On crossposting

[feuervogel]

LJ keeps doing sketchy things wrt security and data mining (and stealing people's revenue by hijacking their affiliate codes). Here's a nice post by afuna on the current issue, which links to this detailed (and in non-jargony language) post.

LJ has been pissing me off over time. I've toyed with the ideas of stopping crossposting, or turning off comments on the crossposted posts. But the bulk of my peeps are on LJ, and none of you seem terribly inclined to move (other than the several of you who already have.)

I could give all my LJ friends OpenID access to my DW account (those of you who have DW accounts but don't use them would be exempt), but that would make it easier to connect the two IDs than it already is, and I prefer to keep them separate.

Question: If I stopped crossposting, or if I turned off comments on LJ, who would have a problem with coming to DW to comment? You don't have to create an account to read, or even comment: they support OpenID.

I don't want to keep supporting LJ and all their sketchy bullshit and keep providing content for them (even if it's mostly behind a flock) to get more ad revenue.

Dreamwidth has an amazing diversity statement, actively works to be accessible to the disabled, and stood up to repeated censorship trolls who targeted their payment providers (first paypal, then google checkout) under the spectre of "porn sites." They don't allow illegal materials (child porn, for example), but neither do they prohibit free expression. They will not allow advertisers.

I still have an invite code, if anybody wants one. I don't think there are free accounts right now, but you can buy a single-month paid account (for $3, iirc, though they've just introduced a points system which I don't fully understand) and let it lapse to become free. Yeah, it's kinda cheating, but their business model includes that situation. And if you decide you like it, you can buy more paid time.

They don't have a bunch of stupid "features" that nobody wants, and they took the spaghetti code from LJ and cleaned it up, so it works *better*.

It's kinda quiet over here, but the water's nice. Come on in.

Comments

[sabeth]

I'll be curious to see people's replies to this. Have been contemplating making comments DW-only as well. I'd prefer to stop crossposting altogether, but 80% of my flist seem set to stay on LJ, sigh. (Although I'm still hoping that as LJ keeps messing up, those numbers will change.)

Let me know if you need more codes, I have a few left.

(I'll reply to your FB message later today! Been busy, and laaazy about communications.)

[feuervogel]

I think most of my flist doesn't give a flip, though the sheer trans!fail going on lately in LJ mgmt might swing a couple of them to go. So far both commenters have said they're ok with commenting here, but they both have dw accounts (which they never use. :P )

Have you been able to move into your new flat? I saw you got keys, and that's exciting!

[sabeth]

Lots of people on my flist are casual users these days and they just can't be bothered. Which I kind of understand, but it's still a shame. I think I need to post and remind people about recent LJ mess-ups again.

I'm in the middle of moving! Went to IKEA yesterday and spent lots of money on furniture, which is supposed to be delivered on Monday. So that's when I'll move in permanently, I think. Should be getting Internet next Wednesday. I can't wait, honestly. It's all pretty exciting. :D

[feuervogel]

I keep running across people who have some sort of moral/ethical objection to using DW, which just ... I don't even know. And they're never my friends, just people commenting elsewhere that they don't want to support this service, or back ages ago when people were all over metafandom "I have an openid account because someone imported their lj, and now it looks like I support DW, and I DON'T."

Furniture is exciting! What district are you in?

[sabeth]

I don't get that at all. Same with the people who are so passionately opposed to the AO3. I think there's a prevailing idea that both DW and the AO3 are some kind of elite/BNF institution, which ... I just don't really understand at all.

Third district! Been wanting to move somewhere around there for ages, so I'm well chuffed. Where are you staying when you're in Vienna, again?

[feuervogel]

Wut? That just doesn't make sense. Hell, I'm not even hardly a FAN these days, not in the way people generally mean it when they say "fandom." (I don't watch TV, I rarely write fanfic, I don't vid ... but I like to read and natter on about cool books I read.)

Oh, nice! We're staying in the 8th district at Pension Wild. (They're openly queer-friendly :D )

[sabeth]

It's just because some of the minds behind DW (and even more so behind AO3/the OTW) are well-known media fandom people. I swear, I keep seeing the argument that this makes people feel unwelcome somehow. (I don't even want to get into what this says about some people's issues. >_>) I've never understood it -- both DW and the AO3 are tools for people to build their own communities, to make their own space.

And I know what you mean, but I think you still have ... fannish sensibilities, in a way? There's a fannishness many people retain even when they wander out of fandom, which I think keeps on connecting us all. (I never know how to describe it adequately, but people either have it or they don't. In RL, too. It's related to, but slightly different from, geekiness, and I tend to get along much better with people who have it.)

Ooh, right, I remember now! Well, one of the many nice things about Vienna is that it's small enough to get anywhere reasonably fast, especially as long as you stay within the inner districts. :D

[feuervogel]

That's just ... Having insecurities sucks, and it's not like anyone is *barring* people from creating accounts because they're not BNFs. (Though one issue I remember people having was Denise's involvement with LJAbuse, and a few resolutions they didn't like. But it's not like she set the policy, you know?)

I think I know what you're getting at. It's a sort of community feeling, with an understanding of what it means to squee, and that makes a difference.

Vienna looks fabulous :) I'm so excited that we're staying within easy walking distance of the first district (and pretty close to a U-bahn stop).

[picklish]

Harumph.

[kirin]

Huh, so you can import an LJ wholesale, including comments? That's kinda nifty.

[picklish]

It was pretty smooth, actually. The only thing that went weird were videos that I had embedded.

I haven't totally committed to switching to DW, but it's looking really tempting.

[feuervogel]

The embedded videos thing is a known bug.

[feuervogel]

Yup! You can even set it to be private if you want. Almost all of my entries from LJ are private, and the ones I've made public I screened the comments on. Partly because it's even easier to figure out my LJ username that way, since I comment on my own posts a lot.

Via the network, hoping that's okay

[rydra_wong]

There are generally codes available at dw_codesharing if anyone needs any more. Just to clarify, an invite code gets you a free basic account.

If you buy any paid time (the minimum is still a month for $3), you don't need the invite code to create an account -- and it's not cheating because they did totally plan for that *g*.

Re: Via the network, hoping that's okay

[feuervogel]

Of course :) I don't mind random drop-ins at all! (Well, unless they're spammers or trolls, of course...)

I always forget about codesharing! Probably because I don't know anyone who's clamoring for invitations :P

[pamacii]

I pretty much have moved over here. I don't crosspost everything anymore, and when I do, I have disabled comments on LJ. I don't even care that I have a permanent account over there anymore, when the global reading list get implemented, I will probably never actually *visit* LJ.

[listener.livejournal.com]

I'd have no problem going to DW to comment. :)

If you stopped crossposting, is there any way to see protected entries via LJ or would I need to use DW?

[feuervogel]

I suppose you could create an LJ rss feed, though that wouldn't pick up protected entries (neither would subscribing in GReader). But I mostly post publicly there.

At some point in the future, there will be a way for (paid) users to read their LJ flists on DW. Mark is very concerned about privacy issues, of course, and they're working on both the code and the privacy end. If that ever comes about and integrates well, I won't have much reason to come to LJ at all.

(Also, LJ has been really sketchy on trans issues recently. That whole thing where they changed the gender dropdown and required a selection, and the QOTD the other day about "what would you do if you dated someone and found out they'd had a sex change?" that turned shortly thereafter into "what would you do if you dated someone and found out they'd committed a crime?" without any sort of demarcation in the QOTD feed...)

[listener.livejournal.com]

I know that LJ has been all sorts of shitty lately. Being sketchy on trans issues certainly makes them lose a lot more points. (I totally missed the gender dropdown nonsense.)

The only thing that keeps me here is the network effect. If I just wanted to post publicly about my life, there's all sorts of options for that and anybody using LJ could just subscribe to an RSS feed. Because I vastly prefer to post everything protected, I feel a little bit tied to LJ because that's where most folks are.

Though, if I could read my LJ flist from DW, I'd likely switch to DW and just crosspost comment-locked entries to LJ.

[feuervogel]

That's the thing: I've been here for 9 years, and people and communities are here. Some of the communities exist in both places, but most are more active here. (Of course, half the people on my flist don't post anymore, or post once every three months, or are old journals they abandoned and made a new one.)

Does the option for you to crosspost locked entries, with comments off, and grant your LJ friends OpenID access appeal to you? It seems rather like a pain in the arse, but it could work. (And maybe your friends would get used to the other site and move there?)

Because, really, the main problem with a mass exodus is that it's hard to mobilize the mass to move. There's a lot of inertia.

[listener.livejournal.com]

That option does sound like a bit of a pain. However, I'm certainly more tempted to move to DW and crosspost from there than I have been in a long while. I'll think about it. :)

[feuervogel]

I like the circle edit wizard. It's fairly straightforward and easy as pie.

One of my favorite things about DW is how they took LJ's sprawling mass of code that was just added to and added to and never cleaned up and made it efficient.

[corbae.livejournal.com]

I have no problem going over to DW to comment. I actually have a DW account, it's just sad and lonely and unused.

[feuervogel]

I never subscribed to your DW account, because you said it was all bandom stuff! But you have access, anyway. (That's one thing I really dig about DW: the ability to easily subscribe to someone whose posts you think are interesting, yet don't know well enough to grant access to. Yes, it's possible to set up filters on LJ that let you do that, but ... it's kind of a pain in the ass.)

[corbae.livejournal.com]

yeah, it is all bandom stuff! In fact, I've pretty much only used it as a place to post completed art and fic.

[corbae.livejournal.com]

oh, and I've just created an account for RL stuff. I'll probably be crossposting with LJ when I can remember to do so. It's corbae (http://corbae.dreamwidth.org) and there is nothing there yet!

[feuervogel]

Added you!

Crossposting is so easy from DW to LJ.

[smarriveurr.livejournal.com]

I think it's possible I would comment slightly less, but I think I'd cross over accounts to comment when it Really Mattered.

Until such time as flocked LJ posts become readable from DW, at which time I'm totally jumping the fucking ship.

[feuervogel]

I skimmed the last couple months' worth of dw_news, looking for updates on the lj flist thing, but it doesn't seem to have been managed yet. I'm sure when it does, there'll be plenty of posts on how to do it on my reading list coupled with squeeing.

Going to a different site can be annoying, which is why I'm asking. I don't even know when I'll make the decision.

[smarriveurr.livejournal.com]

rahaeli mentioned that they were still working on it when I last posted about moving to DW. I'm sure there will be a big announcement followed by an exodus if it succeeds. Having to log in here to check on LJ friends and communities is literally the only thing tying me to LJ after this paid time runs out.

[feuervogel]

Cool.

I have a permanent account :P Though I've probably gotten my money's worth from it already...

[smarriveurr.livejournal.com]

On the plus, it means all the LJ features will be available if you ever care to use them, and you never have to give them another dime. Which, now that they're letting 3rd-party scripts run as if they were LJ scripts, track user activity without their knowledge, and manipulate user-uploaded content... yeah, I don't really feel comfortable giving them more money.

[feuervogel]

True. I got my perm account right before 6A sold to SUP, so my money probably went to 6A? Or most of it? I dunno

Also, I just read that comment thread on your journal, and within the next month? *squee*

[smarriveurr.livejournal.com]

Yupyup. This is why I like DW. It's like a ten-year or so timewarp back to Cool Smallish LJ, except they have the advantage of watching the road LJ took and learning from it.

[steuard.livejournal.com]

Like a lot of others, I blog on LJ because it lets me post private entries viewable by my friends (or suitably defined subsets of them). I read friends' LJs here (so I can see their private entries), and I read most other blogs that I follow via RSS (I'm using Google Reader these days since I use several different computers). Unless I can continue to maintain almost all of those friend-network connections and privacy features (whether by mass migration or by technology), I'm unlikely to move my blog elsewhere.

As for your questions, I'd be fine with commenting on your posts at DW, though I'd hope the experience would be pretty painless. (Would I need to type a password every time? That's not a deal breaker, but it might unconsciously make me hesitate a little.) (It might even be better that way: I assume that comments here aren't visible there and vice versa.) As for reading, if you stopped crossposting then I assume I'd shift to reading your blog via RSS. That would mean that I'd miss any friends-locked entries, which would be a shame.

Wow, that was a longer comment than you were asking for. :)

[feuervogel]

With OpenID, and I'm sure anyone more knowledgeable than I will step in and correct me if I'm spinning yarns, you only have to authenticate once (per computer). You may have to enter it again if/when your cookie expires, but it shouldn't be every time, and there's no password involved.

(My superficial understanding of OpenID is this: you want to log in to a website using OpenID from your LJ. You go to this website and put in your lj address (steuard.livejournal.com), then the website will go to LJ and say "does this user exist? is this computer really this user?". Then LJ will ask you "do you want to give this website a cookie to remember this OpenID?" and you say yes and go on your merry way.)

http://www.dreamwidth.org/openid/ probably explains it better than I could.

[tammylee.livejournal.com]

I don't comment as much if it's on DW.

[marphod.livejournal.com]

If you stopped cross-posting, I wouldn't see your posts. Which would make me sad, but that's your call.

If you turned off comments, I'd comment as much as I currently do, assuming the OpenID stuff works like it should.

(my online todo site nominally supports openId, but only supports 1.1, and LJ has stopped supporting that old of a version. Which makes me annoyed. Anyways, I doubt DW and LJ would fall that far out of sync.)

[kipple-n-bits.livejournal.com]

I got LJ to begin with to keep in touch with my NC friends after moving to WA and made it private to keep it that way. If "the big four" of the users I follow, akiko, kirinn, anacoluthon, and listener, all move to DW or any other service, I would follow. There are other people I met through coup who I'd hope would follow, and I would especially miss tiercel's endlessly enlightening posts (yay muppet tournament, etsy, and other random fun I would never have known about otherwise), but you four would be enough for me to make the switch.

[leora.livejournal.com]

I'd likely comment. If you only post there, I might not see it. I want to follow both, but realistically, I don't.

I'm not happy with either, which is just making me less motivated to use either.

I wish there were a site I was happy with.

[feuervogel]

Why are you unhappy with Dreamwidth?

[leora.livejournal.com]

I have reason to not trust one of its creators who holds a great deal of power there.

Thus I don't trust LJ and I don't trust DW. I'd like to be on a site I feel I can trust.