Follow Friday 3-25-22

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ysabetwordsmith posting in

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Got any Follow Friday-related posts to share this week? Comment here with the link(s).

Here's the plan: every Friday, let's recommend some people and/or communities to follow on Dreamwidth. That's it. No complicated rules, no "pass this on to 7.328 friends or your cat will die". Just introduce us to some new things to read.

Current Mood: busy

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From:

ysabetwordsmith

My topic this week is nature. I was delighted to find several active communities.

I've started trying to indicate which communities are active (posts in the last month), somewhat active (posts in the last year), or dormant (no posts in the last year or so) but a concept worth reviving or replicating in a new community. This should help folks find what they are looking for.

From:

vriddy

That's a really nice way to break down communities, I love it! I subscribed to

common_nature, it looks lovely :)

From:

ysabetwordsmith

>> That's a really nice way to break down communities, I love it! <<

Thank you! It's a learning process. As I'm going through Follow Friday posts, I discover more ways to make the service more useful for myself and others. It helps to know what people are looking for in a community. Thinking about how some people prefer high or low traffic, or might be looking for dormant communities to revive, I started marking traffic more regularly.

Something else interesting: I've spotted multiple communities that had one or more posts earlier this year, and a gap before that. This makes me think that our efforts during Snowflake to encourage people to revive dormant communities actually did have some effect. If we can get at least a handful of folks doing that during each Snowflake -- frex, by posting about it and making it part of our Challenge day -- then one or a few posts a year would keep a community the "low traffic" rather than "dormant" category.

>> I subscribed to

common_nature, it looks lovely :) <<

Yay! I noticed that this community and

gardening are both high activity and high interest for me, but I hadn't been posting to them. So that gave me more ideas.

First, I made a list of active communities using everything from my "Improving Community in Fandom" post through all my Follow Friday posts. I figured it would be easier for people to find worthwhile communities by looking at a list of active communities and searching for their interests in it, than by searching their interests on Dreamwidth and mostly getting hits for dormant communities. This list is already 8 pages. I figure I'll post it once or twice a year.

Because that list was so long, I then went through and collected a shorter list of personal favorites that I want to put more effort into reading, commenting, and posting regularly. These are communities where I write about the topic, but haven't been crossposting or linking to my activity. I listed both

common_nature and

gardening because I post about those things almost every day. I've also become fond of

journalsandplanners because it's fairly active, a topic I have scattered over various materials, and I like the people. Plus it's fun to look at photos of the very artsy journals when people share those -- not something I do personally, but I admire it and can certainly comment.

So these are tools that other folks could use to find and support communities on Dreamwidth. Maybe we can grow from strength.

From:

vriddy

I meant to reply earlier, but:

Something else interesting: I've spotted multiple communities that had one or more posts earlier this year, and a gap before that. This makes me think that our efforts during Snowflake to encourage people to revive dormant communities actually did have some effect.

That is so cool to know! It doesn't take a lot :D

I then went through and collected a shorter list of personal favorites that I want to put more effort into reading, commenting, and posting regularly.

I think that makes sense and is likely the most sustainable way to go! I'm also focusing on a small subset of comms that are of personal interest.

From:

ysabetwordsmith

>> That is so cool to know! It doesn't take a lot :D <<

Yeah, I want to emphasize this in the next Snowflake, in hopes of encouraging more people to do it.

>>I think that makes sense and is likely the most sustainable way to go! I'm also focusing on a small subset of comms that are of personal interest.<<

If everyone interested in communities would pick a few to support with posts and/or comments, then we'd have a lot more activity. In particular, it's easy to forget that there are communities where you could repost things you're already posting about, whether that's book reviews, photos of your yard, fanfic, or whatever.