Fascinating!! I know this is an old post post; I saw muccamukk linking to your post on archiving LJ comms and ended up clicking around because I'm hm nosy but I really like these thoughts around the culture!! (I collect Dreamwidth tips on my journal and would like to link to this post though I'm not sure if that's okay because of the parenthesis at the end, so I'll refrain!)
I'm not the only person who's become extremely tired of Tumblr and Twitter for fandom after spending 2 years deep in it during the pandemic, and I've managed to bring a couple of curious souls over with me to Dreamwidth - but it's definitely a culture shock! And it's not just the comms that are intimidating, people are stressed out about posting on their own journals because it's a big text box that seems like it's made for big thoughts (perhaps the kinda homework feeling you describe, too!). Posting on a comm is next to impossible.
However!! Perhaps in a similar vein to the casual liveliness of FFA that was mentioned, people are very happy to post in comments if given half a chance. Although it's not the same kind of culture from the LJ days (...that I recall. I was a huge lurker and mostly looking for fic at the time), it seems really good to create a casual environment where people are happy to chat. I've seen it work for c_ent, journalsandplanners, bnha_fans, accidentally on anime_manga when I asked people what they were watching haha. It feels like people are eager to chat with each others in spaces like that. Even if creating a new post is beyond many people, even if it's a rec for something they love.
It's a bunch of work on the admins, but maybe that can be spread out if people take turns posting the 'check-ins/chitchat' posts (seen it done for writethisfanfic), but it's also really nice... I'm hopeful!!
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I'm not the only person who's become extremely tired of Tumblr and Twitter for fandom after spending 2 years deep in it during the pandemic, and I've managed to bring a couple of curious souls over with me to Dreamwidth - but it's definitely a culture shock! And it's not just the comms that are intimidating, people are stressed out about posting on their own journals because it's a big text box that seems like it's made for big thoughts (perhaps the kinda homework feeling you describe, too!). Posting on a comm is next to impossible.
However!! Perhaps in a similar vein to the casual liveliness of FFA that was mentioned, people are very happy to post in comments if given half a chance. Although it's not the same kind of culture from the LJ days (...that I recall. I was a huge lurker and mostly looking for fic at the time), it seems really good to create a casual environment where people are happy to chat. I've seen it work for
It's a bunch of work on the admins, but maybe that can be spread out if people take turns posting the 'check-ins/chitchat' posts (seen it done for