vriddy: Cute dragon hatching from an egg (hawks)
Vridelian ([personal profile] vriddy) wrote in [community profile] fictional_fans2022-01-08 08:58 pm
Entry tags:

What makes for good community guidelines/code of conduct for a fan comm?

I'm planning to create a BNHA community since the existing ones appear to be inactive. I've been looking at the way other fandom-focused communities do code of conduct/community guidelines on Dreamwidth and have generally been impressed with how short they tend to be!! Like, the guidelines for this comm are two lines. And it seems to work? I'm very afraid of running myself into a corner by not being clear enough, haha.

Here's what I'm thinking of going with:

  • Treat people with respect.

  • Don't harsh other people's squee. Be mindful that the character you hate is someone else's favourite. Try to come here to celebrate what you love about the fanworks and canon, the characters and themes and anything BNHA-related that sparks joy. Character bashing, kink shaming, flame wars and dogpiling aren't welcome. This is a ship and let ship environment.

  • NSFW content (dark themes, mature topics, adult content, etc) should be placed under a cut and tagged appropriately, so people who want to avoid those topics can do so. Mentioning dark themes from canon (e.g. child abuse, mutilation, suicide-baiting, ...) in passing is fine but should go under a cut if digging into the details.

One of my main concerns is the negativity from Twitter and Tumblr and Discord spilling over to the comm but I'm not sure if I'm going overboard pre-emptively. I'm also not sure yet how to handle manga spoilers for the anime-only, when the anime is years behind 🤔

Do people usually create tag lists for their comms? Or is it possible to rename and manage tags as they get created? Wondering if the tag list should go into the guidelines otherwise...

Tips, advice, and links to more examples are all very welcome! This will be my first community.
pumpkinlumpin: [IDW Sonic Comic] A cutely simplified drawing of Rouge, eavesdropping with a smug look. (oh you don't say?)

[personal profile] pumpkinlumpin 2022-01-08 11:47 pm (UTC)(link)
Oh hey, I'll just quietly sit here and listen for ideas while continuing to waffle over creating a community myself. I think these base outlines are pretty solid!

While you think on spoilers, if I might suggest, there is also the simple html option of requesting folks use or copy-paste something similar to the below markup so that the specific spoilers would have to be highlighted.
HTML tags: <span style="background-color:#ffffff"><font color="#ffffff"> [TEXT HERE] </font></span>
Which results in a box that's white (or your preferred color of choice) that requires being highlighted to reveal the text inside.
Tag-wise, I'm fairly certain they can be adjusted at any time just like personal tags! Also to consider: having set tags vs trusting the community members to tag depending on how easy it would be to keep things cohesive. For example, is there a risk of the same character being tagged multiple things by different people? The various Persona protagonists tend to have...

a) No official name in-game.
b) A name given to them via manga adaptation.
c) An entirely different name granted via anime.

Which made navigating certain sites agonizing, because everyone used something different, lmao.
sporky_rat: Orange 3WfDW dreamsheep (Default)

[personal profile] sporky_rat 2022-01-09 06:33 am (UTC)(link)

That highlight text isn't always great on various styles. I'd recommend spoilers behind cuts and the text of the cut indicate that it is a spoiler.

pumpkinlumpin: Precious weenie cat, Sasha, snoozing. (obligatory cat icon)

[personal profile] pumpkinlumpin 2022-01-09 06:54 am (UTC)(link)
Ahhh yeah, that's fair. I've been using my setup + site skin for so long I forgot there's a handful of styles that are weird about highlight functionality.
satsuma: a whole orange, a halved grapefruit, and two tangerine sections arranged into a still life (Default)

[personal profile] satsuma 2022-01-10 03:36 am (UTC)(link)
It’s also often not mobile accessible — not necessarily an issue with existing DW users but it can be an issue if you’re trying to be newbie friendly