Hello, hello

[zvi]

I must confess, I've never run one of these communities before, so I don't have a very clear vision for it. I do know that I'd like to be a little more out and about locally, so I figured this was one way to start.

The only current rules are "Be excellent to one another" and "Keep it local." If somebody who has more experienced with a geographic based comm wants to offer some pointers, I'd love to hear them.

Suggested topics for discussion: food; shopping; local clubs of any and every sort (for instance, I created the literally_lesbians_feed, which is a feed for a lesbian bookclub that meets monthly in DC, announcing the feed or announcing the meetings and books is on topic); local politics (which, okay, in DC that can have some pretty far-reaching implications, so just use your common sense); breaking news; freecycling; cultural events, or even just saying, "Hey, I wanna go to the Air and Space museum on X date, anyone want to come with?"

P.S. Anybody have any idea how we should arrange our tags?

Comments

[cyprinella]

Some good tags may be DC FAQs like stuff about different neighborhoods in the metro area and touristy stuff. Those are pretty common posts on the LJ comm.

[gblvr]

I second this -- maybe also some specific tags for GLBTQ stuff?

[zvi]

What's the LJ comm, mayhaps I will go study their tags?

[cyprinella]

washingtondc

Although mostly their tags suck for that sort of stuff (and aren't used very frequently), which is why I was suggesting them.

[reginagiraffe]

Maybe separate tags for VA, DC and Baltimore?

[sohotrightnow]

Ooh, I agree. Maybe DC, Baltimore, Richmond, and then NoVA and MD tags besides?

[white_aster]

I'm a fan of categorized tags (tags prefixed with a specific word so they group together in the tag list). It makes it easier to find things if you don't have to scan the whole list looking for a specific location, topic, etc: all the locations, all the topics, etc. are all grouped.

How about these?

"where:"
To be used with anything else to denote location. Like: "where: va" and "where: dc"

"event" or "event:"
For one-time or yearly events. If you have to put it on your calendar, it's an event. Might have to be broken out into areas like "event: music" "event: shopping".

"info:"
For things specific to particular areas: "info: va", "info: dc", "info: md", etc. These would be for persistent things, rather than one-time events (which would obviously use the event tags).

"discuss:"
For things not relating to actual concrete events or places. Like, "discuss: politics" or "discuss: music".

"question"
For folks who are asking for information, to be paired with other tags about what they're asking about.


So from that we'd get:
"What do you think about dc statehood?", tagged "discuss: politics, where: dc"

"Who do you think's the best DC-local band, and when's their next show?" tagged "discuss: music, where: dc, event: music, question")

"What's the best way to get to the Cherry Blossom Festival?", tagged "event:festival(?), question, where: dc"

How's that for a start? :D

[celtic_maenad]

that's an amazing start! I agree, categorized tags are the way to go, as they're especially useful to folks coming in later.

I have a hesitation about the tag "event", but it's not concrete enough to have words yet. Mostly I'm thinking that concert-type one-time-only events might want their own tag from recurring annual Cherry Blossom Festival events. But I don't have a solution.

[It's a particular hang-up of mine: I want to offer a suggestion for a solution if I bring up a problem.]

[white_aster]

That's totally true, and I thought the same thing, actually. I just wasn't sure it was going to bug anyone else but me. ;P

We could have a separate tag for recurring events: "annual events", and even break IT down into "annual events: music" etc. if we wanted. We might be splitting hairs at that point, though...not sure how many annual events we'd HAVE to worry about categorizing, really.

If we want, we could also just have a special compound events classification tag for it: "events: annual" or something, and then pair it with "events: music/cooking/etc"... I'm not sure which of those is better/less confusing? Anyone else have any ideas?

[hkellick]

I ran a group like this on another site..

tags are pretty easy to change around, so don't worry if you don't get it just right, but things such as.. restaurants, shopping, review, gatherings, etc.. make alot of sense. :)