Livejournal Versus Websites

[author_by_night]

(This public post mostly refers to Harry Potter fandom, but can apply to others. I just don't know how it works in other fandoms in terms of websites over LJ. But if it's like that in other fandoms, or just the opposite, I'd still love to know.)

When I first came into fandom, messageboards were huge. But now, I've noticed a decline. Messageboards (and websites overall), old and new and revamped, seem to get far less traffic.

My question is - what's the cause? Obviously there are many reasons. Without naming names, some boards over time became so big that it got confusing for the members. Then suddenly, many members left, and it eclined from there. There's also the fact that members who had time to run the sites and messageboards and/or be active in keeping things going there had less time.

But could Livejournal have an impact as well? I wonder if people aren't choosing Livejournal over messageboards and websites, and that's what I'm asking. I know with me, I do certainly find it's sometimes easier to post on Livejournal.  For one, LJ doesn't have the "newbie stage" - the newbie stage being the stage wherein new members are more or less ignored on the basis of being new. For another, I myself am a very elaborative person; at a board, half of what I'd want to say would probably be considered "tl;dr" ("too long, don't read"),  so I have to shorten it. But when I shorten things, I'm often too vague and make no sense.  On many occasions, discussions at messageboards have prompted Livejournal responses, because I'd rather not write a full page reply. ) However, on a website, I do know what I'm going to see and discuss; it's harder to have a firm idea of that with Livejournal, because even LJ communities change.

Thoughts?

Comments

[chocolatepot.livejournal.com]

I think LJ killed forums by being so much less hierarchial. Post counts and member statuses are very intimidating. And it just works better for networking and meeting people - clicking on the person's name takes you to their personal journal, which looks different from everyone else's, and gives you a sense of who they are. Friending and reading an flist is something you can't do on forums. It's MUCH easier to post on a post by someone you don't know than to jump into a discussion. LJ comments are made for getting multiple replies to one comment and being able to have several discussions at once with different comment threads - and you don't have to quote things to reply to comments, even when other people have replied before you.

Also, signatures are really annoying.

[author-by-night.livejournal.com]

I have to agree with LJ being less hierarchical. I do remember times at even the most open messageboards where being a newbie was very awkward.

As for signatures, I don't mind all of them, but I do have a certain aversion to the ones that make page loading very slow. I wish more admins would ban them.

[chocolatepot.livejournal.com]

What I don't like about signatures is that you see them over and over, and they can prejudice you against a person very easily. If I'm talking to someone about Snape and we have similar views, I can like them - and when I find out they think R/Hr is really stupid and boring, I don't care as much because I already liked them. But if they have a sig that proclaims how much they hate something I like, I probably won't bother. I like how on LJ you can't tell someone's opinions before they say them (in comments, I mean) unless they have a really telling icon.

[carmarthen.livejournal.com]

I think comment threading is HUGE because it makes conversations much easier to follow-- a lot of forums will have a page of "Yeah, me too!" or "[insert inside joke]" followed by every members sig line and at this point I just don't want to scroll by all the junk (thank you, LJ, for not encouraging sig lines). I still like email lists, but unthreaded forums really frustrate me these days (even a lot of the threaded ones are hard to navigate).

So anyway, what you said.

[starlady38.livejournal.com]

I agree on all points. Also, I may be just a snob (which people have accused me of, disclaimer), but I feel that because of the lack of comment threading and because of huge signatures and because of the "noob" status displays, it's actually harder to discuss things meaningfully at any length. Another way to say that is that I tend to get the impression that people on messageboards are idiots, and I think that it's actually the messageboard format contributing to that impression quite a lot.