Interesting question! Fannish spaces are so much more than LJ/DW.
1) What fandom was it? There are two main ones for me outside LJ/DW--Ace Lightning, Baldur's Gate.
2) What was the medium? Both are forums.
3) When was this? Both forums have existed since ~2004 and ~2002 respectively.
4) Are you still active in that fandom? Yes.
5) Why did you participate there, and not at a journaling site? For the first fandom, I know that the fans who set it up didn't know about Livejournal, or didn't feel it suited their needs. For the second fandom, I found the forum there an interesting place more active than Livejournal.
6) Are you more active in fandom on journaling sites or at other places? Probably at other places; I like posting fic on the Pit of Voles/forums.
7) How did the different mode of interaction affect your fandom participation? A lot of Livejournal fandom seems to me to be media-based--live action television shows with large slash fandoms. Maybe that's just because I subscribe to metafandom, but the fandoms that have been my favourite so far have happened to end up with infrastructure outside Livejournal.
8) Does there seem to you to be a difference in fen between the other medium and journaling sites? What are the differences? Why do you think those differences exist? Is it the nature of that fandom, or do you think it has anything to do with where that fandom is taking place? I think forums can become more insular than journaling sites. They're a single, centralized location, with a requirement to register to sign up; I think the culture on a forum tends to grow more homogeneous than fandom on journaling sites, because the latter is spread across communities and personal journals. Journal communities also tend to gain their own cultures and ways, though.
9) What were the fen in the other medium's thoughts on yaoi? (No, seriously. What was the general sentiment towards slash?) There were slash fans in the Ace Lightning forum from its early days, and I don't remember anyone complaining about yaoi. When I look back through the Baldur's Gate forum's older archives, though, I've come across fairly intense debates involving the classic outmoded lines like 'you make them gay!' or 'so-and-so's-one-girlfriend-makes-him-canonically-straight!'.
10) Was it easier or harder to get into a fandom through a medium other than a journaling site? In a journaling site, it's simple to post a personal entry on one's love for a fandom or post a fanfic, but if you want to engage further in the fandom you still have to go through the process of joining a community. Likewise, in a forum you typically have to register to start participating. I think the step of introducing oneself to a forum by posting an introduction/first fanfic is harder than posting some fannish love in one's own LJ, but a first post to a LJ community can similarly be difficult (depending on the community in question and one's general feelings about jumping into a new fandom and meeting new people).
11) Which medium do you prefer? I hate the way both forums and journaling sites manage archiving. I love reading fanfic, and I love being able to find fanfic, and in both cases it's more poorly organized than fanfic archives like the Pit of Voles and AO3. A forum poster of a serial story doesn't link to the previous versions; a journaling poster forgets to tag one chapter--searching forums is easier than searching journals, but in both it can be inconvenient. It torments me when I think I've missed out on something, and I like to read fic in places I can be sure of finding all the fic there is to find.
Here from metafandom
1) What fandom was it? There are two main ones for me outside LJ/DW--Ace Lightning, Baldur's Gate.
2) What was the medium? Both are forums.
3) When was this? Both forums have existed since ~2004 and ~2002 respectively.
4) Are you still active in that fandom? Yes.
5) Why did you participate there, and not at a journaling site? For the first fandom, I know that the fans who set it up didn't know about Livejournal, or didn't feel it suited their needs. For the second fandom, I found the forum there an interesting place more active than Livejournal.
6) Are you more active in fandom on journaling sites or at other places? Probably at other places; I like posting fic on the Pit of Voles/forums.
7) How did the different mode of interaction affect your fandom participation? A lot of Livejournal fandom seems to me to be media-based--live action television shows with large slash fandoms. Maybe that's just because I subscribe to metafandom, but the fandoms that have been my favourite so far have happened to end up with infrastructure outside Livejournal.
8) Does there seem to you to be a difference in fen between the other medium and journaling sites? What are the differences? Why do you think those differences exist? Is it the nature of that fandom, or do you think it has anything to do with where that fandom is taking place? I think forums can become more insular than journaling sites. They're a single, centralized location, with a requirement to register to sign up; I think the culture on a forum tends to grow more homogeneous than fandom on journaling sites, because the latter is spread across communities and personal journals. Journal communities also tend to gain their own cultures and ways, though.
9) What were the fen in the other medium's thoughts on yaoi? (No, seriously. What was the general sentiment towards slash?) There were slash fans in the Ace Lightning forum from its early days, and I don't remember anyone complaining about yaoi. When I look back through the Baldur's Gate forum's older archives, though, I've come across fairly intense debates involving the classic outmoded lines like 'you make them gay!' or 'so-and-so's-one-girlfriend-makes-him-canonically-straight!'.
10) Was it easier or harder to get into a fandom through a medium other than a journaling site? In a journaling site, it's simple to post a personal entry on one's love for a fandom or post a fanfic, but if you want to engage further in the fandom you still have to go through the process of joining a community. Likewise, in a forum you typically have to register to start participating. I think the step of introducing oneself to a forum by posting an introduction/first fanfic is harder than posting some fannish love in one's own LJ, but a first post to a LJ community can similarly be difficult (depending on the community in question and one's general feelings about jumping into a new fandom and meeting new people).
11) Which medium do you prefer? I hate the way both forums and journaling sites manage archiving. I love reading fanfic, and I love being able to find fanfic, and in both cases it's more poorly organized than fanfic archives like the Pit of Voles and AO3. A forum poster of a serial story doesn't link to the previous versions; a journaling poster forgets to tag one chapter--searching forums is easier than searching journals, but in both it can be inconvenient. It torments me when I think I've missed out on something, and I like to read fic in places I can be sure of finding all the fic there is to find.