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davis_square

dustriderma has stepped down as a maintainer, after admitting he wasn't really interested (which is why most of you probably didn't realize he ever was one :).

pheromone (who I've known for about twice as long as LJ has existed) has joined as a community maintainer. We invited her because she offerred to design a better look for the community.

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From:

surrealestate.livejournal.com

she offered to design a better look

If by "offered" you mean "was drafted into it after complaining about that horrid background". :)

In any case, happy to help, and I am VERY open to any suggestions/requests folks have to offer. I know it's irrelevant for most of you because you read the community via your friends list, but a lot of people find it through Wikipedia or some other external site and it's not an especially welcoming or particularly readable space right now.

So if there's a style you think would work, have artwork you feel MUST go somewhere, or whatever else, please comment!

From:

Welcome,

pheromone! I think we should get rid of the background iamge immediately, even before doing any other redesign. Especially since it is actually located on former admin

neitherday's server, possibly without her even realizing it's still there. I would have removed it already, except that the other admins requested that I wait until you arrived.

From:

plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com

Looks like she already removed it. :-)

From:

surrealestate.livejournal.com

Did it once I saw Ron's comment, and changed the background color to something not so blinding. (But I haven't changed anything else.)

From:

mattdm.livejournal.com

You are my hero. Now I can remove the Firefox plugin I had for the sole purpose of blanking out that image. :)

From:

surrealestate.livejournal.com

Done!

Removing that damn image was the one request I made back when the regime change happened. Maybe I'm oversensitive, but it was like spikes in my eyes. I can now rest easy.

Personally, I'm not a fan of the over-designed pages you see so often. I like clean, simple, and has what you want but not much more. I'd like to move to a two-column style that would have links, tags, etc, on right side to help folks find what they are looking for and encourage the use of tags.

From:

enochs-fable.livejournal.com

good god, yes,

pheromone, tags and links please! We might beef up our 'about us' section to more blatantly encourage tags (as opposed to it being the last one line item on a list).

From:

It wasn't even the last item on the list until I added it last week. The other thing I did was to add a "davis_square tags" link in the header of the community's page (right under "journal archive" and "livejournal userinfo").

There's a lot more to be done. I'd love to have a menu of existing tags presented to the user whenever a new post is made, but I don't know how to make that happen. Maybe

pheromone can help with this, too.

From:

hrafn.livejournal.com

it was like spikes in my eyes

Hot, dripping-with-acid (not the fun kind) spikes. Yes. My retinas thank you.

From:

plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com

I love layouts similar to

food_porn. They have way more tags than we would ever need, but the layout makes it very easy to find anything.

From:

But even there, if I try to post the community, I just get a fill-in blank for Tags, rather than a menu.

From:

surrealestate.livejournal.com

I'm not sure where you're referring to. The Update Journal page is particular to the user, not the community. Note that you can post to any LJ you have posting access to from the same page -- afaik, there is no way to define how that will look for other users.

(But if anyone does know a way to do something along those lines, please speak up!)

From:

If I go to

food_porn, then click on "Post to this community" at the top of the page, I get this posting page, which is specific to

food_porn. But "Tags:", near the bottom of the posting page, is still a fill-in blank, rather than a menu of possible tag choices.

From:

lonelyholiday.livejournal.com

I could be wrong here, but the only way I know of to see a menu of tags is to post first and then use the tag icon on the post. That icon takes you to the page where you can add tags either by filling in or selecting from the menu. As far as I know, there's no way to see a menu from the original "post an entry" page.

That's the way I always do it, and while it is an extra step, it's just a matter of seconds. It doesn't, however, solve the problem of how to get community members to actually do that...

I know there's a way to suggest features to the LJ staff. Maybe a menu option should be suggested, if it's not already in their queue.

From:

surrealestate.livejournal.com

Right,

vegancooking has a similar basic feel and is what I was thinking of.

From:

plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com

Yeah, something like that.

From:

Links I was thinking of adding:

City of Somerville
City of Cambridge (since part of Greater Davis Square is across the city line)

Somerville Journal
Somerville Journal Blog
Somerville News
The Alewife (North Cambridge newspaper)

Somerville Arts Council
Friends of Lexington Park (Yahoo group)
Progressive Democrats of Somerville
(plus links to any other relevant local political orgs; this is the only one I know of with a website)

somervillemass

cambridge_mass

porter_square

From:

Oops, left out Cambridge Chronicle

From:

plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com

Maybe MBTA would be useful, too, even though its not exclusive to Davis.

From:

Good idea.

From:

And also, perhaps:

ARTSomerville (different from the Somerville Arts Council, though related)
YourDavisSquare.com (DARBI)
CitySquares page on Davis
BostonSquares page on Davis
Yelp.com Boston

From:

surrealestate.livejournal.com

Unfortunately, there is a 10 link limit on free accounts. I chose ten based on my own capricious criteria but am certainly open to changes.

(I've made a bunch of changes already if you want to check it out. Why yes, I *should* be sleeping.)

From:

I put all of the lnks above (and a few others) on the profile page. If a paid account is desirable for some other purpose (better searchability?), I'm willing to pitch in for one.

From:

I like it, except for the font size, which I think is too small.

From:

surrealestate.livejournal.com

I bumped the font size up a pixel.

I also think we* should come up with a better "Title" for the community. The current one is pretty blah.

(Meaning "someone other than me" :)

From:

"We were the Paris of the '90s. Now what?"

From:

plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com

Yay! Welcome aboard! I know you'll make it look great. :-)

From:

Does the community's current configuration allow any member to tag any other user's post, or does it allow only the original poster and the maintainers to add tags?

I can't test this because I don't have a second LJ account to play with.

From:

cos

We actually have a separate group, called tag team, that determines who is allowed to re-tag other people's posts, and who can invent new tags. People not in that group can only tag their own posts, and only using the tags we've already defined. (That applies to maintainers too, but of course maintainers can edit the filter so they can add themselves to it)

From:

I added

elements to the tag team, because she requested it a while ago.

From:

And now I've added

prunesnprisms to the tag team as well. In reviewing (and retagging) very old posts, I also found requests by

laurenhat and

enochs_fable to be involved with this activity. I've posted replies in the appropriate places to ask if they are still interested.

From:

I just tested this, by creating an account called

davis_test which is a member of

davis_square but not a maintainer and not a member of the tag team . This user was still able to add an already-defined tag (yoga) to someone else's post. I don't know if we really want things set up like that -- it could invite vandalism.

From:

ah42.livejournal.com

I, for one, welcome our most excellent overlady!

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