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brightly_litI joined lj shortly after its inception, and was there in some form for over a decade. In that time, eagerly trying to get better at social media, I watched closely and noticed some patterns, things that worked and things that didn't, and made note of them.
Eventually, I made my own comm, applying what I'd learned, and it seemed to work well--that comm enjoyed a lot of engagement and fun in its heyday. In conversation withvriddy on another thread, I realized I never wrote down any of these thoughts or observations anywhere. Since I went to all the trouble of thinking these thoughts, and they worked pretty well in practice, I went ahead and wrote them down here. I'm sure I forgot a few things, but I tried to remember all the ideas I applied to my own comm. In any case, I hope these observations might be helpful for someone here in creating or making changes to their own dreamwidth community. Please feel free to add any other observations or ideas for how to successfully run a dreamwidth community in the comments.
CONCEPTION:
- First, is there a niche for your comm? That is, are there any other active comms that serve the same purpose as the one you're imagining? If so, chances are that unless you do it much better than the other comm is doing it, people will stick with the comm that was already there and you won't get many members. If there are already comms in the fandom that are doing most of what you like and there's something specific you wish they would do that they aren't, first you can try talking to the mods and making the suggestion--they might be really glad to have it! You might even become a mod yourself, and handle that whole aspect of the comm! But if they just don't want to do it, making your own comm is a good option. If you decide to do that (this is exactly how my comm came about), it's a good idea to then try to think of other things you'd like a comm in the fandom to provide that they aren't--anything you can think of. If you come up with several things you can incorporate into your comm that aren't provided anywhere else, that will really set your comm apart and make it more likely to attract more members.
- Second, and relatedly, is there demand for your comm? Will you be providing a space people are interested in utilizing because there was a vacuum that needed to be filled? This will, more than anything, determine whether your comm attracts a lot of people. There's nothing wrong with making a comm that doesn't have high demand. I love a lot of obscure animes. Sometimes I think about making a comm for one or the other of them. But I would have to temper my expectations of the number of members I'd be likely to get since the demand for such a comm would be small. By the same token, if a hugely popular show lacks a comm dedicated to, say, fanworks about that show, the demand will be there automatically.
- Third, if there's a niche and demand, how will you let people know about your comm and what makes it special? That just comes down to promoting, on your own account and elsewhere. On comms dedicated to the same series or interest is ideal, if it's allowed, but any promotion you can do is beneficial--in comments sections, individually in conversation with others, anywhere where people might see it. Each person who finds out about it could potentially bring others to it. If you can get your friends to advertise it on their blogs, that's fantastic. Try to come up with a quick, one-sentence way of describing what your comm has to offer that no other does and what makes it fun, so you can trot it out whenever there's an opportunity, but any way works, so long as you get the word out!
CREATION AND EXECUTION:
There are some things you can do right at the beginning as you create your comm--such as picking a layout, picking colors, writing the comm info page--that can really smooth the process of recruiting members and running the comm later on. Some of these suggestions and ideas may seem at first glance ephemeral or irrelevant, but I do believe these things make a significant difference in the long run.
- Consider what you want your comm to accomplish, and especially, what impression you want it to give. This is probably not that important for comms that serve a very specific purpose, such as a place to only post fanworks for a specific fandom, but for a comm that is more general interest, or a comm where you hope fun and conversation will take place, it can have a significant impact. What do you want people to feel when they come there? What associations do you want them to have with it? I wanted my comm, "The Bunker," to feel to its members like being in the bunker in our show (Supernatural): a safe place, underground, private, where they can kick back and say whatever's on their minds in an open and honest way. In Supernatural, only "Men (and Women) of Letters" knew of such bunkers and knew how to utilize the resources found therein, so I addressed members as Men and Women of Letters. I made the color scheme dark (but pretty, sort of a dark muted purple), and picked a layout that to me was reminiscent of being embraced in a safe, dark place. I put a picture of the main characters in the bunker in the header, and for the comm info page, chose a photo that made it seem like the user was sitting right there inside the bunker, to make fans feel like they were there with the main characters (right where we all wanted to be, naturally!). All these choices were quite deliberate, to create the vibe and give visual impressions of the concept of the comm.
- The comm info page will set the tone for the comm. Do you want your comm to be light-hearted and silly? Snarky and irreverent? Serious? Whatever words and images you choose for the comm info page are going to figure strongly into how your comm is perceived--not only to people first checking it out, but to anyone returning there to double-check rules as to what kind of posts are allowed there, etc. If you want it to be a snarky, irreverent comm, then you definitely want the comm info page to be snarky and irreverent! If you want it to be a fun, chatty comm, let the comm info page be fun and chatty. Otherwise, false advertising can attract the wrong kind of person and fail to attract the kind of person you created it for! Setting the tone from the beginning, on the comm info page and in the comm's first posts, can save the mod(s) a lot of trouble farther on down the line.
- When it comes to the comm info page, realistically, many people will only read the first few lines, unless they want to make a post and need to reference the rules to see how to do it, so making the comm info page as brief as possible is how you can get people to actually read the whole thing. You can try to winnow down the length by editing hard, trying to take out any redundancies and eliminating anything you decide isn't really necessary. If for whatever reason brevity is undesirable or impossible, then definitely put the things you most want people checking out the comm to see at the very top, within the first three or four lines. If this is a set of strict rules, you may well give the impression that yours is a strict comm. Fandom people are generally just looking for fun, so this may turn some people away, so I'd strongly suggest making those first few lines as welcoming and friendly as may be, if you hope to attract lots of members to your comm.
- I've seen people around these parts talking at length about the intimidation factor of comms. Some people are just very intimidated by the idea of posting there, or even commenting there. In some ways, this intimidation is warranted--comms can develop a specific culture that might be harsh or irreverent or rude. Sometimes it's just the mods who might be hard on people who even unknowingly break the rules. We've all seen bad actors on the internet, people deliberately trolling or pushing the boundaries of what a comm allows. Maybe it's because of this that I've seen a lot of mods assume bad behavior on the part of members and visitors, but, at least on lj and dreamwidth, in my experience, the greater danger is that people will be too intimidated to interact at all. I have a lot of experience posting and cross-posting on comms on lj, and even I feel pretty intimidated by the idea of posting on comms here on dw, and will until I feel like I have a better feel for the place in general, and the comms I frequent in particular (although I feel pretty comfortable commenting there). So my approach with my comm was to try to make it seem like a safe, unintimidating place. I made almost no rules. People know how they should behave. I often think a set of rules tends to be taken as a challenge by bad actors. Every comm has a few rules that should be spelled out, ideally as clearly and briefly as possible, but creeps and trolls aren't going to follow any rules, anyway, so I tend to think a ton of rules do nothing to deter bad actors, but do deter good, rule-abiding potential members, making a comm seem strict and punishing.
- Thus, I did more of my steering of the comm in the right directions in comments than on the comm info page. Sometimes I think mods don't realize just how powerful what they say in their own comm is, especially to the easily intimidated. I've seen a lot of mods be harsh or cold as they enforce rules, as if they think they won't be heeded otherwise, where I tend to believe that such a response is unnecessarily harsh to get the point across, and is likely to drive an easily intimidated person away for good. Thus, I also didn't directly address any breaking of the rules (unless I'd have been just as happy to see that person leave for good, lol), whether it was the letter or the spirit of them. Rather, I would comment and try to lead by example, oh-so-gently steering things in another direction. Many fandom people are well sensitive enough to pick up on that, and eager to do it right, so that was usually enough. Even sometimes conspicuously ignoring a comment is sufficient.
- My greatest concern was bad actors and trolls potentially coming in and causing trouble. The easiest first step in dealing with this is to disallow anonymous posting and only let registered users comment. Sometimes, though, it's not that simple. It's possible for a person to cause a lot of trouble even technically staying within the rules. It's certainly been done for mods to simply ban someone they don't like, but if that person didn't technically break any serious rules, doing that can cause even more trouble for you. This is one reason why my approach was to start off gently nudging--there's someplace to escalate to that way. Also, to baldly call someone out is to immediately set yourself in opposition to them; it begs a fight. Countless times, I've seen mods create a problem with someone who wouldn't have been combative if they'd just been approached more respectfully. Generally, bad actors will go away if they're not getting what they want in a comm, so ignoring them is a powerful tool. Most people will ignore bad actors, anyway, but if you also lead by example, the sensitive and rule-abiding members will tend to follow suit, and the bad actor will depart for someplace where they can get more response.
- I said above that if there's a vaccuum your comm fills, such as being the only place to post fanworks for a given fandom, then there will be a demand for it--I have to add the caveat that while in most cases that's true, it's not 100%. There were two comms available for cross-posting fic of any type in my old fandom, and only one of them actually got used! This seemed to be to do with a) how actively the mods modded the comms (the one that didn't get used seemed mostly abandoned by the mods), and b) how friendly and welcoming the mods seemed to be of new members and posts. There are some communities that bafflingly seem hostile to just about any post, mods nitpicking every little thing, driving potential members away. So my approach was to give absolutely as much leeway as I possibly could when it came to enforcing the rules. If it wasn't actively hurting anything, I allowed it (even if it really annoyed me).
- Finally, relatedly, as hard as it may be due to your own personal feelings, you just have to be fair across the board to every member of the comm and treat everyone equally. Sometimes someone rubs you the wrong way, or seems to be trampling all over the spirit of the comm, or takes things in a direction you don't like, but a healthy, active comm necessitates the mod being the bigger person and doing the right thing, though it may be tempting to use one's modly powers to eliminate someone you don't like. To misuse one's modly powers that way starts a cascade of consequences, as the person you were unfair to may take all their friends with them, away from your comm. You may develop a reputation as unfair, and that can permanently stain the reputation of your comm. Nothing good seems to come of it, so though the banhammer has been wielded willy-nilly countless times, it's best to keep it stowed away except when absolutely necessary. That said, nothing good can come from entertaining an obvious troll, so the less time they have to get comfortable in your comm, the better; if immediately banned, they'll probably just give up and go away, but if they're given lots of chances, they'll figure you're a softie and will stick around to see if they can coerce you into giving them more.
- Regular events are a wonderful way to increase engagement, especially if they seem low-pressure and low-stakes, and ask fun questions soliciting personal thoughts and opinions on a subject. I had a different event for every day of the week. In addition to increasing engagement, I felt like it provided a comforting routine for people, to see these posts regularly. When coming up with when to post each event, consider when people are more likely to want that particular event. An annual fanwork challenge in my old fandom always took place right when people were going back to school or going on summer vacation, which always interfered! You'll probably have higher engagement if you take that kind of thing into consideration. An event that's a quick question that's fun to answer might be just the thing on a Monday morning when people are headed back to school or work for the week, whereas something that requires a little more effort might be good for a Saturday. That said, you might find that for whatever reason more members of your comm engage more at unexpected times, so don't be afraid to go with the flow and post these events when they'll get more engagement for your particular comm.
- Regarding events, also don't be afraid to change it up if one event or another is no longer getting much engagement. Feel free to poll members as to why this is the case and solicit suggestions for how to improve the event. Alternatively, maybe it's time to just let go of that event for a while. Members might have good suggestions for a replacement if you can't think of one yourself.
That's all I can think of (as if this post isn't long enough!). This was fun--I went back to my old comm for reference for this post and had a good time remembering all the fun we had there. Fandom community is such an important, beautiful thing. I'm really hoping to find that here, too--I like what I've experienced of it so far.
May anyone who sees this have great success with your comms.
Eventually, I made my own comm, applying what I'd learned, and it seemed to work well--that comm enjoyed a lot of engagement and fun in its heyday. In conversation with
vriddy on another thread, I realized I never wrote down any of these thoughts or observations anywhere. Since I went to all the trouble of thinking these thoughts, and they worked pretty well in practice, I went ahead and wrote them down here. I'm sure I forgot a few things, but I tried to remember all the ideas I applied to my own comm. In any case, I hope these observations might be helpful for someone here in creating or making changes to their own dreamwidth community. Please feel free to add any other observations or ideas for how to successfully run a dreamwidth community in the comments.CONCEPTION:
- First, is there a niche for your comm? That is, are there any other active comms that serve the same purpose as the one you're imagining? If so, chances are that unless you do it much better than the other comm is doing it, people will stick with the comm that was already there and you won't get many members. If there are already comms in the fandom that are doing most of what you like and there's something specific you wish they would do that they aren't, first you can try talking to the mods and making the suggestion--they might be really glad to have it! You might even become a mod yourself, and handle that whole aspect of the comm! But if they just don't want to do it, making your own comm is a good option. If you decide to do that (this is exactly how my comm came about), it's a good idea to then try to think of other things you'd like a comm in the fandom to provide that they aren't--anything you can think of. If you come up with several things you can incorporate into your comm that aren't provided anywhere else, that will really set your comm apart and make it more likely to attract more members.
- Second, and relatedly, is there demand for your comm? Will you be providing a space people are interested in utilizing because there was a vacuum that needed to be filled? This will, more than anything, determine whether your comm attracts a lot of people. There's nothing wrong with making a comm that doesn't have high demand. I love a lot of obscure animes. Sometimes I think about making a comm for one or the other of them. But I would have to temper my expectations of the number of members I'd be likely to get since the demand for such a comm would be small. By the same token, if a hugely popular show lacks a comm dedicated to, say, fanworks about that show, the demand will be there automatically.
- Third, if there's a niche and demand, how will you let people know about your comm and what makes it special? That just comes down to promoting, on your own account and elsewhere. On comms dedicated to the same series or interest is ideal, if it's allowed, but any promotion you can do is beneficial--in comments sections, individually in conversation with others, anywhere where people might see it. Each person who finds out about it could potentially bring others to it. If you can get your friends to advertise it on their blogs, that's fantastic. Try to come up with a quick, one-sentence way of describing what your comm has to offer that no other does and what makes it fun, so you can trot it out whenever there's an opportunity, but any way works, so long as you get the word out!
CREATION AND EXECUTION:
There are some things you can do right at the beginning as you create your comm--such as picking a layout, picking colors, writing the comm info page--that can really smooth the process of recruiting members and running the comm later on. Some of these suggestions and ideas may seem at first glance ephemeral or irrelevant, but I do believe these things make a significant difference in the long run.
- Consider what you want your comm to accomplish, and especially, what impression you want it to give. This is probably not that important for comms that serve a very specific purpose, such as a place to only post fanworks for a specific fandom, but for a comm that is more general interest, or a comm where you hope fun and conversation will take place, it can have a significant impact. What do you want people to feel when they come there? What associations do you want them to have with it? I wanted my comm, "The Bunker," to feel to its members like being in the bunker in our show (Supernatural): a safe place, underground, private, where they can kick back and say whatever's on their minds in an open and honest way. In Supernatural, only "Men (and Women) of Letters" knew of such bunkers and knew how to utilize the resources found therein, so I addressed members as Men and Women of Letters. I made the color scheme dark (but pretty, sort of a dark muted purple), and picked a layout that to me was reminiscent of being embraced in a safe, dark place. I put a picture of the main characters in the bunker in the header, and for the comm info page, chose a photo that made it seem like the user was sitting right there inside the bunker, to make fans feel like they were there with the main characters (right where we all wanted to be, naturally!). All these choices were quite deliberate, to create the vibe and give visual impressions of the concept of the comm.
- The comm info page will set the tone for the comm. Do you want your comm to be light-hearted and silly? Snarky and irreverent? Serious? Whatever words and images you choose for the comm info page are going to figure strongly into how your comm is perceived--not only to people first checking it out, but to anyone returning there to double-check rules as to what kind of posts are allowed there, etc. If you want it to be a snarky, irreverent comm, then you definitely want the comm info page to be snarky and irreverent! If you want it to be a fun, chatty comm, let the comm info page be fun and chatty. Otherwise, false advertising can attract the wrong kind of person and fail to attract the kind of person you created it for! Setting the tone from the beginning, on the comm info page and in the comm's first posts, can save the mod(s) a lot of trouble farther on down the line.
- When it comes to the comm info page, realistically, many people will only read the first few lines, unless they want to make a post and need to reference the rules to see how to do it, so making the comm info page as brief as possible is how you can get people to actually read the whole thing. You can try to winnow down the length by editing hard, trying to take out any redundancies and eliminating anything you decide isn't really necessary. If for whatever reason brevity is undesirable or impossible, then definitely put the things you most want people checking out the comm to see at the very top, within the first three or four lines. If this is a set of strict rules, you may well give the impression that yours is a strict comm. Fandom people are generally just looking for fun, so this may turn some people away, so I'd strongly suggest making those first few lines as welcoming and friendly as may be, if you hope to attract lots of members to your comm.
- I've seen people around these parts talking at length about the intimidation factor of comms. Some people are just very intimidated by the idea of posting there, or even commenting there. In some ways, this intimidation is warranted--comms can develop a specific culture that might be harsh or irreverent or rude. Sometimes it's just the mods who might be hard on people who even unknowingly break the rules. We've all seen bad actors on the internet, people deliberately trolling or pushing the boundaries of what a comm allows. Maybe it's because of this that I've seen a lot of mods assume bad behavior on the part of members and visitors, but, at least on lj and dreamwidth, in my experience, the greater danger is that people will be too intimidated to interact at all. I have a lot of experience posting and cross-posting on comms on lj, and even I feel pretty intimidated by the idea of posting on comms here on dw, and will until I feel like I have a better feel for the place in general, and the comms I frequent in particular (although I feel pretty comfortable commenting there). So my approach with my comm was to try to make it seem like a safe, unintimidating place. I made almost no rules. People know how they should behave. I often think a set of rules tends to be taken as a challenge by bad actors. Every comm has a few rules that should be spelled out, ideally as clearly and briefly as possible, but creeps and trolls aren't going to follow any rules, anyway, so I tend to think a ton of rules do nothing to deter bad actors, but do deter good, rule-abiding potential members, making a comm seem strict and punishing.
- Thus, I did more of my steering of the comm in the right directions in comments than on the comm info page. Sometimes I think mods don't realize just how powerful what they say in their own comm is, especially to the easily intimidated. I've seen a lot of mods be harsh or cold as they enforce rules, as if they think they won't be heeded otherwise, where I tend to believe that such a response is unnecessarily harsh to get the point across, and is likely to drive an easily intimidated person away for good. Thus, I also didn't directly address any breaking of the rules (unless I'd have been just as happy to see that person leave for good, lol), whether it was the letter or the spirit of them. Rather, I would comment and try to lead by example, oh-so-gently steering things in another direction. Many fandom people are well sensitive enough to pick up on that, and eager to do it right, so that was usually enough. Even sometimes conspicuously ignoring a comment is sufficient.
- My greatest concern was bad actors and trolls potentially coming in and causing trouble. The easiest first step in dealing with this is to disallow anonymous posting and only let registered users comment. Sometimes, though, it's not that simple. It's possible for a person to cause a lot of trouble even technically staying within the rules. It's certainly been done for mods to simply ban someone they don't like, but if that person didn't technically break any serious rules, doing that can cause even more trouble for you. This is one reason why my approach was to start off gently nudging--there's someplace to escalate to that way. Also, to baldly call someone out is to immediately set yourself in opposition to them; it begs a fight. Countless times, I've seen mods create a problem with someone who wouldn't have been combative if they'd just been approached more respectfully. Generally, bad actors will go away if they're not getting what they want in a comm, so ignoring them is a powerful tool. Most people will ignore bad actors, anyway, but if you also lead by example, the sensitive and rule-abiding members will tend to follow suit, and the bad actor will depart for someplace where they can get more response.
- I said above that if there's a vaccuum your comm fills, such as being the only place to post fanworks for a given fandom, then there will be a demand for it--I have to add the caveat that while in most cases that's true, it's not 100%. There were two comms available for cross-posting fic of any type in my old fandom, and only one of them actually got used! This seemed to be to do with a) how actively the mods modded the comms (the one that didn't get used seemed mostly abandoned by the mods), and b) how friendly and welcoming the mods seemed to be of new members and posts. There are some communities that bafflingly seem hostile to just about any post, mods nitpicking every little thing, driving potential members away. So my approach was to give absolutely as much leeway as I possibly could when it came to enforcing the rules. If it wasn't actively hurting anything, I allowed it (even if it really annoyed me).
- Finally, relatedly, as hard as it may be due to your own personal feelings, you just have to be fair across the board to every member of the comm and treat everyone equally. Sometimes someone rubs you the wrong way, or seems to be trampling all over the spirit of the comm, or takes things in a direction you don't like, but a healthy, active comm necessitates the mod being the bigger person and doing the right thing, though it may be tempting to use one's modly powers to eliminate someone you don't like. To misuse one's modly powers that way starts a cascade of consequences, as the person you were unfair to may take all their friends with them, away from your comm. You may develop a reputation as unfair, and that can permanently stain the reputation of your comm. Nothing good seems to come of it, so though the banhammer has been wielded willy-nilly countless times, it's best to keep it stowed away except when absolutely necessary. That said, nothing good can come from entertaining an obvious troll, so the less time they have to get comfortable in your comm, the better; if immediately banned, they'll probably just give up and go away, but if they're given lots of chances, they'll figure you're a softie and will stick around to see if they can coerce you into giving them more.
- Regular events are a wonderful way to increase engagement, especially if they seem low-pressure and low-stakes, and ask fun questions soliciting personal thoughts and opinions on a subject. I had a different event for every day of the week. In addition to increasing engagement, I felt like it provided a comforting routine for people, to see these posts regularly. When coming up with when to post each event, consider when people are more likely to want that particular event. An annual fanwork challenge in my old fandom always took place right when people were going back to school or going on summer vacation, which always interfered! You'll probably have higher engagement if you take that kind of thing into consideration. An event that's a quick question that's fun to answer might be just the thing on a Monday morning when people are headed back to school or work for the week, whereas something that requires a little more effort might be good for a Saturday. That said, you might find that for whatever reason more members of your comm engage more at unexpected times, so don't be afraid to go with the flow and post these events when they'll get more engagement for your particular comm.
- Regarding events, also don't be afraid to change it up if one event or another is no longer getting much engagement. Feel free to poll members as to why this is the case and solicit suggestions for how to improve the event. Alternatively, maybe it's time to just let go of that event for a while. Members might have good suggestions for a replacement if you can't think of one yourself.
That's all I can think of (as if this post isn't long enough!). This was fun--I went back to my old comm for reference for this post and had a good time remembering all the fun we had there. Fandom community is such an important, beautiful thing. I'm really hoping to find that here, too--I like what I've experienced of it so far.
May anyone who sees this have great success with your comms.
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Date: 2022-08-26 09:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-08-27 03:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-08-27 06:11 pm (UTC)at least on lj and dreamwidth, in my experience, the greater danger is that people will be too intimidated to interact at all.
I agree with that, and interesting thoughts around it! Depending on the wankiness of the fandom, I think having some clear rules can also help to reassure people that this isn't going to turn into another pit of negative takes and wankiness. So, when I was asking for advice on community guidelines, a suggestion was to have a rule along the lines of "the mods will take action if something posted that isn't in the spirit of the guidelines but isn't explicitly forbidden, and the admin will update the comm to explain what happened and discuss if we want a new guideline" and that's something that was singled out as reassuring by a new member, I think both in terms of behaviour allowed and transparency. That circles back to what you said around using the profile page to give an idea around what the comm is going to be like, I suppose!
Modding via comments is good as well, showing the example. Personally, I still found that I needed to gently call out/explicitly steer the conversation away from certain topics because even if I ignore it, others don't always and build up on it toward something I'd prefer the comm didn't become (usually around character bashing.) It's tough sometimes even at the Dreamwidth pace, when you can't be around all the time. But in general encouraging the kind of conversations you'd like to see more of does seem like the way to go :D People who like the conversation style are more likely to stick around.
I'm impressed you managed to have daily events, haha! Too frequent events didn't quite work for me in general and others expressed rightful concerns that it would be too much for members to keep up with, especially while the comm is getting off the ground and has few members. It's a lot of work on the mods' part as well, kudos for managing it! Did you find other people to start the comm with you and help from the start? Would love to hear about your experience finding co-mods if you had any :)
This is all so much excellent good for thought, especially around applying rules and encouraging a tone. I'm going to mull it all over some more, thank you for taking the time to write this!
no subject
Date: 2022-08-28 06:41 pm (UTC)In this day and age, I think picking a style that's good for mobile is the most important factor. Someone on a thread on your journal suggested pillowfort to me and I went and checked it out. I get that lj and dw's code comes from a day long before mobile, so I can see how changing them to mobile retroactively might be prohibitively difficult, but pillowfort is new, and I saw that they have no intentions of making it more mobile-friendly! Like, wha ...? Mobile is where people generally can and want to be doing their social media these days.
Ah, believe me, I know wank! SPN fandom was horrifically rife with it. Even to this day, you could probably find dozens of battles going on on Twitter right now over which of the main characters is pure evil (yes, so many fans even hate one or more of the 2-3 main characters, like ... ??? Why are you watching, then??). (Needless to say, I stay out of all that nonsense.) Whatever works for your members in terms of rules is great! I think I just didn't have as much patience as you for modding, lol. I laid down a couple very solid rules and didn't mess around with specifics. My main rule regarding behavior was that "The only dick allowed in the bunker is [character who is canonically a dick]; all others will be kicked out." I liked that approach because it leaves no room for people to argue and try to push boundaries, all the "but I only said ____" and "I don't see anything in the rules that specifically forbids ____." It seemed like people who were boundary-pushers saw a hard-and-fast rule like that and went away, and people who weren't boundary-pushers were reassured by it. I wonder how it would work to say something friendly but unyielding like "No character bashing--we love all the characters here!" and leave it at that ... but you know your fandom better than I do.
I definitely see how daily events on dw would probably just overwhelm comm members! We talked before once about how on lj you could schedule posts ahead of time--I just did that. You could schedule weeks' worth of posts some night when you had time or inclination and just copy and paste--it made it much easier.
And yes, I did have help! My best friend, also a hardcore SPN fan, helped me promote the comm and get in there in the comments to get and keep conversation going--it made a huge difference. (Later, she took over posting the events, when I got super tired of it, lol. She'd always been eager to, and she ended up doing it until we closed the comm's doors.) I had a pretty good-sized group of lj friends by the time I started the comm who I knew would probably like it, and that was also a big part of starting it off with some good momentum. On the Bunker's final post, I saw that a member I never really got to know offered to take over the posting of the daily events (I saw again as I revisited it while writing this post)! People who like your comm will often like the idea of helping out; I'd recommend just making a post that requests whatever kind of help you're looking for. If you don't get a response the first time around, post it again! (And maybe one more time after that if necessary.) That'll help bring the shyer people out of the woodwork.
Thank you for your long and thoughtful response, and thank you for inspiring me to write this post!
no subject
Date: 2022-08-29 08:31 pm (UTC)I forgot about the LJ scheduling! That's cool. And it's so nice someone was there with you to help you from the start. I started the comm more to find my people on Dreamwidth, so I'm building those relationships slowly :D Calls for help haven't resulted in much so far, but many people are still trying to become comfortable with posting vs commenting so we might get there over time!! I'll continue to send them out, and doing it several times to help the shyer people make up their mind is a good idea as well.
Thanks for the additional thoughts!
no subject
Date: 2022-09-02 03:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-09-05 04:36 pm (UTC)