Considering moving everything over to Dreamwidth

[redbird]

Would you be inconvenienced if I moved this journal mostly or entirely to Dreamwidth? Mostly would be cross-posting, but comments only on the DW side; entirely would be nothing posted to LJ except brief link posts, pointing to that week's posts on DW.

LiveJournal is once again inserting redirects and affiliate links on most outbound links. Apparently this round is better coded, and is no longer stripping existing links. But it seems that they are doing this to all accounts: and one of the reasons I've been paying for my account there is to avoid advertising. (I don't love that they have ads, but it's one thing to have that as the tradeoff, and another to have them dropping in links even on paid accounts.)

Part of the annoyance is that they haven't announced this: they could perfectly well have put it in a news post, as "in order to help pay for the servers, we're doing X, here's the code if you want to opt out."

Instead, they waited for people to stumble across it, and when someone asked in the comments on the most recent news post, claimed that it was "transparent." As another user pointed out, if you're being transparent, you announce things, you don't wait for the users to stumble on them.

Mechanics: if I did move everything to DW, you could either comment using OpenID, pay a few dollars to start an account on Dreamwidth (it will revert to free when the paid time expires), or look on the dw_codesharing community on Dreamwidth or the dreamwidth community on LJ for an invite code.

If you want to move over and money is tight, talk to me: I have a couple of invite codes.

Comments

[jenett]

It would not bother me at all, given that I am already here.

[finch]

+1

I also have some spare codes if your friends need them.

[sraun]

+2 - although it looks like I don't get to see 's locked posts.

It's an interesting problem - I have a whole lot of friends on LJ. Hmm, interesting - it looks like I've got somewhere in the 20-25% range duplicated on DW. Unfortunately, a lot of those are place-holders - people grabbed their preferred handle, and haven't done anything since. I'm starting to read both more consistently, so it wouldn't bother me.

You know what I wish?

[dakiwiboid]

I wish that 42answers could be replicated at Dreamwidth. It's becoming moribund at LJ, perhaps because most of the wittiest minds have migrated to Dreamwidth. I'd hate to see it fade away entirely, and a new version of it might come back to life.

Re: You know what I wish?

[redbird]

Worth a try. Do we need invite codes to create communities? (I have two, but having just invited all my friends and relations over here, maybe I should hang onto them.)

te code.

[dakiwiboid]

Check the FAQ, but I think you can just create it. I don't think you really need to migrate the archives over if you're mirroring the LJ one. My husband, moosl says he will certainly post to the new community!

Re: You know what I wish?

[jesse_the_k]

I've got a bunch of invite codes, and will happily donate for community development.

Re: You know what I wish?

[finch]

You don't need one. Plus, if you're not sure you want to do it yourself, you can drop a post in create_my_comm. :)

Re: You know what I wish?

[redbird]

Done.

I carelessly made it 42_answers. Does the difference matter enough that I should redo it without the underscore, do you think?

Sorry to take so long to get back to you

[dakiwiboid]

Various and sundry matters intervened. No, I don't think so. I think that if it's announced to the current group members and posted on the current group's info page, I don't think that there should be any problem.

Off to join!

[emceeaich]

I've already killed off my Facebook account, and they have better, albeit dodgy privacy policies at the moment.

[eftychia]

Would not inconvenience me.

In fact, I'm finding LJ less and less convenient, what with the ads that block viewing the page until the ad has shown for however many seconds. And while that doesn't happen when I go to read an entry by a friend who pays to avoid ads, I suck at keeping track of which LJ friends are ad-free and which ones I may find frustrating when I try to read comments or look behind a cut-tag, so I'm just feeling rather frustrated and annoyed about LJ altogether.

[aquaeri]

Given I'm thinking of doing exactly the same thing, not at all!

[janetmiles.livejournal.com]

Not a problem for me, but thank you for asking.

[roadnotes.livejournal.com]

I'm beginning to wonder whether that's not the way to go, even though I don't have many outbound links.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

It would be more convenient for me if you kept cross-posting.

LJ hasn't quite managed the last straw for me, and most of my community is still over here.

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

Yes, me too.

[supergee.livejournal.com]

Just warn me, and I'll friend you over there.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I haven't been able to detect this change doing anything when I click on links, even if I log out of LJ. I'm somewhat confused by the whole controversy.

I have a DW account, but I haven't used it yet. I prefer reading people here, if it's all the same with you.

[daharyn.livejournal.com]

I hate losing LJ friends, and I have a placeholder at DW, but I'm not moving there until it seems to be something that caters to more than just a few subcultures.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yes, this.

I would follow the link posts when they popped up but would likely not get to them more often than that.

[gerisullivan.livejournal.com]

I'd most likely only follow the links to your Dreamwidth posts occasionally and reply even less frequently than that.

I set up a Dreamwidth account as soon as they were available and paid for 6 months because I wanted to support the effort. I soon discovered that I didn't really know what I wanted to do with that account and have since let it lapse.

Facebook seems to be where everyone is now. I still object to the FB terms of service and haven't signed up. Between FB and DW, LJ seems to be on the way out, or at least in a very real slump. There's nowhere else I really want to go yet, so I'm likely to be one of the last to turn out the lights here. I always have been one to let a party die its natural death.

[erik]

You how how I feel, of course.

My plan is to gradually shift over. I started crossposting with a tag just saying it was a crosspost. Now I'm crossposting with a tag that asks people to comment at DW. next will be a tag like that but comments disabled here. Then finally "I posted something at DW; go look at it."

[jcbemis.livejournal.com]

I'd appreciate the crosspost, even if I have to comment over there

[pameladean]

I will manage whatever you do, but a cross-post as opposed to a link is probably more likely to get me to comment. Not that I do comment all that often anyway.

P.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

I still read on LJ because many more of the people I like are on LJ rather than DW. But I have a DW account, and so if you're crossposting it's absolutely no trouble to me to click the 'comment over there' link.

I used to be able to post on my Wordpress site and have it cross-post automatically to DW and LJ; for some reason that plug-in stopped working so now I manually copy everything to WP and DW and then have DW post to LJ. But I don't really get enough comments for me to care much where people write them.

I think I have some DW codes too, if anyone needs one.

[feorag.livejournal.com]

The post to which you link explains the incredibly simple opt-out.

I have a DW account, but don't use it any more, and the fragmentation that's occurring as some people move there is getting really annoying and inconvenient. Plus the ads there appear to be compulsory.

[liv]

Sorry for jumping on this comment, but do you mind clarifying exactly what you mean by compulsory ads? I have moved to Dreamwidth, even though some of my friends feel as you do that it's annoying and inconvenient, and the whole reason why I have done that is because Dreamwidth has no ads whatsoever, for any account level. So if you're seeing ads there something is badly wrong, or perhaps you're using a definition of ads that hadn't occurred to me.

[redbird]

Like livredor, I'd like to know more about the ads you're referring to. (I have a paid account on DW as well, if that's relevant to ad status.)

Also, yes, the post explains the opt-out. It also notes that LJ has done as little as possible to tell anyone about the opt-out, or about why we might need or want it. I don't much like the idea that ad-free status is, not a benefit of paid accounts, but something limited to the more technically savvy user who also makes a point of following communities that point out what LJ is doing now and not telling us about.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

If you do not allow comments on LJ, I will not comment.

This isn't an ultimatum, it's a thing about me. Friends of mine have done this, and when I think about commenting, every single time I find I can't be bothered faffing about.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Oh, and if you only post there, I won't see the posts, obviously.

[redbird]

Not an ultimatum, a relevant fact. Thank you.

[daze39.livejournal.com]

Hmmm.... I don't often comment, but I'm more likely to read your postings if cross-posted than if only given as links.

[ashnistrike.livejournal.com]

Ashni and I are likely staying on LJ for the foreseeable future, as it is where the majority of our flist is. I am finding the way you do your crossposts now significantly easier to deal with than the other people I know who are doing it - in particular the little tag at the bottom of your posts that says how many comments are on the DW entry is very much appreciated.

-Nameseeker