[FFML] A thought on the future of the FFML

[The Wanderer]

On 06/24/2013 05:31 PM, Mythril Moth wrote:

> To everyone reading, I ask for a moment of honesty here. You don't
> necessarily need to reply on-list, just answer this question in your
> own mind: How often do you even check your e-mail anymore, compared
> to how much time you spend on social media, web forums, and the like?

I check my E-mail regularly, indeed near-constantly.

I don't use social media (as I understand the term) at all, though I'm
considering getting into Twitter once I don't have quite so many
projects on my plate.

The only Web forums I follow are the Drunkard's Walk Forum and the
comments sections of a few specific people's blogs, and I don't follow
any of those nearly so often as I used to.


Things I like about an E-mail-based approach, not necessarily in any
particular order:

* You don't have to go out looking for new posts; they just come to you,
   straight through your mailbox. With any Web forum, you have to go
   check the Website, and if you want to reply - or if you've configured
   e.g. custom display settings - you have to log in. (Or set up some
   workaround, possibly involving notification E-mails or an RSS feed,
   which have their own downsides.)

* You don't have to create an account to read and/or post; you just have
   to subscribe using your existing E-mail address.

* You can filter it yourself (either automatically, via e.g. spam
   filters and incoming-message rules, or manually by moving and/or
   deleting messages), rather than being limited to what the forum admins
   decide to do.

* You're guaranteed to have an archive of what gets posted, for as far
   back as you care to not delete it (within the limits of available
   storage capacity), not subject to the whims, control, or system
   failures of anyone else.

* You have access to existing posts (from the local archive) even when
   you don't have Internet access - e.g. when the network is down, or (on
   a laptop) when out of wireless range. (If nothing else, it's nice for
   having reading material during such periods.)

* It's easy to save out a copy of a given post - for a separate archive,
   for reading in a different viewer, for editing to fix spelling or
   other errors to make it easier to read, et cetera - without getting
   anything undesired along with it, and without losing formatting et
   al.. (In the editing case, I've used diffs against the edited form as
   the basis of proofreading commentary in the past.)

* It's easy to contact an author or other poster directly, via E-mail
   rather than via some site-specific messaging system.

* Assuming people are using vaguely compliant software to post, you can
   get properly nested message threading just by configuring your mail
   client for it, rather than being limited to the "flat" or "single
   conversation" views used in the large majority of Web forums nowadays.

* Moving between messages, or to/from reading a message and replying to
   one, happens at the speed of your local system; you don't have to wait
   for a page on a Website to load, and it's much easier to maintain
   multiple windows for different messages and/or replies.

* The quoting styles, or at least what constitutes good practices in
   quoting, match my preferences. (Good practices in quoting on a Web
   forum can be very different from good practices in quoting for E-mail
   or e.g. Usenet, and all else being equal, I happen to prefer the
   latter form. I've done minor essays on this topic in the past, and can
   probably reproduce some if necessary.)

* The content is plain text, without fancy HTML-based bells and
   whistles. Some people (including you, I know) disagree, but I find
   "plain-text style" - with, at most, no more formatting than basic
   italics and/or boldface - to be preferable; while it's certainly not a
   requirement to use more than that, HTML and even most forum markup
   makes it possible, which means people will be tempted to do it. This
   also helps the "without losing formatting" part of the "easy to save a
   separate copy" point above.


There may be others, but that's all that springs to mind for now. I've
never run across a Web-based or hybrid approach that could match E-mail
for even a majority, much less all, of those elements.

While I'd prefer to retain the E-mail-based FFML (in fact I was
considering trying to revive and host it myself, before the chez-vrolet
revival, though I don't think I'd have done as good a job as what has
been done), the more of those elements can be satisfied by a proposed
alternate solution, the more likely I am to actually use it.

> Would you be more likely to read and reply to fanfics if you could
> easily browse them while you're taking a break at work, waiting in a
> doctor's office or such, or on the go?

Probably not. The limiting factor in my case is what I might refer to as
"project capacity"; reading a fic with intent to provide commentary -
or, at least, to do it well, especially with a chapter of a size worth
paying attention to - takes a certain type of mental resources, and I've
got (what feels like) far too many projects both active and on my
back-burners already to easily be able to enjoy devoting those resources
to another one, even a short-term one like that.

My back-burner projects are slowly clearing away, so that may change in
the foreseeably near future, but as far as I'm aware that's the major
reason I haven't been providing more commentary than I have. I do enjoy
detailed C&C, but I haven't been able to do it much in the past several
years.

-- 
    The Wanderer

Warning: Simply because I argue an issue does not mean I agree with any
side of it.

Every time you let somebody set a limit they start moving it.
   - LiveJournal user antonia_tiger