I don't know whether I'm going to move to Dreamwidth -- and if I don't, there won't be a lot of point in having this journal, I suspect -- but it seems prudent at this point to reserve the space.
It isn't necessary to move if you just want to follow and reply to people who have actually moved.
You can follow/read a DW user by using an RSS feed. For instance, to follow me here, add altivo_dw_feed over on LJ, since that feed has already been defined.
You can reply by using OpenID. Go to www.dreamwidth.org/openid while you are already signed in at LJ. Supply your LJ URL to get logged in. Then change your settings on the next page to "keep me logged in" and save that. Edit your profile to supply an e-mail address for notifications. You can add a user icon or two and other details if you wish. After that, when a DW post appears in your friends page at LJ and you want to reply, click through the link at the top of the post to get to the DW page and reply there on your OpenID account.
That said, for many reasons I have found this to be a much more hospitable site. I double posted for a year just to make sure before pulling the plug on LJ because of their lousy management attitudes.
I know -- I've been sort of casually watching Dreamwidth for a while; I wrote a fairly widely relinked critique of SUP a couple years ago (http://chipotle.livejournal.com/183056.html) that got the attention of a few of the folks involved with DW planning, so despite not having an account before yesterday I've got a bit of a handle on the design here.
For the most part LJ's various headless chicken dances don't bother me greatly; I think Six Apart was vilified somewhat unfairly over their supposed "journal purging," which was certainly a stupid idea stupidly handled, but I'm not sure people understand just how much of a panic cries of "child porn! you're promoting child porn! save the children!" can send a content company's lawyers into. SUP, though, generally doesn't pull their shenanigans out of a sense of undue panic, but out of very deliberate, and occasionally sleazy, "how can we make more money off this" tactics.
At any rate, my conclusion then was that when push comes to shove, SUP really doesn't care whether the remaining American users of LiveJournal take a hike. They're interested in the Russian and Eastern European markets; LJ is still growing there, while it's been in decline here for years. I don't expect LJ to go away here, but simply because at this point there's not more money to be made in shutting off the servers in San Francisco. I suspect if there ever comes a point where an Excel spreadsheet says there is, LJ users will get maybe a week's notice. So i think it behooves me to hedge my bets. :)
Well, now that I've done it myself (at last) I can recommend Dreamwidth's function that imports your LJ postings and comments. It brings everything but the usericons over, and sets up OpenID access for all your friends list members from LJ. That lets you preserve your journal content against destruction should SUP do something stupid, which was a big consideration for me.
OK, I just read the older post about SUP and likely migration from LJ to some other platform. Like many, I actually tried IJ and GJ, and even double posted for a while, but neither IJ nor GJ had much life in terms of support for the system and as you no doubt know, GJ collapsed completely.
However, despite your apparent derision for the LJ code base, those of us who have used LJ for years find it quite hospitable (or we'd be gone.) There's something to be said for compatibility at least at the user interface and API level, and I think that has given DW a big boost. Management that seems to care about the user helps a lot as well.
The thing that really makes DW a viable refuge right now is syndication and OpenID. Once one figures out that little setup trick, it becomes easier to stay in contact with the old network while rebuilding on the new platform. Anything that actually replaces the core of code but wants to attract former LJ users needs to be acutely aware of this need.
It would be nice to have a shell wrapped around that to make it easier for the users who are less technically savvy. I've been explaining over and over again for the last 24 hours how to make it work from the LJ end. I had no idea that so many people actually cared about my LJ posts. ;p
Well, I am among those of you who've used LJ for years. :) I migrated off a very homebrew blogging solution in 2002, and I'm actually an LJ permanent account holder, which is in no small part one of the reasons I'm not rushing to move.
I don't have derision for the code base, per se, but it is what it is -- "familiar" and "extensible and maintainable" aren't always congruent. It was my feeling when I wrote that post that it would be easier to do something like what Six Apart did with Vox than it would be to bring the old LJ codebase up to where I suspected it needed to be. (Vox seems to have been a failure, but I think that's been a matter of 6A really not figuring out how to reach the market they were trying for -- or possibly that market just not having actually existed.) The Dreamwidth developers took the tack of starting with the old LJ base, though, and they've done really well at proving me wrong. And to give credit where it's due, SUP hasn't been standing still, either; LJ does more now than it did in 2008, and DW benefited from that, too.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
You can follow/read a DW user by using an RSS feed. For instance, to follow me here, add altivo_dw_feed over on LJ, since that feed has already been defined.
You can reply by using OpenID. Go to www.dreamwidth.org/openid while you are already signed in at LJ. Supply your LJ URL to get logged in. Then change your settings on the next page to "keep me logged in" and save that. Edit your profile to supply an e-mail address for notifications. You can add a user icon or two and other details if you wish. After that, when a DW post appears in your friends page at LJ and you want to reply, click through the link at the top of the post to get to the DW page and reply there on your OpenID account.
That said, for many reasons I have found this to be a much more hospitable site. I double posted for a year just to make sure before pulling the plug on LJ because of their lousy management attitudes.
no subject
For the most part LJ's various headless chicken dances don't bother me greatly; I think Six Apart was vilified somewhat unfairly over their supposed "journal purging," which was certainly a stupid idea stupidly handled, but I'm not sure people understand just how much of a panic cries of "child porn! you're promoting child porn! save the children!" can send a content company's lawyers into. SUP, though, generally doesn't pull their shenanigans out of a sense of undue panic, but out of very deliberate, and occasionally sleazy, "how can we make more money off this" tactics.
At any rate, my conclusion then was that when push comes to shove, SUP really doesn't care whether the remaining American users of LiveJournal take a hike. They're interested in the Russian and Eastern European markets; LJ is still growing there, while it's been in decline here for years. I don't expect LJ to go away here, but simply because at this point there's not more money to be made in shutting off the servers in San Francisco. I suspect if there ever comes a point where an Excel spreadsheet says there is, LJ users will get maybe a week's notice. So i think it behooves me to hedge my bets. :)
no subject
no subject
However, despite your apparent derision for the LJ code base, those of us who have used LJ for years find it quite hospitable (or we'd be gone.) There's something to be said for compatibility at least at the user interface and API level, and I think that has given DW a big boost. Management that seems to care about the user helps a lot as well.
The thing that really makes DW a viable refuge right now is syndication and OpenID. Once one figures out that little setup trick, it becomes easier to stay in contact with the old network while rebuilding on the new platform. Anything that actually replaces the core of code but wants to attract former LJ users needs to be acutely aware of this need.
It would be nice to have a shell wrapped around that to make it easier for the users who are less technically savvy. I've been explaining over and over again for the last 24 hours how to make it work from the LJ end. I had no idea that so many people actually cared about my LJ posts. ;p
no subject
I don't have derision for the code base, per se, but it is what it is -- "familiar" and "extensible and maintainable" aren't always congruent. It was my feeling when I wrote that post that it would be easier to do something like what Six Apart did with Vox than it would be to bring the old LJ codebase up to where I suspected it needed to be. (Vox seems to have been a failure, but I think that's been a matter of 6A really not figuring out how to reach the market they were trying for -- or possibly that market just not having actually existed.) The Dreamwidth developers took the tack of starting with the old LJ base, though, and they've done really well at proving me wrong. And to give credit where it's due, SUP hasn't been standing still, either; LJ does more now than it did in 2008, and DW benefited from that, too.