mistressofmuses | Test Post?

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Test Post?

I've had a DreamWidth account for quite a while (well... a few months) but never actually made a post. I recall thinking that it would be nice to have so I could follow a couple people who had accounts here but no Livejournal, and then... mostly forgot about it. There are a few proposed (and apparently imminent) changes to LJ that do not please me... the endless-scrolling "feed" replacing the friends' page is a major one. That particular 'feature' of infinite loading/scrolling is what makes Facebook and Tumblr all but unusable for me... my poor abused laptop overheats and shuts itself down with little provocation, and that's plenty to make it happen. If LJ starts doing the same thing, that's going to definitely bother me a whole lot.

I'm terrible at keeping a regular posting schedule. I hardly seem to use LJ, and when I have in the last few months, it's been to give links to posts I've written elsewhere. I want to write more... I just either have enough to do that I don't have time, or have time but nothing I feel is worth writing about. :P But I can always keep trying, yes?

AND. DW also has a handy crossposting feature! So even if LJ is being a buttface for me, I can still post there!

And that's part of why I'm making this post. To make sure the crossposting works, and so I can have an entry in my DW journal so I can test out some layouts and such.

Also: I know pretty much no one on Dreamwidth. Anybody else have an account? If so, I'd very much like it if you'd friend me! :D My username t/here is mistressofmuses. For the lazy, here's the link directly to my journal: http://mistressofmuses.dreamwidth.org/

If you aren't familiar with Dreamwidth, it's basically identical to more old-school Livejournal. There are a few differences, but not a ton. So um... yup. I'm not leaving LJ entirely, or anything; I'll still read friends' entries on LJ, and the crossposting means I'll still post there, too. I just feel like this site may be a much smoother experience for me.

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Your poast, it was successful.

I think this is a lot easier. Also, DW is so much more old school LJ. LIKE IT SHOULD BE.

I hate you LJ. lol

Mmm... fresh poast. Nom nom.

I think it is too... I'll poke around some more with DW, too, but so far it seems smoother and more intuitive than some of the LJ stuff has gotten. I like that.

Hahaha, I hate you dubstep. ;P

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I'll add you back, 'cause you're pretty awesome, too! :D And I never post at all either!

Have you read this release? http://lj-releases.livejournal.com/79629.html

They have now promised to make the infinite scroll optional, which means that the Russian bosses are beginning to realize that the Soviet Union no longer exists. If you want to comment there, please be kind to

astronewt who posted the release because she is the one who struggles to reason with the Russian management. The introduction of some limited customization options was promised from the very begining - in Russian only (I know, head-desk).

For an explanation of why the LJ Friends Page can't stay the way it is,

siderea has summed it up here. I've read the same thing in comments in Russian (not in any actual entry - communication issues again), but I'm not a programmer myself, so I couldn't sum it up so well. And oh, they should totally hire her to communicate with the English-speaking users.

And now I'm having my flist split in different places again... please keep crospossting because all I need is one more social network; I'm registered on more of them than I can manage already and keep neglecting my Google+ account. *sight*

the Russian bosses are beginning to realize that the Soviet Union no longer exists

I literally LOL'ed at this.

While I know you're addressing Katy, I figured I'd just jump right in and interrupt, since I'm rude like that. :P I read the reasoning as to why the friends page "can't" stay the same, and I don't buy in to it. It *can*, with the proper programming and tweaking/removing of outdated "stuff"(of which there's lots, which is why problems are occurring).

I really do believe that these changes are being made as an attempt to keep up with the larger networking sites-- Facebook in particular. They're already referring to the new page as a "feed"... a Facebook term. LJ is a journaling site, and that it's being turned in a completely different direction saddens me a great deal.

It's why I've gone to DW. It's what LJ used to be and what LJ users want.

I will keep crossposting, I have my account set to do it automatically. I'll also check in here periodically, though I won't be posting here. I'm sorry, but just being able to turn off the infinite scrolling isn't enough.

/soapbox

It wasn't quite a joke about the Soviet Union - it's not easy to take it out of some people. :)

Is there any site other than LJ where that kind of page isn't called "feed"? I'm not on Tumblr, so I don't know what it's called there. They aren't introducing the real Facebook/Google+/vKontakte/whatever feed in which nothing stays put in chronological order, so I have no idea what exactly they are trying to achieve.

Even Google+ can't compete with Facebook outside Russia, and there is already the Russian site vKonatakte that seems to be more popular than Facebook in Russia, although its design is something like an outdated version of Facebook (the only better thing about it is that they still have the old "wall" instead of the Timeline). The Russians also use LJ primarily for blogging (even if it's a very different kind of blogging), and the Russian management is very well aware of that. That's what all those weird things like social capital and promo blocks are about - a certain Russian subculture of very public bloggers competing for popularity, and some of the most popular ones even write meaningful stuff.

They seem to have some vague "modernization" in mind, but aren't doing it the right way to attract new users and retain the old ones.

I wonder how on earth they intend to organize commenting directly from the feed. WTF featured comments? You either allow an option of viewing all comments directly in the feed (that would be much more complicated than on FB) or don't.

I'm willing to buy that there are reasons the current friends' page setup is broken... but I also agree with you that they could fix it without a major change on the user end; I think they've just decided it isn't worth it. And like you say, they want to keep up with FB and Tumblr and whatever other networking sites they hope to emulate. If it's what they're being successful with, I can't really fault them; I know that it's a business for them. But I also agree that it means it's being taken in a direction that makes LJ less useful (or not usable) for me. It disappoints me that it's such a major change to such an established site, and I want to go somewhere that is geared toward the functionality that I want.

I definitely don't want to be rude to anyone who is just trying to get information out. I'm sorry that anyone is blaming the people who are just trying to share what's going on.

I understand the reason why the friends' page is broken. I understand that code needs to be updated, that technology and usage changes, etc. She sums it up really well, better than I could have for sure, and I get that it's something that does have to change in some way. The problem is that while they may be cleaning up their code and optimizing functionality for some (or even a majority,) the supposed "fixes" mean some other people (myself included) can't use it at all. That isn't their fault; if I had a newer computer, with a more up-to-date operating system, I'd be using current versions of browsers and plugins, and I wouldn't have the hardware issues that I have, and then likely a major redesign wouldn't keep me from using the site. Unfortunately, I don't have the money for a new computer, and I don't want to sink money into software upgrades for a machine that may fail on me. That isn't LJ's problem, but it means I do have to find another option that does work for me.

And even with the issue of the infinite scroll aside (and it is really good if they're going to make that optional!) there are some issues I've had. The redesigned comment pages are very difficult for me to read, and while they allow for people to keep things in a custom style, that may go away if the code becomes too difficult to wrangle. And since I don't want to view everything in my style, I do have some comms or journals where people have the new default style. Image posting never seems to work correctly for me, and there are other weird little buggy things that happen when I'm trying to post or comment... DW is a little more streamlined and intuitive, I think because they aren't trying to do quite as much as LJ. LJ is putting more resources into those big comms like ONTD, and it's a much bigger deal/much more serious platform in Russia than it is here. So I don't really fault them for putting their resources into that, it just means that the site isn't geared as much towards what I want to use it for.

I do promise to keep crossposting! No worries there; I know that a lot of people don't want journals on both sites, or don't want another site to keep up with. I understand!

I still have Windows XP on this computer. My ancient IE can't even open LJ properly now, and It's not much better with Facebook, so I use Google Chrome without any extra plugins. What do you use?

The Russians don't all have the newest computers with the newest software either (that's why they also raised the alarm about the infinite scroll). There is a numerous user base (or potential user base) there, but many of those people are the same typical second-worlders as me. I wonder if the Russian management just doesn't think of that.

You don't need to be so nice to all the LJ staff, Katy. I'm just telling everybody that

astronewt in particular isn't the right person to blame for anything.

I have the specific problems of somebody with a Friends Page half in Russian. The Russians aren't likely to leave LJ (THE blogging site in Russia) for Dreamwith (an obscure American site for them). On top of all I expect some of my English-speaking LJ friends to move entirely to Google+. Argh!

I have an outdated Mac operating system, one that is I think three behind the most current. Chrome won't work on an OS this out-of-date, and I can no longer update Firefox (which is what I use most of the time.) I also can't update Flash anymore. I know I NEED an upgrade... I just can't afford it right now. :/

They may not consider that. They're maybe more absorbed in whatever is 'latest and greatest' not really considering how many people can't actually access or utilize that.

I don't want to shoot the messenger, haha. I know that a lot of the people who are making posts about what's going on aren't the people with the ability to actually change what's going on, though, so I don't want to be rude to them.

Haha, yes, I imagine that makes for quite a serious problem. I don't have much of a flist on LJ anymore... you, a few older RL friends I know from high school, Alex, and maybe three-five other friends that post more than once every couple months. I can go literally three or four days without seeing an update from a personal journal.

I've never even used Google+. I feel like I "should" because so many other people do, but... I don't keep up with the sites I do have accounts with.

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Alas, it's only the infinite scroll that is going to be optional. The question is how much customization of the new friends page are they going to allow, and they don't seem to have a complete plan of that yet.

Yeah, I have a few comms that I'd want to keep up with here, and some personal journals that I'd definitely want to stay in touch with, but I figure I may just drastically pare down my flist here (like, trim out communities that I don't always want to read, so I can visit the comm page but not have it show up in my feed, etc.) so I can still use it.

The new friends page is in beta, so it's optional for now. They've been saying it will be mandatory, but now have apparently backed off of that because there were so many people unhappy with it. It sounds like maybe it will still be mandatory, but you'll be able to decide whether it's on multiple pages or an infinite-scroll?

I will keep crossposting, for sure! I have my blogspot blogs (the horror one and the hiking one) and have toyed with making a third for any of my other picture-heavy things (concerts, projects, food, etc.) just because image posting is so much easier there. But I don't get much readership at all over there, so I'm not sure it'd be worth it, lol.

It sounds like maybe it will still be mandatory, but you'll be able to decide whether it's on multiple pages or an infinite-scroll?

Yes, that's exactly what they are saying. Plus some still unspecified limited customization options for the new friends page.

Huh... Admittedly I'd never even heard of the site, but it does sound like a viable alternative to Livejournal at least. I haven't really tried the new Livejournal Friend's Page/the infinite scrolling feature but I am sorry that your laptop is giving you grief. -_- I too understand the need to update websites and the like with the times, but it would be nice to have control over some of the features they add in some form or another. (Very few sites allow you to change the background to black and the text to white, something I GREATLY prefer as it doesn't make my eyes bleed haha).

Unfortunately I don't know anyone else who would use Dreamwidth but if enough people move over to such a site, provided they have the ability to selectively post to friends only, etc., I'd consider it.

It's basically based on the old design for livejournal, so it's very similar to how the site used to function. (And yes, I much prefer dark backgrounds with light text, or something other than black on white, because I get such a headache. DW does have a site skin that's white on black, which I was glad to see.) It does also have the option for making public, friend's only (though it's called something like "access" on DW), or private entries.

LJ just seems to be headed in a different direction now. It's sad to see such a huge change for a well-established site, but if it's what they want to do for business reasons, I can't fault them, I guess. But DW is just a little more in-line with what I want for a personal journalling site. I'll keep crossposting, though, and I'll still be checking LJ.

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