Welcome to our monthly roundtable, where we tackle a topic as a community. As we continue our slow roll out of new rules, I thought we mods could take a step back and acknowledge the wonderful people here that make this subreddit so vastly amazing. I know, I am biased here, but what can I say? The people of DPP are what makes this place tick and give it a heart.

Below are a few of the ways that people have contributed over the years and days to DirtyPenPals.

Metas

Metas serve as a catch all for “Community Discussion”. These discussions have varied from detailed research on kinks to helpful outlines to even topics that delve into a common experience of DPP. If you want to see some of these metas they are all searchable, simply type in “pegging meta” and you may find a result. In the interest of adhering to the link limit, I will not link all the metas that have been written, but among them are Share Formatting, How to write Dialogue, Writing with Adverbs, Ways to find Inspiration, How to Write a Post, How to Respond to a Post, How to deal with ghosting, WTF is up with that downvoter, and even what songs inspire people.

Comments

Leaving a comment on a post can be a really great way to let someone know you thought their post was creative, funny, or just worth reading. Not only does leaving comments make the writer of that post feel good, but it also gives you, the commentor, a little more exposure. Often, finding a penpal can come down to letting your personality show and shine so that when you post, a person knows a bit more about the poster. So really, leaving comments is helpful to others as well as to yourself. ;)

Community Events

Not all community events are put on by the mods. In fact, some of the very best events are driven by super wonderful people that give their own energy and time to help others make a connection and have a good time. Several matchmaking events, including Christmas and Wandsday were developed by two amazing and helpful DPP elves. The five word wish posts are also a user-created movement from within our very own community.

Community Subreddits

Some of the helpful subreddits that have become integrated into our DPP existence originated from people seeing a need and going out there to find a solution, like DPPtinkering and DPProfiles. These subreddits aim to make DPP a better experience for those involved. Tinkering can help you perfect your post, and Profiles gives you a place to store information about yourself in a way that is easy for prospective PenPals to see in one glance. There are many other subreddits that provide niche spaces for specific kinks to grow and foster with like-minded individuals.

Kinklists

Those colorful dot infused and completely customizable kinklists?? -- Those were made by a member of this community. Goctionni made that template to resolve the issues people were having with finding something online that then had to be mashed up and hacked back together. Now we have pretty lists that each person can tailor to their taste.

Mods

Every one of us mods started as members of this community. We found our way to the mod list in different ways, but each of us has dedicated our own time to help run this place. We review a metric fuck ton of posts every day. We work on coding updates and themes. We respond to questions as needed. There is a near-constant stream of discussion among the mods, and while some of that might not show to the subreddit at large, our various opinions give a pretty good representation of DPP.

FAQ

The FAQ was written by the community of DPP. Over a year ago there was a call for volunteers and the FAQ was pulled together from the brainstorming of dedicated and thoughtful people who wanted to help provide a resource to those that might visit and hopefully decide to stay.

Upvoting

Passing an upvote on brings the best, funniest, hottest posts to the front page. Stats could easily show (pulls stat out of thin air) that most posts never receive a score higher than 2. That means a lot of posts come through at 1 or even get hit by the plague of downvoter trolls to reach 0. If we choose to collectively become curators of posts, rather than view them as competitors, then not only are we giving each other a boost, but your own post may be the recipient of that boost as well.

So all that, all of DPP really, comes from people just trying to have a good fun dirty time. DPP can be disheartening at times, but the community can be supportive. Of these examples, large in scale or small, what have you found helps you?
     - How can people make DPP a better community?
     - Do you have suggestions for ways to continue strengthening the community?
     - From mods to members, what have you enjoyed about your time here and what would help you to continue to enjoy your time here?

Please, let’s keep this civil and positive, and yes, we all know that the arrival of the sexiest unicorn on the planet to fawn over you in just the right way is really what you might be after, but barring that, what can we do for each other!?