the newsletter, but it's not like that in every fandom. And while I'm personally not shy about just commenting in a newsletter to get my stuff linked if I want to, I admit that I still dislike it if newsletters work by some opaque method. The SGA newsletter has a quite transparent method, and it's explained in the FAQ, but not every newsletter does that. And some are really vague, so that you are unsure about what gets picked up, because those newsletters are more editorial in their nature. I mean, for example metafandom, I don't follow the newsletter itself, but sometimes one of my posts get linked (which as you know is fine with me) and I have no clue why because it didn't seem to fit with that metafandom agenda as I understand it, while other posts which I thought might end up linked weren't, and well if a newsletter linking to fiction worked like that I can see why the perception wouldn't be favorable. At least including all communities makes it clearcut what's to be included and what not, but not all fandoms have a lot of community infrastructure, so newsletters end up with similar problems that metafandom has, that they link to what they pick up and to things people pimp in a comment. But I get why that can feel like asking for a favor if you have to do that to get linked, while others seem to get linked "automatically" (of course often you don't even know that for sure since many newsletters screen all comments, so others may well have asked without you knowing, but well, I'm not saying it's a *rational* feeling towards newsletters).

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the only fandom newsletters I know well is SGA which is indeed pretty clear on its policies. As for metafandom: it's really that random! Depending on time of day and who's memoried, things will go in and others won't. But these days, a lot of the links get linked in, so we're not just dependent on our flists any more (which it really all it was there...interesting discussions in fandom that we happened to come across) <- and now make all that past tense since Im' not affiliated any more :)

[ratcreature]

What you call "random" is easily perceived as cliquish though, which I think is problematic once a fandom resource has grown beyond a certain size. I mean, I can understand reluctance to ask a newsletter that is just people collecting things from their f-list to link to things, because it feels even more like begging than when your post falls into clearly delineated parameters of a newsletter and the editors just missed it for whatever reason.

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

Oh no, makes perfect sense.

I just don't know how metafandom *could* establish a comprehensive policy...we take from the meta section of other newsletters if it isn't too fandom specific, we LJ seek for meta...it's impossible to read every LJ and there *is* no community... [plus, I think by the end, we were getting pretty comprehensive, even reading "just" from our flists, simply b/c people who do meta ended up reading the newsletter or were on our flists...]

[ziasudra-fic.livejournal.com]

I think the randomness issue is always going to be there as long as newsletters are around. As I mentioned in a comment above, once in a while I'd find a post via friends of friends' list. And when I first started newslettering, I in fact did read several people's fof lists every week (back when I was a student and had time...). But I soon came to realize why there was a reason editors used a set watcher journal for compiling links -- there really are only a set number of people who post essays and metas on a regular basis (my newsletter is news and meta-based). The 50 or so other journals I added to my personal watch list tend to have posted one very interesting fandom-related entry (which caused me to add them in the first place) but never again, and many of those journals have since become inactive, heavily RL or other-fandom oriented, or friends-only.

It's the self-perpetuating cycle of venturing "out" for more links, finding nothing, and then going back to relying on a set list of journals for links until I feel the need to venture out again. I'm still looking for a balance -- I checked out a bunch of LJs after meeting new people at Phoenix Rising, but even though the journal owners are definitely fans, they rarely post linkable entries -- and haven't really found a cure-all solution that would cover all the people's complaints.

And I freely admit I miss things all the time. Sometimes I'd send an "oops, I'd meant to link to this but I forgot" email to my fellow editors after I'd posted, and other times I wouldn't come across whatever I missed until months later, when all I could do then is headdesk to myself.

[ratcreature]

Heh, I guess it would be useful for newsletters if people tagged logically before posting and the newsletters could just use the tracking feature. I mean, for example if someone only does really interesting meta every four months, and you were bound to miss it, if they tagged the post "meta" you could just get an email that way. That's what I do to follow infrequently updated stories (as long as the LJ is setup sensibly) if there's a lot of other stuff in the LJ instead of friending it, and I tag my own posts like that too, because I can sometimes go months without posting in a certain fandom, but then start getting into it again, and it's not like I expect people into comics to follow my SGA posts or my pet rat photos or whatever.

[ziasudra-fic.livejournal.com]

Heh, I guess it would be useful for newsletters if people tagged logically before posting and the newsletters could just use the tracking feature.

That would be cool. I've done this before with one journal, but "meta" seems to have a very broad meaning for that person so I just ended up manually checking her LJ every once in a while ;p

But I suppose one bad experience doesn't a bad system make. Thanks for showing me how tag tracking is really supposed to work... I'm going to give it another try with some of the journals of people I've recently met through cons. At least I know for sure they're still in fandom and are enthusiastic enough to pay money to go talk about fannish stuff :)

[zvi-likes-tv.livejournal.com]

I mean, for example metafandom, I don't follow the newsletter itself, but sometimes one of my posts get linked (which as you know is fine with me) and I have no clue why because it didn't seem to fit with that metafandom agenda as I understand it, while other posts which I thought might end up linked weren't,

I can't tell from your statement if you wanted them linked or not, but if there's a post you want metafandom'd, 90% of the time, going to the comm and putting the link as a comment to the latest day's post works.

[ratcreature]

Yeah, I know that, but I'm not really interested in being linked at metafandom one way or another. I rarely post fandom meta in any case, being not really into it myself, but when I post something that might attract attention I wonder whether it might get linked and consider that. I'm not about to lock my LJ or ask people not to link public stuff any way they like, but it is kind of startling to have suddenly a bunch of people you don't know commenting on an entry because metafandom linked it, when you normally don't get more than a few comments in your C-list (in terms of fannish popularity and friend-of-list size) LJ, so it's at the back of my mind that something might get linked in newsletters without me promoting. I usually just ask appropriate newsletters to link if I posted fanart, not for "meta".

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

But yes, you're totally right about the scalability!