I'm talking about this here, because you've all been members of the community for a while now, and I think that you're the best go-to team for advice here.
It's no secret that the community well.. sucks now. There are many reasons for this, but I'm going to take the blame squarely on the shoulders. I got tired, and I didn't want to deal with it anymore. However, I realize that this is a project worth devoting time to, and that people enjoy.
To that end, I just don't HAVE all of the time I've had in the past to devote to this. Frankly, neither to J & V. Everyone's busy with real life, and jobs and it moves us away from our mod responsibilities.
However, in recent chats with  artist_writer, ideas have started flowing again. This is a good thing, and I'd like to get some input from all of you if possible.
I was going to do a poll, but that's too cold, so I'm going to ask you to please take a few minutes of your time and comment on the following ideas/suggestions to see if we can come up with a common goal.
1. I'd like to reopen the community. In order to do this we need some sort of structure. The pending actives definitely worked for a while, but became difficult to herd cats. artist_writer had the following suggestion for opening the community to new members:
I think deleting non-participants and recruiting a fresh crop is a good choice, honestly. The selection process, like with art_reborn, needs to be really critical, though. Kind of like nervousness.org's philosophy of working towards proving yourself trustworthy first.
Some ideas:
New members fill out a membership application, like before (right?).
A "pending members" swap occurs between them and one of the maintainers *OR* members with the highest ranking, depending on schedules or rotation.
Swaps must originate from the pending member, must follow the critera set forth by the recipient and must follow all of the community guidelines for sending and receiving. An example of a simple pending member swap can be:
---------- > Maintainer goes to any public place that has tri-fold brochures, picks the ugliest one they can find, opens it up flat and alters one side. They take pictures of their finished piece, then they tag it appropriately. Then, they send it to the pending member member.
---------- > The recipient alters the other side, takes pictures of their finished product, then sends it back using the community guidelines.
---------- > If all the criterea is met for this swap and the community agrees that this person's attempts would be an asset to the journals they're passing around, the maintainer/high ranking person folds the brochure back up and alters the front of it saying they've been accepted to the community and it's sent back to the pending member.
Sounds like a lot of work, right? Personally, I think it's worth it. If they can't do a simple swap like this, with cheap mailing and almost free supplies . . . then are they worth having in the community?
Now, I'd like to find a way to do that with a journalling theme, but I am drawing blanks. So I'd like to know about any of your suggestions and/or concerns about reopening the community, and secondly how to go about the qualifying to play.
2. I need help. Lots of it! The Master List has (obviously) gone untouched for months now, and I'm way behind. I think I can take the time to get it up to date this week, but I'm going to need help in a general way.
I've already asked Jenn to help out here, and she's accepted. Basically, what she's going to do is simply post comments to the list when journals have been posted about/updated. This is because.. well, 4 eyes are better than 2, and it really IS easy to miss posts on LJ when your friends list gets too crowded.
I would also like to get a few more 'maintainers' for the community.
-I need someone to put posts into memories. They're already categorized, they'd just need to be added as we go along.
-I need someone to be in charge of who needs to be skipped/removed/etc. I would write the post for you, but as LJ doesn't let you edit others' posts, I'd need you to repost it as yourself, so that you have access to edit it. I'm thinking that a skip/remove post weekly or bi-weekly would be useful for everyone. Journals wouldn't go to inactives, etc.
-I probably need a few more things I can't think of.
Now, none of you need to volunteer to do this, as within the next week I'll be posting for help in the main community, so if you can't - c'est la vie. But please do give me your input.
3. Rules. What do you want to see ? What do you want to see gone ? If we open it up to play with new people, what guidelines should we have?
Should members ultimately be responsible for requesting addresses? Should we get an address maintainer? What would make this better for you?
If you knew me at all, you'd know that its difficult for me to admit I've failed, but it's clear that I most definitely have in this case. But I'd like to try to get the community to bounce back. I just can't do it without you guys.
So let me have it. Criticize away :)
I can't wait to hear your suggestions!
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