No Sense of Community
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So far, I cannot find any sense of community in WordPress. Have I come to the wrong place for that? Having some system of searching through pages would be nice. And I don’t mean the “tags” option from the blue bottons at the top of my screen – those have worked out to be lousy so far.
Please let me know if you’ve found some type of community here, and how you got there. Thanks
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what do you mean exactly by community and a “system of searching through pages”? you can always search wordpress for other tags than the ones on your tag surfer.
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It’s true that other sites ‘do’ community better, but when I try to analyse what they’re doing differently I’m not exactly sure. It doesn’t help that wordpress.com has grown very fast and very diversely in a very short space of time, so you don’t get the cosiness that comes with being on a smaller site, or that usually comes with being an early adopter. For example, five years ago when I was journalling at diaryland.com, there would be links to the most recently updated diaries on the front page, very similar to the ‘recent posts’ on the wp.com dashboard; and if I clicked on one there was about a 10% chance I’d find it interesting enough to revisit. And then I’d read the lists of diaries they read, and it would go on from there. But then, diaryland had a pretty homeogenous userbase — young women in their teens and twenties, writing in English — and that simply doesn’t apply here. Also, tags don’t work nearly as well as searchable public profiles for identifying people with the same interests, because we don’t necessarily blog about everything we’re interested in.
The mechanisms that enable community on sites like diaryland and livejournal are mostly in place — publically available blogrolls, multiple-authored blogs, friends-only blogging — and as more disgruntled livejournallers migrate over here we’ll probably see them being used more effectively. If you hang around on the forums answering support questions, you do get to see who else is posting, and what they’re writing about on their blogs. But, yes, if you’re looking for like-minded people it’s easier to find them on livejournal or vox than blogspot or wordpress.
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@wank: complete agreement.
We’re trying to do a bit more of a community thing at http://www.fanpop.com/spots/wordpress.com
So far it’s been great for introducing me to bloggers I would have otherwise never found out about.
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Sense of community means different things to different people. You can randomly surf blogs and find interesting blogs sometimes or just refresh your dashboard and click on subjects of interest. To me the ability to meet and converse with other people is community. They do not have to be like-minded.
Like any place, you have to get your feet wet and wade around a little to find what is out there and what you like.
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While you state that you don’t like the tags, have you looked at the tag system? You might also want to expand on what you mean by “sense of community”.
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By a “sense of community” I wonder if the author of paperidetbooks means something along the lines of what 9rules offers — categories of bloggers.
Don’t get me wrong, I think the tag system here at WP.com works wonders. I’ve met a number of blogs I wouldn’t have found otherwise by surfing through those communal tags. But that doesn’t mean all those tags pertain to a community.
For me, a teacher, searching through the “teaching” tags, the “education” tags, or the “student” or “writing” tags, doesn’t necessarily mean I’m going to happen upon another teacher. Most of the time clicking on the “teaching” tag leads me to posts that “teach” me how to use excel or ‘WEB2.0’ or how to create the proper PHP script for my own website. But these tags do not relate to the classroom teacher. Yeah, they’re education, but not quite what someone searching for that type of education expected.
When I click a “teaching” tag, I’d much rather read about teaching in the classroom as it pertains to teachers.
paperdietbooks‘ blog doesn’t seem to be about “paper” or “diet” or “books”….yet (but I haven’t read any of the non-links he/she has posted).
Maybe what that author is talking about is creating community via a distinct set of tags created to outline blogs covering niche blogs — teaching blogs, technology blogs, personal blogs, anime blogs, parenting blogs, etc.
Maybe that author is searching for a “diet book blog” and hoping to find others who write on the same topic, rather than others who tag their blogs with he words “paper” or “diet” or “book.”
While not a complaint, I’d like to see WP.com utilize tagging (and keep the tag surfer plugin) but also offer a feature to point out the niche sites.
What do you think?
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I think the person raising the point should be the one to explain what they mean. Friendly reminder that we’re not mind readers not matter how my ex expected me to be one. :)
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Agreed, Dr. Mike.
Just threw in a couple pennies (and then a few more).
Sorry if I took this past the original request.
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Not a problem. I didn’t say we should discuss it at all. I just would like to see the OP follow up on the subject. :)
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I find myself reading, blogrolling, and linking to quite a lot more wordpress blogs than other kinds specifically because of the way wordpress has embedded community into the useability of the platform.
What I mean is, I see the most recently updated posts and sometimes I click on them: I see the most popular posts, top blogs, fastest growing blogs, and click on them; I see the helpful bloggers in the forum here and click on them; I use the Next Blog key a LOT!
Is this LiveJournal? Hell to the no! And thank god. I see this not as a cosy small town but as a city of independant thinkers who encounter one another and sometimes wave. The community exists, but maybe it’s not the community for everyone.
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Like drmike I’m curious to hear how the original poster defines “community” and I’m interested to hear what she feels is lacking here.
Like reflectiveteacher I checked out the site and found no common ground with the blogger on which to establish a personal dialogue due to the lack of posts and a lack of interest in the pages posted.
Indeed wordpress isn’t a community of hormonally challenged youth hitting on each other. It’s certainly not the kind of chatty little entertain me because I’m bored housewife type of community. It’s also not a let’s exchange the names of our cats kind of community. And it’s not a community of head cases dialoguing only in geek speak about internet related and technological issues.
Like raincoaster I am thankful for small miracles because wordpress seems to be a community comprised of a diversity of free-thinking individuals of all ages who have yet to form noticeable cliques. -
I feel WordPress is a kind of cool community. I have found great blogs here, and the people behind them. Some of us have several blogs, so finding time to hang out, and get all the other stuff done can be challenging. I tend to communicate with people through their blogs. Most people I have interacted with here at WP, were a direct result of hanging in the forums, not always posting, but lurking often. :)
The forums have a feed which I tend to check more than once a day. Following feeds is a good way to acquaint yourself with others and what they are blogging about. I remember when I first visited these forums, I found them quite intimidating … yet after a while I found I felt comfortable here, as well as having received some excellent help. Hats off to the helpers, and the mods! -
i agree with blumoon. i think as long as someone who participates in the forums remain patient, polite and elaborate in their threads or posts, people would eventually reciprocate in kind. it’s a good community if you’re looking for a place to widen your blogging knowledge and offer blogging support, but not if you’re looking for a more personal, chat sort of community.
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But Sulz, that’s the WordPress help forums, not WordPress itself. I don’t really think of the forum as a community, but rather as a community resource. Engtech and Dr. Mike have their sites off WordPress which are designed to help connect WordPressers in a way that their blogs cannot do by themselves. People looking for that in this forum are definitely not going to find it, but it does exist.
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rain: point taken. however, in my opinion, the only sense of community i get is whatever goes on in the forum, because it is accessible to every wordpresser. it is here i get news if wp has bugs and the latest blogging issues. it is here i get to know fellow wordpressers like you. it is here i go to if i have a blogging dilemma too trivial for the feedback form. as you said, some users have wp resources outside to help fellow wordpressers, but how accessible is it to them? that’s why i consider the forum to best define the meaning of the wordpress community.
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Did not realize my use of the word “community” would spark such interest. Let me explain my experience and go from there.
You go to the main page at wordpress.com. There are simply links to Hot Posts, Hot Blogs, etc. I’m not one to simply click on a link and take my chances, especially when someone else’s estimation of “Hot” could be much different than my own. I’d kind of like to know what I’m getting into first, especially after a very brief (and regrettable) visit to a site much like “the hormonally challenged youth hitting on each other” site I once visited. That’s not my cup of tea, nor is “the bored housewife type of community” or “let’s exchange the names of our cats kind of community”.
I will admit I’m mostly looking for like-minded bloggers, but definitely enjoy the opportunity to see what else is out there, just with a bit of a “head’s up” first.
I appreciate engtech’s weblink, and believe that could be a viable solution for what I’m looking for.
As for my own page…be kind…I’m just a grub here!! It’ll evolve, over time. Still working out the many, many kinks!
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*chuckle* “let’s exchange the names of our cats” Gotta remember that one.
We also tried an offsite forum but that failed after my previous host went belly up and disappeared.
The first thing that comes to mind is some sort of guide suggesting sites here. We sort of have that over at Best blogs.
Any other suggestions?
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I like the suggestion made in this thread that possibly wordpressers could be given a tool that allows them to identify the type of blogging community to which they belong. By that I mean perhaps there could be a way for wordpress bloggers to self-identify their interests in categories like this (just for starters): politics, parenting, food, litblog (which is what I think paperdietbooks is up to), sports, and of course, hormonally challenged youth looking to hook up. (There must be a euphemism for that.) Not to be limiting, there’s no reason a person couldn’t identify themselves as being both a sports and politics blog or any number of subjects. It would be fun to see who’s in these communities and might encourage people to take a look at others with things in common. It would be particularly wonderful to have access to blogs in other languages, blogs that might share an interest that could become a common language. I don’t think a tool like this would discourage exploration of sites not in one’s chosen community, because there are plenty of tools already for doing that, like the top 100 lists.
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I’m wondering also if the Tag Surfer thingie we have on our Dashboards was an attempt to do something like this.
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