Official Geographic communities

[radiantsoul]

Title
Official Geographic communities

Short, concise description of the idea
All new members are automatically subscribed to an official, moderated community that represents their geographic area.

Full description of the ideaThe idea is that there will be several geographic communites; say UK, France, Germany, Russia, etc. These would be moderated

Comments

[pauamma]

There are already a number of country-based communities. Somehow, I don't see them taking kindly to LJ either creating a new one and calling it official, or (worse) leaning on existing ones (or some of them) to become "official". Both issues should be carefully considered before implementing that scheme.

[radiantsoul]

I would suggest new communities are created. The problem is newbies cannot easily find these country specific communities.

[jai_dit]

That's a problem that should be addressed by better search functionality and better spotlighting, not brand new communities.

[radiantsoul]

Well LJ has been talking about better searching and spotlighting since I joined(August 2001). It probably isn't happening soon, if ever.

For a new user from the UK they will first need to discover what communities are, then they will need to search for UK communities. They will get a list of 384 communities - many of which are of limited interest and have few members(oddly the LJ "official" Independent sponsored community doesn't seem to appear in the list).

[jai_dit]

Actually spotlighting has gotten better, at least in the last couple of years. There's a bit on the homepage, and there's the community lj_spotlight. But your solution of making new communities also relies on spotlighting and visibility - otherwise how else will people find the communities for their area? So improving those functions will fix it, even if it may not happen for a good long while.

The other bits you mentioned about the new user flow not being great are good points, and that could probably be addressed as well, somewhere. The New User's Guide to LiveJournal, or something.

[radiantsoul]

I would autosubscribe people to the relevant geographic area. It would be an opt out issue. I beginners community would be useful too.

The spotlighting is better than it was.

I would be interested to know how many people create an lj and then quit quite shortly afterwards because they just don't get it.

[enigel]

In your Full Description you said 'These would be moderated and would be "opt in" rather than "opt out".'

This is at odds with "All new members are automatically subscribed" and with "It would be an opt out issue".

If beginners are so clueless, they would also have problems figuring out how to get out of these communities they never wanted to part of in the first place...

LJ feels US-centric because of news post and certain feature sets. (The sheer numbers of US users might play a part in that too. ;) ) The existence of official communities couldn't change that. I see LJ as interest-based groups, and rarely are those interests strictly geographical.

[radiantsoul]

I suspect that most "friends" in LJ are geographically quite close. People seem to have pretty tightly connected social networks, but I haven't seen much research on it. Perhaps it is more interested based, but I have better stickability with those who are British.

[mskala]

Everybody's different, but I think only two or three of the people on my list live in the same city as me. Most are in foreign countries.

[bwinter]

I have exactly three LJ-Friends from my city, out of 214. Only two more are in the same country.

-1.

[lied_ohne_worte]

I suspect that most "friends" in LJ are geographically quite close.

I doubt that. I have a few people from my country on my F-list, yes, but none is from my area, and there is noone that I know personally. The vast majority of my Friends is neither in my country, nor do they have the same native language.

[lied_ohne_worte]

If beginners are so clueless, they would also have problems figuring out how to get out of these communities they never wanted to part of in the first place...

Precisely. There are a considerable number of new/clueless users who think that the official journals that are already added automatically (news, spotlight, lj_maintenance) and the entries posted to them are random, evil strangers spamming their friends pages.

[azurelunatic]

There's a group of suggestions addressing the problem with interest searches returning less-active communities:

http://community.livejournal.com/suggestions/855613.html
http://community.livejournal.com/suggestions/750899.html
http://community.livejournal.com/suggestions/625369.html

I think changing the interest search to make sure that an interest search does not shortchange the searcher (I believe deleted journals and communities get counted but not displayed when the search tool is running, so the search tool thinks it's returned the first 500 but the searcher only sees the 300-odd that are not deleted), and to push the most active communities and journals to the top of the search, would help immensely.