Meta: Lurkers, participation, and community

[jjhunter]

Hello all! I’m J.J., the founder of poetree and one of our two current admins. Today I’m going to give a brief overview of POETREE’s history, and then open up the conversation in regards to a topic of importance to both this community and any online community seeking to increase participation.

In a post earlier this week, Plunge magazine founder ailelie mentioned the importance of defining any idea, or really any organization, in three to five words. Six months in, I define POETREE as an ‘online poetry discussion community’. The community was originally envisioned as a supplement to the higher volume poetry, another Dreamwidth community that specializes in published poetry not the poster’s own, but quickly began to morph into something more interesting than that: a place where poets amateur and professional and poetry enthusiasts could share and discuss poems and poetry culture. Rather than being just another poetry mailing list, POETREE could take advantage of its host platform to facilitate conversation and and build up an archive of resources available free to anyone interested.

That dream is very much a work in progress, and the journey to realizing it has been alternatively humbling and exhilarating. For the first six months, I focused primarily on recruiting people to write content, and assumed that the audience for that content would materialize over time. The community has certainly grown a great deal -- we’re now at triple the number of members and subscribers that we had in December -- but the amount of discussion going on in the comments has been much more variable. This in turn makes it more difficult for the Hosts to gauge how many people are reading their posts, and (I worry) makes it less rewarding than it might otherwise be for people to Host in the first place.

This is not a guilt manifesto, but rather a place to begin. Earlier I defined POETREE as an ‘online poetry discussion community’; it’s worth asking ourselves, what makes us a community? Is participation a requirement for being part of the community? Where does that leave the lurkers, those who might be reading avidly but by preference or default tend not to comment on posts or have time to Host? In the recent anonymous feedback poll, over half of the respondents identified themselves as default lurkers; over a third wished for more participation in the comments, and a clear majority felt like they should comment but don’t know what to say or feel like they don’t have anything meaningful to contribute, with those marking time as an issue just under a majority. There must overlap between all of these groups, given the numbers and the option for poll takers to mark more than box per question, but I still find that clear majority for the default lurkers very telling.

There are structural things my co-admin alee_grrl and I can do to do a better job of facilitating conversation: encouraging Hosts to include concluding questions for discussion on every post; modeling commenting by commenting more frequently ourselves and making a point of introducing new points for discussion; providing alternate ways for people to participate besides commenting, such as kudos polls; and so on. We’ve already begun implementing some of that, and tomorrow will see two new weekly features that we think will help further in terms of building community and increasing participation.

I also wonder whether it’s time to introduce a minor cultural shift: what about the kudos comment? By ‘kudos’, I mean both kudos in terms of the AO3 fannish practice and kudos in terms of ‘+1’, ‘I like this’, ‘Amen’, ‘<3’ and so on. When you don’t have the time to leave a detailed comment or you feel like you don’t have the spoons to think of something profound, there is still room between the heartbreaking work of staggering genius comment a multi-line comment and not leaving any indication of the fact that you read a particular post & thought it was worth the read. I’m not advocating replacing more detailed comments with kudos comments, but rather writing kudos comments instead of writing nothing at all. Commenting is ultimately a habit, and the practice usually starts small.

Some further resources about feedback from a different context.

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What do you think? If you left the occasional ‘kudos’ comment, what format would it take? Do you have ideas beyond those already mentioned? What would you like to see in the comments?

Comments

[bookblather]

I'm one of those who applied lurker to myself, for a couple of reasons: I'm new to the community, and I'm still not 100% sure what is and isn't okay to post, and I'm also a little intimidated by how smart y'all are. I can say for sure that kudos would make it easier for me to participate, because I don't have to keep up with the academic discussions.

[alee_grrl]

Things are definitely intimidating when you are new to a group. But you've already made some great contributions over the last few weeks, which I think is awesome. And those of us who like to wax academic, also enjoy more down to earth conversations on poetry. I love know draws a person to a poem. Why did they like it. The answer does not have to be complex. It can be, I like the way it sounded, or This line made me smile. It's just fun to talk about. Feel free to ask questions of fellow community members as you might if you were out with friends over coffee. "What do you mean when you say..." or "Why do you say ...." Most of all, keep in mind that many of us just want to share our interest with like-minded others. Chip in where to want to conversation wise, and feel free to watch other conversations. We're going for a comfortable community. :)

On a completely unrelated note: I love your icon! :D

[jjhunter]

Most of all, keep in mind that many of us just want to share our interest with like-minded others.

Yes, this. When you find yourself explaining poetry to a cat, you know you have it bad.

*might be speaking from personal experience, but will neither confirm nor deny*

[bookblather]

Ha, thanks! Yomiko and I have much in common. Like, her apartment in the OAV? That's my room.

Lovely, thanks. So is it okay to post poetry of our own, or to post favorite poems that we've run across recently? I've been rereading Paul Zarzyski and rediscovering my love for cowboy poetry.

[alee_grrl]

It's most definitely o.k. to post poetry of your own or post favorite poems that you've run across recently. If a particular post has reminded you of something you've written, or something you've read elsewhere then it is fine to link to that in a comment. We do try to keep our initial posts somewhat organized by having hosts, but a hosted week of cowboy poetry would be fascinating. Please consider signing up for hosting here. The whole idea is that anyone can host on any topic related to poetry they are interested in. We're all about people who love poetry, whether they be writers, editors, teachers, or readers. We just like sharing that love and talking with folks about it. :)

And seriously a week of cowboy poetry would be awesome!

[jjhunter]

Chiming in to clarify that you can indeed post your own poetry when you are the weekly Poetry Host; posting favorite poems that you've run across recently might be best to save for 'Sunday Picnic' posts if they're under copyright -- we're more particular than poetry about respecting copyrights, and generally encourage people to err on the side of caution & contact the poet for permission to repost their work if it isn't clear that the poet has given permission through a Creative Commons license of some kind when posting poems to the community as a whole. Does that makes sense? You can see the distinction in my first villanelle post, for example; one poem I only quote in order to respect copyright, while the other I post in full.

I agree with alee_grrl that I think you would enjoy being a weekly host, and I encourage you to sign up at the current signup post. You can post your own work, others' (as long as you keep in mind the points above), or some mix thereof; I think you'd find it a lot of fun. :o)

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[jjhunter]

Hee, we do tend to go on sometimes, don't we. S'okay - poetry's big enough for the academics and the not-so-academic alike. If you left a kudos comment, what would it look like? I tend to think of lilmoka as the master of such, but there are so many ways of doing it (even just a comment with 'kudos' in the subject line & a '<3' would make an author happy, in my experience) that there's plenty of room for personalizing it and still not using that much in the way of spoons.

If you're interested in tips, etc. re: commenting more at length eventually, the link I included at the end of the post leads to a roundup post with some neat resources. If not, that's perfectly fine too. Seems to me like you've doing a wonderful job of participating lately *hugs your sestina format post gleefully*, and if the kudos format is the difference between no comment and feeling comfortable participating, then I am 110% behind it.

1. Kudos
2. ????????????
3. Poetry wins all the internets!

[bookblather]

Awww, thank you! Yeah, for kudos comments I usually just leave something like "This" or "word' or "I agree with everything you just said please say some more things." Not terribly productive, but at least friendly.

[alee_grrl]

And very happy making for the poster. Comments along those lines always make me grin.