I have an assortment of comms. One got to be reasonably popular, but most of them showed early promise only to die a premature death.
This, apparently, is going to send me to hell.
The reason this happens - in my estimation - is that there's things I'm good at. I'm good at making some stuff up. I'm good at coming up with links between things. I'm good at strange ideas that Just Might Work. I'm good at overcommitting myself. This means that the one thing I have the most limited supply of - ie, me - can't really do all the things I want to be able to do.
And I want for things to work. So, here I'm going to go through those comms, one at a time, and talk about what I think probably needs to happen. So, in no particular order (ie, alphabetically by comm name), here they are:
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
adjectinventive
It's a comm for new words on LJ. NeoLJisms, as it were. It mostly came about as a result of comments in a post by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lesslikeyou, and then failed to grow into a fun place for posting new LJwords.
I'm undecided as to the fate of this comm. On one hand, I'd like to keep it - if it could grow into a viable comm, it'd be Quite Fun Indeed. On the other hand, it's been about for over a year now, and hasn't done much of anything.
If people are interested in keeping this comm, then I'd like a person or two to make co-maintainer(s) of1, an influx of new members2, and (hopefully) some new posts. Maintainer responsibilities would probably include keeping peace, enforcing rules and keeping things tidy-ish.
apathy_books
This comm was based on the idea of a kind of fandom exchange - I would read HP, and other people would read some Garth Nix. Problem is, nowI've read HP up to and including HBP, so the premise of the comm has fallen apart some.
Oops.
Originally, I'd planned on keeping the comm afterwards as a kind of geographically dislocated asynchronous book group - ie, a comm for people to talk about books they like. I imagine these already exist elsewhere, but the difference is that this one would be mine. Which really just means that it'd be run by a library science student with overblown ideas on information access.
I'd still like to keep this comm, but I'll take the slash-and-burn approach of removing all the existing entries, rewriting the comm info, and adding some kind of standard format for describing the books that keeps me happy without the need to teach everyone to be cataloguers.
Again, a co-maintainer or two would be shiny1 - and the job would probably be one of keeping the peace and helping with (a) entry tags and (b) the community memories. The memories would index entries under the name of the book's author3, while the tags would provide access for author(s), subject4, genre5, series and anything else deemed important for finding related items.
New members would be good, too2, and please don't let me scare you.
apathy_games
This was a comm I had high hopes for, and was quite excited about. While I probably did quite poorly from the start - it was my first ever attempt at a journal RPG, my first shot at running a Serenity game, and then it was brutally interrupted by my newfound attempt at schooling - I'd have liked for it to work.
To all those who signed up, I have this to say: Sorry. No, really. Unfortunately, I don't think that game can be saved; not after the eight months it's been left.
I'll start cleaning the comm out in about 48 hours (posts and member list both). If you want to keep bits of the posts there, and it'll take longer than that to do it, please comment here to tell me so that I don't delete it before you get a copy.
palmer_kun has suggested a new pulp game, run using Spirit of the Century, a new FATE v3 RPG from Evil Hat. It's utterly fantastic, much like FATE before it, and I think it'd make for a fun game. This game would need two things: a GM6, and some players7. For those not yet familiar with SotC, there's a two-chapter .pdf preview here.
comms_anon
Intended as a community for community addicts to share communities they like, it, um, never really happened. I'm open to all suggestions for this one.
drama_review
This one sprang out of an AIM conversation withnyctanessa, andthen didn't really go anywhere. nyctanessa, if you want it, it's all yours. Otherwise, if someone else wants it, you're welcome to it. If no-one wants it, it'll probably be unexisted.
Lastly,
metaicons
has been vaguely successful. It's largely self-managing, and doesn't need much in the way of attention - except to prod those who make material fit formetaicons go and post it there. All I'm really looking at here is a co-maintainer or two; interested parties would mostly just poke people toward the comm and, um, be there in case something bad ever happens there. Again, 1.
And that's this list pretty much done. There's one comm that didn't make the list and was summarily unexisted, but that was from when I still played NationStates, and that was Quite Some Time Ago. So, now for the footnotes!
This, apparently, is going to send me to hell.
The reason this happens - in my estimation - is that there's things I'm good at. I'm good at making some stuff up. I'm good at coming up with links between things. I'm good at strange ideas that Just Might Work. I'm good at overcommitting myself. This means that the one thing I have the most limited supply of - ie, me - can't really do all the things I want to be able to do.
And I want for things to work. So, here I'm going to go through those comms, one at a time, and talk about what I think probably needs to happen. So, in no particular order (ie, alphabetically by comm name), here they are:
adjectinventiveIt's a comm for new words on LJ. NeoLJisms, as it were. It mostly came about as a result of comments in a post by
lesslikeyou, and then failed to grow into a fun place for posting new LJwords.I'm undecided as to the fate of this comm. On one hand, I'd like to keep it - if it could grow into a viable comm, it'd be Quite Fun Indeed. On the other hand, it's been about for over a year now, and hasn't done much of anything.
If people are interested in keeping this comm, then I'd like a person or two to make co-maintainer(s) of1, an influx of new members2, and (hopefully) some new posts. Maintainer responsibilities would probably include keeping peace, enforcing rules and keeping things tidy-ish.
apathy_booksThis comm was based on the idea of a kind of fandom exchange - I would read HP, and other people would read some Garth Nix. Problem is, nowI've read HP up to and including HBP, so the premise of the comm has fallen apart some.
Oops.
Originally, I'd planned on keeping the comm afterwards as a kind of geographically dislocated asynchronous book group - ie, a comm for people to talk about books they like. I imagine these already exist elsewhere, but the difference is that this one would be mine. Which really just means that it'd be run by a library science student with overblown ideas on information access.
I'd still like to keep this comm, but I'll take the slash-and-burn approach of removing all the existing entries, rewriting the comm info, and adding some kind of standard format for describing the books that keeps me happy without the need to teach everyone to be cataloguers.
Again, a co-maintainer or two would be shiny1 - and the job would probably be one of keeping the peace and helping with (a) entry tags and (b) the community memories. The memories would index entries under the name of the book's author3, while the tags would provide access for author(s), subject4, genre5, series and anything else deemed important for finding related items.
New members would be good, too2, and please don't let me scare you.
apathy_gamesThis was a comm I had high hopes for, and was quite excited about. While I probably did quite poorly from the start - it was my first ever attempt at a journal RPG, my first shot at running a Serenity game, and then it was brutally interrupted by my newfound attempt at schooling - I'd have liked for it to work.
To all those who signed up, I have this to say: Sorry. No, really. Unfortunately, I don't think that game can be saved; not after the eight months it's been left.
I'll start cleaning the comm out in about 48 hours (posts and member list both). If you want to keep bits of the posts there, and it'll take longer than that to do it, please comment here to tell me so that I don't delete it before you get a copy.
palmer_kun has suggested a new pulp game, run using Spirit of the Century, a new FATE v3 RPG from Evil Hat. It's utterly fantastic, much like FATE before it, and I think it'd make for a fun game. This game would need two things: a GM6, and some players7. For those not yet familiar with SotC, there's a two-chapter .pdf preview here.comms_anonIntended as a community for community addicts to share communities they like, it, um, never really happened. I'm open to all suggestions for this one.
drama_reviewThis one sprang out of an AIM conversation with
nyctanessa, andthen didn't really go anywhere. nyctanessa, if you want it, it's all yours. Otherwise, if someone else wants it, you're welcome to it. If no-one wants it, it'll probably be unexisted.Lastly,
metaiconshas been vaguely successful. It's largely self-managing, and doesn't need much in the way of attention - except to prod those who make material fit for
metaicons go and post it there. All I'm really looking at here is a co-maintainer or two; interested parties would mostly just poke people toward the comm and, um, be there in case something bad ever happens there. Again, 1.And that's this list pretty much done. There's one comm that didn't make the list and was summarily unexisted, but that was from when I still played NationStates, and that was Quite Some Time Ago. So, now for the footnotes!
- If you'd like to put your virtual hand up for this, comment here, and tell me which comm you're interested in doing stuff for.
- If you'd like to join, just go and do it. And do feel free to post.
- Which is to say, first author, mostly. And by 'mostly', I mean that the memories entry would correspond with main entry in cataloguing except in cases where main entry would be under title, because that would make a silly memories list.
- For non-fiction items, because people read those too. This would involve coming up with some kind of scheme for subject tags, which I'd like to keep reasonably simple because it's meant to be a book group, not a catalogue.
- For fiction. Tagging makes hybrid genres easier to deal with, too, because you can just add each as a new tag.
- If you're interested, comment here. If more than one person is interested, then you can talk it over in the comments and decide who'll do it. I'm not going to do it - my schedule really can't fit the responsibilities of GMing, and I don't want another promising game to die. The eventual GM will get maintainer access to the comm, so that they can actually Do Stuff to make their game work.
- Spirit will comfortably take up to about six players, according to the book. Feel free to comment here with expressions of interest, but choice of players will ultimately be up to whoever will be GM.
