hetalia | Where's the community?

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community: discussion

Where's the community?

It's sad seeing none's into that fandom anymore.

Life you see the new Hetaween posts and there are like... 0 comments. Looks like Hima-papa's losing all his fans during the last 2 years. It's true he doesn't upload regularly anymore but it's more like... everyone's gone suddenly.

I'm afraid he doesn't attend to peoples interests anymore (well he always did as he pleased) but now he brings all that historical persons into the comics and none bats an eye anymore.

I'm quite upset about it. There are no discussions in here anymore... as well as the Hetalia Blog Community ...

bamboothicket2

Hope to see you guys there...!

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Hi you! I just wanted to take a moment to thank you so much for your continued hard work. You and the rest of the scanlation team do a lot for this fandom and ya'll don't ever seem to get enough appreciation or gratitude and it's a damn shame because you guys really pour so much effort and time into what you do.

I just wanted to let you know a few important things about the State of the Fandom regarding journal based sites.

For the most part, activity has really died down on LJ in general as the site became hostile and inhabitable for many users, so many big fandom blogs have decided to abandon it in favor for DreamWidth. For this reason, I don't know if it would be worthwhile for you guys to continue updating LJ as I don't think many people are checking it anymore.

It probably would be a lot more beneficial for the health of this community if you guys took the time to move it to DW where a majority of Rpers and their muns now reside. Dreamwidth has a great importing feature that will allow you to transfer every post made here over there. I know it's a pain in the butt, but I think it's worth considering.

I also just want to take this moment to remind anyone reading this that the Aphanon_meme (http://aphanon-meme.dreamwidth.org/) over at DW is still a rather active community. It has a reputation of being a "hate site", but it really isn't and hasn't been in five years. Instead, we function more as an informal dressing room/discussion board where anonymity while discussing is key, but rping is more than welcome. We are always looking for more additions to our cast, and if you look at our current page, you can see how fairly active we are for a small community. (http://aphanon-meme.dreamwidth.org/93057.html?page=38#comments)

Updates are also posted regularly and it's a great platform to keep track of the fandom while partaking in headcanon discussions/historical or political talks, or just being silly. It's a pretty fun, friendly place to make a few new friends as we also have a very active twitter community, do things like stream movies and celebrate the holidays with special events.

That being said, in all it's tl;dr rambling glory, we could use a bit of a new blood and fresh activity, and it'd be really appreciated if you could add the meme to your pinned post for all to know it exists! Thank you again in advance!

Edited 2014-11-08 07:34 (UTC)

I have an account on DW, but I haven't been on it in forever. orz If we moved things over there, we'd still be leaving some people behind over here. There's just no singular place to make everyone happy. ;w;

What do you mean about LJ being "hostile and inhabitable"? I thought most of it was just moving to other social platforms, so I feel like I might be missing a story here.

That's true, but hey, if a ship is sinking and there's another boat safe and ready to go, most people take the leap! In the end, most communities have made the leap and have gone on just fine!

I left LJ in 2012 and that's when things where going up in a ball of fire. I don't really know deets, but the main issue for me was the errors and cyber warfare that seems neverending during Russian political seasons. Because LJ is now primarily own by a Russian company, it's now really vulnerable to political internet warefare. For a while I recall we had a really bad bout of DDOS attacks that made the constant loading errors even worse and gave malware warnings. It's also bombarded with spam bots that carry viruses and leave comments everywhere within your journals. The waters seem to have calmed a bit, but it's definitely not an ideal site and it's gotten a bad reputation among fandom as an unsafe and vulnerable site.

I have to disdagree with your last sentence.
There may well be people who consider LJ unsafe, but I sincerely doubt they're in the majority, as this is the first time I hear about it.

You can disagree but I'm still pretty sure it's the majority as huge, huge, huge communities, like all the big communities aside from maybe, ONTD, which is sponsored by LJ, have jump ships. FF_A moved, RPanons moved, Wankgate moved. I mean look at all the RP games like R29, Entranceway, Dear_mun, Holly Heights. The list goes on and on. I don't think it's unsafe atm, but it was in the past and now DW is well favored over LJ and that won't ever change. LJ is on its way to defunct.

That community you linked to might be an alternative if we really do lose LJ some day. However, just from one look, I see several problem with it.

For one, I can't find your rules. Do you have some? Can you have them on Dreamwidth? What are your rules?

There is too much going on over there. I mean yeah, we want more interaction, but we'd want to be able to actually read it, too. If a thread moves at the pace I see over there, that can quickly get really hard to follow, especially when you have to miss several hours working or sleeping. Also, I like to get to know people I'm interacting with, but with such a massive amount of comments, that's impossible.

And from Dreamwidth itself, I've read that you can't reduce the size of images you post on it. Is this true? If so, that too can be a big problem, especially for people with slow connections.

Butting in-

The anonmeme has a rules post. It's linked at the top of the page. Tl;dr: Anon or logged-in is fine, spam that stretches the page/screws up page formatting will be deleted.

Most of the stuff going on over there is pretty frivolous; the "top level comments only" setting is best when looking for updates and that kind of thing.

Re: Dreamwidth and image sizes, that is incorrect. Anyone can edit their posts when logged-in, so they can change the images as necessary. The issue that people have had with Dreamwidth and images is that anonymous users can't post them, unlike on LJ where there used to be a work-around for that.

Thanks for explaining.
It looks like it's not the place for me, but I wish you guys all the best.

hey, obviously not who you replied to, but a fellow anonmemer! i can answer your questions:

- for one, we wouldn't intend for our comm to be a replacement for the main community. it's just not that kind of community and we wouldn't be changing our format or anything (in fact, there would be extreme resistance, i'm sure). BUT, we welcome people who like our format to come and hang out, that's all.

- as for our rules, we do have them here http://aphanon-meme.dreamwidth.org/4726.html which if you didn't see, they're linked from the main body of every post. basically, we don't allow excessive image spamming/page stretching, very disturbing images (mostly real life violent/gory content) and autoplay, 'officially'. our rules are very limited and we're more self-policing- the comm used to be quite intense but it's really calmed down now. even so, again, it's not an appropriate replacement for any other comm and we don't intend it to be!

- you can indeed have rules on dreamwidth if you make your own community, not sure why you wouldn't be able to!

- as for our pace, i think you're confusing threads with posts. we use a single post for a long, long time, until the comments max out at 10000. so it actually moves very slowly (it used to be super fast, not anymore). a thread is a single comment with other comments nested under it. the post itself doesn't have any content, we just use the comments like a discussion board. nowadays, you can go to bed and come back to the same page having hardly moved.

- we're also a fairly small community, such that you will certainly be able to identify those of us who post logged in easily (we also hang out on twitter). the fact is though that many people post anonymously and so it's unlikely you'll get to know them. we encourage an atmosphere where everyone can chat, anonymously or not, without necessarily knowing each other well.

- dreamwidth allows images to be resized in comments and posts just fine, using html, but it doesn't allow anonymous image posting (which was annoying for us). that's just my experience, though, i'm no expert!

i hope that answered your questions! i hopped in to answer because i wanted to clarify for anyone else wondering about us!

Edited 2014-11-08 16:13 (UTC)

Thank you for your answer.
I came to the comclusion that it's not the place for me, but I hope you can find some new members as well.

no problem! i can understand that if you're looking for something close to the current main community!

"It probably would be a lot more beneficial for the health of this community if you guys took the time to move it to DW"
Isn't there already a Hetalia comm on Dreamwidth? I don't know how we'd move a community, especially since there's already one on DW. I mean.. it's the same thing.... Sorry. I'm just confused about that part. (Not about moving posts, but the point of it).

I have a DW account but I use it even less than my LJ one.

I think the problem with that one is that it's not ~*~* official~*~*~ and isn't well modded at all and I don't think people realize that it's even there. I totally forgot about it existing myself. But that's totally a valid point!! People who use DW can just post to the DW community.

I'm not 100% sure if communities import the same as journals. So that's a big consideration. However, I still don't see this community reviving on LJ at all, but hey I could be totally wrong! Either way, it was just a suggestion. When all other communities voted for moving, my vote was always for the move just because I prefer DW's functionality and I trust the site more.

I personally think it's the right move and I think it's just the migratory trend. This community has staggered on steadily with a few loyal stragglers, but I think that's just that, y'know? It'll always just be loyal stragglers and very few new faces. Like I said to Pink_Cass, it's just where everyone is at this point. That's the only reason I think it'll be beneficial.

Communities will import the same as journals (http://www.dreamwidth.org/support/faqbrowse?faqid=230), FF_A did this. So that at least shouldn't be a concern!

Ohhh, that's a relief to know! Thank you so much for telling us!

After having a bad experience with someone from the old LJ anonmeme (who stalked my tumblr and threatened me), I have absolutely zero desire to join another one. I'm familiar enough with how anonmemes and gossip comms work to know they are something I never want to involve myself in again.

I'd much rather see attempts being made to revitalize the main comm.

Dunno bout any of that but either way! Never said the whole main comm should move to the anonmeme, bro. Just advertising and asking to be mentioned!

You do sound pretty aggressive for someone who just wants to advertise, you know. Ever heard that proverb about catching flies?
I'm a blunt person myself (can you tell? ;)), so I'm assuming your tone is unintentional, but you should be aware of how you come across. Two comms can peacefully exist in different places, and can each work on their own improvement and survival without dragging members out of one to the other.

Okay, last reply because honestly, I think there's real misunderstanding and some confused reading comprehension going on between you and me. I meant what I said 100%, like I said it, and I wasn't being passive aggressive or anything. It's just that!! I have literally noooo intention in MERGING the main comm with the anon_meme and never even said that once ever at alll. Please reread what I wrote because the only thing I'm suggesting is for the main comm to move to DW. That's literally it. The meme thrown in is just for anyone who is interested. And if you're not, then that's cool!!

In the end, they're two different communities, they cannot be one. I was only reminding the fandom at large that it still exists. Secondly, I was talking only to the mod at first, and only went into the LJ vs DW as an option to consider. In the end, though, I truly don't care at all what the main comm does or does not do. All I'm saying is that LJ is a graveyard, and most people don't regularly visit the dead. I threw in my two cents, asked to be considered, and that's that. No need to be picking a fight with me over something I am not even suggesting when I am not even addressing you at all!! That being said, good bye and have a nice life!!

Other than the merging thing, I understood what you said (unless I am still misunderstanding, in which case rephrasing it might be a better help than repeating it). And what I said in reaction to it is that your tone is unneccessarily aggressive. Not passive aggressive, just plain ol' aggressive. In the same way that a missionary ringing you out of your bed to talk about Jesus is aggressive. Not in content or intention, but in execution.

And as for the content:
As you can see in this very thread here, there are enough people who still like Livejournal and want to stay. This entire discussion is about reviving this comm, this Livejournal comm. So I don't know where you get the impression that nobody cares about this place anymore. If this is a graveyard, then what are we? Ghosts? Yes, it's been abandoned for some time, but we're working to rebuild the community. If you took it away from Livejournal (and as a result, the Livejournal users), it would also have to be rebuild from scratch, just at a different place.

(And as an offtopic remark: Most people don't revisit the dead? What do you think graveyards are for? Why do you think graves are marked for identification?)

"It has a reputation of being a "hate site", but it really isn't and hasn't been in five years." (http://aphanon-meme.dreamwidth.org/93057.html?thread=918554241#cmt918554241)

Mmkay.

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