Yeah, yeah. I know. I take a week off and then become the posting monster. Deal 😉

I posted to LJ’s suggestion board with this. It hasn’t shown up yet (I hope it’s just the moderation and not a submit bug)

I’d love comments from this journal’s readers:

Title:
Community Guide

Short, concise description of the idea:
A yahoo-style hierarchical guide

Full description of the idea:
Currently the only ways to discover communities are

  • Go to a community promotional commmunity
  • Find it on the (possibly truncated) list on an interest search
  • Find it on someone’s userinfo
  • Word of mouth

    If I actually want to find a community on (random example) alyson hannigan I can go to:
    http://www.livejournal.com/interests.bml?int=alyson+hannigan
    the results of this (mercifully under the filter cap of 500) present me boards on BtVS, RPGs, fan boards, character relationship boards… I have to pretty much read each one and decide if they fit what I am looking for and possibly if the community is still active.

    I’d like a hierarchical list that one could search from generic down to specific topic for communities. For an example see:
    http://dir.groups.yahoo.com/dir/1600036306

    This list of topics should most assuredly be searchable.

    An ordered list of benefits:

  • An easier search mechanism for communities
  • A filter mechanism for communities that may not apply to a search
  • Possible revenue for LJ for people wanting to feature their communities on a topic
  • Possible view of community activity

    An ordered list of problems/issues involved:

  • New data needing to be attached to every community
  • May have to be entered by comm moderators which lends to data accuracy
  • May require approval mechanism (people requirement)
  • Could be a resource hog
  • Could infringe on Yahoo Patent?

    An organized list, or a few short paragraphs detailing suggestions for implementation:
    Personally, I think the mechanism of having moderators chose their own topic in a yahoo sense is the best approach. If each topic is merely an longinteger it’s a minor additiion to the community dbase entry (I haven’t really researched this)

    Basically you need a way to have a set of stock topics and sub topics and then the ability to easily suggest a sub-sub topic or suggest splitting a subtopic. From there, comm mods can request a primary and possibly a secondary topic(s) for the community. If you want this verified that can be done. Or… you can give that power to the community members.

    This mechanism (to deal with the resource usage) could be another revenue stream. Cost for listing under multiple topics. Cost for promoting in a topic as a featured community.

    Most importantly would be the use of the community or multi-user view that shows or lists when the community was last updated. This can be very helpful to deciding between two communities. This view (while this probably belongs in a separate suggestion) should also list number of members.

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