Dreamwidth comm: thoughts

[aceeccentric]

Hey y'all :) So lately people have been talking about starting a new ace community on Dreamwidth for asexual, demisexual, grey-asexual and other folk to talk. The advantage being that with a community that we created and moderated ourselves, it'd be easier to shut down any attacks than it would be on other sites.

Below are just some thoughts I've had about creating a community. I'm very curious about other people's thoughts and opinions. I'm pretty sure, also, that I have anonymous and Open ID commenting enabled.

Also, just to warn y'all, I'm going to be largely unavailable from the 2nd to the 7th -- my girlfriend is coming to visit! :D So unless some people decide to help mod (or, babysit mod for just those days) I don't want to start the community while I won't be able to check on it.

Oh, and I have more Dreamwidth invite codes for anyone who still needs them. You can leave a way to contact you in a comment or leave an Ask through Tumblr (I have anon asks enabled). If you only have an e-mail to have the code sent to, I promise not to do anything nefarious with your address.

Name

Right now the suggested names for the community (that I've seen) are Group_X (suggested by captainheartless and modified with an underscore by various people) and acecommunity (suggested by epochryphal). ETA: acesabroad has also been suggested (by shiyiya). ETA2: ace_umbrella also came up as a possibility (theletterfour).

I was going to make a poll but I don't know right now whether I want to buy a paid account, so instead I'll just create a dedicated name thread where people can comment with other name suggestions or which one of the suggestions they like.

Purpose

The main purpose would be to create a community space to talk about ace continuum things that would be safer than the current Tumblr environment. People could get to know each other and know attacks against the community within the community could be frozen, deleted, blocked, etc., more easily than the "asexual" and other tags on Tumblr, which anybody can use.

If anybody has any other ideas about giving the community more of a focus, leave them below.

Open Threads

One thing I would like to do is have a weekly Open Thread. A post that's just a free-for-all in the comments, where people can talk about anything, get to know each other better, and ease into the community. Probably each post could also have a specific prompt to get people talking about something in particular (favorite jokes, videos, candies, etc.).

Other Posts

One thing I like about Tumblr is the way it can mix personal posts and discussion-oriented posts, so I think it'd be nice to allow either here. Being able to talk about something personal that you want or need to share with fellow community members. Maybe the guidelines would be to keep them related to the focus of the community and to put long posts or big images behind cuts so as not to clutter up people's reading lists or slow down their load times.

Safe Space Policy

Considering the environment that prompted people wanting an extra space, I think it's important that we write a safe space policy. I've never written one of these before, so I'm not exactly sure how to go about it, but it'd probably include putting trigger warnings on posts, putting potentially triggering material behind cuts, not attacking people's identities, and avoiding derogatory (anti-trans, ableist, ageist, sexist, racist, classist, etc.) attitudes and language.

Also, possibly making entries default to members-only security? I think the Open Threads would necessarily be members-only, for the protection of those who felt comfortable only discussing things in a locked entry. We could ask all entries to be members-only if people wanted things that way.

If anybody wants to help out with this it'd be much appreciated. Anything that gets written would, of course, be posted for people to review and make suggestions or comments on.

Accessibility Policy

The Dreamwidth team seems to be pretty good about coding accessibility into the website. Beyond that I'd like to include warnings and cuts on flashing images or video in case anyone visiting the community might have a seizure because of something like that, and image descriptions on any images included in posts. And maybe summaries or transcripts for videos that people post, because a lot of time videos don't have captions or the option to try auto-captioning (when auto-captioning is even reliable).

Admin

Right now I don't mind starting up and modding the community. I have enough time on my hands to do that, I think (of course I'm saying this before the new semester starts, but last semester wasn't that bad, so…), and I did start a specific discussion about it, so it's only fair. I'd appreciate hearing thoughts on being able to mod from anybody else, even if you'd only be free on the weekends or something.

Membership

Moderated membership doesn't seem like it would work at the moment -- there are a lot of new accounts and little-used accounts (including my own), and I'm not sure how we would "verify" people, since most moderated policies I've seen have been based on the age of the journal and how much activity it's had. But we'd have the option of creating a moderated membership policy if we were having trouble. We could also write up a policy for suspending/banning members if we wanted to have one.

And, of course, offer your own opinions on this.

Design

I figure we could just pick an easy-to-read theme out of the ready-made themes Dreamwidth offers. But if anybody wants to design a layout, banner, icon, or profile, that'd be cool too. I don't know how to do much more than fiddle with layout colors. I'd prefer to pick something neutral colored (like asexual_fandom has).

Tags

I almost forgot about tags! So, tags I can think of off the top of my head:

asexuality, demisexuality, grey-asexuality, attraction, sexuality, relationships, dating, romantic relationships, zucchini, community, coming out, family, invisibility, gender, media, video, images, representation, pride, merchandise, meet-ups, open thread, mod post, sex, erasure, tagging (for a master tag post where people could request new tags?).

ETA: Also suggested are discussion, intersectionality, tag request (in place of requesting things at a master tag post), and 101, if we wanted to put 101-type entries into the comm.

I know there should be more but I'm not sure how to phrase them or what they should be exactly. Like, aromantic and wtfromantic are adjectives but everything else is a noun … I'm probably the only one who would even notice that though.

That's it for now!

Comments

Name Thread

[aceeccentric]

Comment with your opinions about names here!

[anghraine]

I like group_x best, too. Acecommunity is clearer but kind of ... prosaic.

[theletterfour]

1. If at some point, you decide you want a poll, I have some dreamwidth credits sitting in my account that aren't earmarked for anything. I could use those to get you a month or two of paid time so you could make a poll. Of coruse, I'm not sure how a poll functions if your account reverts to a free account..

2. Membership: I don't really like moderated membership communities in general, although I understand that for the purposes of a safe space, it might become necessary. However, there is also the option of having open membership, but only specific members can post, or open membership and all members can post, but the posts are moderated in a queue. If more care is needed, perhaps moderated posting would be a better idea than moderated membership.

2a. banning members: I think it's a good idea to set up guidelines of behaviour before the community is created, so if someone is being a troll or abusive or whatever, it's clearly stated somewhere that such actions aren't tolerated (this also ties into the place being a safe space)

2b/3. Administration: I have no idea whether I'd have time to moderate (I just graduated from university so my schedule is up in the air right now as I figure out what's going to happen next), but I would be willing to help if I have time. I have some experience moderating and running communities in places other than dreamwidth as well as a pretty good handle on how dreamwidth works.

4. tags: Dreamwidth allows a (sort of) nested tag use. It's not true nesting, but a lot of communities have sub-classes of tag where they'll tag anything adminny with "admin: x-tag" rather than just "x-tag." Also if there is a master tag post, you wouldn't really need the tagging tag, since you could just link to that one post in your sidebar. However, you could allow people to request certain tags that didn't exist in the entries themselves, and in that case it would be useful to have a tag named tag request.

Also, there is an available setting for all members to be able to create new tags, however that can open up to tag abuse or to multiple tags for one concept (this was what led to scans_daily running out of tags at one point, because they'd have separate tags for Clark Kent and Superman, for example.)

Depending on the types of posts we're looking for in the community you also might want some tags like... discussion (for a post looking for discussion), 101 (if we're allowing 101-type posts), intersectionality if someone posts about how their asexuality relates to another part of their identity and how that affects privilege... I'm sure there are more, I think there needs to be time to see what happens in the community to see what types of tags are needed. Tags can always be added retroactively as well.

[virescence]

Now that I have time to think about more than just names, I'm going to Comment More. Hope that's ok XD

First off: I'd volunteer to help mod if you need me? The next month may not be great for me since it's dissertation crunch time, but after that I should be fine time-wise.

I could also do an icon (and potentially a banner if anyone knows what size one would need to be) - I'm not great with graphics so if anyone else is and wants to they should take priority, but otherwise I'm up for it. (And obviously if anyone has suggestions for what they'd like on them I would be all ears!)

I think having membership unmoderated and then suspending/banning members if necessary is the best way to go about it - but we'd probably need as comprehensive a list of offences as possible beforehand, I think, just so there's something to point to and say "this is what you did wrong". I imagine it would probably tie in quite heavily to the safe-space policy.

What else did I want to say? Oh yes - security. I'm not entirely sure how security works over here so forgive my ignorance, but I think the best option would be a situation where some posts were members-only and some were public (with the poster getting to choose to share them or not, and with Open Threads being private). The main reason I think there should be the option for some public posts is mostly for the sake of newbies. In my experience, I find that some people coming to a place where everything is locked for members only can end up feeling excluded before they've even joined - it can give a community a sort of insular feeling, and it means they can't get a feel for what sort of place a community is before deciding if they want to join it. Having a few posts public would probably help (though with commenting locked for members only, ideally - is that possible?)

And goodness, sorry for rambling. Feel free to ignore anything!

[sciatrix]

Now that I have a bit more time to sit and make real comments...

Re the safe spaces policy: I was involved with a lot of the intitial ToS planning for the TransYadas forum, so I have some limited experience on that front. Want me to help out with the drafting of the one for this community?

I vote for unmoderated membership. If we have trolling problems later, moderate it and let people in on a provisional basis--keep an eye on them in the community and on their personal spaces, that sort of thing--and wait to see if they become productive members. But to start with, especially with so many people who are brand new to DW, unmoderated seems the best plan.

[firiel]

I'm leaning the opposite way with security: we need moderated membership, at least at the beginning when all the trolls will know exactly where to find us. I've seen this idea used before, so I know it works pretty well. It's labor-intensive, but would allow for people who are new to DW to still be included.

The mods are the first members. They invite people. Each new person is allowed a certain number of invites, possibly including why they think that person is trustworthy - link to their Tumblr as evidence, know them IRL, etc. (This is handled through a screened master post.) The mods check each person, invite them, and once the new people have read and commented on the rules/FAQ post they are allowed to invite their 3 (or however many) people. If someone duplicates a nomination, they are allowed to name another person so their turn isn't wasted.

Like I said, this obviously takes a lot of mod time to get off the ground. I would be willing mod at the beginning to help out with the work load, then step down when things are less hectic. The one real problem I see is if people come across the group via the asexual tag here. Perhaps there could be an open thread for requests from people who feel like they don't have someone to vouch for them? I don't think we would need to be on the voucher system for terribly long, so once we switched to normal moderated membership and/or posting, we could do a basic quick vetting of the people on the list and let them in.

Yes, it's a lot of work, but I really feel like anything unmoderated at this point is troll bait. If this is our safe space, we shouldn't give people a chance to come in and be offensive at all, even if they do get banned immediately. Hope for the best but prepare for the worst, because we've seen some of the worst of people.

[kaz]

Brief notes cause I still have no decent typing ability...

Re: moderated membership, I think we might be able to start with unmoderated and see how it goes from there? My reasoning is that DW needs invite codes (speaking of which if anyone needs any I can send you one when I get back from holiday) and as a result trolls will have to go to a lot more effort re: finding some if they're not already on DW and it won't be easy to create new accounts to harass us. It depends on if they WILL go to that effort and also if any trolls are already DW people.

Main point I wanted to add was re accessibility - PLEASE have a policy of video descriptions or transcripts. It's not only that autocaptioning doesn't work very well but even with captions some people (*waves*) still can't watch or have a great deal of trouble watching video, so adding on some text only stuff makes it more accessible. And although transcripts are obviously best they can be a lot of effort and honestly speaking for myself having someone plonk down a video and then go "above: funny video of a cat" is MUCH less alienating and frustrating than someone just plonking down a video with no description whatsoever and no way for me to figure out WTF is going on in it - this second is the quintessential "Kazzes not welcome" sign for me, captions or not.

[(Anonymous)]

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