The Little Details comm at LJ just updated

[conuly]

which I know because I have it's feed on my reading list.

It's a pity the mods never followed through (as near as I can tell) on moving the comm over to DW or anywhere else. That was a really fun resource.

Comments

[altamira16]

What was that community about?

[conuly]

Let's say you're writing a story - an original story, a fanwork, maybe you're just doing homework. You want to know about polite table manners in 10th century England. You ask if they ate their mashed potatoes with their forks up or down, and some kindly person informs you that there are no forks in that period, and also NO POTATOES.

You've thus been spared an embarrassing string of comments to your work.

Or maybe you want to know what an actual EMT or paramedic would do if they saw somebody collapse in front of them while leaving the bank. Or exactly how lefties do it all. Or whatever.

[conuly]

At any rate, the mods waffled about moving the comm over, and then they let a whole lot of posts build up in the queue, and those two things combined killed it pretty dead.

If they hadn't waffled, somebody would've just made their own over here without waiting for the posts to be mirrored. And it would never have been *quite* as active as on LJ, because DW isn't, but it would've existed.

I wonder if there's a subreddit or something now for the same thing.

[dewline]

Will keep an eye open.

[mindstalk]

You could start a community here. :)

[melannen]

I miss l_d too! There were attempts to create replacements over here, but I don't think any of them ever got the critical mass to be useful. (factfinding still occasionally creaks back to life, hampered by the fact that people tend to ask for GIANT RESEARCH DUMPS rather than actual tiny details on it, which makes it less likely to get answers.)

[dewline]

Thanks for pointing that community out. Seems like a resource that could be useful.

[conuly]

If we got enough active folks there to keep it moving.

[delight]

I keep background nodding it as needed, but I'm not the kind of person who can advertise things, so I'm sure part of the quiet is my fault! I don't have the personality trait of talking things up. But the original comment is also true, people don't actually ask for little things much!

[dewline]

And I will try to avoid falling into the "asking for giant infodumps" trap you mentioned.

[readerjane]

Ben Aaronovitch is always asking his twitterverse following for little details like that. I suppose one you have a large enough following, it achieves its own critical mass.

[swingandswirl]

Oh man, little_details! I miss that comm so much. (no, brain, you don't have time, don't message the mods to ask if they mind you starting a DW version.)

[moon_custafer]

I loved little_details. They used to have an “illness/injury to order” tag where people would describe the setting and ask stuff like “I need a character sidelined for three, at most four weeks, followed by a full recovery; what’s a plausible thing for them to have?”