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vriddyI figure trying to put some order into these posts may make it easier to navigate them rather than keep linking to the 'creating a comm' tag every time. Feel free to share this masterpost! For context, this is not a definitive guide and I don't pretend to know the truth about everything. This describes one person's journey, including some posts specific to fannish comms while others are more widely applicable.
The following posts gather my notes and thoughts as I set out to create a comm for Boku no Hero Academia (![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
bnha_fans) and explain the process I followed, the resources I used, etc. Most of the time, the comments are just as worth reading because they really helped to inform my process and often include insightful advice from LiveJournal and Dreamwidth old souls who have more experience than I do. I'm still learning! Very grateful to everyone who stopped to offer advice and/or encouragement. I hope you too may find something useful in there.
(TL;DR of the TL;DR: reoccurring posts that encourage conversations, inform people that your comm exists as we want to know about it!)
I want to do this: Thinking again about starting a BNHA community on Dreamwidth
(Locked) I'm scared to do this: Something better than nothing? TL;DR "But what if there are LJ/Twitter-levels of drama when I don't have the energy to mod that? *cries*" Answer: Unlikely these days. Worst case, there are now 3 dead BNHA comms on Dreamwidth instead of two. You won't know if you don't try.
getting_started and fictional_fans: Running a dreamwidth community as a newcomer
On the importance of recurring posts, with links to resources from People Who Actually Know What They're Doing: Recurring posts
Technical Dreamwidth tips for comm management: Random technical things learnt poking at community stuff
Creating promo material and a list of places where new comm promotion is welcome: Promoting a new comm
Scheduling posts to help manage reoccurring posts: Scheduling posts for a comm
Quick notes on my current system to keep the community plugging along, mainly using scheduled posts
Silence can be discouraging, but activity often works in waves: Some of the dispiriting moments
Setting up Community Watercoolers, aka, reoccurring posts with easy ways to comment
Thoughts on growing a comm, with promotion and activity ideas
Doing regular comm check-ins to hear what members think
Ten days in, already a lot of learning: Community Thursdays and a Day Ten recap of the new comm
One month in, what's working well and worries: One month in
Four months in, the community is fragile but happy with how things are going: Four months in!
--
All of these posts are tagged with dreamwidth: creating a comm, if you'd like to read them in chronological order instead.
Let me know if you notice dead links, etc. And feel free to link to additional resources in the comments, too!
The following posts gather my notes and thoughts as I set out to create a comm for Boku no Hero Academia (
bnha_fans) and explain the process I followed, the resources I used, etc. Most of the time, the comments are just as worth reading because they really helped to inform my process and often include insightful advice from LiveJournal and Dreamwidth old souls who have more experience than I do. I'm still learning! Very grateful to everyone who stopped to offer advice and/or encouragement. I hope you too may find something useful in there.TL;DR
A summary of everything below in two paragraphs with the two main points I found to work best, personally: Creating a comm TL;DR(TL;DR of the TL;DR: reoccurring posts that encourage conversations, inform people that your comm exists as we want to know about it!)
Pre-game: making the decision and thinking about scope
Do I want to do this? Creating a new DW community...? (BNHA adjacent) | For another comm: Wondering about a new comm for Japanese immersion learningI want to do this: Thinking again about starting a BNHA community on Dreamwidth
(Locked) I'm scared to do this: Something better than nothing? TL;DR "But what if there are LJ/Twitter-levels of drama when I don't have the energy to mod that? *cries*" Answer: Unlikely these days. Worst case, there are now 3 dead BNHA comms on Dreamwidth instead of two. You won't know if you don't try.
Creating a comm: technical matters
Creating community guidelines, including links to excellent advice fromgetting_started and fictional_fans: Running a dreamwidth community as a newcomerOn the importance of recurring posts, with links to resources from People Who Actually Know What They're Doing: Recurring posts
Technical Dreamwidth tips for comm management: Random technical things learnt poking at community stuff
Creating promo material and a list of places where new comm promotion is welcome: Promoting a new comm
Scheduling posts to help manage reoccurring posts: Scheduling posts for a comm
Quick notes on my current system to keep the community plugging along, mainly using scheduled posts
Running a comm
Spoiler policies and how much modding for spoilers sucks and kills conversation: (fan) comm: spoiler policySilence can be discouraging, but activity often works in waves: Some of the dispiriting moments
Setting up Community Watercoolers, aka, reoccurring posts with easy ways to comment
Thoughts on growing a comm, with promotion and activity ideas
Doing regular comm check-ins to hear what members think
Recaps and taking stock along the way
Announcement post! New BNHA community!Ten days in, already a lot of learning: Community Thursdays and a Day Ten recap of the new comm
One month in, what's working well and worries: One month in
Four months in, the community is fragile but happy with how things are going: Four months in!
--
All of these posts are tagged with dreamwidth: creating a comm, if you'd like to read them in chronological order instead.
Let me know if you notice dead links, etc. And feel free to link to additional resources in the comments, too!
(no subject)
Date: Jul. 20th, 2022 22:02 (UTC)Good luck with your comm!
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Date: Jul. 21st, 2022 06:27 (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: Jul. 28th, 2022 11:29 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: Jul. 30th, 2022 13:06 (UTC)If this can help other people get started as well, I would be delighted.
(no subject)
Date: Mar. 19th, 2023 16:43 (UTC)We'll have to definitely give this a closer look because we're thinking of starting a couple of coms ourself. The Irish among us (Craimar, Cedar to name 2) were surprised that there wasn't an Irish music com, so we're seriously discussing how to start one up.
Not to mention a couple of other interests we found lacking that we're curious about, so there's that, too. xd
-T~
(no subject)
Date: Mar. 21st, 2023 20:59 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: Mar. 31st, 2024 19:34 (UTC)Some of the stuff you talked about in early posts is almost word for word where I am right now - two old communities, haven't been touched in years except where I poked around, mods gone - and I found myself nodding along at a lot of your concerns. It's all very helpful.
Honestly, I'd much rather *not* be a moderator, because I'm not the sort of person who can put my foot down easily at misbehavior, and I'm not sure I'm emotionally able to handle some of the particularly intense shipping dramas of my fandom. If I could have just found a pre-existing sleepy - not dead - community with moderators that I could have participated in and promoted the heck out of, I'd be all over that! But after poking around one of the older comms and debating throwing up a community promo somewhere, I had some of the same concerns you did about there not being any active moderation at all... so if someone has to do it, I guess it might as well be me. I'm considering trying to bypass a lot of my worst anxieties by making it a gen community, though I know that might limit engagement even further.
Anyways, this is a great post!
(no subject)
Date: Apr. 7th, 2024 10:26 (UTC)I'm also happier as a lurker. However, few people have that luxury on Dreamwidth for fandom-specific conversations :D
My fandom, BNHA, has over 300k works on AO3. According to the latest 2024 size stats I could find, only 6 fandoms are that size. I'm telling you this so you can get an idea of the size of the drama and wankstorms that go with that on social media. Shipping drama, you-support-X-abuse-if-you-like/ship-character-Y, etc etc etc.
If you're happy with shipping conversations or it's something you were looking forward to, I would still include them. Just make it very clear in the rules, both on the profile and the main comm sticky post, that no character/ship bashing is welcome. Another way I did this is by having some of the most controversial characters on the banner, so people who have kneejerk reactions just click away, and the people who are a bit broken from all the harassment on other social media know that this is a safe space to also enjoy the controversial characters. Maybe you could have two characters kissing on a banner too, in addition to gen-friendly eating pizza together or whatever, to make it instantly clear that all sorts of conversations are welcome?
A couple of quick "Hey, remember the character/ship you're sneering at is probably someone else's fav on this comm" and/or redirecting the conversation toward what people like rather than hate, at the beginning, were enough to set the tone fpr the comm. There hasn't been drama (*knocks on wood*).
If you're not interested in shipping conversations, I don't want to force you to include those, clearly :D But I also don't want you to limit the scope of your comm any more than necessary. I mentioned the size of BNHA on AO3 and elsewhere, it's a HUGE fandom, incredibly popular on Twitter etc as well. However the Dreamwidth comm has maybe 6-7 active people at any given time. The fandom may be huge but it's not really present on Dreamwidth. (The people that do come here, though, are especially chill and happy to just not talk about characters/ships they don't like, and cheer each other when sharing whatever cool things we found or made.) So I would encourage you not to make the space any smaller than necessary, so you can also find your handful of Dreamwidth people who are into the fandom! I think it's going to be hard to generate regular activity, but also that the people who find the comm will be a lot more likely to be chill, especially if the kind of expected behaviour and discussions is clear from the start.
I really wish you well. I took some time to answer because I wanted to give you the thoughtful reply your comment deserves! I think you're going about things the right way, thinking through things. Also, if I ever hit a difficult moderation problem, I'm going to immediately go over
I think keeping a comm active takes a lot more time and energy than moderation issues, in the current state of Dreamwidth. But I also totally understand the worrying "What if?" questions, especially if exposed to a lot of toxicity in other fannish spaces.
Good luck! <3
(no subject)
Date: Jul. 2nd, 2024 23:18 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: Jul. 6th, 2024 17:32 (UTC)