preserving the LJ emergency network

[rm]

Can we talk about something?

I don't want to be all, "LJ is dying" but it's certainly slowing down/transmuting/something.

There's the splintering/relocating/mirroring to Dreamwidth and other services; the increased popularity of Twitter and FB amongst LJ people who used to say they didn't care for such; the fandom focus on Tumblr and A03; and people like me fleeing for their own domains.

Yet, one thing LJ has been remarkable for is the people helping people thing, because it engenders (and has engendered over time) relationships that make need and veracity somewhat easier to verify.

So how and how much we use LJ is changing. In the face of that, how do we preserve the "help solve a scary problem" factor in a way that's meaningful, decentralized, participatory, and based on networks of trust and expertise?

Comments

[grr-rob.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I kind of wondered a bit about plugging into the "help me, please, LJ!" network after being absent from any kind of active involvement.

Since I have been around for a bunch of years, even if I was never a very prolific writer, I felt a little easier about asking. Also, since I was asking for info/resources (or, you know, someone's private plane!) it didn't make me personally uncomfortable as if I had been asking for financial donations. (This is my own comfort level with what I judge to be okay for me to ask for relative to my participation in a community, and not slamming anyone else.)

I think the LJ change is partly due to the uptick of FB and Twitter, sure. (And I posted the same request on FB, and got replies from people I know from Face to Face and from LJ, long before FB, just as an info point.) The memes/the silly/the one liners go elsewhere, which is okay, but means we lose a lot of the chit-chat that makes other sorts of connections easier.

But I think the big move across the entire online world to make everything into a possibly money-maker or a brand or a *thing* that can be tied to commerce may have a big piece of this, too. What sort of piece, I'm not entirely sure, but when I have more personal bandwidth, I'll try to tease it out.

And, also, the folks who were early (to mid-20s ten years ago at the start of LJ's "golden age" are mid-30s, now. And those of us who were ten years older than those folks are, because math is like that, ten year older, now.) My online time has to be different now, as someone with a sixty hour work week than when I was in graduate school.

I'm there with the "please, may I have a good RSS solution?" being one of my online wishes. Google Reader is part of how I cobble stuff together, but it is not a good solution.