I wonder if that trend has any correlation with the growth of the rarer 'verses in the exchange?
Entirely off-the-cuff answer here, but I think so.
When you look at the way people write their sign-ups, they tend to nest 'ship within 'verse: for ACD I want these ships, for BBC I want these ships, for Elementary I want these other ships. Only a few ships strongly transcend that pattern -- obviously Holmes/Watson, but also Holmes/Moriarty and Gen (if you can call Gen a ship)... Watson/Mary sometimes looks like it's both an ACD and BBC ship, but there are enough people who see ACD-Mary and BBC-Mary as irreconcilable with each other that you definitely see people thinking of Watson/Morstan and John/Mary as distinct beasts, to be requested separately.
The thing is, if the ships nest inside the fandoms, and the number of participants for a particular fandom falls below a specific threshhold, its rare pairs will become unsustainable. Of the six rare pairings you just listed -- Mystrade, Sherlolly, Sherstrade, Holmescest, John/Mary, Sherlock/John/Lestrade -- at least three of those are BBC-specific pairings, and you can make a case that two more are mostly-BBC. When BBC started drawing a smaller share of Holmestice overall, it became much harder to sustain those rare ships.
You ask downthread about whether the mods can encourage the rarepairs the same way we encourage smaller fandoms and non-fic media types -- ugh, we try. We try not to describe the exchange as if it's an implicitly Holmes-and-Watson fest. I match on rare pairs whenever I can -- in many cases, I'm matching on rarepairs before I match on fandom. (The usual sequence is people who didn't offer/request fic, Holmes/Moriarty, gen-only, anyone else who looks like they may not have many matches in the pool, then one-off rare-pairs and rare-fandoms. After I've done what I can with those, as I get into bigger pools of ACD-centric or BBC-centric people, I match on rare pairs and rare media-types within those pools first, saving the Holmes/Watson matches for last.)
It's not a lot, but we try. If anyone has ideas beyond those, I'm happy to hear them.
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timeasmymeasure
Re: starfishstar's alarmingly large pile of guesses, pt. 7 (there wasn't even supposed to be a pt. 7
Date: 2020-06-21 12:18 am (UTC)Entirely off-the-cuff answer here, but I think so.
When you look at the way people write their sign-ups, they tend to nest 'ship within 'verse: for ACD I want these ships, for BBC I want these ships, for Elementary I want these other ships. Only a few ships strongly transcend that pattern -- obviously Holmes/Watson, but also Holmes/Moriarty and Gen (if you can call Gen a ship)... Watson/Mary sometimes looks like it's both an ACD and BBC ship, but there are enough people who see ACD-Mary and BBC-Mary as irreconcilable with each other that you definitely see people thinking of Watson/Morstan and John/Mary as distinct beasts, to be requested separately.
The thing is, if the ships nest inside the fandoms, and the number of participants for a particular fandom falls below a specific threshhold, its rare pairs will become unsustainable. Of the six rare pairings you just listed -- Mystrade, Sherlolly, Sherstrade, Holmescest, John/Mary, Sherlock/John/Lestrade -- at least three of those are BBC-specific pairings, and you can make a case that two more are mostly-BBC. When BBC started drawing a smaller share of Holmestice overall, it became much harder to sustain those rare ships.
You ask downthread about whether the mods can encourage the rarepairs the same way we encourage smaller fandoms and non-fic media types -- ugh, we try. We try not to describe the exchange as if it's an implicitly Holmes-and-Watson fest. I match on rare pairs whenever I can -- in many cases, I'm matching on rarepairs before I match on fandom. (The usual sequence is people who didn't offer/request fic, Holmes/Moriarty, gen-only, anyone else who looks like they may not have many matches in the pool, then one-off rare-pairs and rare-fandoms. After I've done what I can with those, as I get into bigger pools of ACD-centric or BBC-centric people, I match on rare pairs and rare media-types within those pools first, saving the Holmes/Watson matches for last.)
It's not a lot, but we try. If anyone has ideas beyond those, I'm happy to hear them.