Communities are not working as well as one could wish. One reason is that a large number of them approve of whatever rubbish is submitted to them. They are not watching over quality or even plagiarism. Neither are they clearly niched, and that, as I see it, is a pity. For a visitor, it is almost impossible to find an article about a certain topic; clearly niched communities would make that easier.
It is also impossible to find a specific community. They are now so many, that a systematic solution must be found for finding or searching among them. Such searching, however, is hardly possible if the communities are not keeping a relatively strict borderline around their topic or topics. Communities of the type "Everything goes" would fall outside of any attempt to create order. On the other hand, such communities tend to become a trash can for material of inferior quality no one else wants, held open only for the chance to catch points. However, I think read.cash has a plan for a solution to that: the introduction of featured communities. The trash-can-type of community will hardly become featured and then it will lose all its attraction for as well admins/moderators as authors and readers.
For a new member today, finding a community to which he or she can submit his/her writings must be a challenge. The communities are many and it's impossible to find anything among them, at that they are vaguely niched; I understand that new members enter the open doors of the trash-can-like communities. Everything goes; they are received with open arms, even if they would be plagiarists, because the community top gets a chance to share in the author's points.
This is a further reason to initiate some sort of system in the list of communities or an efficient search function. New members must have some tool to find relevant communities in their capacity of authors.
For authors, there are a couple of other problems with communities. With one of the recent changes here, the list of communities in which an article can be found is no longer available. What you see instead, is only a list of the communities to which the author himself has submitted the article. There is no chance, even for the author, to find out in which other communities his articles are! This is weird. It must be made possible.
A second flaw is that only moderators can remove articles from communities. Authors also must be given the ability to remove their own articles from a community. First because communities can go astray, and second, and even more important, anyone can submit an article to any community, even without the author's knowledge. Then, the least one must require, is that the author has a chance to see where his articles are, and that he without any specific effort can remove them, should he so desire.
Another problem with communities is to find something once being inside them. Some of them are so full of material that navigation there is impossible - and that happens rather quickly. Already 25-30 articles there make it messy. The only chance to keep that manageable is to have very few articles there. That is disadvantageous from other points of view, so I suggest the introduction of subsections in communities, and perhaps even sub-subsections. That would eliminate the need of dividing communities into two or more each time they get too full. Just imagine how useful in for instance a community whose topic is history!
Finally, I hope all members are aware that if you open a boosted article, you still come to the dummy article, where comments give no points and views and thumbs up are meaningless for the author. This is also the case if you open an article from the author's profile or from the three links at the bottom of each article. That's why I presently, in the end of my articles, include a reference - in bold text - to the same article inside a community, where all these things count. Just open the article by clicking that link before you comment or give thumbs up.
UPDATE: Read.cash just launched Featured communities. That is changing certain things. https://read.cash/@Read.Cash/featured-community-rules-79af32fb
To be sure to get points for your comments and make thumbs up worthwhile, please open the article via this link: https://read.cash/@Mictorrani/communities-in-chaos-observations-suggestions-a95131ad
Copyright © 2020 Meleonymica/Mictorrani. All Rights Reserved.
(If you liked this, please consider leaving a tip, either here or via CoinTr.ee)
You find all my writings on Read.Cash, sorted by topic, here.
Read also:
Different Versions of Same Articles in Read.Cash
Each articles that is submitted to communities should be sorted by the admins. It is a sore in the eye to see useless or rubbish articles everywhere, not that I'm being judgemental but just stating my opinion.