Mod annoucement / Discussion time / Meme Schedule / Promotion

[1800]

Time for (logged-in) discussion, meme players.

Please keep it civil. I'm looking for sound opinions, not the competition of who shouts the loudest. Thanks!



MEME SCHEDULE

How much do you want memes on schedule? At the moment our rules state:
Do not repost a meme that can be found on the first two pages of Bakerstreet, or that is less than a week old! (rule added on November 10, 2014) and we have a couple of memes that regularly post every week.

I get the desire to have a regular day for a meme but imho there is going to be clutter if more and more meme makers start to think their meme deserves a weekly slot. If you're one of those people, tell us why.

PROMOTION

Would you be like to have a dedicated (bi-weekly?) promotion post for your fandom and rp communities?

Every now and then people try to start up all sorts of comms but they end up having hard time staying afloat or they simply don't get enough exposure to start with. Advertising at Bakerstreet is obviously not a miracle cure, but it might reach someone who doesn't frequent DW anoncomms, for instance.

My idea is to make the post and then both mods or members can comment with links to different comms. Maybe small banners (300x200 or 400x150) could accompany the promotions. I don't want people to have to scroll a lot when they view the page.

Or it can be as simple as copying one line of text. Check out these two new comms:

GOODRPERSSOCK
A non-anon community for RP, fandom, and general constructive chatter.

FANDOMWEEKLY
A multifandom weekly fic challenge community, where participants write a short fanfic (1000 words or less) based on a prompt.

MISC

Anything else you wish to say. There's of course the Problems post for those who don't want to voice an opinion logged-in.
http://kostinaya.dreamwidth.org/311.html


THE LOVE HOTEL MEMES Please keep this subject out of this discussion. There are a few issues that I want to work with in peace. I'd prefer people to contact me directly if they want to say something, no matter what side they represent.

Comments

MEME SCHEDULE

[1800]

Your thoughts on memes that are posted regurlarly. Should there be more of them, less of them?

[memeorabilia]

The consistently popular memes being on a fixed schedule would get my vote. (TFLN on Friday, Picture Prompt on Wednesday, Smutty Picture Prompt on Sunday)

Before posting a meme I check to see if it's been posted within the last 7 days or if there's a similar one currently up. So far I haven't had any trouble or concerns sent my way.

Outside of that I have a few memes I put up on a monthly or bi-monthly basis. Nothing too much to add, but my two cents all the same.

EDIT: I also don't post any more than two memes in one day, let alone consecutively, if you want to take that into account.

Re: MEME SCHEDULE

[morally_cryptic]

I don't mind memes on a schedule (particularly ones like TFLN, etc...though with the way it's getting popular and getting to captcha so quickly I was thinking last night maybe it should totally get posted twice a week now...like Fri and Tues. I'm mostly joking) as long as it's not like, "hey, this one meme about playing in the park with ducks goes up on Wednesday and so does this meme about playing in the park with geese!"

That's when it gets frustrating but I don't know how you'd really want to moderate that because I feel like having people "reserve" slots is just going to be a pain the ass.

[lamb_chop]

I think this might help. Or might make things worse, hard to say without trying it.

If this is done, may I suggest a notice like a sticky note and/or in the profile that lists the days and memes that are currently scheduled for those days? Also maybe assigning one or two meme-makers to be the primary posters, that way we don't get into what sometimes happens with TFLN with the meme getting posted earlier and earlier (though thank you for not letting it get posted Thursday nights any more).

I have a question about posting memes, what is considered redundant?
For instance: There are a lot of picture prompt posts that get made. I see how the mods might think they're all different but a lot are the same with very minor changes (reverse prompt, for example). I think it would help us as players to know what constitutes redundancy in the minds of the mods. Especially if we move to a schedule format for some posts.

[seekersock]

Are there really that many as it is? I mean we have TFLN (Fridays), Smut Picture Prompt (Sat/Sunday), and Reverse Smut Pic Prompt (Wednesday) as far as I know. I think there's one or two that get posted once a month as well.

The thing about them is that no single meme poster just decided they had to be scheduled. There was a general agreement among the community to keep those memes on those days because they were so popular both so people would always know when they went up and to keep them from being posted a lot more frequently. It was a measure to prevent clutter and also help people not miss out on memes so many people enjoy playing in. Other people that just decided they'd try to claim a day for whatever pet meme they had tended to get ignored from what I've seen.

From what I noticed, there's only recent complaints because someone tried to smash all the picture prompt memes together into one big one and then complained when not everyone was on board for various reasons (like not wanting to break the schedule, people not wanting the smutty pics mixed in with the gen ones, etc). Someone fairly recently also tried to combine 'shipping' and 'smut' and also go shot down.

[alucard]

I'm pretty content with the way things are now except for the picture prompt memes. Imo, there are too many of them, and I think the could all be combined into just one meme unless they're very different. (For example, I wouldn't mind smutty and gen being separate memes.)

[justformemes]

I see this was brought up because of the integrated/smut meme thing and I agree with the idea of keeping the smut meme separate. Maybe make the integrated meme for all the rest, but keep the smut meme to a smut/shippy meme, that way people that only want something gen/au don't have to worry about coming across pictures of full on naked nsfw stuff. That's initially why the smut prompt one was made, iirc. (I could be totally wrong, it could have been the other way around)

That said, I'd like to keep the ones we have on a schedule. The ones I can think up off the top of my head are the TFLN on Fri, Smutty picture on Sun, Texting meme on Tues, and picture prompt on Weds. Maybe make the integrated picture prompt be Weds instead? That should meet all the quotas for those things. Outside of that, I've noticed a real uptick in reposting memes that didn't really get much play, but reposting them really soon. Like that 'crawl back to you' meme, which I happen to like, but doesn't really need to be posted as often as it is. Weekly schedules should remain up for the ones that are genuinely popular. Spacing out the other posting would be nice. I know that I'm scrolling by a lot of memes lately because they're just reposts of ones that don't get played. I try to space out my own posting to something that hasn't been put up in a while, but I'm having difficulty finding things that aren't being reposted to death.

Meme play is slowing down a little right now and we don't need six memes a day that are just like the six posted yesterday.

Re: MEME SCHEDULE

[filthyslutsock]

personally, i think it wouldn't hurt to see if some of the memes that get "copycatted" (forbidden love/want what you can't have, any h/c shipping, h/c smut what have you) could be distilled down to the most bare bones original meme - if you could even track it down - or whichever version is the most popular/inclusive, and have it put on an every two-three weeks or even monthly schedule?

[youare40]

everyone has been super respectful about not posting the classic word association meme until i put it up around the middle of the month, and i want to thank you guys! my biggest fear is it turning into a couple hundred comments and dying so thanks for helping me keep it alive and interesting for folks.

apologies it hit captcha so fast because i missed december! there shouldn't be any more gaps. see the february edition sometime this week!

Re: MEME SCHEDULE

[truthsnomiracle]

While this only tangentially relates to the topic of whether there should be more regularly scheduled memes, I feel this is the best place to say that I think memes that aren't so massively popular that they need a specific schedule shouldn't be allowed to be reposted weekly. Bi-weekly should be the most frequent reposting time allowed without a schedule IMO. (Some memes work best if posted less often than that, too, but that would be too much work to regulate.)

PROMOTION

[1800]

Yes or no?

This time you can do promotion right here, too.

[biomechanic]

I love this idea. I run a dressing room and have had no idea how to promote it!

[lamb_chop]

This is a bad idea - especially every 2 weeks.

There are enough promotion comms out there, it would be completely redundant to do it here.

Instead, why not add a list of links to such places in the profile? That way, traffic gets driven to the appropriate comms and you don't have to worry about any wank that might happen over things like: "OMG how dare you promote that comm here??"

Re: PROMOTION

[youare40]

i think it could work if combined with the weekly recap and lj-cut similarly. otherwise yeah, rp promotions aren't what i come to bakerstreet for. a dedicated monthly post would be fine though imo

[commandshumor]

Yes but only maybe once a month, or every couple months. Muses are created overnight but dressing rooms and games take time so posting the same ones weekly is unneeded.

You can always link the post with all the promotions for the month in the weekly meme roundup too.

MISC DISCUSSION

[1800]

...goes here.

[lotsoflaughs]

I've noticed that sometimes multiple incredibly similar memes all get posted in the same day, resulting in all of them getting very few tags. It would be better if they could be condensed into one so people don't just look at them and go 'great, they're all riding the same bandwagon ::scroll past::'.

[lamb_chop]

Can we please have sensitivity to how meme posts are formatted.

1) Sometimes people pre-format the text to be black, which I can't always read, depending on which journal I'm logged into. I then have click on the meme (and/or change which journal I'm signed in on) to see what it's about. Either way it's too much work. I want to be able to see the meme and scroll past if I'm not interested or post if I am. Here's an example: https://bakerstreet.dreamwidth.org/3124451.html (Though you probably can't tell here, but in a theme with a dark background, you can't read the text because it is pre-formatted as black rather than as simple text - which adjusts to whatever theme you're using.)

2) Other times, the meme is formatted for a wider screen, but then the words cause the layout to extend past the layout I'm currently using. An example: https://bakerstreet.dreamwidth.org/3127435.html
This is especially bad if I'm on a netbook/iPad rather than a desktop (but it's pretty annoying on my laptop too).

These might seem like minor things, but I've gotten into just scrolling past anything that I can't easily read and I wonder how many others are doing similar?

Re: MISC DISCUSSION

[morally_cryptic]

This is one of those things I don't know how to moderate (maybe just a note to the meme-poster to reconsider their approach?) but there are some memes that get put up regularly that rarely get tags, certainly not very many and often just top-levels and no actual threading happening. I find myself wondering why the poster keeps trying when they're not getting any bites but they're basically just cluttering the page with something nobody's going to actually play.

Could be they just need to re-word it or maybe they keep posting it when there are already similar, more popular memes on the first page or two.

I don't think they need to be deleted or anything but if there could be a way to encourage these folks to stop banging their head against the wall in hopes the door will open....

[alucard]

I'd love to see more frequent posts looking for PSLs and also discussing ideas for games. It'd help people find more long-term RP partners and maybe give a boost of interest to games that might not be created otherwise.

Maybe something bi-weekly? I think weekly would be too frequent.

Re: MISC DISCUSSION

[thatsincrediblysocking]

A lot of us WANT to use this comm but we can't for lack of the FLOOD OF NSFW memes when, frankly, we're not interested in that sort of content, and it seems to be pages and pages of it and maybe one or two memes that aren't. And God Help You if you don't want Hurt/Comfort.

I'm not really sure if it's something that could be moderated, but I know I've been seeing a lot of complaints about the amount of smut memes I see to the point where people essentially feel Bakerstreet isn't a "gen" meme comm anymore at all, and is, in fact, just smut after smut with the occasional gen one if you're lucky.

[parasock]

Something I've been wondering about that may alleviate some issues others are bringing up:

Tagging posts with the type of meme or as whatever meme it is i.e. "insomnia meme"). I haven't used Dreamwidth extensively in awhile but I believe free accounts are able to track a certain tag in a community for notifications of when an entry with that tag is posted. I wonder why no meme posters have ever tagged their posts so people know when they're up and don't have to wade through spam of memes to find one they want to play in.

Food for thought.

Re: MISC DISCUSSION

[filthyslutsock]

idk i probably won't get a positive response to this, but in the interest of playing devil's advocate/advocate for people like myself:

i literally don't care about the number of smut/shipping memes, and i'd imagine there's a good deal of people who are either indifferent OR enjoy them. for me, it's the latter, because i'm in plenty of games. i get gen and SOL and wacky adventures whenever i'd like. i'd assume most dwrpers are game players, as well, and come to bs and memes in general to get their shipping and smut in on the side. tbh, it feels like a few people are trying to get all catholic school sister nuns or extreme tumblrina asexual and ring the bell of SHAME. SHAME. SHAME. on those of us who dare like or post smut (or shipping, because apparently shipping is the same as porn?) frankly, it's unwelcoming and wanky. my ass doesn't get pained when i see post after post of tryhard or uninspired, imo, gen memes. and trust me, there are a few meme posters who do try to force certain dry gen memes on the comm (the platonic life partners meme, which is always spiteposted after a popular shipping meme goes up, comes to mind). why do people have to take a meme community, of all places, so seriously? i just don't understand it.

Idea - What about making a "pimp/promote my meme" post and stickying it?

[anonsandbroomsticks]

The "Promote my meme" post could be divided into sections, like gen/shipping/smut/other, and unstickied and reposted every two weeks or so.

What do you good folks think?

Re: Idea - What about making a "pimp/promote my meme" post and stickying it?

[anonsandbroomsticks]

oh, just in case you were wondering, I meant a post in which the meme posters could promote their own memes, so people could find them easily even if they fell off the first page.

[1800]

Thank you for your ideas and suggestions, folks! I didn't expect this post to become so lively but it's nice that it has. Everything will be taken into consideration even if I can't immediately reply to everyone.