Journal Housekeeping

[enemytosleep]

Check out the Master List to find links to all of the 2021 challenge posts.

As the sunshine_challenge draws near, we invite everyone to take a look around their journals and take care of any tidying they might wish to complete before having new visitors next month. Of course, 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.

As you peruse this checklist, please feel free to mark each item as being Up to Date, In Progress, or Not Applicable to your journals.

Many of us may benefit from the friendly nudge to neaten our spaces, but if you are already up to date, then please still use this post as a place to say hello and investigate new-to-you journals ... you may even have additional tips to share!



1. Transformative Works Policy + AO3 Profiles
There is no right or wrong way to feel about other people making transformative works, but having your feelings clearly listed in your various fannish profiles is a great start to more fannish interactions and collaborations — it’s also a great way to avoid awkward confrontations should someone incorrectly assume your stance! If you have an AO3 account, do you have anything on that profile page?

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? What are your personal commenting habits, and do you feel it would be helpful to have that posted as well?

3. 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.

4. Interests (in profile) + Introductory “About Me” Sticky Page
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) and anything you'd like to share up front (pronouns, important tags or posts, etc.). 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.

5. Master Lists
Some folks like to keep master lists linking all of their their fanworks, meta posts, fanwork rec posts … maybe they do weekly book/tv reviews? A master list can help organize your journal and allow people to find your content more easily. If you have any master lists on your journal, here is your call to make sure they are up to date and that no links are broken!

6. 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. You can find more information about DW tags here at their FAQ page to see how you can best use tags on your journal.

7. Current Icons
Icons are a very quick way to visually advertise your interests to other users. 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 unless you choose to rename keywords when editing.

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.

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.


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Once you’ve finished, leave a comment to this post saying you’ve done it! Include a link to your pages if you feel comfortable doing so and let everyone know if you are "Ready for visitors!" 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. ♥




<a href=https://sunshine-challenge.dreamwidth.org><img src='https://enemytosleep.dreamwidth.org/file/76957.png' alt='' title='' /></a>

Comments

[olivermoss]

I'd tidied up the place and it's ready for visitors!

[enemytosleep]

I love the earthy green of your journal style (and I love going through the photography tags). Thanks for taking part!

[peasina]

Your post about journal housekeeping last year really helped me organise, so I needed only a few tweaks this year :-) Thank you for the reminder. I'm ready for visitors!

[enemytosleep]

Your journal is definitely super tidy! Thanks for joining us :D

[mythicmistress]

Tweaked a few things, including (I hope) clarifying my friending policy. Visitors welcome.

[enemytosleep]

Thanks for joining us this year as a mod! I have been using this prompt to slowly add image descriptions to a backlog of fanart and icons. I get closer each year to getting them all done, and will be using this month to continue moving through the art folder.

[paulamcg]

Thank you for the reminder! Welcome, visitors! I'd rewritten the Mini Bio in my profile for Snowflake Challenge, and now I only needed to change the part about granting access. And I added tags to the last few entries, as I tend to forget to do that.

[autobotscoutriella]

Thanks for joining us! Your bio looks fantastic, very well organized. It's a good nudge for me to work on mine as well. :)

journal housekeeping

[oldtoadwoman]

Okay, I think I'm good. Or at least better than I was. Fixed a couple of broken links. Edited a mention of an "upcoming" season that aired last year. Added a new show to my fandom list.

Re: journal housekeeping

[enemytosleep]

Yes, I have been in a state lately myself where I have to do small tasks on the daily To Do list or else nothing gets done. Glad to see you around more and more!

[silveradept]

I should be ready for visitors, and if you like seeing walls of links broken up with the occasional thought post, then you'll be at home.

[enemytosleep]

Thanks for joining us again :D

[aliensamba]

This is helpful checklist. I think I'm ready for visitors.

[enemytosleep]

So great to see more folks adding Transformative Works policies to their profiles! Yours is very clear and to the point (like mine, love that). I hope you enjoy taking part with us this year! :D

[athaia]

I did the thing. Meaning, I added more dead and/or obscure shows to my list of fandom interests :p and tried to clean up my tags. For some reason, I can't merge similar tags? I can only mark tags that are adjacent to each other in my tag list, but I can't select non-adjacent tags, and since I can order the tag list only alphabetically or by frequency of use, some of those tags that I'd like to merge never appear next to each other. Does anyone know a workaround to that?

[enemytosleep]

I think what you're saying is you're having trouble at the Manage Tags page clicking on tags that aren't next to each other? Can you right click each tag to select them? I suppose a longer workaround could be to temporarily rename one of the tags you'd like to merge into some like like "cat" and "catx" so that they would show up next to each other on the list alphabetically.

[lilly_c]

Ready for visitors :) there wasn't a lot of tidying up to do, mostly checking that my links list all worked properly. With been mostly f-locked, comments on any public post are fine :)

TW policy is over at my comm here and also linked in the top sticky there too.

[enemytosleep]

Excellent sticky post, and great to see you back again!

[bemused_writer]

Finished up some tidying! Please feel free to take a visit and peruse. :D

[mythicmistress]

Good to see you again! I hope you enjoy the rest of this year's challenge.

[novembermond]

what do you mean it's almost July? where has the past year gone? oh, right, nevermind.
I think my journal is as ready as it will ever get (:

[enemytosleep]

Haha yeah it's been a BLUR. Glad to see you here!

[autobotscoutriella]

I have Done The Thing (and it only took me a month!) Come on over and check it out!

[enemytosleep]

Look at us with our new sunny icons! xD Love to have you back again, buddy.

[kalloway]

I'm not sure how much of the challenge I'll do after last year, but thanks for the housekeeping reminder. Mostly good, tweaked a little wording. Yay!

[autobotscoutriella]

Hey, no pressure at all - if the housekeeping post is the only one that works for you, that's okay! We're glad to see you around anyway. :)

[svgurl]

This sounds really interesting and I'm looking forward to participating. Your list was very helpful and gave me an excuse to make some edits.

I think I'm ready for visitors.

[mythicmistress]

Welcome! We look forward to seeing what you have to share with us during the challenge.

[aurora_amethyst]

I've tweaked my journal (mostly updating old links and updating my sticky post), and it's ready for visitors!

I didn't get to participate last year, but I look forward to participating in this year's Sunshine Challenge. I'm not sure if I'll be able to do them all, but I will definitely give it my best shot!

I look forward to seeing what everyone comes up with!

[bemused_writer]

We look forward to having you! And do however many you can; all participation is good participation. (^^)

[isabellerecs]

It's always nice to be reminded to keep these things current. And it was also a fun excuse to try a different more summery look. :D

[enemytosleep]

I'm glad people enjoy the reminder (I know I sure need it each year). :D

[bluedreaming]

I thought I was organized after the snowflake challenge, but definitely still found some tweaking. These tips were really helpful!

I forgot to add, ready for visitors!

[autobotscoutriella]

Welcome, we're glad to have you here! Your introduction post is very impressively organized - I'm glad we could provide some helpful prompts. :)

[icecheetah]

I think my Journal is ready for vistors? I'm not sure if "I don't do private posts at this time, but I'd only grant access to known friends for that." is a sufficient covering of my friending policy.

Also this year I'm doing a heck of a New Year's Resolution (Details Here, but basically I'm roughly simulating my High School years) but it's flexible enough that I can potentially work the Sunshine Challenge into it!

[autobotscoutriella]

Seems like an excellent summary to me!

That is indeed a heck of a New Year's resolution! We're very glad you're joining us, and I hope that the Sunshine Challenge will blend well with your resolution. :)

[glittering_git]

I'm excited to be doing the sunshine challenge this year!! I've just updated my intro post and I can't wait to meet some new people 💗

[enemytosleep]

Hello, neighbor. ;D The energy of your intro post is infectious, and I hope you find our little corner of DW as fun as I do. We usually have such a wide variety of people and interests each year, and it's so lovely to see everyone's excitement for their special interests.

[shipperslist]

I tend to keep my profiles updated all along, but I checked them anyway. So, done and done.

[enemytosleep]

Keeping up to date on a regular basis deserves its own kudos. Thanks for checking in with us!

[runpunkrun]

I took a look around and I'm ready for visitors!

[bemused_writer]

Awesome! Happy to have you with us. (^^)

[walgesang]

I totally didn't wait until the last minute but am ready for visitors! :D

[autobotscoutriella]

Wonderful, thanks for joining us! Your icon is delightful.

[badfalcon]

A well-timed post since I've just written 'sort out DW icons' and 'sort out DW tags' on my to-do list. I've changed layout as well this weekend. Everything else was already pretty up-to-date - but I definitely need to renew my paid account because icons! tags! interests!

[bemused_writer]

Completely understand this! I also need all the icons, tags, and interests available to me. :0 Glad the post helped!

[aphrodite_mine]

I've done some rudimentary tidying.

[enemytosleep]

We love seeing folks join in (my journal gets a little neater each year)!

[used_songs]

Done

[autobotscoutriella]

Wonderful, thanks for joining us!