@vega Thanks for this. I'm not familiar with LiveJournal, so it's good to learn of another way this problem has been tackled. If we had LJ style community pages, what topic(s) would you start?

@macgenie @vega this is a great idea. LJ communities was definitely part of its secret sauce.

@vega Thanks for writing that! I wasn't very familiar with the LiveJournal approach to community blogs. That's a really interesting way to do it.

@vega I like this. The whole thing is blog based which I like.

@vega That’s an interesting idea. I can envision a version of M.B with a new section called communities, where your communities are located, and from there the community posts. The balance of finding communities versus making them too public might be the challenge.

@vega This sounds great. I have so much trouble finding anything on Micro.blog aside from pure connections and serendipity thus far.

@vega I like the idea of looking back to a much-beloved early blogging platform/community for inspiration (I did not use LJ, but one of my best friends in grad school did, along with many of her closest friends from undergrad, so I got a bit of a glimpse of its appeal).

@macgenie A selection of topics that I'm currently engaged with. I may not necessarily start them on M.B, but would participate to some degree.

"Newbies learning Hugo/static site generators", "newbies learning CSS/HTML", "fantasy/SF/speculative-fiction writers", "how to begin a self-publishing business", "discussion/playthroughs for Anthem (video game made by BioWare)", "artist support circle", "book reviews, discussion, and recommendations", "video game reviews, discussion, and recommendations", "writing interactive fiction", "world-building Q&A", "building PCs".

@macgenie @manton For what it's worth, a few of LJ's Help pages on communities -- one, two, three.

@vega The early era of blogging suggests a possible loose, informal, dynamic approach to community: the communities that pop up around specific blogs and their comment sections.

@vega Thanks for these pointers.

@macgenie an idea— allow users to join a “community” which is a multi-author blog. Allow those users to “contribute” any of their MB posts to that community. It becomes a full content repost with a special link back to original post. Maybe have a moderator role for a community of some kind to approve joins and contributions. Maybe charge all contributors an extra $1 for each community they’re a member of. Maybe split that cost with mods.

Basically, and this would be a fair amount of coding work, allow MB to incentivize building ad free, inclusive community curated blogs that keep individuals still having their own blog

@jsonbecker That is an interesting idea. I'm tagging @manton.

I feel happy that we are having this discussion as a community because it is a sign of how we have grown, and also that we can work together to find solutions for community needs.

@macgenie I like the idea of “category blogs” that we can contribute too, in addition to maintaining our own blog. I would love to moderate a Boston Celtics blog. 🏀

@jsonbecker very much like this idea.

@kbizz cool! I’ve been thinking about it since the post about LJ and was going to blog my idea but decided it would take too much to really think it out so may as well just reply.

@macgenie @vega this sounds similar to what @johnphilpin has spun up with @justgoodmusic through WordPress. I agree this sounds like a good idea and would be interesting to see how it could be implemented with microblog.

@kbizz We do have more than a few Boston-area members here at Micro.blog. Not sure whether they are Celtics fans. @danielpunkass @johnbrayton @mitch

@vega I do miss some of the LJ communities I used to be in. This is a great suggestion!

@kordumb

You are not wrong. Very early days, but yes we have so far

1) any microblogger who wants to write and publish about music can register at justgoodmusic and they will be made an author,

2) any microblogger who already has a place where they do that, or generally has an RSS stream of what they write and publish about music can send me that feed and it will be added.

( currently there are only three such feeds in there ... and if this really takes off we will probably manage in a different way ) ..

For example, would love to add the micro.blog category rss feed for 🎵 .. but that is not available.

But as an example, anything I publish into micro blog with the tag ‘justgoodmusic’ will be fed into that aggregator. If microbloggers already using some kind of music category on their blog ... send it over .. it can be added.

If this had been going longer than a couple of weeks we would likely have a rich history of posts ... categorized and tagged on the site ... searchable, with an archive organized by author, all feeding into the account of @justgoodmusic which is already syndicated to Twitter.

The site also cross links to the new space that @Jacob has created here for music creators and of course we have cross over there .. so if a music creator wishes they can post that creation into JustGoodMusic .. and again found easily later by others as we build the categories and tagging and authors.

Writing this I am reminding myself that I still need to write and publish the about justgoodmusic about page ... but basically justgoodmusic.net is a domain I have owned for 16 years and I was going to let it die ... but this idea came to me. The site currently sits as a sub domain under Philpin.com ... while I work out whether to continue with this or not ... which will be decided by how much this community thinks it is a good idea as the site gains authors, visitors and traction. When I cross that Rubicon (is that a mixed metaphor?) ... it will run at justgoodmusic.net which is currently only a pointer.

Finally, apart from the convenience of already having this domain, this project is really trying to work out how to better serve micro bloggers who love music, allow non micro bloggers interested in music to find the site and get interested in microblog and finally to operate as ‘A Micro.Blog Service’ .. words that are used as the sub-title to the site itself.

Putting my hand up as a volunteer that if we want to tighten up the connections to micro blog as a demonstration of what is possible for other potential categories ... lets do it.

@macgenie @vega @manton @joejenett @jacob

@khurtwilliams Our brief chat on finding common interests on M.B spawned a new new discussion... tagging you into the loop for your interest.

@khurtwilliams Whoops - I think this is the right link. Otherwise "Conversation" should go there...

@vega @macgenie @manton I love the idea of m.b communities. Most of us here have a broad spectrum of interests. Creating communities could help us build and sustain more connections between m.b-ers

@macgenie I don’t follow basketball, but I’m always happy when a local team does well. @kbizz, are you located in the Boston area?

@johnbrayton hey! I am based in Watertown. Love ❤️ my beantown, I just moved back after being away for a couple years. NBA isn’t for everyone, but I love the Celtics coach and the way the team has competed.

@macgenie @kbizz Also @donmacdonald (and I believe @FrankRamblings) is/are Boston-area.

@dustdaughter posted often about “my Celtics” during the end-of-season/playoffs, so I think it’s safe to include her among the Celtics fans.

@kbizz Great. I live in Haverhill.

@smokey Yes, I am a long-suffering Celtics fan. Inherited the fan-hood from my late father who revered Bill Russell.

Doesn’t mean I agree with all of Danny Ainge’s moves, though. This is gonna be a rough offseason. 😫

@vega damn, that's an awesome idea! I'd love to see communities pop up on micro.blog...though, I do wonder at how these would be moderated, given people's propensity to argue on the Internet.

@matpacker Thanks. I don't see why M.B community feeds can't have the same kind of moderation/curation/gatekeeping of the Discover feed or @justgoodmusic. Either the curation is at the "content of posts" level (Discover), or at the "persons invited to post" level (@justgoodmusic). Either way, perhaps one of the requirements for starting a M.B community is a willingness to own and curate the feed -- doing like the M.B's creators are doing. @jsonbecker had suggested this up-thread. // cc @macgenie @johnphilpin

@vega Interesting. I didn't know this about LJ.

@vega echoing @bradenslen, I like that your proposal is blog friendly. I’ve using my blog for nearly everything these days while pushing out certain links to other networks (e.g. twitter, micro.blog, mastodon).

@dustdaughter how do you feel now? Seems like a pretty good roster with the addition of Kanter. Not a ton of defense but boy ya'll should get some buckets!

@cheesemaker @dustdaughter Teah, all things considered, the Celts reloaded pretty well on the fly.

@grayareas I'm really gonna miss Horford, though.

@grayareas @dustdaughter I think Kemba is an upgrade over Kyrie in terms of team chemistry and ball distribution. I bet Celts go further this year.

@cheesemaker I hope you're right! There's still questions about Brad Stevens and if he's going to continue to play favorites this season. We shall see.

@dustdaughter Understood! Especially with him going to the Sixers.

@dustdaughter Big Al is a pro’s pro. 🏀