Six Weeks for Dreamwidth

[erda]

As most of you already know, we are approaching the first year anniversary of Dreamwidth's open beta. To celebrate that event, I am thinking about creating a community to oversee a festival which would generate content for our home.

This is not about trying to coerce people into joining Dreamwidth, it's not about posting on lj or any other service about Dreamwidth. It's about making content here, for the people already here, because we have a group of talented people already gathered here and we should have a party for ourselves. If some live journal only people get curious about what's happening over here, they're welcome to come join the fun, of course, but I'm envisioning a party that is by and for people who already love Dreamwidth. Because Dreamwidth is awesome.

I have some ideas about how this might work, but right now it's all still fluid, and I'm open to suggestions. Here's what I have in mind so far:

A central community which I've tentatively called "Six Weeks for Dreamwidth" where people would probably post links, though posting actual content there is not out of the question. Six weeks for Dreamwidth means that participants agree to post their content only on Dreamwidth for six weeks, that is six weeks from the date it is posted. After the six week period is over authors/artists/vidders are free to take their content and post it anywhere they want.

Starting at the beginning of April, as many people as we can interest will start posting content on Dreamwidth comms, or wherever they want on Dreamwidth, and link it on the main comm. Also, as many people as we can interest would start comment fic memes in their personal journals. I would personally like to see some pairing specific memes, because I suspect the percentage of monofannish people on some other journaling services is higher than on dw, and those people might not be so interested in combing through a multifandom thing looking for their pairing, whereas if they should happen to hear there is a meme with just their otp available only on dw, it might make our home more interesting to them, and spark more discussion here.

I'd also love to see a prompting community where people can post prompts without any formal sign ups or obligation to write. I'd like to keep this whole thing as low stress as possible. No real sign ups, just people trying to participate as much as they can given that we are all busy people with lots of other projects. It's a party, not a duty, you see.

ETA: To clarify things a little: I am not saying that participants would restrict their posting of all content to DW for six weeks, or for any period of time. This six week period would only be for works that the participant decided to use for this fest. That would include any comment fic the participant chooses to write for memes which are designated as Six Weeks for Dreamwidth memes. Participants would continue to post other works not written for this fest wherever they liked.

Sooooooooooo

Poll:

Poll #2385 Six weeks for Dreamwidth Interest Poll

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: Just the Poll Creator, participants: 84

Are you interested in a Dreamwidth only content fest for our Anniversary?

Yes.
48 (57.1%)

Maybe.
27 (32.1%)

Yes, but six weeks is too long to tie up my content.
9 (10.7%)

Yes, but I think we should keep the content on Dreamwidth longer.
0 (0.0%)

No, not interested at all.
2 (2.4%)

What kind of content should we try to generate?

Fic only.
0 (0.0%)

Fic/Art only
0 (0.0%)

Fic/Art/Vids
3 (3.7%)

Everything we can get.
81 (100.0%)

Would you try to participate in this fest?

I would probably try to create content.
76 (90.5%)

I would probably start a comment fic meme to support Dreamwidth in my personal journal and link it to the main comm.
18 (21.4%)

I would probably try to comment on content generated by this fest to support people creating content.
58 (69.0%)

No, but I still like the idea.
4 (4.8%)

No, I think your idea is lame.
2 (2.4%)

Which activities would you like to see?

One main comm where everything is linked and tagged.
49 (65.3%)

Separate prompt comm where anyone can play.
12 (16.0%)

Use already existing comms to post content.
52 (69.3%)

Comment fic memes in personal journals.
38 (50.7%)

Create fandom specific comms for the fest and link them all to one main comm.
16 (21.3%)

I have another/other ideas I will explain in comments.
4 (5.3%)

Input, suggestions, signal boosting welcomed.

Comments

Via network

[angelikitten]

I was thinking, the other week, about having a virtual meetup for the first anniversary - but your idea sounds much better :)

Re: Via network

[erda]

Nothing to say we can't do both. A virtual meet up sounds like fun!

Re: Via network

[princessofgeeks]

of course you could do both!

did you get a chance to see what denise and mark's plans are, if any? not that you can't do things separately from them, but that was the first thing that sprang to my mind.

Re: Via network

[erda]

Not sure they've firmed up any plans yet.

slight delay

[princessofgeeks]

i forgot that today is the opening of posting for a ficathon i'm supposed to be in charge of, so i need to wait until tuesday or so to do your signal boost. i want to keep my announcement at the top of my queue for a day or two.

[zvi]

I think that included content should definitely be show-specific meta, show specific squee, and show reviews. The complaint I hear is not so much that the whole service is slow, but that people's specific fandoms are not here.

Re: slight delay

[erda]

Hee! No problem.

Re: slight delay

[princessofgeeks]

the facepalm. it is huge.

[princessofgeeks]

this is exactly what i'm getting too -- people want a sense that their fandom is represented here, so that's a great idea.

[erda]

I agree, but it's going to come down to whether we can involve enough people.

[naraht]

Intrigued by this idea (here via zvi) but still pondering it. Are you envisioning "content" as only being fanworks, or including personal posts/comments/other things? Because I think that how you define it will have a big impact on the character of the fest.

Not sure I can commit to it in any case because I have a Big Bang that I'm taking part in which starts in early May...

[ex_wicker969]

Are you envisioning "content" as only being fanworks

I'm in on the idea but that's my question too. I have content, mostly art but some writing, that's not show-specific. I've got a couple people in my circle who are non-fandom photographers and writers. I'm all for people wanting to celebrate less-common fandoms (Dinotopia books ahoy!) but limiting it to that seems to me to be make the six weeks more about convincing people to come over than celebrating an awesome service.

I also think any new communities except one round-up community should be avoided because we ought to fill up the comms and personal journals I'm hearing non-DW people complain are slow. The structure's here, let's fill it with nice things!

[naraht]

I also think any new communities except one round-up community should be avoided because we ought to fill up the comms and personal journals I'm hearing non-DW people complain are slow. The structure's here, let's fill it with nice things!

Yes, I'm with you here.

[erda]

Uh, sorry, I see that wasn't clear. I was referring specifically to fanworks.

[zvi]

right, but more types of things people can do to contribute should raise the number of contributors.

[erda]

I was referring specifically to fanworks.


I also think any new communities except one round-up community should be avoided because we ought to fill up the comms and personal journals I'm hearing non-DW people complain are slow.

Excellent point. We already have the comunities.

Interesting idea...

[elke_tanzer]

(I'm here by way of zvi...)

I'm willing to participate, mostly because I'm only posting content to Dreamwidth with an auto-cross-post to InsaneJournal. I can turn that off for a month and half, or make the IJ posts private (I think of that as a backup of my journal content nowadays). I also post whatever fic I finish to the OTW's Archive Of Our Own (AO3 aka AOOO), and I can put off the archiving of whatever fic I produce to the AO3 for six weeks. I'm so far behind on updating my own website with my fics that another six weeks for that is no difference from what I'm already doing, LOL.

I'd recommend that we try to encourage use of existing DW communities if they exist for whatever fandoms we're creating in and commenting on posts in, because one of the gripes I'm hearing from all quarters is "but it's so quiet on DW!" and the only way to get the comms to be louder is to post more stuff in them, and to comment on the stuff that's there. :-)

And if there's not communities here yet for fandoms folks want? We could encourage creation of the needed communities, and encourage an announcement post to dw_community_promo, with a special tag noting that the comm was created as part of this effort...

Now that I think of it... can we consider asking Denise & Mark to create a public-type-tag, much like "follow friday", so that rather than creating a new community for this to post content and links, we simply encourage everyone to tag their posts (of content or new community creation) for this effort as "six weeks of dreamwidth" or "six weeks of dw" or "happy anniversary dw"? That way it'd be easy to look at the whole effort using a shiny cool tool of DW...

I want to ponder this whole thing further. Hmmmmm.

Another thought...

[elke_tanzer]

I'm hearing from folks just joining DW that they're seeing the nonfannish comms as also being quieter than they'd expect or want. So I'd say, hey, let's consider broadening this beyond fanworks, and just generate more content and comments of all types!

Re: Another thought...

[damned_colonial]

IAWTC.

Re: Another thought...

[erda]

I don't object to including nonfannish content, I just don't know much about that area of Dreamwidth.

Re: Interesting idea...

[erda]

I like this idea a lot.

Re: Interesting idea...

[elke_tanzer]

In thinking about this a little further, so far I'm liking the idea of a "happy anniversary dw" tag best, for posts which are either DW-only or DW-primary... because that's more-obviously a positive celebration of DW rather than something that could be perceived as exclusionary or anti-other-services for six weeks. Hmmmmm. Still pondering.

Re: Another thought...

[elke_tanzer]

Hee! Come to the dark side additional-to-media-fandom-side! We have cookies! :-D

boilingwater - omnomnom - recipebox - batchlunch - our_daily_vino - permaculture - altars_and_shrines - actyourwage - homeeconomics101 - disaster_preparedness - style_salon - sca_attire - fleecefiberyarn - knitting - baaaaabylaptops - macapps

:-D

Re: Another thought...

[rydra_wong]

Thirding. There also seems to be a widespread perception that Dreamwidth is specifically fannish. So some people are saying that they find non-fannish LJ friends don't want to move because they think DW's just about fandom.

I'd vote for it to cover all sorts of content, whether that's fic or a meta essay or a how-to guide for a particular knitting technique or a bit of interesting historical research.

Re: Another thought...

[rydra_wong]

poetry! disobey_gravity! sun_salutation! do_it! fucking_meds! gimp_gate! metaquotes! sewing! *g*