A moment to breathe

[krisomniac]

As of when I woke up this morning, the fandom_counts count had reached more than 23,500.

If you ever thought you were alone or were treated as being on the fringe, well, just know it's a big fringe out there.

And it makes me glad that something which, in actuality only affected a few members of the greater community, brought the rest of you to stand together like this. (Even if it was a little crazy *g*)

That is all.

(oh, and on the off chance you haven't seen, there is finally an official response at http://news.livejournal.com )

Comments

[drvsilla.livejournal.com]

*echoes sentiment* INdeed.

:)

[krisomniac.livejournal.com]

:D And *phew* the madness seems to have passed.

[drvsilla.livejournal.com]

Yezzz. Thank goodness. :P

[vichan.livejournal.com]

Sorry about (1)going to sleep last night and (2)not actively doing anything this morning.

I'm going to try and sort through my comment/e-mail mess this evening - I simply don't have the time right now.

(Also looking for a few more trustworthy mods so we're not alone. ^_^)

[krisomniac.livejournal.com]

No worries. I was out last night at a coworker's farewell party, after which LJ was the last thing on me mind. :D

[slammerkinbabe.livejournal.com]

I like the idea of fandom_counts, and have joined.

I actually wanted to make a request of you, though. I was wondering if you would be willing to post in fandom_counts about a community I've just made. It's called darfur_counts, and my purpose is spelled out there. The gist of it is that I think it's amazing that so many people have come to stand together for free speech like this and have held LJ accountable so effectively. But those of us who are in a position to be doing so have a lot of safety and a lot of privileges in our lives that people in other countries couldn't dream of; the Darfur conflict is one particularly awful example of this. I think a lot of people go about their daily lives without giving a great deal of thought to stuff like Darfur because it's too painful to think about because it feels like we can't do anything. But with this overwhelming outpouring of energy and the sheer numbers of people who have been involved in protesting Strikethrough '07, I thought that if some of that could be channeled into something as simple as small individual donations to Darfur, well, it could add up.

I know that fandom_counts is not meant to be a posting community, but you've amassed such an extraordinary audience, and it's just the audience I was hoping to reach with this. I don't mean to be forward, but I do hope you'll consider it.

If you would post a link to darfur_counts in fandom_counts, maybe with a cross-post of the text from darfur_counts' userinfo, I'd be crazy-grateful. I'm going to post this same comment to vichan too, as you're comods.

Thanks for reading all this.

-Kylie, an incorrigible idealist

[krisomniac.livejournal.com]

Love you idealism and totally support the cause. it's great to see people being so active. I've been looking a lot at the tragedy in darfur, and it overwhelms and terrifies me. And good for you for trying to do something about it. :)

As you can imagine, I'm sure, there have been a ton of requests from people trying to reach this massive list for their very worthy causes. Basically, we've decided that the comm is a statistics generator-- just there to give people a number to quote when they want to size up "fandom"-- and though it was created because of the strikethough, there's no polital agenda or statements being made there whatsoever.

we're assuming that people do not watch the comm, either. They simply sign up there.

Thank you for joining! And i hate to disappoint. Seeing and saying no to all of the eager activists with awesome ideas out there has been by far the hardest part about bringing this thing together.

[slammerkinbabe.livejournal.com]

I understand, especially given that you guys have been getting a lot of similar requests. I don't suppose that, off the top of your head, you happen to know of any more appropriate fandom venue? My fandom has, you know, three people in it :) (WE ARE LITTLE BUT WE ARE FIERCE!), so I don't know of appropriate places to try to publicize this that would have a good-size fandom readership. At any rate, whether you know of anywhere else or not, thanks for responding.

[krisomniac.livejournal.com]

fandom_gives seems to have a similar agenda. You might want to start there.

hope that helps!

[deirdre-c.livejournal.com]

Oh dear. I imagine you're going to get all kinds of requests from people wanting to post to that big an audience. Good luck with it, darlin', and good job following through on your LJ frustration so positively. *hugs*

[krisomniac.livejournal.com]

hehee. it's totally vichan's baby.

:)

and yeah, it's not going to get posted to ever at all.

[erinptah]

Since it's over 31,000 now and still going, you stand a very real chance of hitting 50,000 soon, at which point the userinfo says the number of listed members will stop going up.

In that event, why not close off membership and create "fandom_counts2", to keep the body count accurate?

I'm a geek for numbers; I'd love an accurate count of fannish journals on LJ, and I'd hate for it to be limited to 50,000.

[krisomniac.livejournal.com]

That's a VERY good point. :)

There are communities in place for if/when this one reaches the 50,000 mark. The catch is that opening a new community allows the possibility for people to be counted doubly, so as the new membership rates are slowing, we're going to put off opening a second one until absolutely necessary.

Thanks so much for commenting! And I totally agree about wanting an accurate count