![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quillpunk(This post is almost 1k words, welp. But at least I had fun thinking out loud!)
So I made this throwaway post on my shiny new Pillowfort account:
"I wonder what part AO3 having native fic exchange and prompt meme functionality played in it becoming the fandom behemoth."
And the thought stuck with me. Like, to participate in a fic exchange or prompt meme on AO3 you *must* 1) have an AO3 account, 2) post your resulting fic on AO3 and 3) probably comment on the fic you get gifted [in return] while logged in on your account. You functionally can not do a fic exchange on AO3 without everyone involved having accounts on AO3 and actually using them.
I mean, you can certainly do a fic exchange or prompt meme without AO3. But there's a barrier of entry to running something like that, a difficulty that makes it Intimidating™ and Big™. A prompt meme, sure, that's relatively simple. But an exchange?
Now you're talking math. You're talking matching requests and offers. You're talking moderating people who might break the rules, who might write something with a recipients DNWs, who might be an asshole if they don't like the fic *they* get gifted. You're talking juggling pinch hits and deadlines and trying to make sure everyone has gotten all the info about their match.
So I made this throwaway post on my shiny new Pillowfort account:
"I wonder what part AO3 having native fic exchange and prompt meme functionality played in it becoming the fandom behemoth."
And the thought stuck with me. Like, to participate in a fic exchange or prompt meme on AO3 you *must* 1) have an AO3 account, 2) post your resulting fic on AO3 and 3) probably comment on the fic you get gifted [in return] while logged in on your account. You functionally can not do a fic exchange on AO3 without everyone involved having accounts on AO3 and actually using them.
I mean, you can certainly do a fic exchange or prompt meme without AO3. But there's a barrier of entry to running something like that, a difficulty that makes it Intimidating™ and Big™. A prompt meme, sure, that's relatively simple. But an exchange?
Now you're talking math. You're talking matching requests and offers. You're talking moderating people who might break the rules, who might write something with a recipients DNWs, who might be an asshole if they don't like the fic *they* get gifted. You're talking juggling pinch hits and deadlines and trying to make sure everyone has gotten all the info about their match.
AO3 having that fix exchange functionality lowers the barrier of entry. I mean I've never run an exchange, much less on AO3, but I imagine it must. After all, as I gather, it does the matching *for you*.
Instant exchange magic.
And congrats, now you've gotta be on AO3!
I've been told that some exchanges are thinking of running on SquidgeWorld in the future. This is really cool and I'm very interested to find out more about that, if anyone has links please drop them. But. But actually, this doesn't change the problem, it just spreads it around to more places.
The problem is the... alright I know there's a word for this, I've seen it somewhere but I can not think of it.
So. The problem is the hostage situation. If you like participating in exchanges, you like running exchanges, you like pinch hitting for exchanges etc. you can not do this outside AO3 (or whatever AO3 clone you're on). An exchange running on an AO3 software is effectively locking you into AO3; you *must* now post and read fic there. And once you start, why not keep going? You probably will. You might read some of the other fics in your exchange and oops the ball is rolling annnnnd... here you are. Hi.
When given the option between doing all the hard work of matching and re-matching and re-matching again, and just using AO3's software to do it, most people are going to choose AO3. I don't think there's anything strange about that; I imagine most people running an exchange do it for fun and the less hoops you've gotta jump through, the simpler it is. That's just fact.
The intimidation factor goes down, the time spent on it goes down, and just in general it's easier to get started. (Again, no personal experience. I'm speculating XD)
But now there's a new barrier. The barrier of leaving. The barrier of running an exchange without AO3. The barrier of trying to drag your usual participants into not only doing the exchange on another site, but correspondingly making accounts *there* and *using* them because the code will lock you in no matter what clone you're on. The barrier of trying to convince an exchange runner to do it somewhere else. The barrier of "I've done it this way for so long, do I even know how to do this without AO3?" The barrier of everyone is already on AO3 and if doing it somewhere else, anywhere else, would you even get participants? Would they even trust you on matching them?
I like what Ourchive is doing just in general because I really like the idea of more, smaller fandom archives and communities. But I think, actually, that Ourchive, at least in this part, might be trying to become a part of the problem? Because I know I've seen the devs say on the discord that exchanges is a thing they wanna do/something they're trying to figure out how it would work (I'm not sure which one they actually said, sorry) and like. Would that not just fracture things instead of *decentralize* things?
So on that note, does anyone know of software that could take AO3's place in exchange matching? That could do it fancy and automated and maybe have a pretty site? That doesn't need login (for signing up to the exchange, I'd imagine it'd need it for running one) or is ties to any particular account, ie it only does the technical aspects or running it, it's not the actual place the exchange is taking place? That could perhaps be self-hosted so it's not an all eggs in one basket situation? (A piece of software that you could download, and then you manually input (perhaps via an import feature) the information a signup-ee gives you somewhere and then it'd automatically match everyone for you... that sounds cool.)
Because I think that might be really helpful toward decentralizing fandom and breaking away from the dependance on AO3, actually.
Instant exchange magic.
And congrats, now you've gotta be on AO3!
I've been told that some exchanges are thinking of running on SquidgeWorld in the future. This is really cool and I'm very interested to find out more about that, if anyone has links please drop them. But. But actually, this doesn't change the problem, it just spreads it around to more places.
The problem is the... alright I know there's a word for this, I've seen it somewhere but I can not think of it.
So. The problem is the hostage situation. If you like participating in exchanges, you like running exchanges, you like pinch hitting for exchanges etc. you can not do this outside AO3 (or whatever AO3 clone you're on). An exchange running on an AO3 software is effectively locking you into AO3; you *must* now post and read fic there. And once you start, why not keep going? You probably will. You might read some of the other fics in your exchange and oops the ball is rolling annnnnd... here you are. Hi.
When given the option between doing all the hard work of matching and re-matching and re-matching again, and just using AO3's software to do it, most people are going to choose AO3. I don't think there's anything strange about that; I imagine most people running an exchange do it for fun and the less hoops you've gotta jump through, the simpler it is. That's just fact.
The intimidation factor goes down, the time spent on it goes down, and just in general it's easier to get started. (Again, no personal experience. I'm speculating XD)
But now there's a new barrier. The barrier of leaving. The barrier of running an exchange without AO3. The barrier of trying to drag your usual participants into not only doing the exchange on another site, but correspondingly making accounts *there* and *using* them because the code will lock you in no matter what clone you're on. The barrier of trying to convince an exchange runner to do it somewhere else. The barrier of "I've done it this way for so long, do I even know how to do this without AO3?" The barrier of everyone is already on AO3 and if doing it somewhere else, anywhere else, would you even get participants? Would they even trust you on matching them?
I like what Ourchive is doing just in general because I really like the idea of more, smaller fandom archives and communities. But I think, actually, that Ourchive, at least in this part, might be trying to become a part of the problem? Because I know I've seen the devs say on the discord that exchanges is a thing they wanna do/something they're trying to figure out how it would work (I'm not sure which one they actually said, sorry) and like. Would that not just fracture things instead of *decentralize* things?
So on that note, does anyone know of software that could take AO3's place in exchange matching? That could do it fancy and automated and maybe have a pretty site? That doesn't need login (for signing up to the exchange, I'd imagine it'd need it for running one) or is ties to any particular account, ie it only does the technical aspects or running it, it's not the actual place the exchange is taking place? That could perhaps be self-hosted so it's not an all eggs in one basket situation? (A piece of software that you could download, and then you manually input (perhaps via an import feature) the information a signup-ee gives you somewhere and then it'd automatically match everyone for you... that sounds cool.)
Because I think that might be really helpful toward decentralizing fandom and breaking away from the dependance on AO3, actually.