idle daydreaming: a world where every personal journal had a new-reader faq

[cimorene]

I read in dw_suggestions that Dreamwidth now has a feature for community maintainers that allows you to set it so new members who join a community are automatically taken to an FAQ post. What a useful feature! The landscape of fandom would change SO DRASTICALLY that it's sort of hard to imagine what it would even be like if noobs stopped posting without following the rules, you know?

Which brings me to personal journals. As ridic as that would be, sometimes I think it'd be good to do something like that for those too. Bob knows there have been innumerable incidents on both sides (people I should have had a quick-start intro to when I started reading their journals for ease of comprehension, and people who obviously missed the quick-start info displayed prominently in my profile from their initial comments assuming that I live in the US, that I'm actually Finnish, that I'm not gay, that I agree with them that Fandom Wank & Mean Girls Everywhere are teh ebil, that I'm not a jew, that I obviously agree with them that gender-normative clothing IRL/the media is fun/empowering and not sexist).

Many of the former just continue to breed confusion, because it's kind of hard to find that stuff as a latecomer to a journal if it's not in the userinfo (which it often isn't, since many people like to keep that stuff somewhat private - which makes perfect sense). Even if someone is a religious user of tags, you can't really go through all of them looking for the clue.

Most of the latter require at most a few sentences' elucidation, but every now and then they stick me in the position of leaving a comment completely unreplied to because it's trying to initiate one of those conversations I've had a million times and got tired of a long time ago, like "But, hey, you guys, on the subject of RPS, I just had a thought: how would YOU feel?" (NB: Not an actual example from my journal. At least, not that I can remember. On the other hand, that happens all the time to fandom, which is unfortunately not able to direct all noobs to Fanlore and the Fandom Wank Wiki before they post anywhere.)

Comments

[brewsternorth]

Is the point that this FAQ-post would be made apparent to new subscribers as well as people to whom access has been granted? If the former, it would be a vast improvement on a public sticky-post, you're right.

[cimorene]

Yes, that was my thought.

[pineapplechild]

Hey, I like the idea. While I don't know that I have enough that I need to disclaim, I would find the utility-- esp. in authors who have personal and fic and art and etc. in their journals-- handy in others. Kinda a "This is how I organize; this is how I work; these are taken for granted, these are not."

[zvi]

You can always make a suggestion. :D? :D?

[cimorene]

Hmm, that's true. Other people like the idea, so I guess I will tomorrow!