FAQ - Communities

A LiveJournal community is a journal in which many users can post entries about a similar topic. Users who are interested in a particular subject can find or create a community based on this subject. For example, residents of a town or city can gather to exchange information about it or to announce local events.

There are several things that make communities different from personal journals:

* Entries and comments in a community journal are made by other accounts that are personal journals. A community account cannot post entries or comments, nor can it join other communities.

* It is not possible to create entries with Private or Custom security in a community. Members are to a community as Friends are to a personal account. "Friends-only" entries in a community are therefore "Members-only"; they are only visible to members of the community.

* Entries made in a community journal will be associated with the user picture of the user who posted them. The community's user picture will only be shown if the entry's author has no default user picture defined and has not specified a picture to use. It is not possible to select from the community's user pictures when posting entries. However, you do have the option to view the community's user picture rather than individual posters' user pictures on your friends page.

* A community has at least one "maintainer." A maintainer is a user whose personal journal account is separate from the account of the community that they maintain. A maintainer supervises the happenings in a community, controls its settings and Community Info, and performs other administrative functions. It is possible for a community to have several maintainers who all have this administrative access.

* In addition to http://www.livejournal.com/users/communityname/ and http://www.livejournal.com/~communityname/, a community journal can be accessed at http://www.livejournal.com/community/communityname/. If the community has a Paid Account, it can also be accessed at http://communityname.livejournal.com/.


FURTHER READING

How do I create a community?
http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=78

How do I join a community?
http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=101

How do I post in a community?
http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=76

How do I view community user pictures on my Friends page?
http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=205

There are several different ways to look for a community:

* Search by interest by visiting http://www.livejournal.com/interests.bml or by using the search box present at the top right of some LiveJournal site schemes. Up to 500 communities that list the interest will appear first in the search results.

* Use the LiveJournal directory's community search page, available at http://www.livejournal.com/community/search.bml. Make sure to set your Sorting Method to "Update Time" in order to utilize this feature.

* An official LiveJournal community, community_quest (http://www.livejournal.com/userinfo.bml?user=community_quest), was created as a place where other LiveJournal users can help you find a community that relates to your interests.

* Maintainers are encouraged to post a small description of their new communities in community_promo (http://www.livejournal.com/userinfo.bml?user=community_promo). It may be helpful to view community_promo's entries to find communities that interest you.

All communities have a link at the top of the Community Info page reading "To join this community, click here." When you click this link, one of the following will occur:

* If the community is open, you will be able to confirm your choice to join the community. You will also be asked if you would like to add the community to your friends list (also called "watching"). You can leave the box checked to do so or uncheck it to leave the community off of your friends list. If you change your mind later, you can add or remove the community at any time by modifying your friends list.

* If the community has moderated membership, you will be asked to confirm your choice to join and the community's maintainers will be notified that someone has requested membership. The maintainers can then decide whether or not to add you to the community.

* If the community is closed, you will see a list of maintainers that you can contact for more information about joining.

If you have been invited to a community, you can accept or decline the invitation at http://www.livejournal.com/manage/invites.bml. You will not receive an e-mail informing you of the invite. Invitations are valid only for 30 days.

Joining a community will usually give you both membership and posting access. Membership is the ability to see Members-only posts, if there are any, and also means that your journal's entries appear on the community's Friends page. Posting access means that you can add an entry to the community's journal.

Eligibility for membership in a community is determined by the owner. There is no other way to join a community, and there are no LiveJournal rules to define what an owner may or may not set as their requirements for membership.


FURTHER READING

Community Info page
http://www.livejournal.com/userinfo.bml?user=communityname, where "communityname" is the username of the community

If I join or watch a community, can the members see the protected entries made in my journal?
http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=81

How do I post in a community?
http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=76

What is "watching"? Can I view communities separately from the rest of my friends list?
http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=179

What is LiveJournal's Friends system? How do I use it?
http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=61

"Watching" is defined as adding a community to your friends list. Users who list the community as a friend are shown on the Community Info under "Watched By".

You can watch a community without being a member, or be a member of a community without watching it. Watching a community without becoming a member will not allow you to post entries or see protected entries in the community. In some cases, it may also restrict your ability to post comments.

If you watch communities but want to view them separately from the rest of your friends, you have two options:

* use custom friends groups
* append ?show=C or ?show=P to the end of your friends page URL to only show entries in community journals or personal journals, respectively. For example, http://www.livejournal.com/users/exampleusername/friends/?show=C would
only show you entries in community journals that you are watching.

You also have the option of removing a community from your friends list and viewing its entries by visiting the community individually.


FURTHER READING

What is LiveJournal's Friends system? How do I use it?
http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=61

If I join or watch a community, can the members see the protected entries made in my journal?
http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=81

How do I join a community?
http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=101

What are custom friends groups? How do I use them?
http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=102

How do I view shared user pictures on my Friends page?
http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=205

No. Joining a community or adding it to your Friends list will not enable the members of the community, the maintainer of the community, or the community account itself to view your Friends-only entries. The only people able to see your Friends-only entries are those whom you list individually on your Friends list.

If you wish to be a member of certain communities without them showing in your "Member of" list, you have three options:

* Ban the communities you want to hide in the same way you would ban a user.
* Hide the entire "friend of" list, which will also hide "member of". There is no way to hide these separately.
* Use a different account to participate in the communities you do not want associated with your main account.

While the first two options are the easiest, they do not remove a community from the list of communities to which you have posting access, nor do they hide any communities that you may be watching on your friends list. Because you have complete control over communities that you have posting access in and the accounts you list as friends, LiveJournal does not allow you to hide these lists.

Other users can also see which communities you are a member of with the LiveJournal directory and you will also be listed in the individual "Members" list on the Community Info page of each community that you join. Due to this, the only way to remove a community entirely from your User Info page and remove yourself from its Community Info page is to leave it and make sure that you are not watching it. The best option for hiding your involvement in certain communities is to create a separate account.


FURTHER READING

How do I ban/unban a user from commenting in my journal?
http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=20

Can I remove people from my "Friend Of" list?
http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=185

How do I leave a community?
http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=82

What is LiveJournal's Friends system? How do I use it?
http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=61

What is the Directory? How do I use this feature?
http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=123

How do I create an account? How do I get started?
http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=104

You may leave a community by going to the Community Info page of the community you want to leave and clicking on the "leave the community" link at the top of the page. You will be asked to confirm that you want to be removed from the community. You will also be given the option to remove the community from your friends list. You can leave the box checked to remove the community or uncheck it to leave it on your friends list. If you change your mind later, you can add or remove the community at any time by modifying your friends list.

If the community you would like to leave has been deleted or suspended and you can't view the Community Info page, you can go to the Admin Console and execute the following command:

          community <community> remove <user>

Do not enter the < or > symbols; these are only for reference purposes. Replace <community> and <user> with the username of the community and your username, respectively.

Note that leaving a community using the console method will not remove it from your Friends list.


FURTHER READING

Community Info page
http://www.livejournal.com/userinfo.bml?user=communityname, replacing "communityname" with the username of the community

Admin Console
http://www.livejournal.com/admin/console/

What is LiveJournal's Friends system? How do I use it?
http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=61

Maintainers are able to set various posting options for their communities. Most maintainers allow users to be granted posting access upon joining the community. Others require posting access to be granted individually. If you find that you do not have posting access in a community even though you have joined, you should contact its maintainer.

Some communities may allow users to post entries without being a member. If this is the case, you will see a blue pencil icon on the small blue toolbar on the Community Info page. Clicking on that pencil icon will take you to an update page where you can compose and post your entry to the community.

In either case, communities may also be moderated. This means that any entries you make in the community journal will need to be approved by a moderator. You are only permitted to have one entry in the moderation queue at any given time.

To post so that only members of the community can see your entry, you will need to select the "Friends" security level. There is no way to use a "Private" or "Custom" security level in a community.


TO POST USING THE WEB INTERFACE

Go to the web update page (http://www.livejournal.com/update.bml) while you're logged in. In the drop-down list titled "Post to", you can select the community to which you want to post.


TO POST USING A DOWNLOADED CLIENT

Many clients available for download include the ability to post entries to a community. For more information on your preferred client, consult its documentation or its menu options.


FURTHER READING

How do I join a community?
http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=101

Community Info page
http://www.livejournal.com/userinfo.bml?user=communityname, replacing "communityname" with the username of the community

What is a downloadable client? Where can I get one?
http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=158

When you select "Friends" as the security level when you make an entry, only the members of that community may see it, and only when logged in. See http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=24 for information on security levels.

You cannot use the "Custom" (http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=102) or "Private" security options in a community. There is no way to make an entry visible only to certain members in a community.

LiveJournal does not offer an automatic cross-posting feature from its web interface. However, you do have several options for achieving a similar effect.

* You can compose and post a separate new entry in each of the desired journals or communities.

* You can post the full entry in one journal or community and then link directly to that entry from the other journals or communities. When using this method, you may want to disable comments on all entries but the original to ensure that all comments are made in the same place.

* You can use a downloadable client, since some clients allow cross-posting or have features that make it easier, such as the ability to save a draft copy of an entry.

Please note that some communities have strict guidelines regarding cross-posting. Ensure you check the relevant community info pages for any rules/guidelines prior to cross-posting. Some may specifically prohibit cross-posting while others may simply just require that you use an lj-cut.


FURTHER READING

How do I add a link to another journal or another web site in my entry?
http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=67

What are comments? How do I enable/disable message boards?
http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=62

What is a downloadable client? Where can I get one?
http://www.livejournal.com/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=158

How do I use an lj-cut? What are the other LiveJournal-specific tags
http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=75

Can I link my journals together? How do I update another journal without logging out?
http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=199

There are several different reasons why you cannot post to a community. You should first make sure that you have joined the community you wish to post in, instead of just adding it to your Friends list. Most communities do not allow posting by non-members, and as such, you will first need to join the community. Once you do so, you will generally be able to post.

If you have already joined the community, it may be that you do not have posting access. If the community is not listed in the "Posting Access" list at the bottom of your full userinfo, but is listed in your "Member Of" list, then you will need to contact the community maintainer and request that you be granted posting access.

If you recently created a community and are the maintainer, you will not automatically receive membership or posting access to your community. You will need to grant yourself access to the community before you can post.

If you recently joined the community and are trying to post from your downloadable client, you may need to log out and log back in so that your client can recognize your posting access to the community.


MODERATED COMMUNITIES

If you receive the error "Maximum queued posts for this community+poster combination reached," then it means that the community you are trying to post in is moderated. In a moderated community, entries are not added directly to the community. Rather, they are put into the moderation queue, which is a list of entries that the community moderators must approve or reject before they can be posted. If you already have an entry in the moderation queue -- that is, if you wrote an earlier entry to the community, and you have not yet received an e-mail saying it was approved or rejected -- then you will not be able to post another entry, and will receive this error. You will need to wait until a moderator has approved or rejected your earlier entry.

The error "Moderation queue full" may also occur with moderated communities. This error message indicates that the queue of posts for the moderator to approve or reject is full; there can be up to 50 entries in the queue at one time, but no more. No one will be able to post any new entries until a community moderator has dealt with some of the existing queued entries.

If a moderator rejects your entry to a moderated community, please do not reply to the e-mail you receive, as that will open a LiveJournal Support request. Support volunteers cannot help you with reasons why your post may have been rejected or help with getting it approved. If you feel that the information provided by the moderator in the e-mail you received was not a sufficient explanation, you will need to contact the moderators directly using any contact information they may have provided on the community's Community Info page.


FURTHER READING

How do I post in a community?
http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=76

How do I join a community?
http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=101

How do I add users and grant posting access to my community?
http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=80

What is a downloadable client? Where can I get one?
http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=158

Your Full User Information Page
http://www.livejournal.com/userinfo.bml?user=exampleusername&mode=full (replacing exampleusername with your username)

You can edit or delete any community entry that you posted as long as you currently have posting access to that community. If you are a community maintainer, you can delete entries other users post in the community, but cannot edit them in other ways.

When editing entries through http://www.livejournal.com/editjournal.bml or a downloadable client, you will be able to view all entries posted in the community. However, you will only be able to save your changes if you are authorized to edit or delete the individual entry you are viewing.

Remember that once you edit or delete an entry, there is no way to reverse this. If you delete an entry, any comments left on it will also be made inaccessible. If you think you might change your mind, you should save the text elsewhere before making the change.


USING THE WEB INTERFACE

Go to the "Post Comments" or "Read Comments" page for the entry you want to edit. You can get to these pages by clicking on the entry's comment links if comments are enabled, or by using the community's Calendar view. Click on the Edit Entry button (a blue pencil icon) on the small blue toolbar near the top of the page. This will take you to the Edit Journal Entry page.

You can also get to the Edit Journal Entry page by using http://www.livejournal.com/editjournal.bml. This page allows you to choose an entry to edit either from your most recent entries or from a specific date. When using this page, you will need to specify which community you want to retrieve entries from.

From there you can make the changes you want. To edit an entry, make the changes to the text and then click "Save Entry" to save your changes. You may also preview your changes before saving by clicking "Preview," or spell check the whole entry by clicking "Spell check."

To delete an entry, click the "Delete Entry" button. If you are the author of the entry, you can also delete the entry by deleting all the text from the body of the entry and clicking "Save Entry."


USING A DOWNLOADED CLIENT

Many clients available for download can edit and delete journal entries. For information on a specific client, consult its documentation or its menu options.


ERROR MESSAGES

While editing or deleting entries, if you receive the error message "Client error: Invalid text encoding: Cannot display non-Unicode posts unless default encoding has been selected", see http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=133. The process described there will need to be performed by the community maintainer.

If you are the author of the entry and receive the error message "Client error: Don't have access to requested journal" when you try to edit or delete an entry, it means that you do not have posting access to the community. You will need to rejoin the community if you have left it, or contact a maintainer of the community to have them grant you posting access if you are still a member.


FURTHER READING

How does my Calendar work?
http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=70

What is a downloadable client? Where can I get one?
http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=158

How do I join a community and read its entries on my Friends page?
http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=101