Come on, reccers, *please*!
Okay, so, this is a rant I've been sitting on for a while, but ...
If you rec at
stargateficrec and suddenly realize that you've waited until the last minute to rec, could you do your flist a favor and at least *try* to spread out your recs a little bit?
I mean, today ... it's the 28th. That means that even if you woke up this morning going, "Oh, shit, I haven't posted any recs yet!" you could post one rec today, one tomorrow and so forth 'til the 31st. And every person watching
stargateficrec doesn't have to wade through an impenetrable mass of recs for one character or pairing to get to the rest of their flist.
That's kinda what happened to me this week -- I realized that I'd gotten nearly to the end of the month without finishing out my John & Rodney recs, so I've been SPREADING THEM OUT. I still have one to go. I'll probably post it this evening or tomorrow depending on how clogged with recs the site is. Let's face it -- if you post your recs at the same time everyone else is posting their recs, yours gets lost anyhow. Even in the end-of-month rush, I try to wait for lulls in the action to toss one of my recs in.
And if right now is the only time you'll have all week to hunt for and write up recs -- then write them all up now, and post them over the next four days. That's how I generally do mine, actually, at least when I'm organized enough to manage it: I write them up all at once, or in small batches whenever I have time, and then copy and paste them into a browser window at intervals. My Jeannie recs this month ... I wrote them all up at the end of September (I had some time, and felt like reading some Jeannie fic) and then every few days, I'd open up an LJ window and copy-paste a rec into it.
I'm not really trying to pick on anyone specific, because a lot of people do it -- hey, I waited 'til the last minute this month, so I'm part of the problem too. But the end-of-month clog at ficrec is what makes people take it off their watch lists. I know I'm not the only one who has that problem. And it's harder on the taggers and mods, and it makes it less likely that people are going to notice or read that rec for that awesome fic you've been waiting for months to share with people.
Edited to add: I also don't want anyone to feel bad about reccing, of course. It's an awesome resource for fandom, and how I find many new stories! It's just ... that last-minute end-of-month glut of recs is really a pain, and it makes the comm less useful for everybody.
If you rec at
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
I mean, today ... it's the 28th. That means that even if you woke up this morning going, "Oh, shit, I haven't posted any recs yet!" you could post one rec today, one tomorrow and so forth 'til the 31st. And every person watching
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
That's kinda what happened to me this week -- I realized that I'd gotten nearly to the end of the month without finishing out my John & Rodney recs, so I've been SPREADING THEM OUT. I still have one to go. I'll probably post it this evening or tomorrow depending on how clogged with recs the site is. Let's face it -- if you post your recs at the same time everyone else is posting their recs, yours gets lost anyhow. Even in the end-of-month rush, I try to wait for lulls in the action to toss one of my recs in.
And if right now is the only time you'll have all week to hunt for and write up recs -- then write them all up now, and post them over the next four days. That's how I generally do mine, actually, at least when I'm organized enough to manage it: I write them up all at once, or in small batches whenever I have time, and then copy and paste them into a browser window at intervals. My Jeannie recs this month ... I wrote them all up at the end of September (I had some time, and felt like reading some Jeannie fic) and then every few days, I'd open up an LJ window and copy-paste a rec into it.
I'm not really trying to pick on anyone specific, because a lot of people do it -- hey, I waited 'til the last minute this month, so I'm part of the problem too. But the end-of-month clog at ficrec is what makes people take it off their watch lists. I know I'm not the only one who has that problem. And it's harder on the taggers and mods, and it makes it less likely that people are going to notice or read that rec for that awesome fic you've been waiting for months to share with people.
Edited to add: I also don't want anyone to feel bad about reccing, of course. It's an awesome resource for fandom, and how I find many new stories! It's just ... that last-minute end-of-month glut of recs is really a pain, and it makes the comm less useful for everybody.
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It's like when people on FF.net post a long list of their one-shots all at the same time, pushing all other stories to the bottom or the next page. I drives me crazy having to scroll through it to find the other stories (because some of those lists would go on for pages). And if you don't have a lot of time to search for fic, then those stories pushed to the end are pretty much lost.
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Still, I agree with the general concept of the rant. *g*
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And I realise I'm guilty of not giving enough info on my own recs. I usually tend to talk more about a fic when there are problems. But still, I definitely have to disagree with that one.
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Shockingly, though, fandom is not entirely composed of me. *g*
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I really wish more people on the SGA Big Bang comm would use a rec for their preview. I'm finding the authors have no idea how to promote their own work (at least the ones who have posted so far). (Tip #1: If your story is novel-length, you need to write more than one vague line for your summary.) A long rec that really went into what makes the story interesting and different would be immensely helpful.
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With my fics, I often tend to take a line or two from the story as the summary, but I try to choose something that gives a good idea of the subject matter. (I don't think I always succeed.) Some people pick what they think is the best line, which again, may give me an idea of the writing style, but is not really telling me what the story is about.
(But then so many people in fandom don't use summaries as a way to choose their reading material anyway, and instead read based on pairing or author or kink or something else that is totally irrelevant to me. :p)
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I guess you really can't anticipate what's going to appeal to the audience. Like an audience is a monolithic entity with only one opinion on anything. What's a fascinating teaser to one person is annoyingly vague to another and irritatingly trite to someone else.
Of the Big Bang previews so far, I've found most of them pretty helpful (in either deciding whether to read the story or whether it won't be my thing) and a couple that are too vague to be useful at all. I like creative previews as much as the next person but there needs to be actual information in it ...!
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It's a bit like graphic novel covers, I guess -- I generally dislike covers that are done in a different art style than the interior art, because I want the cover to give me an idea of what to expect from the insides! I tend to be very annoyed when I open up a book on the basis of beautiful cover art and find something totally different. But my inner artist really appreciates some of the pretty covers even while being annoyed that the interior art doesn't match. And obviously for some readers, the pretty covers must work just fine.
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and it makes it less likely that people are going to notice or read that rec for that awesome fic you've been waiting for months to share with people.
Exactly!
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I think if I had a backlog to rec and volunteered, I'd try to do one the same day each week, which I'm guessing is the theory behind four per month anyway.
I'm personally accustomed to skimming down my flist because it's also my RSS reader (when the feeds aren't down, again), so the clumps don't especially bother me; I can just ignore a chunk of Sheppard/Weir recs, for example, instead of being excited that I have a new distraction from work on my flist and then realizing I don't care about it. That's almost definitely just me, though. Heh. And I throw a new tab from anything I plan to look into, so I don't tend to miss recs that interest me.
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I tend to dislike high-traffic comms and feeds in general, because they make it more difficult to wade through to my actual friends' posts (which are what I'm more interested in). So maybe that's a personal thing. I've never been able to figure out how people can stand having high-traffic comms on their reading list; I miss things that way.
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And the couple of times I rec'd I always tried to post once a week, but I thought that was a requirement ;). Maybe the mods should change the wording to 'once a week' instead of 'four times a month'. Most people simply follow the comm's guide lines.
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I just click on the tag for that category and skip back a couple of pages. Unless it's a really popular category, skip=80 or 100 gets you a couple years back in time. If the fic doesn't come up I go ahead and rec; I figure that if it's been rec'd earlier than that, it can't hurt to rec it again. :)
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Go the the stargateficrec community and click on "memories" in the top community menu. There you have each reccing category listed as a "memory" category, and if you click on the category you're reccing for you'll see links to every rec made in that category. Then use your browser's search function (some variation of: edit -> find) to search for the title of the fic you're looking for. It's pretty easy and quick once you figure it out, but not immediately obvious. And the tags are hit and miss for checking categories.