Quick thought re: activities

[randomling]

How about something like a one-activity-per-post system?

For example:
Suggested activity: Sign this petition / donate to this cause/fundraiser / submit an article(/story/poem/piece of art/wevs) to X submission call / attend X event / whatever

Possibly followed by the submitter filling in a short form, like:
Link:
Location: (for meatspace events)
Time estimate: (5 minutes, an evening, whatever) (Possibly we could have a classification system, something like: short, under 10 mins, medium, under an hour, long, under a day, very long, something that takes sustained effort over days or weeks?)
Deadline: (eg petitions and fundraisers are likely to have a closing date)
Does this require me to: leave the house?, spend money?, expend mental spoons (eg: writing something)?, expend social spoons (eg making a phone call, show up in a chatroom)?, make a decision (eg how much to donate)?, reveal personal information (eg petitions sometimes require full name and postal/zip code)?

Mods could then show up and tag submissions depending on the contents of the form or perhaps our own research if some questions are left unanswered. Maybe that could be a once-a-day thing? Then we'd have a nice searchable archive of things-to-do.

(For actions with a deadline, we could tag them "current" and "deadline" or something, and have a mod scroll through current+deadline things every now and then to take "current" off the ones that have expired.)

Brainstorming questions:
* Does this seem like a good idea?
* How would you modify it to work better?
* What other tags might we add to make the list more accessible?
* How to organise tag moderation so that tag-modding is also reasonably accessible?

Answer any, all or none - just saying hi is fine!

Comments

[alatefeline]

Hi!

I like the 'one suggestion per post' idea.

I think maybe we should also have a weekly or weekly-ish 'things I did' post where people can share a thing or things that they feel activist-ish-ly accomplished about, similar to awesomeers, but less frequent so people can pick and choose whatever they think is the best example. But I'm not certain; that sort of thing seems likely to slide sideways of the intent. I guess I would like to hear from more people?

Also, 'expend physical spoons' should be on the list at least for outside the house things (and some inside, I guess, if someone posted, like, gardening or electrical tips or an ice bucket thing) - some kind of estimate of distance traveled; of time to be spent walking, rolling, standing, sitting, exercising; and of motor skills that need to be used or worked around. Just at a rough cut. I am not expert on the topic, but it would seem odd to account for mental and social energy without including the physical.

I have no clue how tagging would work.

[the_rck]

I like the idea of a posting template and of limiting the number of items per post. Seeing too many things all at once can mean that I can't actually address any of them. This applies in low stress communities like whatwasthatbook, so I suspect I'd get overwhelmed here where posts have real world emotional impact and the outcomes can affect people's lives.

I'd like a line on the template for people to add extra information that doesn't fit anywhere else. For example, I saw someone on LJ post that they couldn't go to a particular protest but would like to sponsor someone else who wanted to go but couldn't afford it.

I'd like a sticky post where people can comment with useful links they find. I'd be willing to monitor such a post and sort and compile the links so that people could find them more easily. I'd be surprised if it took more than half an hour to an hour a day, and most days I have more time than that for such things.

[rmc28]

I've amended the template a bit, see below. I think a posting template is easier to get going with than enforcing a form, reminds me of fic exchange signups.

Link:
Location (if relevant):
Deadline:
Time estimate:
Requirements: money / mental / physical / social / personal information / other
Anything else:


I like the idea of the weekly-ish "what we've done" post, and I'm willing to try making it and see how it goes. (I usually have some time to make posts at the weekend.) If it turns out not be useful I can stop making them.

[alatefeline]

*nod nod nod*

[randomling]

I like that!

I really want to put "decision-making" back in as a possible requirement, though, 'cause I have multiple conditions that affect my executive function, and sometimes the first need to make a decision can not only throw me out of what I'm doing but make it a lot harder to do anything else for a while because my brain kind of blue-screens.

I'm sure I'm not the only person in the world this happens to, and while making activities accessible for everyone I'd also like to make them somewhat accessible for myself!

[randomling]

Ha, that's why I asked for commentary. I guess I didn't think of that because for me, leaving the house and travelling somewhere is already eating up plenty of my spoons - I'm not going to be gardening or walking any distance or even standing for long once I get there!

[untonuggan]

hey! i just saw this after making a post (whoops!). so if there is a template format maybe it can go in a sticky post?

[randomling]

No worries! We're still figuring out the template format, it'll totally go in a sticky when we've got it finalised.

[untonuggan]

excellent!

[alatefeline]

*nods* Whereas I have pretty solid physical endurance *before* I interact with humans for the day, but lose my physical as well as mental equilibrium with just a few minutes to a half hour in an unfamiliar crowd, even at events I like. So I can about handle intros and 'now let's get to work' on a project like cleaning or moving things, but a sit-down meet and greet chit-chat with strangers would be literally impossible without extensive pre-planning (e.g. meeting some of them one on one so they aren't all strangers). At any kind of large gathering, I have to periodically check out and sit behind closed doors for awhile. Yet long walks by myself aren't a problem. (Except when they are.) Also, not that this is likely to matter, I can cross busy streets fine by myself, but *not* simultaneously *with* other people, because I can only track the movement of the vehicles or the pedestrians, not both. ...Autism is weird.

...I'll defer to you and others on physical activity descriptions, then.

[alatefeline]

Good idea.

[randomling]

We can definitely do those things! I think having a post of useful links is a really good idea. I'm wondering what kind of links we might want? Like - there's a great article going around from the Southern Poverty Law Centre, for example, about how to go about confronting bigotry close to home. (It'll be in my history somewhere, I should dig it out.)

That kind of thing? General "how to do support for X marginalised group"? Stuff like the debate on whether it's a good idea for white people to wear safety pins as a symbol we'll look out for the people around us?

(There is so much debate and commentary around social issues on the internet. I'm wondering do we want to grab lots and categorise? Focus on specific topics? Should I make a post about this and throw it to the community?)

[the_rck]

I was thinking also of linkspams, probably sorted by date (by week, maybe?), and of generally useful websites for things like finding organizations looking for volunteers and finding out how various charities spend their money and of other communities such as thisfinecrew.

[randomling]

♥ I definitely think we need to hear from a number of people re: physical spoons because my physical spoon levels are not the same as everyone!

I thought your suggestions for physical-spoons things were really good - sorry, I felt a wee bit defensive because I was embarrassed I hadn't thought of all those things myself. (Largely because of my own physical restrictions!)

Autism IS weird. I have a bit of a different symptom-set but... yeah it can make things complicated!

Also I didn't say above, I really like the weekly check-in idea. Let's do it!

[alatefeline]

I think that maybe we should be a pro-awkwardness community. As in, 'We are going to fuck up in the course of our extended group conversation, and then we are going to take a deep breath and try to do better. AND THAT IS GOOOOOOD. Let us do an awkward happydance in our various ways."

Analysis: I KNOW I am going to say something that is not-good at some point. I'm prepared to forgive anyone who unintentionally says something not-good at me, provided they own it if and when I point it out. I also want to dig down and own that I have absurd amounts of privilege as an employed, mostly-invisibly neurodivergent, white, cis-passing person (among other things) so I will likely not be the first to know if there is a really problematic *trend* among individually minor things that people say or omit, and I need to check myself regularly to not talk over people. (People? Peoplefolk with more-informed thoughts than mine on the physical spoons thing? You don't gotta, but I'd love to hear from you.) And pointing out gaps can be a bit embarrassing, but it beats not doing it, so I'm in favor.

Which comes down to saying: I know you felt embarrassed and I feel a little odd too but I think you are doing an awesome job and I *don't* think you made a horrible blunder, I think you had a draft in progress and things got added because it wasn't perfect which it isn't supposed to be because it's a draft ... *breathes* ... but there could well be more-informed opinions than mine and this is why community is a *thing* ... !

Take care. Seriously, do a taking-care-thing if you can and wanna. <3

[alatefeline]

Argh I'm so sorry that came out sounding advice-y I'm so sorry. *facepalms*

[randomling]

♥

I think a pro-awkwardness community would be great. We're all going to make mistakes at some point, and you're right, owning them and talking about it is better (and I think less likely to induce burnout) than Drama and people walking out in a huff! Or indeed everyone staying silent. I don't like Atmospheres of Silent Resentment much either. XD

Thank you for saying you don't think I made a horrible blunder! It was definitely an in-progress thing and I asked for comments because I posted it at about 2am and I knew I wasn't covering everything, I just had an IDEA! and wanted to get it out there for discussion...

My self-care thing was sleep, which isn't going that well at the moment, and now I'm going to answer a few more comments and then go back to my hidden-objects game, I think. :D

[randomling]

♥ It's all good!

[randomling]

Ah, yes, linkspams would be absolutely awesome!

Would you be up for making a top-level post about this and maybe we'll generate some community discussion?

(I realise I floated that as a thing I might do in the last comment, but it has since occurred to me that this is everyone's community, all members have posting access, and I don't actually have to be in control of everything. :D)

[alatefeline]

Okay. *breathes*

<3

[alatefeline]

<3

[the_rck]

I have to leave the house twice today, so I won't have time/spoons to think about doing this until Friday or even Saturday. I will do it, though.

[the_rck]

I've been digging back in my DW reading list tonight (it's near bedtime, and I'm not done, but I got back as far as the 12th which was skip 400). At this point, I've got a few categories. They all need refining because some of them aren't exactly accurate.

Of course, this is a work in progress.

The categories now are:

Sibling communities

Linkspams/DW journals with a lot of unlocked political content

Informational links (this is the biggest category right now)

Personal and/or inspirational posts (I don't want to use 'inspirational' because it implies happy to me, but I don't have a better word)

Cute/funny/relaxing links

Satire links

[cesy]

I like the template. Can we put it in a sticky and in the profile, so it's easy to start using? We can always tweak it later.

[randomling]

That sounds pretty good to me so far!

I think it'd be great to get these ideas up as a community post, where more people might see it, rather than buried in the comments here - would you be up for posting what you've got or would you rather I did it?

[the_rck]

I will do that tomorrow once I'm up and functional.