Have you loved a community today?

[goodbyebird]

Community culture used to be big back in the day, but as fics drifted over to AO3, fanart and graphics to tumblr, and random thoughts/reviews sprinkled in just about everywhere, the communities have been somewhat left behind. But they're such a wonderful hub for potential new folks to stumble across!

So, have you loved a community today? Please consider sharing them where applicable <3

Drop a comment below to let us know!

Comments

Questions?

[goodbyebird]

ask here

[fred_mouse]

I have two communities that help me keep bits of my life together - unclutter and bitesizedcleaning. Without the support from the people in those communities, I'd be much less together than I am!

[goodbyebird]

That's good to hear. having a small, manageable task handed to you can so often be helpful.

[quamquam20]

Wow, I don't know why I never thought to search for communities like that. They look great. Thank you for sharing them!

Feeds

[melagan]

I wrote a little bit about how easy it is to use Dreamwidth feeds and posted a link to the current list of feeds.

Dreamwidth also makes it very easy to create a feed, and if I can do it, anyone can.

My post is here

Re: Feeds

[goodbyebird]

Ooh, good idea!

[mekare]

I regularly post to drawesome, and c_ent (most recently a masterpost of Mysterious Lotus Casebook graphics)

[pauraque]

I enjoy common_nature! All kinds of posts about nature are welcome, but most people post photos.

[aurumcalendula]

I'm really enjoying c_ent (and how active it is)! I particularly like the weekly chat posts and reading about what folks have been watching lately.

[lumiosecity]

If I don’t gush about how much I love starwars100 at any given opportunity, assume I’ve been replaced with a doppelgänger that hates fun, or something.

I love writing drabbles, and everyone in the community is just so dang kind, and a bunch of really good writers to boot!

[goodbyebird]

I absolutely adore drabbles, so nice to see some activity for those still!

The SW communities I'm aware of are dreamwars (different discussion topics), swbookclub (what it says on the tin), and disneyplusshows (for all the new series).

[sporky_rat]

I have been really enjoying agonyaunt and the wild wild stories that show up.

[fiachairecht]

I love seeing what people share on recthething! It's a great chill place to share fanworks you're enjoying lately.

Done!

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> Community culture used to be big back in the day, but as fics drifted over to AO3, fanart and graphics to tumblr, and random thoughts/reviews sprinkled in just about everywhere, the communities have been somewhat left behind. <<

Some communities have survived and are still highly active. These include comms devoted to major fandoms (e.g. Harry Potter, Star Wars), umbrella comms for extremely popular topics (e.g. crafts, icons), event comms (e.g. bingo fests, exchanges), and template-based comms (e.g. recipes, recommendations). It's useful to know those categories and their various strategies for survival and activity.

See also my posts on "Improving Communities on Dreamwidth," "Activating Communities," "Improving Community in Fandom."


>> But they're such a wonderful hub for potential new folks to stumble across! <<

I agree. I always recommend that newcomers to DW check the Interests page and to find communities they want to subscribe. It's also good to check those resources once or twice a year, such as during major events like this, because the activity is higher then which makes it easier to find things.

>> So, have you loved a community today? <<

I have!

I made my daily "Birdfeeding" post in birdfeeding. This is crossposted on my blog and in that community.

Each week I make a post to followfriday where folks can recommend communities or individual blogs worth reading; here is today's rec post. I also make a thematic post on my blog that lists active communities on Dreamwidth, which I then link over on the community. Today's is Follow Friday 4-26-24: Digital Art. Remember I mentioned icons above as a thriving topic? Icon communities come up in most topics that I feature. \o/ I encourage everyone to drop by and recommend your favorite communities.

Periodically I advertise my communities on dw_community_promo. If you moderate any communities, I encourage you to promote them there, at least once or twice a year. New comms can be promoted once a week, and older ones once a month. Today I did a mass promo of my communities including a pitch about3W4DW: Three Weeks for Dreamwidth Community Promotion.

I've probably made brief comments in several other communities today or yesterday, because I'm linking people's 3W4DW events in my gather post. I try and remember to tell folks when I've done that, so for any community event there is likely a comment.


>> Or have you recently posted something that could be linked in a community? Reviews, meta, fanart, recs, silly memes... Please consider sharing them where applicable <3

Crossposting is a wonderful way to keep communities active. I see people posting tons of things that would suit various communities. For my communities, and occasionally others, I comment encouraging folks to crosspost. Generally speaking, it's safe to crosspost anything between your blog and one topical community. It's also safe to crosspost things to topical communities that have little or no overlap, like if you make a post about your Harry Potter themed garden (lilies and petunias and narcissus, oh my!), you could crosspost it to a Harry Potter comm and a gardening comm. The main thing to avoid is crossposting to every comm in a topic, like all the HP comms, because then lots of people would see multiple copies of the same post, which gets annoying. But if you're promoting something like an annual event, then it makes more sense to hit all the relevant comms, once.

Do you moderate a community? Make sure that its profile, and sticky post if any, tell people that crossposting is welcome and give some examples about what kinds of content you'd like to see crossposted and how. This is an easy way to boost activity, because once somebody has written a post, it takes only a few seconds to duplicate it or post a link to it.

Some communities have near-identical content, like recipecommunity and creative_cooks. Several of us regularly crosspost the same recipes to both. Other things may diverge.
If I post nature pictures on my blog, I often crosspost them, but because I frequently break the set into multiple posts, I look at the content. Did I catch a bird? That post goes on birdfeeding. Does one post have a lot of pictures from an herb or flower garden? It goes on gardening. Wildflowers, the prairie garden, other wildlife like a rabbit or butterfly, a sunset? It goes on common_nature. So if you look at your posts, especially long thinky ones or anything with images, consider connections to different communities where you could crosspost or link to it. Also think about what topics you post most frequently. If you don't already have a community you could crosspost those, consider finding one to join.

[althea_valara]

Thirty-nine Dreamwidth community recommendations posted in my journal! Feel free to link elsewhere, and I'd be more than happy to add to the list with others' suggestions.

[mxcatmoon]

Ooh, goodie, a nice big list to check out!

[seleneheart]

I spend a lot of time in journalsandplanners recently.

[yourlibrarian]

Just made another post over at common_nature (already recced above). However I want to put in a plug for tv_talk which got new life this past year and has had active discussions going on every week. It's open to meta, discussion posts, recruiter posts, reviews and other fannish posts about TV shows!

[goodbyebird]

I'm really happy to see tv_talk still alive and kicking ❤️

[mxcatmoon]

I posted a list of some of my favorite communities over on my journal here: https://mscatmoon.dreamwidth.org/234030.html

[wearing_tearing]

I'm always around tv_talk! I've found a few great shows through some people over there. Also a big fan of booknook for book talks and recs. fanart_recs is also great for showing appreciation for artists <3

[impala_chick]

I'm having fun over at two brand new kink memes (and I hope kink memes make a comeback in general): hbowarkinkmeme and skepticbelieverkinkmeme


Rules Post | Prompt Post

[goodbyebird]

I've often been frustrated by stumbling across a kink meme that doesn't use the "kink meme" interest tag; let us find the thing! Hopefully the awareness of kinkmemepromo keeps spreading. Creative memes are so much fun.

[impala_chick]

Oh thanks for the link, I've never heard of that comm before!

[goodbyebird]

letzan is a journal, not community, but the account is only used for posting femslash AO3 stats. I find it really interesting, and I'm so happy someone's tracking it <3

the_old_guard and ourflagmeansgay are communities I've set up, but in both I've been in awe of the lovely community that came together. Fingers crossed the Old Guard sequel comes out at some point this decade, eh?

[matsushima]

I love the idea of allkindsofdolls but I don't want to be the only person posting - I hate when it feels like a community is just one person's self promo, you know? So if you're into dolls - any kind of dolls! - please check us out?

[linky]

I really love fandom_checkin, and doing their polls every day is part of my routine. I also really enjoy youtuberecs, common_nature, and fictional_fans. (Plus tons more!)

I especially have a soft spot for the three I run for my fandom: toku100challenge, tokukinkmeme, and tokurecs. It's been wonderful seeing activity in them over the time I've been running them.

[goodbyebird]

I love seeing fandom-specific communities actually making it ❤️