Sunshine 2019: Prompt One

[enemytosleep]

Check out the Master List to find links to all of the 2019 challenge posts.

Prompt 1: Fannish Housekeeping

As the sunshine_challenge begins, we invite everyone to prepare their journal spaces for new guests who may be visiting. Remember that there is no official deadline, so feel free to join in at any time or go back and do any prompts you've missed!



One of the best parts about Dreamwidth and similar places is that there is no right or wrong way to keep your journal. The possibilities are nearly endless, and you can customize your space as you see fit. Some of you like to keep everything public with an open friending policy while others are more comfortable keeping personal entries behind friend filters; some of you prefer to keep everything friends only — all methods are good! There is no one way to organize your space.

That said, here are some things to consider now that your journal might see increased traffic from new visitors:

1. Transformative Works Policy
2. Friending Policy
3. Interests (in profile) + Introductory “About Me” Sticky Page
4. Master Lists (of fic or recs or meta or just squee about the different things you like)
5. Post Tags (can also help people notice your interests at a glance)
6. Current Icons (these can also help advertise your fannish interests. Does anyone not love it when someone pounces just to say, "Love your icon! I love that show!")
7. Sidebar Links (do you have an AO3 or Tumblr page that people might like to visit?)
8. Access Filters (do you have personal and fandom filters to keep your posts locked?)

And now for more details on all of these things!

1. Transformative Works Policies
A lot of folks don't know what they are and how they can affect fannish collaboration and interaction. Until recently, I was also one of these people (I had never considered how difficult it might be for someone to approach me to ask permission to create podfic or fanart of one of my pieces), so if you haven’t already considered listing your personal policies, you’re not alone!

analise010 gave us permission to link to their post discussing Transformative Policies, so if you have questions on how and where to start, that post is a good place to begin. runpunkrun also linked Fanlore's Blanket Statement page if "Go Ahead!" happens to be your policy. Again, there is no right or wrong way to feel about other people making transformative works, but having your feelings clearly listed is a great start to more fannish interactions and collaborations.

2. Friending Policy
Have you publicly stated your circle policy anywhere? Do you automatically add people back if they’ve added you, or do you want people to comment and introduce themselves first? Are all your fannish activities public anyway and only private stuff is access-locked? Are you only comfortable interacting with people through communities? Do you welcome people commenting on any random journal entry?

It’s a lot more difficult to gauge people online and how they feel about interacting as we don’t have the visual and auditory cues we might have in face-to-face meetings. Having your friending policies clearly listed can help others feel more comfortable about adding you and/or interacting with you on your pages. Again, there is no right or wrong way to feel about friending others on DW, so set up your spaces in a way that feels best to you!

3. Interests + About Me
Do you have an “About Me" page sticked to the top of your journal or in your journal profile? This can be a great place to list your interests, fandom or otherwise. Have you updated your interests on your profile page so that people can see at a glance what interests you have in common? People can search for journals by their listed interests, so this can help new friends find your page!

Is your journal a fandom-only space, or do you also have personal posts and interests included? Having an About Me section on your profile or as a stickied post can really help new visitors decide if you both share interests in common, and can help them navigate your page and interact with you in more meaningful ways.


4. Master Lists
Some people like to use a stickied post to list links to other posts on their accounts. For example, it could be linking all of your your fanworks, meta posts, fanwork rec posts … maybe you do weekly book/tv reviews? A master list can help organize your journal and allow people to find your content more easily. I need to update my master list and will be taking this opportunity to do so, but I’ll link it here as an example of how you might consider creating one.


5. Post Tags
Do you use tags on your posts? Do you tag your fannish content only, or do you also tag your personal content? There is no right or wrong way to organize your posts, but using tags can help other people find your content in order to interact with you more easily.

As an example, here is my DW tagset. You’ll notice that I have multi-level tags enabled, which allows me to use labels such as “fandom: inuyasha” and “fandom: fullmetal alchemist” to keep all of my “fandom” tags lumped together. You can find more information about DW tags here at their FAQ page to see how you can best use tags on your journal.

6. Current Icons
Whether you have a basic free account or a paid membership with additional icon spaces, having your icons updated can be a great way to advertise your fannish interests as you interact with others on community pages. It’s a very quick way to visually advertise your interests to other users all over Dreamwidth. Dreamwidth allows you to label your icons with keywords, comments, and descriptions.

The keywords help both you and the website know at a glance which image you’d like to use when creating a post or comment on the site. PRO TIP: if you edit the keywords on your icons after using them for a while, Dreamwidth will change past entries and comments to display your default icon as the code trail will be lost, so to speak. So, if possible, keep that in mind when uploading new icons and setting their keywords.

The comments are a great place to give credit to the icon maker and/or the artist your icon image originated with. It’s not only polite, but it also gives people visiting your page an easy way to find more of the content you both enjoy!

Lastly, the icon descriptions allow you to describe what is happening in your icon visually. This is used to add a text description of the content of the icon, which shows as "alt" text for blind users and some other forms of assistive technology.

If you are an icon maker this post might also be a great place to advertise your page and meet new people who might be on the market for new icons!

7. Sidebar + Profile Links
Do you have an AO3 or Tumblr page that people might like to visit? Do you have links to those accounts sites posted where people can easily find them? Your stickied About Me or Master List posts might be some places to link your other accounts. Your profile page also allows you to connect other services and list your account names there.

You can also list links on your journal sidebar so that people visiting your journal can find your tags and links alongside your journal entries.


8. Access Filters
Have you remembered to access-lock that personal post about your family or your job that you might not want strangers seeing? Dreamwidth gives you the option to create posting filters that allow you to decide which members can read each post that you make. Perhaps you might leave your fandom posts public so that all users can read them. Perhaps you might lock your personal posts so that only users whom you’ve added to your circle can read them (Access List). Perhaps you create more specific filters so that certain posts can only be read by a selected group of users that you’ve added to a custom filter. Here is a post discussing how to set up access filters for your journal.




Once you’ve finished tidying up your fannish spaces, leave a comment to this post saying you’ve done it! Include a link to your pages if you feel comfortable doing so. Let everyone know whether you are "Ready for visitors!" or "Lurking for fandom fun". If your have questions about any tips that we’ve posted, please don’t be afraid to ask for help. We’re all here to make friends and improve fandom. Also, if you have any tips and tricks to add to this post, please do share!

Most importantly, please check through the comments and go visit new journals, comment on their shiny posts, and maybe make a new friend or two. We encourage everyone here to aim to comment on two new journals if they are able (of course, you are welcome to do more!). ♥



<a href=https://sunshine-challenge.dreamwidth.org><img src='https://oldtoadwoman.dreamwidth.org/file/301373.png' /></a>

Comments

[muccamukk]

I think I'd pretty much done that already, though I never know if I should make a sticky for the top of my journal out of the bio in my profile, or if having it in one place it enough.

A tip I'd offer would be to look at see what your journal looks like when you're logged out. A lot of users don't/can't always browse logged in. Are you a wall of those age locked content signs? Does your layout look weird? Did you accidentally put your address in the location field of an unlocked post?

[enemytosleep]

I ended up doing both a sticky and the profile bio, mostly because so many folks don’t have a complete bio that I figure many won’t think to click to thar page on my journal. No right or wrong answer, of course!

And that is an excellent tip about checking your journal while logged out!

Ready for Visitors!

[oldtoadwoman]

I'm sure there are still interests that I've forgotten to list, but I've done what I can.

I'm also vowing to remember to post publicly during the challenge. I tend to go into turtle mode most of the time and do most of my posting under lock. But you can't make friends hiding in my shell, so for the duration of July I will be poking my head out more often.

Re: Ready for Visitors!

[sodium_amytal]

I'm also vowing to remember to post publicly during the challenge. I tend to go into turtle mode most of the time and do most of my posting under lock. But you can't make friends hiding in my shell, so for the duration of July I will be poking my head out more often.

Seconded!

[alexseanchai]

I fixed my sidebar links and I'm retagging some posts for easier navigating my journal.

Ready for visitors!

Sunshine Challenge ☼ 2019

[oldtoadwoman]

Awesome!

[sodium_amytal]

Ready for visitors! I think my journal's organized the best it can be (bless the handy sidebar tags).

Sunshine Challenge ☼ 2019

[oldtoadwoman]

I find the sidebar tags to be so useful for recognizing common interests. Sometimes someone won't even think to mention something in their interests, but you can see they used the tag for it 25 times. :-)

[runpunkrun]

Ready for visitors! I tidied my informational sticky post, which covers most of these things, and added some links to my tags since my tags are basically impenetrable.

Here's a tip: Fanlore has a Blanket Statement page--for when your transformative works policy is "go ahead!!"--and it links to some fanwork specific lists of people who have provided blanket statements for their works to be podficced or translated, as well as blanket permissions by fan artists and zine publishers. If this is you, you can add yourself to the relevant list.

[enemytosleep]

Ooo I will add that link to the main post as well. Thanks for the share!

[tomakeanoffer]

A long but informative intro post

My tags are a mess but I'm so bad at settling on a tagging system, so hopefully a lengthy intro will be enough for now.

[autobotscoutriella]

Tagging systems are hard! Lengthy intros are great, though—I always look for a nice long intro post when checking out new journals.

Thanks for participating!

[finch]

Sidebar link-related question! My layout of choice actually doesn't have sidebars as I do the majority of my dreaming on mobile - instead the links appears at the bottom of my pages, so I've minimized what's there, depending on the profile links to do the heavy lifting. Is there another way to handle this that anybody would recommend?

[enemytosleep]

I hopped over to your journal and found it very easy to navigate, so there's no need to add one IMO (also, long ago I worked as a head teller and sales trainer for a local credit union so *waves*). This challenge was less about uniforming everyone's spaces and more of a reminder to update and add the things we've been putting off doing. I think if you really wanted to add a links list perhaps a sticky post for links? But honestly it was very easy to pop around your journal as it is.

Ready For Visitors!

[silveradept]

Did some cleanup work on all of the mentioned spaces, so hopefully my sticky post is ever more informative, my interests are more up to date, my bio is reworked, and there's plenty of content available for poems to see and get a feel as to whether I'm worth the trip.

(Have some unlocked content, please, for your visitors. Preferably representative unlocked content.)

Re: Ready For Visitors!

[enemytosleep]

I love the intro including a discussion on commenting and how you work. And yes, I am totally guilty of locking everything most of the time, which makes it difficult for new people to access. I am aiming to keep more things public, at least while this challenge is active!

Ready for visitors

[nyctanthes]

I couldn't sleep, so I reorganized my tags and updated my profile and sticky.

Yay?

This was a nice first day challenge. I've been meaning to do this for a while, and now I have.

Re: Ready for visitors

[autobotscoutriella]

Yay! Organization is a great way to pass some time when sleep isn’t happening.

(I’m a library clerk, I miiiiiight be a little biased on the organizing-stuff front...)

[sorchasilver]

I'm always lurking for fandom fun, but I've tidied up a bit and edited my profile, fiddled with a few settings, and generally polished things up to be ready for visitors. Thanks for the nudge to do it.

Also started a Post Every Day This Month, so there will be some actual content if people do come to visit :D

[autobotscoutriella]

Yay! Post Every Day challenges are awesome—though I’ve never quite managed to pull it off. :D Good luck, and thanks for participating!

[lexicalcrow]

Okay, this was a good reminder bc I did need to tidy up most of those things and remove some irrelevant social links I no longer use anymore, so that's good. I feel like I'm ready for visitors now. :D

I do have a sticky post intro, but I'll probably do a specific intro for this challenge as well, just for anyone to drop by and say hi if they want to, and to be a bit more specific about my fannish interests, pairings, icons, etc than I am in my sticky post. And like I did with my snowflake challenge posts, all my posts for this challenge will be public as well.

I am, however, not in any way going to tackle my Hot Mess of a tagset bc I have 15 years' worth of journal entries (fuck) (I started on LJ) and absolutely no patience to go and fix the tags on all of my 2.5k entries.

eta: And here's the sunshine challenge intro post I finished, since I felt I wanted to do a proper intro for this challenge. <3

[enemytosleep]

Yeah, I've done a lot of tidying on my DW and AO3 (I had never completed my AO3 bio/profile), but my LJ is just a giant mess that I'm sweeping into the closet. I did remove my custom CSS from that account as over the years it has been broken by their updates. It's at least viewable now with a basic template if any old friends happen to pop over there. xD

Ready for visitors!

[shadowhive]

I’ve done a post for this prompt and I’m gonna sort my fic masterlist our once I’ve had lunch 🖤

Re: Ready for visitors!

[oldtoadwoman]

Awesome!

[marzipan77]

Hmm, this seems like a heck of a lot of work. I consider my journals more like I'm meeting people on the street - I don't walk around with intro tags and lots of information about me hanging out. I'd like people to get to know me by interaction, by reading my fics or my posts or blogs. Commenting and my responding. It's okay if I have fewer contacts that way.

[enemytosleep]

One of the beauties of DW is that we can all create our own spaces in the ways that we see fit. There is no requirement or pressure to alter anything you've got if you are happy with your space. ;) I would say if this particular challenge offered nothing for you, then try to focus instead on the interaction challenge and interact with new journals as they are Ready for Visitors!

[independence1776]

I updated my profile, sticky, and interests to add another current fandom.

Does anyone know if it's possible to have the links list to other services on your profile visible to the public without also showing an email address?

[enemytosleep]

Yep, absolutely you can keep that private. When you edit your profile page there will be a section titled "Contact Information and Links". There you can use the drop down menu to the right of your registered email and choose "Do Not Show" to keep that hidden. You can list your username for the other sites below, and it will post links to them without displaying your email. My profile is linked like this if you want to see it in action. :D

Ready for visitors

[used_songs]

I have a sticky post and info in my profile, but I also wrote y'all a post. And thank you to oldtoadwoman for the icon!

Re: Ready for visitors

[oldtoadwoman]

Yay! I'm glad you like it!

[all_choseny]

When I came back to fannish things and made a new DW, I was determined to keep it organized. I pretty much have everything organized the way I want it and this prompt served as a checklist for me! My journal is visitor friendly :)

Sunshine Challenge ☼ 2019

[oldtoadwoman]

Yay! I always promise myself I'm going to keep things updated and then I backslide, much like my actual housekeeping.

[kingstoken]

I created an about me post and pinned it to the top of my journal and updated my profile page and the links list in my sidebar.

Sunshine Challenge ☼ 2019

[oldtoadwoman]

Woot! I haven't decided what to do with my links list. It's current, but I'm linking to a few services where I'm just not active at all so I'm not sure there's a point.

I just followed your YouTube link and the "Kirk is the Reason" vid is just so true. Perfect.

[misbegotten]

Done! This was a really good choice for a challenge.

Sunshine Challenge ☼ 2019

[oldtoadwoman]

Thanks! It seemed like a good way to kick things off.

[bleodswean]

You've inspired me!

Posted - https://bleodswean.dreamwidth.org/343107.html

Looking forward to meeting new voices!

Sunshine Challenge ☼ 2019

[oldtoadwoman]

Yay!

Ready for Visitors!

[smallredboy]

I added a blanket statement to my sticky post, a friending policy and some sidebar links. I hope I can get some new fannish friends this way! :D

Re: Ready for Visitors!

[autobotscoutriella]

That's awesome! Thanks very much for participating, and I hope some new friends find their way to your journal. :D

[corvidology]

I haven't done any tidying up today but I did check up on things when DW became more active again and I don't really have anything to change.

Sunshine Challenge ☼ 2019

[oldtoadwoman]

I view it like real housekeeping. If everything is already tidy and ready for company, you can count it as a win!

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

I added a proper bio and friending policy to my profile page. I think this is a very sensible, practical first challenge.

Ready for visitors!

https://stonepicnicking-okapi.dreamwidth.org/42653.html

Sunshine Challenge ☼ 2019

[oldtoadwoman]

Awesome! Glad you like the challenge so far.

[annathecrow]

I have an "interests" related question! Do y'all put in all your interests, or things you actually post about? Because for me the former is a much bigger circle than the latter.

Is that feature more about things you as a person might talk about, or about the blog as it is?

Sunshine Challenge ☼ 2019

[oldtoadwoman]

It's kind of up to you. I've possibly gone overboard and listed all the fandoms that I've pretty much ever been into, with glaring omissions that I've just forgotten, but sometimes I've been tempted to just delete all my interests and point people at my stickied "about me" page where I can go into detail about things I was into years ago versus things I'm actively into versus things where I loved season one, but rage-quit after season three, etc. There are some fandoms I'm obsessed with and some I enjoy casually and it's easier to explain that on an "about me" page than on the interests list.

Some people just say "science fiction" and some list every show and book title they love. Others list non-fannish interests and then collectively just list "fandom" as the single fandom interest.

Totally up to you.

[swirlsofpurple]

I wrote a thing: swirlsofpurple.dreamwidth.org/1936.html

Sunshine Challenge ☼ 2019

[oldtoadwoman]

Awesome. I love your username, by the way. ♥

[badfalcon]

Thank you for the reminder to update my fanfiction sticky post. It's so out of date that it doesn't even include my current fandom.... so that's at least five years. Gulp. I won't have chance to do it tonight but it's been pencilled in to do at the weekend, once my going out plans are solidified :)

[enemytosleep]

Oh geez! Haha I had a six year internet hiatus and boy is my LJ just a disaster. I think I salvaged this and my AO3 9I even got my Tumblr running again), but yeah, it's so easy for things to fall behind.