Well, I'm kind of late to the comment party here, and I don't have time for deep thoughts anyway, but mostly what I wanted to say was that I think this should be required reading before attending any panels at Escapade or ConneXions or whatever other cons have all the panel discussions bog down in repetitive discussions about LiveJournal: How it Works and What It Means For Fandom. Not that I think your points here are beyond debate, but they're true enough, and if we could all just start with these eight givens, we might have some chance of moving the discussion forward. Or possibly even talking about something *other* than LiveJournal. *g*