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kari_izumiSo there was a post in haruomi 's journal which lead to a discussion on wanting to open a really ship-neutral Bleach comm. Since I spend far too much time online than I'd care to admit, I'd be willing to try opening and moderating such a place, but I wanted to get some input from everyone reading this on what things they enjoy about their favorite comms and things that they really, really hate. (Yay for non fandom-centric entry!)
About the only thing I would really, really want out of this is a hands-free approach to moderation. The more rules that get slapped on, the harder it is to have actual entertaining discussion. One of the first board online founded on that principle is called Troll Kingdom, founded after some mods at another board decided to start making up rules to ban those whose political views they disagreed with. The Godawful Fanfiction board is run in pretty much the same manner. Nowadays, both are shitholes, which is why I would never want an entirely mod-free board, but mods who can use a bit of common sense in dishing out warnings are welcomed.
Secondly, I'm really uncomfortable with the idea of excluding people based on their history at other boards. While I'm a rather upstanding citizen at places where I have to be, I also post at other boards that allow me to call the cat a bastard when I see fit. The latter doesn't work for most people, and that's fine. Even those who post at those places get sick of that if it gets to be too much (hence my lessened presence at GAFF these days). I certainly wouldn't want my history used against me at a place where I haven't even posted in yet, and I hate hypocrisy with a burning passion.
I really do want a place with polite fans who can refrain from making sweeping generalizations or taking unnecessary swipes at others (more on that in a minute), but at what price? People are free to disagree with my rules,and I'm certainly open to changing a rule that is proved to be stupid or needless--but I have no reason to boot out anyone that can follow those rules, regardless of what they say and do elsewhere.
Thirdly, I really loathe mods with their heads in their ass--ones who think anyone questioning their rules/logic are idiots without common sense or trying to destroy the place by just THINKING one rule is stupid. I was in a YuGiOh fanfic challenge where some mods made up a rule to get rid of one bothersome troublemaker, where one couldn't vote for an author in one round that they voted for the round before. This would have most likely lead to someone who didn't deserve it to get voted out unfairly and I told them this. They realized it, and the rule was resended and said troublemaker pulled a passive-aggressive stunt of purposely writing a bad fic to get kicked out anyway.
As opposed to fanfictionrants, in which a few on staff relish on being rude and bitchy towards anyone who dare post a criticism about any of their rules, no matter how politely worded. Or at one board I post at, in which one mod accused another poster of being a pedophile for one badly-worded thread topic, which lead to an all-out board war. Thankfully, this lead to a rather large retooling of the moderation staff and there hasn't been a big mod drama out of that place since. I can say with all certainly that I would step down from the comm before I allowed myself to be a power-hungry twatwaffle.
On the fandom-specifc side, I'd want to see:
-More chapter discussion without ship speculation taking over.Each side has its own comm and an FC at every major Bleach board for that. I think the best solution would be to have one chapter thread discussing the solid, tangible aspects and another for shipper speculation. Everyone's happy and included.
-A ship-neutral place for all fans to enjoy. I went over that one in depth in the journal that spawned this, but as someone who's been on the Ichihime equivalent ship in fandom before, it can suck when everything becomes about the major fan couple, and it's hard to find a place that won't constantly rub it in about your pairing not being canon outside of your own shipper forums.
Likewise, not everyone shipping the major couple (myself included) wants to associate with those who have to put down the other couple to prove theirs is valid. If you have to do that to make your couple work, you're doing it wrong. Like the writers on "As The World Turns," who have propped up the Paul and Meg pairing by ruining every character that crosses paths with those two, but I digress.
Besides, what about those who couldn't care less about either major couple? I'm sure there are plenty of people who read this manga/watch the anime for reasons other than who Ichigo will end up with, and appreciate the awesomeness of all the characters without subjugating every aspect to a romance that may or may not happen, considering this is shounen.
-A place for finding fandom betas: Okay, I admit this one is entirely me here, but it seems all the beta comms on LJ seen to be dominated by mostly Harry Potter fandom and Sci-Fi...pretty much every fandom BUT anime-centric ones. None of the big Bleach comms seem to be open for beta requesting threads, and I doubt I'm the only one with this problem.
That's about everything I can think of. Suggestions are very welcomed.
ETA: And since I'm on the subject of comm, I do have a few already that you are welcomed to join:
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
lol_smut : Dedicated to humor fanfic with lemony goodness. Because sex can be full of lulz!
yazacapslock : A caplocking community dedicated to the works of Ai Yazawa.
haruomi 's journal which lead to a discussion on wanting to open a really ship-neutral Bleach comm. Since I spend far too much time online than I'd care to admit, I'd be willing to try opening and moderating such a place, but I wanted to get some input from everyone reading this on what things they enjoy about their favorite comms and things that they really, really hate. (Yay for non fandom-centric entry!)About the only thing I would really, really want out of this is a hands-free approach to moderation. The more rules that get slapped on, the harder it is to have actual entertaining discussion. One of the first board online founded on that principle is called Troll Kingdom, founded after some mods at another board decided to start making up rules to ban those whose political views they disagreed with. The Godawful Fanfiction board is run in pretty much the same manner. Nowadays, both are shitholes, which is why I would never want an entirely mod-free board, but mods who can use a bit of common sense in dishing out warnings are welcomed.
Secondly, I'm really uncomfortable with the idea of excluding people based on their history at other boards. While I'm a rather upstanding citizen at places where I have to be, I also post at other boards that allow me to call the cat a bastard when I see fit. The latter doesn't work for most people, and that's fine. Even those who post at those places get sick of that if it gets to be too much (hence my lessened presence at GAFF these days). I certainly wouldn't want my history used against me at a place where I haven't even posted in yet, and I hate hypocrisy with a burning passion.
I really do want a place with polite fans who can refrain from making sweeping generalizations or taking unnecessary swipes at others (more on that in a minute), but at what price? People are free to disagree with my rules,and I'm certainly open to changing a rule that is proved to be stupid or needless--but I have no reason to boot out anyone that can follow those rules, regardless of what they say and do elsewhere.
Thirdly, I really loathe mods with their heads in their ass--ones who think anyone questioning their rules/logic are idiots without common sense or trying to destroy the place by just THINKING one rule is stupid. I was in a YuGiOh fanfic challenge where some mods made up a rule to get rid of one bothersome troublemaker, where one couldn't vote for an author in one round that they voted for the round before. This would have most likely lead to someone who didn't deserve it to get voted out unfairly and I told them this. They realized it, and the rule was resended and said troublemaker pulled a passive-aggressive stunt of purposely writing a bad fic to get kicked out anyway.
As opposed to fanfictionrants, in which a few on staff relish on being rude and bitchy towards anyone who dare post a criticism about any of their rules, no matter how politely worded. Or at one board I post at, in which one mod accused another poster of being a pedophile for one badly-worded thread topic, which lead to an all-out board war. Thankfully, this lead to a rather large retooling of the moderation staff and there hasn't been a big mod drama out of that place since. I can say with all certainly that I would step down from the comm before I allowed myself to be a power-hungry twatwaffle.
On the fandom-specifc side, I'd want to see:
-More chapter discussion without ship speculation taking over.Each side has its own comm and an FC at every major Bleach board for that. I think the best solution would be to have one chapter thread discussing the solid, tangible aspects and another for shipper speculation. Everyone's happy and included.
-A ship-neutral place for all fans to enjoy. I went over that one in depth in the journal that spawned this, but as someone who's been on the Ichihime equivalent ship in fandom before, it can suck when everything becomes about the major fan couple, and it's hard to find a place that won't constantly rub it in about your pairing not being canon outside of your own shipper forums.
Likewise, not everyone shipping the major couple (myself included) wants to associate with those who have to put down the other couple to prove theirs is valid. If you have to do that to make your couple work, you're doing it wrong. Like the writers on "As The World Turns," who have propped up the Paul and Meg pairing by ruining every character that crosses paths with those two, but I digress.
Besides, what about those who couldn't care less about either major couple? I'm sure there are plenty of people who read this manga/watch the anime for reasons other than who Ichigo will end up with, and appreciate the awesomeness of all the characters without subjugating every aspect to a romance that may or may not happen, considering this is shounen.
-A place for finding fandom betas: Okay, I admit this one is entirely me here, but it seems all the beta comms on LJ seen to be dominated by mostly Harry Potter fandom and Sci-Fi...pretty much every fandom BUT anime-centric ones. None of the big Bleach comms seem to be open for beta requesting threads, and I doubt I'm the only one with this problem.
That's about everything I can think of. Suggestions are very welcomed.
ETA: And since I'm on the subject of comm, I do have a few already that you are welcomed to join:
lol_smut : Dedicated to humor fanfic with lemony goodness. Because sex can be full of lulz!yazacapslock : A caplocking community dedicated to the works of Ai Yazawa.
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no subject
Date: 2008-07-22 05:22 am (UTC)Thank you, for considering all of this.
no subject
Date: 2008-07-22 11:33 pm (UTC)If you have name suggestions, I'm all ears.
That, and maybe becoming a co-mod.Not just for keeping the place in order, but having a few more opinions to run ideas by with or to point out when I'm being a tool (I'm human. It can happen ;) )
no subject
Date: 2008-07-23 12:56 am (UTC)I'm sorry. I'm horrible with coming up with names, so I'm not going to even try to attempt it. But I'd be delighted to be a co-moderator! I don't have any skills to brag about, but I like to organize, so I can probably help out keeping the community neat and orderly.
no subject
Date: 2008-07-22 06:50 pm (UTC)I think my reference previously to keeping out the riff raff was more concerning with making sure people don't feed into it. It's just more of a common sense kind of thing, but it gets complicated when you try to invoke a common sense or golden rule kind of a set up, because what's apparent to some people isn't apparent to others.
The only thing at concerns me is the shipping half. Maybe it's just me losing my faith in people being able to be decent about this sort of thing, but there does tend to be a mutual tendency on both sides of the "main ships" to kinda gloat that a certain moment fails to meet fan expectations. I think a good shipping rule would be: talk about your ship, or if you're going to talk about an opposing one, be constructive and listen to what they have to say. If it gets to hairy, just agree to disagree. I think if people come at it without feeling like they have to win or prove that their ship is better, it may be easier to discuss things most people don't want to discuss.
I would also love maybe a weekly (or bi-weekly) character discussion. The character comms are generally pretty dead or a little too shippy and mostly filled with fanwork, and there are so many great characters in this story to discuss or even just learn about without having to profess your love for them. I don't like Gin like a lot of the fangirls do, but I'll be damned if he isn't one interesting guy. (Same thing goes for Tousen after the Pendulum Arc.)
no subject
Date: 2008-07-22 10:31 pm (UTC)That's my personal stance on that sort of thing, too. As long as people are being polite, they can defend their moonbat theories till the cows come home, and people are free to debunk you with canon evidence. I did plan to make a shipper courtesy guideline in the profile.
I think if people come at it without feeling like they have to win or prove that their ship is better, it may be easier to discuss things most people don't want to discuss.
Yep.
I also like the idea of character discussion. For a show with as long a cast line-up as Bleach, this could work well, especially if (like me) you don't particularly feel like joining over 9000 comms to make a post when you have no intension of contributing anything else. Most of the characters/ship comms are best suited for finding fanfics/art for your favorite characters, but not so much discussion.
I haven't even thought of a name for the place. Any suggestions?
no subject
Date: 2008-07-23 01:55 am (UTC)So this is going to be great, because it'll prove that there doesn't have to be pairing biases to enjoy an awesome manga series. :D
no subject
Date: 2008-07-23 04:35 am (UTC)Agreed. I may have my pet pairings, but I can't talk about any one topic for too long without being bored out of my mind.
Like I mentioned to Bitter_tea, the best solution is just to take a neutral position on shipping, welcome everyone and toss out the idiots that either can't or don't get it.
no subject
Date: 2008-07-23 02:56 pm (UTC)senkaimon would be okay. It's not too confusing or hard to spell, and with it being the opening between the human world and the SS there could be some kind of symbolic nature to it.
Just as long it's not something like The Shinigami's Lounge...
no subject
Date: 2008-07-24 01:27 am (UTC)So is there anything else that you need help with or that you feel I should know about?
no subject
Date: 2008-07-24 08:33 am (UTC)As tomorrow's my day off from work, I'll set the comm up, list a few rules, and we can tweak the general guidelines before the Grand Opening.
:)
no subject
Date: 2008-07-24 04:43 pm (UTC)(I can't believe I haven't friended you yet with all this talking going on. I admit, I'm lazy...)
no subject
Date: 2008-07-25 12:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-23 09:43 am (UTC)I happened to had discussed the possibilities of establishing such a comm with bitter_tea on MSN, and was glad to be seeing some other people with similar ideas. I love to talk about Bleach in general and not just the shipping part, which mostly exasperates me in general forums because biasness always appears. This was what inevitable drew me out from general discussions because i'm tired of refuting. One of others posts seemed to be directing at something with hidden agenda. Even if it was the topic of Ishida's current whereabouts.
If you don't mind, i would like to befriend you, and lend you my support in the comm.
no subject
Date: 2008-07-24 08:47 am (UTC)I'm still rather new to the fandom, having only got into the show this past spring, but I've yet to set foot into actual discussion for this reason. I had an idea that shipper wank ran rampant after seeing rant after rant at Fanfi Rants on the subject of Orihime bashing (In fact, the numerous rants and Ichiruki trolls that came in whining about Orihime sucking was what got me watching to see what the big deal was), and after my experiences with Star Trek and shipping there, I seriously DO NOT WANT.
Personally, I have no problem refuting flat out wrong or incorrect staements...including those that are arguing the same idea I am, and I see a LOT of that over at the Fanfiction.net boards with fellow Ichiruki fans that insist that say such stupid things as "Ichigo can't live without Rukia!" Ya, that's why he didn't pitch a fit when she decided to stay in Soul Society after her near-execution, amirite? Because he's that dependent on her?
Plz.
Thanks for the friending, BTW. I'll be sure to add you to my F-list too. :)