Improving Communities on Dreamwidth
Jan. 2nd, 2023 04:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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twitter_refugeesLast year I made a post on Improving Community in Fandom. As part of that pursuit, I have done several things:
* I make weekly posts in my blog and onfollowfriday listing active communities on Dreamwidth by theme. The annual roundup post is here. I figure it's easier to look at a list of things and see what interests you, rather than try to think up things to search for in the Interests box. I would love to see more folks follow the feed (everything tagged "Follow Friday" or "followfriday" will appear on it) and make posts in their blogs or on the community. It would be especially nice to have someone feature individual blogs or feeds the way I'm doing communities. For a smaller project, at least once a year post your favorite communities or blogs.
* I helped revive Three Weeks for Dreamwidth (April 25-May 15). This fest encourages people to post content that appears only on Dreamwidth (at least during the fest itself). Many users post about blogging. Some folks like to pick a favorite topic and make anchor posts about it, or split that across a different topic for each week. In 2022 I featured hippies and bohemians. I encourage everyone to mark the dates on your calendar and do something in your blog for this event.
* When Twitter went haywire, I pounced on the opportunity to scoop new users for Dreamwidth. I made Twitter Exodus and Twitter Exodus Continuing posts. The first features information on using Dreamwidth, while the second focuses more on news about Twitter mayhem. I have supported the new communitytwitter_refugees by making posts about activities and resources for newcomers. If you are new to Dreamwidth, whether from Twitter or elsewhere, please drop by and check it out. Experienced users, we welcome your tips and resource links.
This year, I'm making a list of ways that people can boost activity on Dreamwidth communities. Everyone loves communities, but not everyone remembers to post or comment in them to support their survival. In compiling my posts forfollowfriday, I see many great communities that have died out, and some popular topics no longer have a live community. This is my effort to help fix that. Here are some things you can do ...
* Most people search for communities only on two occasions. 1) When they first arrive on Dreamwidth. 2) When they add a new fandom or other major interest. I recommend that folks make a custom of checking for communities once a year. January makes it easy to remember withsnowflake_challenge when lots of folks are recommending their favorite communities. Also look for new communities started in the last year. I listed the new ones I could find here.
* Subscribe to or browse promotional communities. The main ones include![[site community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/comm_staff.png)
dw_community_promo, fandomcalendar, and fandom_on_dw. These are good places to find communities you might like to join, especially new ones. promoting and promote are for everything. If you host communities, then promote them occasionally -- or if you run regular events, promote those -- to help find new members. Promotional communities typically have guidelines about how often you can post, with new communities usually getting to promote more often than older ones.
* Check the list of communities that you belong to. (When you make a post on Dreamwidth, the post creation window has a "Post to" box. Click the down arrow on that and it will give you a list of your communities. You can also see your communities in your profile.) Are they still active? If not, you may want to drop the dormant ones to reduce clutter. Are you still interested in these topics? If your interests have shifted, you may wish to drop some old communities and replace them with communities for your current interests. Do you post to these communities? Some communities are mostly meant to be read and only have a few moderators or volunteers making the posts, but others are open to everyone and the more the merrier. Do you comment in them? Most communities and contributors love feedback. The more activity, the more likely a community survives over the long term.
* Check your list of Interests, and if you run a community, check its list too. Interests make up a major way that people search for and find things on Dreamwidth. Make sure that yours are current and that your community's include everything people could possibly use to find it. The Interests tool is dumb and only returns results for exact matches -- not including words in the journal title itself! -- which means you have to search many variations of the same concept to find most of the results. Broadening your Interests list can help make it easier for people to find you quickly. If you look at the profile forbirdfeeding, you can see that it lists both "birdfeeding" and "bird feeding," "photos" and "photography," etc.
* One good way to maintain activity without overloading yourself is to adopt a short list of favorite communities where you post and/or comment often. What are your 3-5 favorite topics? Do you have communities for those? If not, can you find or create some? Even if you just pick one, becoming a regular supporter of a community is a huge help.
* Think about the topics you post most often. (Click Most Popular Tags in your sidebar and scroll to the bottom, then click Manage Tags, then where it says Sort By, click Usage. That will put them in order of frequency.) Are there communities for those topics? If so, do you post in them at least occasionally? It helps maintain activity, and just echoing posts you already make is very little extra work.
* Maintain the activity of communities by posting in them at least once a year. When I make lists of communities forfollowfriday, I define "active" as posting in the last month or few, "somewhat active" within a year or so, "low-traffic" as posting in the previous year, and "dormant" longer than that. Just one post a year is enough to keep a community in the "active" range, and thus, likely to attract new members. Without new posts, people usually won't subscribe, and if the moderator has dropped out then it's dead because many of the tools are not accessible. So sometimes I go through and make posts to low-traffic communities in hopes of keeping them active. If you see a community without recent posts and it's a topic you like, post something. If the last post is mine, post there too, because then I can do another one later without stacking mine together. Your list of subscribed communities is a good place to start if you want to make this a long, ongoing project like doing one community a week. For a shorter project, use your short list of favorite communities that you want to support.
* Volunteer. Some communities rely on volunteers to host or support events. For instance,snowflake_challenge has posting and comment hosts for different days, and allbingo has hosts for different monthly fests. These are often temporary, short-term commitments that are easier to fit into busy schedules than long-term ones might be.
* If there is no active community in your favorite interest(s), then consider launching one. This is most likely to succeed if you have at least a few friends who are into the same thing, but anyone can do it.vriddy has a good post on how to create a Dreamwidth community and I have one for sample online community parameters. I recommend including a few recurring posts to anchor your topics and maintain activity. I recently created birdfeeding because there was no active community about birds and I post about this almost every day.
* When creating or maintaining communities, focus on the general ones first and the specific ones second. General communities draw from a much wider audience, which makes it easier for them to survive over the long term. However, sometimes the most passionate users are in a specific community. This can cause the general ones to be forgotten and lost, which makes it harder to find new members who may not think to search for the specific interest, only the general one. A good example where we still have both isfandomcalendar (for promoting all fannish activities) and potterfests (for promoting events about Harry Potter).
*comment_bingo is a challenge community that encourages people to make comments. This helps boost feedback in communities and individual blogs. While this community runs based on sessions, over in allbingo you can play any card at any time.
* Community Thursday is a type of recurring post. This began as a challenge fromgoodbyebird which has since spread; vriddy is another blogger who has a Community Thursday tag. Make an effort to engage with communities on Dreamwidth in one way or another, be it by commenting, posting, reccing, creating a community, or doing mod work for said community. Then talk about what you did in your journal, using the Community Thursdays tag. Important: add Community Thursday to your Interests so that people can search for it, because the tag only lets them find it from inside your blog.
* Look for holiday-themed challenges and exchanges roughly one season in advance. So for instance, Christmas-Yule-Chanukkah-Kwanzaa activities typically start advertising in late summer-early fall. Currently we're toward the end of what you can catch for Valentines (although theallbingo Valentines fest will open in February) and coming into signups for Easter and other spring fests. Many holiday, fest, or other event-based communities are only active at certain times of year and hard to find otherwise, so it pays to search periodically. These are often easiest to find through the calendar communities that advertise activities, such as fandomcalendar.
Do you have other suggestions for increasing community activity?
Please link and share widely to boost support for communities on Dreamwidth.
* I make weekly posts in my blog and on
followfriday listing active communities on Dreamwidth by theme. The annual roundup post is here. I figure it's easier to look at a list of things and see what interests you, rather than try to think up things to search for in the Interests box. I would love to see more folks follow the feed (everything tagged "Follow Friday" or "followfriday" will appear on it) and make posts in their blogs or on the community. It would be especially nice to have someone feature individual blogs or feeds the way I'm doing communities. For a smaller project, at least once a year post your favorite communities or blogs.* I helped revive Three Weeks for Dreamwidth (April 25-May 15). This fest encourages people to post content that appears only on Dreamwidth (at least during the fest itself). Many users post about blogging. Some folks like to pick a favorite topic and make anchor posts about it, or split that across a different topic for each week. In 2022 I featured hippies and bohemians. I encourage everyone to mark the dates on your calendar and do something in your blog for this event.
* When Twitter went haywire, I pounced on the opportunity to scoop new users for Dreamwidth. I made Twitter Exodus and Twitter Exodus Continuing posts. The first features information on using Dreamwidth, while the second focuses more on news about Twitter mayhem. I have supported the new community
twitter_refugees by making posts about activities and resources for newcomers. If you are new to Dreamwidth, whether from Twitter or elsewhere, please drop by and check it out. Experienced users, we welcome your tips and resource links.This year, I'm making a list of ways that people can boost activity on Dreamwidth communities. Everyone loves communities, but not everyone remembers to post or comment in them to support their survival. In compiling my posts for
followfriday, I see many great communities that have died out, and some popular topics no longer have a live community. This is my effort to help fix that. Here are some things you can do ... * Most people search for communities only on two occasions. 1) When they first arrive on Dreamwidth. 2) When they add a new fandom or other major interest. I recommend that folks make a custom of checking for communities once a year. January makes it easy to remember with
snowflake_challenge when lots of folks are recommending their favorite communities. Also look for new communities started in the last year. I listed the new ones I could find here.* Subscribe to or browse promotional communities. The main ones include
dw_community_promo, fandomcalendar, and fandom_on_dw. These are good places to find communities you might like to join, especially new ones. promoting and promote are for everything. If you host communities, then promote them occasionally -- or if you run regular events, promote those -- to help find new members. Promotional communities typically have guidelines about how often you can post, with new communities usually getting to promote more often than older ones.* Check the list of communities that you belong to. (When you make a post on Dreamwidth, the post creation window has a "Post to" box. Click the down arrow on that and it will give you a list of your communities. You can also see your communities in your profile.) Are they still active? If not, you may want to drop the dormant ones to reduce clutter. Are you still interested in these topics? If your interests have shifted, you may wish to drop some old communities and replace them with communities for your current interests. Do you post to these communities? Some communities are mostly meant to be read and only have a few moderators or volunteers making the posts, but others are open to everyone and the more the merrier. Do you comment in them? Most communities and contributors love feedback. The more activity, the more likely a community survives over the long term.
* Check your list of Interests, and if you run a community, check its list too. Interests make up a major way that people search for and find things on Dreamwidth. Make sure that yours are current and that your community's include everything people could possibly use to find it. The Interests tool is dumb and only returns results for exact matches -- not including words in the journal title itself! -- which means you have to search many variations of the same concept to find most of the results. Broadening your Interests list can help make it easier for people to find you quickly. If you look at the profile for
birdfeeding, you can see that it lists both "birdfeeding" and "bird feeding," "photos" and "photography," etc.* One good way to maintain activity without overloading yourself is to adopt a short list of favorite communities where you post and/or comment often. What are your 3-5 favorite topics? Do you have communities for those? If not, can you find or create some? Even if you just pick one, becoming a regular supporter of a community is a huge help.
* Think about the topics you post most often. (Click Most Popular Tags in your sidebar and scroll to the bottom, then click Manage Tags, then where it says Sort By, click Usage. That will put them in order of frequency.) Are there communities for those topics? If so, do you post in them at least occasionally? It helps maintain activity, and just echoing posts you already make is very little extra work.
* Maintain the activity of communities by posting in them at least once a year. When I make lists of communities for
followfriday, I define "active" as posting in the last month or few, "somewhat active" within a year or so, "low-traffic" as posting in the previous year, and "dormant" longer than that. Just one post a year is enough to keep a community in the "active" range, and thus, likely to attract new members. Without new posts, people usually won't subscribe, and if the moderator has dropped out then it's dead because many of the tools are not accessible. So sometimes I go through and make posts to low-traffic communities in hopes of keeping them active. If you see a community without recent posts and it's a topic you like, post something. If the last post is mine, post there too, because then I can do another one later without stacking mine together. Your list of subscribed communities is a good place to start if you want to make this a long, ongoing project like doing one community a week. For a shorter project, use your short list of favorite communities that you want to support.* Volunteer. Some communities rely on volunteers to host or support events. For instance,
snowflake_challenge has posting and comment hosts for different days, and allbingo has hosts for different monthly fests. These are often temporary, short-term commitments that are easier to fit into busy schedules than long-term ones might be.* If there is no active community in your favorite interest(s), then consider launching one. This is most likely to succeed if you have at least a few friends who are into the same thing, but anyone can do it.
vriddy has a good post on how to create a Dreamwidth community and I have one for sample online community parameters. I recommend including a few recurring posts to anchor your topics and maintain activity. I recently created birdfeeding because there was no active community about birds and I post about this almost every day.* When creating or maintaining communities, focus on the general ones first and the specific ones second. General communities draw from a much wider audience, which makes it easier for them to survive over the long term. However, sometimes the most passionate users are in a specific community. This can cause the general ones to be forgotten and lost, which makes it harder to find new members who may not think to search for the specific interest, only the general one. A good example where we still have both is
fandomcalendar (for promoting all fannish activities) and potterfests (for promoting events about Harry Potter).*
comment_bingo is a challenge community that encourages people to make comments. This helps boost feedback in communities and individual blogs. While this community runs based on sessions, over in allbingo you can play any card at any time.* Community Thursday is a type of recurring post. This began as a challenge from
goodbyebird which has since spread; vriddy is another blogger who has a Community Thursday tag. Make an effort to engage with communities on Dreamwidth in one way or another, be it by commenting, posting, reccing, creating a community, or doing mod work for said community. Then talk about what you did in your journal, using the Community Thursdays tag. Important: add Community Thursday to your Interests so that people can search for it, because the tag only lets them find it from inside your blog.* Look for holiday-themed challenges and exchanges roughly one season in advance. So for instance, Christmas-Yule-Chanukkah-Kwanzaa activities typically start advertising in late summer-early fall. Currently we're toward the end of what you can catch for Valentines (although the
allbingo Valentines fest will open in February) and coming into signups for Easter and other spring fests. Many holiday, fest, or other event-based communities are only active at certain times of year and hard to find otherwise, so it pays to search periodically. These are often easiest to find through the calendar communities that advertise activities, such as fandomcalendar.Do you have other suggestions for increasing community activity?
Please link and share widely to boost support for communities on Dreamwidth.
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Date: 2023-01-03 04:08 pm (UTC)Thoughts
Date: 2023-01-03 06:20 pm (UTC)