any ideas to promote this comm more and encourage reccing?

[ratcreature]

I'd love for this comm to become a bit livelier in this new year, and to broaden the reccer base.

While it is absolutely great that a handful of people rec so regularly, making sure the comm isn't (near-)dead, and there are also some new reccers every now and then, just reccing for a month, there often aren't enough reccers to average a rec per day, so fanart_recs definitely could be more active.

One way would be to make this comm more widely known and grow in numbers, some of whom then might rec eventually. I think for that having a banner to offer people prettier linking with some embedding code would be nice, but I suck at making attractive banners myself. So if anyone felt like making some we could offer, that would be great. Maybe if we had such pretties and a pre-made promotion they could just c&p more would spread the word than now. I could also use something like that to advertise again on dw_community_promo which I haven't done in a while.

The second way would be to encourage more current members and subscribers to make the jump to reccing, but I'm not sure what the barriers to that are there now. Is there anything that could be made easier and would make you consider reccing? Like, for example the comm could do occasional open posting periods outside the regular structure, allowing every member to rec a fanart they wanted to, without having to commit to a whole set but still dip their toes in. (though really, it's only four! *puppy dog eyes*)

Comments

[melannen]

I would be more likely to participate if there were free-rec threads - I'm really hesitant to sign up for a whole month because I'm not really a person who goes looking for fanart, I just enjoy it when it crosses my sight - but I'd be willing to put up a favorite or two in a free-recs post every so often

I'm not sure how well that would work at tempting me to sign up for a month, though.

[ratcreature]

I'm against reccing in comments, because the browsing organization relies on tags, and I absolutely hate the kink_meme model where everything is squished into comments, and you need outside services to organize. I won't have that in my comm. (Sorry to be dictatorial on that point, but the mere thought makes my inner tagger recoil. *g*)

Opening posts to everyone, whether for a short period, like open weekends, or announced open months, or even a switch to just open reccing are things I'd consider, but not reccing in comments.

[melannen]

Oh, I didn't mean to be suggesting threads rather than a free-posting period - it's just that every other comm I've been on that has periodic free-for-alls does it in comments, and I didn't read your post very carefully, so I assumed. A posting period would maybe be even better!

[jelazakazone]

Replying to both of you here:

What if there was a post, say once a week, where people could make free recs in the comments and then a mod collected those comments into another post where tagging was used properly?

I totally agree with ratcreature. I hate the KM model. I can't read anything there.

[ratcreature]

Since I'm the only active mod (there is a backup moderator to keep an eye on things in a pinch, but the general work load now is low), I'm not that fond of creating c&p work for me *ponts to icon*, when people might just as well make a regular post themselves as posting a comment without more effort for themselves.

[jelazakazone]

LOL (at your icon). I'm a terrible mod. I like to set up comms and then hope that people play in them.