Hey, you crazy cats. Here's a short missive from modland. A revised and expanded FAQ page is still to come! This new one has numbered jump links and everything. Are you excited? I know I am.

Why do you sometimes LJ-cut the "specific fandom" section?

Metafandom is published on the net, which is an international community. We try to cut discussions that might be spoilery, so fen that are behind on a show can still read the updates. Not being robots directly wired to epguides.com, we can't know exactly what is spoilery for shows we may not even watch, so we sometimes cut the whole thing to be safe. It's for your own protection, kids!

Why did you refuse my "specific fandom" link?

The specific fandom section is confusing, it seems. So let’s lay it out.

1. Most fandoms have a newsletter anyway, so we don't look to cover all those essays about Snape's hair or the significance of polar bears, fine as they are.


2. We do look to cover stuff that might be of interest to those outside the specific fandom, who might not subscribe to said newsletters.


3. We group this stuff in the specific fandom section, to cut down on spoilers and to generally indicate the focus.

So an example might be a casual conversation about Buffy and all her various boyfriends in the show. It contains a long dissection of major plot points because all the participants are long time Buffy fen and they have Seen It. The comments talk about why Buffy shagged who she shagged and what that means for her as a person. I probably wouldn't link that, but I might drop a link to the su_herald so they could.

Now take the same conversation, but this time the comments investigate why the writers made those decisions, why the fans reacted they way they did, and what that means for media fandom as a whole. I'd probably link that, in the specific fandom section to avoid spoilers.

This policy is obviously open to personal interpretation. If yours differs to the compilers' then feel free to email me. However, the one unchangeable policy of metafandom, from day one, has always been that compilers are free to decide what goes in their post and interpret any policy as they see fit, so I'm more offering a shoulder to cry on than any concrete help. Please try to remember that compilers are relatively normal human beings and cannot be all things to all people. Have a nice day. :)

( revised FAQs )