Was there a coup? Am I just coup-less?

[crazydiamondsue]

I know a couple of you on my flist have started and/or are involved in these, so I have a question:

What's with all the new "friends only" fanfic communities? Are we morphing into the "Queer as Folk" fandom and no one told me? Is it because of "adult content"? 'Cause if so - I've posted quite a bit of unflocked "adult content" in my day. Is it adult-adult? And what exactly does "darker" mean? Does Xander eat a live chicken while Tara circles him slowly, burning incense; as Spike makes a questionable collage of pre-pubescent Elijah Wood manips?

I'm being flip - but seriously, what's with the Friends Only? (Please attribute the bemusedly bitter tone to the fact that I use communities to track down fics for the su_herald and if they're locked, I can't link them.)

So why are we suddenly becoming a fandom of the "down low?" Um, I think Joss knows we're writing smut. Seriously.

Comments

[crazydiamondsue.livejournal.com]

I also know I'm being a bit petty on refusing to join and unjoin freinds-only communities because it isn't like you get spammed with "are you sure you want to quit" emails from LJ like you do from Yahoo Groups. Heh - and yes, I had a similar thought. I felt as if I wasn't friending simply based on principle that I was required to friend.

I completely understand flocking fic on a private LJ, whether it's due to subject matter or just to keep the kids from lurking onto a bit of your Riley/Clem smut.

It's just that I've noticed a trend toward flocked communities recently. And yes, if it's a group of friends who are interested in sharing stories between them and not with the fic reading public at large, totally understandable. If it's subject matter (RPS, incest, extreme-AU's, character bashing, etc.) that typically draws flames, that's understandable as well.

But I'm afraid I don't understand the necessity of flocking, say, a Willow/Tara community. It's canon, it's closed canon, and the mod's rules are the mod's rules. People can lurk until such time as they wish to friend, whether it be to regularly read or participate in posting. But it's the idea of not being able to window shop the community, you know? That way if it's not your taste, you move on with none being the wiser.

And yes, it kind of screws things up from a newsletter viewpoint, because I'm assuming that fic that is flocked at the community would be flocked at the personal journal (because otherwise, what would be the point?) and possibly interesting tales are missing out on a wider readership. So I'm interested in the reasoning, because whether it's a simple case of "club mentality" or a worry about ratings, I'm seeing it more and more frequently.

[liz-marcs.livejournal.com]

Until I read the other comments, I never even considered that it might be closed circle of friends who want to keep it exclusive. I guess I'm camping so deap in the why bother to put it out there if you don't want it out there camp that I didn't even realize that someone might consider it a legitimate reason to FLock a community.

But, yeah, FLocking a community kind of prevents people from lurking and figuring out the flava and rules of the community before they decide to join. And as someone else mentioned, some of the FLocked communities may be the result of that fandom-wide kerfluffle that happened a few months ago over the use of NWS oversized graphics used outside of an lj-cut in fanfic communities. It could be a case that the open communities clamped down on the use all NWS images and people just started these new FLocked communites.

The other thing that concerns me about friends-only communities it that it can tightly control access. Okay, not always a bad thing, but not everyone is going to love you nor are you going to love everyone. In an open community, people (in theory) learn to play nice or at least not antagonize each other. A FLocked community can be exclusionary in that an individual wishing to join might get blocked from joining (or booted after joining) because they're not part of the "in crowd" at that comm. Lord knows, you can find plenty of stories about crap like this happening in other fandoms on fandom_wank.