FAQ - Communities

Before posting an entry in a community, you will usually need to join it, as posting access is often granted with membership. You can then post to the community with the web interface. There are several reasons you may not be able to post an entry in a community.

A LiveJournal community is a journal where many users post entries about a similar topic. Users who are interested in a particular subject can find or create a community for this subject. For example, residents of a town or city can use a community to exchange local information and announce local events. After you find and join an interesting community, you can post comments or entries to the community.

You can leave a community by going to the Community Profile page of the community you want to leave and clicking on the "Leave" link in the upper-left corner 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 use several different methods to find communities on LiveJournal. (Are you searching for people on LiveJournal instead?)

• Directly: If you know the username of the community, you can go directly to it using the following link, replacing examplecomm with the community's username:
• http://community.livejournal.com/examplecomm/
  


• Community Directory: You can search for communities based on general topics or sub-topics.


• Interest Search: The Interests page and the search box present at the top right of some LiveJournal site schemes show up to 500 communities that list your interest. Community maintainers can add information about the community's theme that will display during interest searches by using the community's Edit Profile page.


• Friends: Your friends probably know some interesting communities, so why not look on their User Profiles?

If you are able to join a community, you can click the Join link at the top right of its Community Profile page or accept an invitation sent by a community maintainer. You can also watch the community by using the link on the upper right corner of the Community Profile; this will add the community to your friends list.

Most communities require you to join before posting entries. Joining or watching a community will not allow community members, moderators, maintainers or owners who are not on your Friends list to read Friends-only entries in your journal.

You can edit or delete your community entry as long as you currently have posting access to that community. Depending on the settings of the community, you may also be able to add, edit, or delete entry tags. If you are a community owner or maintainer, you can always add, edit, or delete entry tags; you can also delete other users' community entries, but you cannot change their security settings, subjects or entry text.

"Watching" a community adds a community to your Friends list. Your username will appear on the Community Profile under "Watched By" and the community's public entries will show on your Friends page.

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

The only way to completely hide your community membership is a separate account. However, you can make a community not appear on your profile page by not watching the community and also hiding it from your "Member of" list through one of the two methods below:

• Individually hide the community from your "Member of" by banning the community you want to hide in the same way you would ban a user.
• Hide the entire "Member of" list through hiding the entire "Friend of" list. There is no way to hide these separately.

Since you control which communities you list as friends and are members of, you can't hide:

• Friended Communities (communities that you are watching) on your Profile
• Community Membership on the Community Profile page ("Members" section)

If you leave a community and remove it from your Friends list, community settings may allow you to post entries and comments without its username showing on your profile and your username showing on its profile. However, your username will still be associated with your entries and comments in that community.

There are several different reasons why you cannot post to a community: these include lack of a validated email address, community membership, or posting access.

This FAQ is only available in Russian. You can read it here if you like.