passing on some valuable Dreamwidth meta

[merelydovely]

I'm really enjoying the responses to my post about the femslash gap, so this in-depth post by melannen about how to make discussion happen on your Dreamwidth posts caught my eye:

...if my specific goal is to host a discussion, I find it very useful to think of myself as a host. And as a host, I have duties - I have to make the space welcoming; I have to make sure people know that they're invited; I have to give people a reason to want to come; I have to remember that I'm in a position of responsibility for the guests who are in my space; I have to be ready to unobtrusively deal with messes...

She then goes on to lay out eleven points to keep in mind if you're trying to get folks talking. It's probably worth reading if you're having a bit of post-tumblr culture shock.

The one I found most interesting was the third one: Make your post broadly accessible, and require minimum context to contribute. The musings there about the difference between Tumblr and Dreamwidth were very insightful. As melannen points out, your posts aren't likely to be tumbled around the site until they reach all the people who can instantly and effortlessly relate; you'll get the best engagement if you pitch your posts to the reference base of your network, because that's as far as your post is going to reach, more or less.

And in the spirit of point number 2, everybody likes to be asked, I'll ask you: what internet haunt do you associate with the most interesting and lively discussion? I have fond memories of the forums attached to the webcomic Megatokyo, of all places...

Thanks very much to implicated2 for the tipoff; check out their post as well for more Dreamwidth advice!

Comments

[ineptshieldmaid]

I think I've managed to have interesting and lively discussion on every site I've been on, but I have particularly fond memories of the LJ comm ontd_pinto. I barely even followed Pinto shipping but that comm had some GREAT off-topic threads.

[merelydovely]

I always wondered why the RPF for Pinto had such an unbelievable ratio of quality to mediocrity. It makes sense that the community behind it was also high quality!

[ineptshieldmaid]

You know how people are mourning tumblr as a unique platform for generally-reliable peer-to-peer sex ed? ONTD_pinto's TMI fridays were amazing for that. Mixture of of opportunities to LOL at other people's lives, bond over your sex experiences, and answer... questions the internet should not have to answer. The number of threads I saw explaining to americans that no, a permanent state of stingy and swollen is NOT just what you get for having sex, that's either an std or (more likely) a UTI, get thee to a doctor at once was ASTONISHINGLY HIGH.

[merelydovely]

Oh god. That's simultaneously awesome and frankly depressing.

[ineptshieldmaid]

I never realised /how bad/ the health care situation in the US is until then. Obviously some of that is poor education, but also... people either being totally unable to see a doctor, or discouraged since childhood from seeing doctors for anything but emergencies. If I hadn't had my mother explain UTIs to me I would still have gone to a doctor, because Peeing Blood Is Bad and doctors fix things like that.

[merelydovely]

Yeah, it's... I don't think I really realized it until I got old enough to have to worry about my own insurance, since I was lucky enough to have well-insured parents growing up, but wow. It's a trip sometimes.