On reccing
24 Oct 2019 22:08![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
extrapenguinWords aren't coming for the WIP, so some thoughts on reccing. Potentially unpopular? IDK.
Namely: the purpose of reccing is to give people links to stuff they might have otherwise missed.
So a rec list that's the first page of the fandom tag when sorted by kudos is a failure of a rec list. Everyone knows those fics, everyone has read them or made an informed decision about not reading them, yes even the newbies. The purpose of a rec list should be to tell people about good fic that, whether due to the author's NNFdom or sparse tagging, might not rise to the general fandom's attention.
(Note that I'm talking about unsolicited recs – the "I have made a reclist and am informing the void about it" type thing. Solicited and targeted recs à la "here's every Lin Jing h/c fic like you asked for" or "here is a selection of 5 fics that you, my BFF, will probably like" have their own lines.)
Namely: the purpose of reccing is to give people links to stuff they might have otherwise missed.
So a rec list that's the first page of the fandom tag when sorted by kudos is a failure of a rec list. Everyone knows those fics, everyone has read them or made an informed decision about not reading them, yes even the newbies. The purpose of a rec list should be to tell people about good fic that, whether due to the author's NNFdom or sparse tagging, might not rise to the general fandom's attention.
(Note that I'm talking about unsolicited recs – the "I have made a reclist and am informing the void about it" type thing. Solicited and targeted recs à la "here's every Lin Jing h/c fic like you asked for" or "here is a selection of 5 fics that you, my BFF, will probably like" have their own lines.)