ain't no Houellebecq girl ([info]yiskah) wrote,
@ 2009-05-01 18:17:00
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But look, what is the POINT of Dreamwidth? Why is it good? And what on earth does its name mean?

I don't mean to piss on everyone's bonfires, but isn't this just like a few years ago when everyone got Vox accounts and then promptly forgot about them?

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[info]the_lady_lily
2009-05-01 05:21 pm UTC (link)
Don't ask me, I'm just squatting on my username like a toad upon a damp stone.

Edited at 2009-05-01 05:21 pm UTC

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[info]yiskah
2009-05-01 05:22 pm UTC (link)
Hmmm, good point, actually.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]pisica
2009-05-01 08:58 pm UTC (link)
Same here - my username is the Romanian word for 'cat' which means it tends to get snapped up if I'm not quick.

Also, part of me is still 15 and trying to run with the cool kids. :)

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]tx_cronopio
2009-05-01 05:23 pm UTC (link)
Apparently it farts unicorns?

No, some people that I love are very supportive of it. I am dubious that it's going to be any better than LJ, and LJ is where my community is and I'm not going anywhere.

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[info]p_dan_tic
2009-05-01 05:31 pm UTC (link)
that pretty much what I thought (not the farting unicorns natch), but I have to say the freaking adverts EVERYWHERE have made me fall out of love with el jay somewhat.

I long for the days where you had to have an invite code to get an account here tbh, and if anything takes me towards those days then I'll look at the grass looking greener on the other side of the fence

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]khalinche
2009-05-01 05:24 pm UTC (link)
(Shamelessly auto-plagiarised from the comment I just this moment left on a near-identical post)

Its interface is a lot like lj. But it's open source and therefore fluffier, not owned by unaccountable Russians. The most interesting way it differs from LJ is that it differentiates between subscribing to someone's posts and giving them access to your journal. So for each user 'friend' that you add, you have the option of reading their entries or allowing them to see yours or both. You can therefore filter through people who write eighteen times a day and flood your flist, but still allow them to see your entries, or subscribe to someone you think is interesting, but not have to compromise yourself by showing them *your* diary.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

[info]biascut
2009-05-01 05:29 pm UTC (link)
But it's open source and therefore fluffier, not owned by unaccountable Russians

This is the bit I'm really uncomfortable with. A lot of it feels like, "I identified with LJ when it was run by Anglophone SF-based Geeks Like Me, but clearly the fact that it's now owned by People Who Speak Foreign means it's all gone bad."


(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)(Expand)
(no subject) - [info]p_dan_tic, 2009-05-01 05:33 pm UTC (Expand)
(no subject) - [info]biascut, 2009-05-01 05:39 pm UTC (Expand)
(no subject) - [info]p_dan_tic, 2009-05-01 05:48 pm UTC (Expand)
(no subject) - [info]biascut, 2009-05-01 06:10 pm UTC (Expand)
(no subject) - [info]yiskah, 2009-05-01 06:17 pm UTC (Expand)
(no subject) - [info]p_dan_tic, 2009-05-01 06:33 pm UTC (Expand)
(no subject) - [info]tx_cronopio, 2009-05-01 05:38 pm UTC (Expand)
(no subject) - [info]daegaer, 2009-05-01 05:59 pm UTC (Expand)
(no subject) - [info]biascut, 2009-05-01 06:16 pm UTC (Expand)

[info]doetja
2009-05-01 05:33 pm UTC (link)
You can do all of that on LJ. If you create a "default view" you can leave some of the people who are on your friends list off your reading list. You can also that filter (or any other) to post, so that if you make a locked post you can exclude at will people you are quite happy to read yourself, but don't want to share intimate stuff with. Of course they will be able to see your public posts if they are curious about who is reading them, but I assume that's also the case in DW (or is there no such thing as a public post, in DW? Because that would be the difference then).

As for unaccountable Russians, I think Californians have proved perfectly unaccountable until now, and yet we've all been here quite happily for a number of years. I don't wish they all could be Californian, in fact I don't care either way. And LJ has been open source from the beginning, unless I'm mistaken. Has that changed now? (genuine question, I don't know).

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)(Expand)
(no subject) - [info]forthwritten, 2009-05-01 05:42 pm UTC (Expand)

[info]hfnuala
2009-05-01 05:53 pm UTC (link)
Large parts of LJ are open source too - that's the base DW is starting from.

(to [info]yiskah I'm tempted to see if I can get nuala over there and also to back up my lj over there but I have a permanent account here and am unlikely to buy one over there too.)

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)(Expand)
(no subject) - [info]glitzfrau, 2009-05-01 06:19 pm UTC (Expand)
(no subject) - [info]daegaer, 2009-05-01 06:34 pm UTC (Expand)

[info]glitterboy1
2009-05-01 05:24 pm UTC (link)
I've got an account there in the same way as I've got/had one on various other LJ clones - if LJ is ever down, or there's some disaster, there's a 'home-from-home' with a network of at least some friends already set up. But that's all I see it as.

(Reply to this) (Thread)(Expand)

[info]carpetofstars
2009-05-01 05:35 pm UTC (link)
same here. also, i like shiny new things.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]starfishchick
2009-05-01 05:49 pm UTC (link)
Yes, this.

And also, I want my name there just in cases.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]daegaer
2009-05-01 05:52 pm UTC (link)
Yes, I don't see myself abandoning LJ, but having a place to back up my journal and to run to when LJ sometimes isn't available is useful (apparently the importer for backing things up is very fast and reliable, which is nice).

The ability to read and interact on LJ and other journalling sites from Dreamwidth is also appealing, and I can see why that would attract people.

(Reply to this) (Parent)
(no subject) - [info]zoje_george, 2009-05-01 06:56 pm UTC (Expand)

[info]aliceinfinland
2009-05-01 05:43 pm UTC (link)
I was just tweeting the same thing: is this the new vox / gather / friendster / orkut / tribe.net / ravelry? None of which ever became the big destination in my world, and all of which still send me mail.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

[info]whatifoundthere
2009-05-01 08:39 pm UTC (link)
I don't think the Ravelry comparison is entirely fair, since Ravelry has a purpose outside the social-networking thing. I love Ravelry and use it a lot for stash organization/WIPs, even though I never darken the doorway of its boring, weirdly drama-filled discussion groups.

But your general point is a good one: I've got social-networking fatigue bigtime. Every time there's some catastrophe in LJ, I have to scroll past a million posts on my friendslist along the lines of "I'm going to IJ FOREVER AND EVER, see you there!" I just can't be arsed. And we all saw what happened to Greatestjournal, which was the Hot Thing for about 6 months just because they let you have more userpics. :/

All that having been said, I do plan on squatting on a DW username at some point. Because, why not?

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)(Expand)
(no subject) - [info]aliceinfinland, 2009-05-01 09:59 pm UTC (Expand)

[info]rysmiel
2009-05-01 05:45 pm UTC (link)
I wanted to nab this username, and I am worried that one day enough of my friends will move away from lj because of lj doing something they find offensive that it will necessitate me to move somewhere else.

I am far from pleased with dreamwidth-associated pro-fanfic rhetoric, I see this as a negative, but lots of people seem to think otherwise.

Edited at 2009-05-01 05:46 pm UTC

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[info]yiskah
2009-05-01 05:50 pm UTC (link)
What's the pro-fanfic rhetoric? This presumably bypassed me while I was in Morocco.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)(Expand)
(no subject) - [info]daegaer, 2009-05-01 05:57 pm UTC (Expand)
(no subject) - [info]yiskah, 2009-05-01 05:59 pm UTC (Expand)
(no subject) - [info]sophiedb, 2009-05-01 09:20 pm UTC (Expand)

[info]blue_monday
2009-05-01 05:47 pm UTC (link)
I was thinking the exact same things, and wondering if I should bother getting an account.

The fact I was wondering probably suggests something.

(Reply to this)


[info]chiller
2009-05-01 05:54 pm UTC (link)
Yes. I think it is exactly like that. I'm basically cyber-squatting my name.

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[info]forthwritten
2009-05-01 06:09 pm UTC (link)
I wrote this a while ago and someone listed changes between LJ and DW - you might find these interesting. The guiding principles are also interesting.

Personally, I like the fact it's open source, the owners have a lot of experience with LJ (both as devs and as support/abuse), the owners have a sustainable business plan and are very aware of what it costs to run a service like DW (which seems to be the major failing with other clone sites) and they care about things like site accessibility (for example, making it easy to use for people using screenreaders). They understand that advertising on social media sites eventually backfires - not having ads on Dreamwidth isn't to make people happy but limit revenue, not having ads is actually a business decision to support a stable service.
From what I've seen, they are quick to respond to user concerns - this was their response to the transgender community noting that the diversity statement didn't explicitly separate gender identity and gender expression, and this is how they handled the payment glitch today.

I think the problem with LJ is that it's run by people who don't understand the culture of LJ (and they could be Russian, American, English - it doesn't matter). There's shoddy advertising, there are features that users don't want, they seem to have a PR disaster on a regular basis and it makes me sad and worried. I think it's a weird concept to trust the owners of a site, but I do see where DW's owners are coming from and I like their principles.

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[info]forthwritten
2009-05-01 06:27 pm UTC (link)
And by "culture of LJ" I of course mean in the way that [info]biascut explains. But at the same time, I think that if a service isn't catering to me and I'm not the kind of user they're trying to attract or retain, I don't have to use that service.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)(Expand)
(no subject) - [info]yiskah, 2009-05-01 06:35 pm UTC (Expand)
(no subject) - [info]yiskah, 2009-05-01 06:34 pm UTC (Expand)
(no subject) - [info]biascut, 2009-05-01 06:43 pm UTC (Expand)
(no subject) - [info]braisedbywolves, 2009-05-01 09:20 pm UTC (Expand)
(no subject) - [info]forthwritten, 2009-05-02 08:54 am UTC (Expand)
(no subject) - [info]yiskah, 2009-05-01 06:36 pm UTC (Expand)
(no subject) - [info]forthwritten, 2009-05-02 09:13 am UTC (Expand)

[info]glitzfrau
2009-05-01 06:15 pm UTC (link)
Like several others, I am suspicious of anything that The Fans and The Libertarians like. At the same time, I can understand the desire to have open-source-ish ownership of a site, to make it more democratic and to drive it yourself - if, that is, you're using the site for a project that's intensely important both to you and your community.

Me, I've settled into an auld curmudgeonly pattern of LJ usage, and don't really care who manages it. It's been ages since I made a new friend, I don't really participate in communities because I can't take the aggro, and LJ is just fine for the private, friends-based community blogging I do. There are things that I would like to see changed, principally Scrapbook, which is practically unusable, but that doesn't seem to be a Dreamwidth priority. At the same time, the Big LJ Controversies left me cold - I didn't give a toss about Nipplegate, and am actively opposed to paedo fanfic pictures. Neither of those things are going to make me want to move.

And you all are here! I know that worst come to the worst, if a significant proportion of our list bailed, we could copy six years' worth of journal over to DW and start over, but would everyone? Really? And do we really want to? I sadly suspect that plenty of people our age would just drop out of the habit of social networking altogether, what with our new grownup busy lives, rather than bother to set up elsewhere...

(Reply to this) (Thread)(Expand)

[info]zoje_george
2009-05-01 06:59 pm UTC (link)
And... what you said.

I'm only set up over there through openID for the times when the LJ is down, as per [info]glitterboy1's comment.

You are stuck with me here.

(Reply to this) (Parent)
(no subject) - [info]hfnuala, 2009-05-01 07:12 pm UTC (Expand)
(no subject) - [info]glitzfrau, 2009-05-01 07:32 pm UTC (Expand)
(no subject) - [info]hfnuala, 2009-05-01 07:55 pm UTC (Expand)
(no subject) - [info]felinitykat, 2009-05-03 06:06 pm UTC (Expand)

[info]inlovewithnight
2009-05-01 06:57 pm UTC (link)
Wandering by off friendsfriends- from what I understand, the name is meant to be analogous to "bandwidth." If bandwidth is a measure of how much data you can move, dreamwidth is a measure of how much creativity.

That's based on a post by one of the site owners quite some time ago, so my memory is a bit fuzzy, but something like that.

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[info]cellardor
2009-05-01 08:50 pm UTC (link)
I don't know. I don't even know how to set up an account. Is it even properly finished yet? When I last looked it wasn't running fully. Feels like too much bother right now.

(Reply to this)


[info]sophiedb
2009-05-01 09:23 pm UTC (link)
Apparently I'm getting a code soon, so will probs snag my usual username.. if still available.. but seeing as I still can't be bothered with interacting in all the FB groups I joined, I probably won't actually DO anything there!

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[info]nicotje
2009-05-02 01:13 am UTC (link)
I have an account now, for no particular reason: http://someday-soon.dreamwidth.org/. Have not posted yet but am going to import all my old LJ entries and consolidate with my current one. Dunno why ...

(Reply to this)


[info]amuchmoreexotic
2009-05-02 04:52 am UTC (link)
It has one advantage over Vox: a clear migration path. You can sign in to comment with an existing LJ account (using OpenID), it's easy to crosspost between both sites, and I think they have an import tool for your old LJ entries. So, even if (like any sane person) you don't care much about the right to ship semi-nc Harry/Snape, it's a good thing Dreamwidth exists as a way for us all to move off LJ without too much disruption to 'the community'.

I agree about the name. It's hard to think of a worse name than Livejournal, but they managed it. Any service called 'Dreamwidth' should involve putting electrodes in your brain.

(Reply to this)


[info]dawnage
2009-05-03 06:15 pm UTC (link)
Having fallen off the blogosphere I had never even heard of Dreamwidth before this week. Earlier today I wasn't arsed in the slightest about it; I can't even be bothered to update the LiveJournal I paid for permanently. However, I now see an INVITE CODE is required for registration with Dreamwidth and, because I don't have one, I WANT ONE.

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