Welcome everyone to our new Melbourne-flavoured slice of the internet!
I am RustyRaven one of the moderators of this community (AKA BrightFadedDog). I am working to develop some community guidelines so we can make sure that the community stays a productive and welcoming place, and would like to hear what you want.
What would you like the group to focus on? Do you like to dip into the group for a quick update on the latest local news and carrot man sightings, or do you want to spend time with deeper ongoing discussions? Would you prefer to keep the posts strictly to things concerning Melbourne, or would you prefer to be able to be able to get a local perspective on wider issues?
Suggestions for the best way to arrange posts are also welcome – particularly if we should separate some areas of discussion into separate regular or ongoing posts. We could for example have a post for restaurant recommendations or activity suggestions.
I’d also like to know whether you would value having a wiki or other reference source connected to the community.
Feel free to add any ideas, suggestions or things to aim for.
Random blurry brain morning thoughts incoming… I think the random thread should be “anything goes” convo wise as long as it’s respectful. Maybe we could let the more detailed rules evolve as needed. Sometimes it bothered me that the mods of our previous place would not allow more posts on a current hot topic eg. earthquake. Whoever got in first got the “right” to have a post and everyone else had to comment on that, leading to a hellishly long post that was occasionally hard to find. For me anyway.
I think the DT is pretty much sacred - it is also why most of us are here, so what is happening there obviously works. I’m definitely not contemplating introducing lots of rules or trying to tie everything up with restrictions, my main concern is that I understand what everyone else wants so I don’t end up just pushing my own preferences onto everyone else.
The other side of things like the earthquake posts is that having them all there tends to fragment the discussion into lots of posts, and makes it hard to find posts about anything else. I’m not sure there is a perfect solution, at least with the current technology. A slightly more hierachical structure with sub-groups would probably work well for larger groups, if it was possible.
That’s a good point re. fragmented discussion. And it is good to hear a mod describe the DT as “sacred”!