Mod Post: Moderator changes and community updates

[kerstin-orion.livejournal.com]

Howdy, A_B!  We've got a few mod changes to announce.

Some time back, hamburger stepped down as a moderator due to time constraints.  I only just realized I never officially announced it.  (Or if I did, I can't find the post.  Either way, "d'oh!")

sigilgoat has taken a bit of a hiatus from moderating to concentrate on catching up with work before school starts. 

This has left us a tad short-handed, so we remaining mods decided to add another member to our team.  We are happy to announce we chose neolucky as our new moderator.  Neo has been a long-time active member of our community, and we're looking forward to working with her to keep our community running great!


And in other news:

We tend to get TOS or pricing (or TOS AND pricing) posts from time to time.  Some time ago, we made major general advice posts on the topics, but it has been quite some time and the requests and replies have petered out, not to mention some of the advice may be rather out of date.  We mods have decided to make them a more regular thing, posting either monthly or quarterly, depending on demand.  Hopefully, this will encourage more feedback, while preventing a preponderance of individual posts.  (man, I love alliteration!)


Finally, the community info page is going to get a freshening-up.  There is a fine balance between informative and tl:dr, and with more users joining us from services outside of LiveJournal, readability is key these days.   

Some initial thoughts:

• abbreviate the rules list to one line each; make a separate post with the fully-explained rules and link to it from the community info page
• combine the posting guidelines and beware template into one post
• remove the tags list from the main community pages, and just link to it from the community info page 
• switch to a variable-width layout, so users with wide monitors don't have just a narrow stripe of content on their screens
• look into the pros/cons of using the S1 comment system (The one that LJ recently "improved"; input from those who have used it is welcome!) 

I'd love to hear suggestions from you all about how to improve the community info, rules, posting guidelines, and beware template, including both formatting and phrasing!  Reply here or shoot me an email at kerstinorion (at) gmail (dot) com.

Comments

[mazz.livejournal.com]

I'd love the TOS/pricing post to be a monthly thing!

[syrusb.livejournal.com]

Monthly I think would be too often, where quarterly or even twice a year would be more reasonable.

[ocelotish]

This is my thought. If you need advice at other times, ask your friends/hold an auction.

In addition, the less frequent it is, the more people will be around to provide feedback. If it's a monthly thing, you'll only get a few people each month. If it's more rare, more people will want advice on their own stuff and post in the comments. It will be more of a community thing: every six months or so you post and see if you can raise prices.

However, I'd go quarterly rather than biannual. There are people holding off commissions because they don't know what to charge/would like feedback before setting prices. Quarterly seems like it would be frequent enough to provide for these people while still keeping it rare enough to be a community event.

It also walks the line of not having the same person bugging you (general) every month. If a person is asking month after month it can come across negatively: either they didn't appreciate the time it took for you to evaluate or they are just looking for a different answer. If it's quarterly or less, it just feels more like they want to reevaluate rather than just looking for a different answer/praise.

[fenris-lorsrai.livejournal.com]

If you time them to occur just after people do the quarterly taxes that would probably be ideal, since people will have just looked at their numbers.

[rtydmartel.livejournal.com]

I like quarterly too.

[taasla.livejournal.com]

I agree with quarterly or biannually. Three to six months is a good time to build up enough questions and folks may not end up repeating themselves all that often.

[grygon.livejournal.com]

I agree. Monthly would be swell.

[splatterhouse.livejournal.com]

The s1 comment system seems to be generally buggy & loathed by most people from what I've seen.

[ljmydayaway.livejournal.com]

I do like the new comment system - only because you can see where the new comments are easily.

I don't like how it collapses, and I wish it were adjustable in that sense. :/ But... eh.

[blackberrypie.livejournal.com]

Oh thats fantastic! I know Neolucky will be a great mod!
Also on the tos/pricing posts, that would be awesome. I don't think monthly would be a good idea as it might clutter the community and might have the same topics bought up over and over. I think quarterly would be great. Just enough time imo!

I have to say I kinda like the new comment system. I was having issues with large threads on the old comment system where the collapsed comments wouldn't load and I basically missed out on a lot of information. However now they load very quickly and it just seems to work great for me in that way. I don't know what all they changed about them though. I don't really use LJ enough to have noticed a large change.

[neolucky.livejournal.com]

Dawwwwww thank you <3.

[taasla.livejournal.com]

Welcome on board M'am!

[rtydmartel.livejournal.com]

If you don't mind doing the work "twice", so to speak, you can have a "quick" version of the rules on top (one line each, like you said), and an tl;dr explanation below for the people who want to read more.

I don't know what to think about the posting guidelines and tags list, sorry.

The variable-width layout sounds neat, if it can be done.

S1 comment system: Oh, please don't! Each "improvement" on LJ's default comment style gives me even more of a literal headache whenever I try to read the comments.

If it wasn't for artists beware I think I would have deleted my LJ account by now.

[temrin.livejournal.com]

I am really happy to see Lucky as a new mod. She always has the right things to say and is never afraid to speak the truth instead of candy coating it. *highfive*!