Disclaimer:
All opinions expressed in this LJ are mine, unless otherwise indicated. They are certainly not those of my employer(s). They are also not the opinions of LiveJournal; I just volunteer here.
I think Dreamwidth has helped save LiveJournal.
No, really; I think that LiveJournal is in a much better place right now than it was six months ago. It may even be in a better place than it was a year ago. I'm feeling more general enthusiasm and hope than I was then, and most especially, I'm no longer experiencing the quickly-repressed desire to pack up my journal and flee into the night (with the exception of my Suggestions duties, as I wouldn't leave Carrie in the lurch like that, as my shoes would be hard to fill).
I haven't been paying steady or close attention to
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/newsinfo.gif){kind=small}
news comments for a while, not since the level of animosity against SUP, LiveJournal in general, and some actual personal friends reached full shriek. I had better things to do, like kiss a facehugger. I have checked back intermittently, and I have noticed a change in the last two months. It seems to me that the people who had been speaking out with the most anger and betrayal about LiveJournal's decisions have finished migrating off the service.I just didn't see that same level of pain and outrage the last time I looked. Annoyance? Oh, yes, plenty. A la carte userpics were promised, but there hasn't been much of an update on the progress there. "My Guests"? Oh, yes, that's getting the classic debate, where people who will opt out and never use it complain about its very existence, and people wonder who would use it and why it was even implemented (it's a frequent request in
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small}
suggestions, for the record). But the anguish has dramatically lowered.The launch of Dreamwidth has played a role in that drop-off in a way that no other alternate journal service has. I did not see the same level of drop-off in user anguish with the large migrations to GreatestJournal and InsaneJournal -- indeed, if anything, there was just an additional element to some of the complaints.
( GreatestJournal, InsaneJournal, Dreamwidth, ease of migration, backups, Open Source, antagonistic users vs customer service, and my observations. )
And no longer embattled with the same factions of the userbase, LiveJournal responds, with further attention to detail in new feature rollouts, and a high level of responsiveness to beta feedback. LiveJournal is changing. LiveJournal is up and running and starting to actively develop instead of just treading water. I can taste the way the development team is providing output as a fully operational team once more when I look at
lj_releases. Stuff from suggestions is bubbling through. Releases seem to be happening more smoothly. Promising new volunteers are starting to pop back in. Code patches shuffle back and forth, today Dreamwidth picking up a new feature from LiveJournal, tomorrow LiveJournal snagging a bug fix from Dreamwidth.The project rolls on, and the userbases of all LiveJournal-based sites are the more secure for having more talent devoted to the project, and another viable option.
Cross-site chatter: Dreamwidth, LiveJournal
A list of things (largely technical features) that are being done differently (note: there are many things on that list that aren't covered in my run-down; go check it out if you haven't already.)
( Read more... )
The following is an informal summary of the ruling.
Dude. Even though this state has a large number of bigoted twits who want to keep the gays out of your marriage, it's still fucking unconstitutional, and you can go shove beans up your nose. Let me compare you to people who wanted to keep slavery and segregation around, and keep women from voting.
If you want to discriminate against a group, your ducks has better be very well in a row, and we're going to go right on down and show you where your ducks just ain't.
Same-sex couples can't reproduce? Shove that up your nose. Same-sex couples are adult humans who want to get civilly hitched, and this is about getting hitched, not about getting knocked up.
You want to claim that this is about denying marriage to same-sex couples, not about discriminating against gays and lesbians? Shove that up your nose too. Who the fuck else is going to want to get a same-sex marriage?
Gays and lesbians get discriminated against, despite being productive members of society. You can shove your "ex-gay" therapy up your nose too, because anyone with more brains than a turnip can see that it hurts more than it helps. Despite it being fucking illegal to discriminate in some cases, guess what, it still happens.
Traditional marriage is traditional. If you can't think up a better argument than that circular one, you can bite me.
For the childrens! Um, while we see that you claim that a mother and a father are the best, but let's take a look at REALITY, where all kids DON'T HAVE THIS.
How about no. Deadbeat parents, child molesters, and murderers can still get hitched. Let's think critically about this for a moment. If we don't deny marriage to these people, why again are we denying it to a group that's, see above, productive members of society?
Same-sex couples are still RAISING kids, without being married. Um. So you want to deny the benefit of having MARRIED parents to these kids, while claiming that all kids should have married parents? Bite me.
Lots of same-sex couples don't have kids. Opposite-sex couples who don't have kids can get married. Bite me.
Exactly how is same-sex couples getting married going to stop opposite-sex couples from getting themselves knocked up?!
Exactly how is same-sex couples getting married going to make opposite-sex couples stop getting married or raise the opposite-sex divorce rate?!
It would save the government money if less people got married. Very much so. But why stop at excluding the queers when you could also exclude religions you don't like or races you don't like? Bite me.
"The sanctity of religious marriage is threatened! Our world is crumbling around us!" ...uh, have you read the marriage law? Your religion can define "marriage" all it wants to. This law is about civil marriage. Bite me.
In conclusion: denying same-sex marriage to gays and lesbians is discriminatory, wrong, and above all, unconstitutional. Get hitched, guys and gals. And those opposed? Bite me.
LiveJournal has taken to using a Content Delivery Network (CDN for short) to serve its userpics. This means that instead of all 197 of some permanent user's userpics being served from LJ's servers in Montana, no matter where you are in the world, the CDN will try and have them on a server that is geographically much closer to you. This means that the master copy of your userpic is stored with LJ, but you are actually viewing a copy on the CDN's server.
This ... can lead to a bit of a situation, because now people have started to get served incorrect userpics from time to time due to the CDN's local copy being bad. It's worse than just a completely wrong userpic -- since it's only on one CDN server, your best friend halfway across the continent is looking at a different server, sees the correct userpic, and thinks you're on crack. There is a treatment, but the cause (why the CDN grabs the wrong picture, why it chooses the wrong picture that it grabs, whose stuff is broken, and exactly what piece of programming or equipment is broken) is, as far as I know, unknown at this time.
As seen in metaquotes, and as I explained there:
There's growing support for a mob with baseball bats and/or code machetes fixing the userpics problem. On the one hand, it's good to have the userpics served from someone else's more geographically convenient servers. On the other hand, if they're going to store the wrong userpics for a certain segment of the viewing audience...
Basic rundown of what happens, for those who aren't familiar with the problem:
LiveJournal: 197 userpics is a lot! Ow, my bandwidth!
Content Delivery Network: We can help with that!
LiveJournal: Great! *sets stuff up*
Content Delivery Network: *retrieves original userpics from userpic-origin.livejournal.com* *copies to p-userpic.livejournal.com* Have your userpics, people!
User: Dude, that is not my userpic.
User's friend: What do you mean? That's the same userpic you've had for three years.
User: I'm telling you, mine is supposed to be the O RLY owl, and I've got Goatse!!!
User's friend: Believe me, it's the owl. I would have noticed Goatse.
User's neighbor: WTF, man. Your goatse userpic just showed up on that post when I was showing it to my MOM.
User: SEE!!! *screencaps* *goes to support*
Support: Oh god. Another one. *gets link to userpic* *bothers staff*
Staff: *whacks content delivery network a few times until it drops the goatse userpic and gets the O RLY owl from userpic-origin.livejournal.com again*
Support: There! Fixed! (Until the next time, when My Little Pony gets replaced with naked Amanda Tapping!) *drinks heavily*
It's not necessary to include a screencap when reporting. We know it's happening. You don't have to prove it. Just grab a link to the affected icon, or include its keywords, and let Support know so that Staff can go run the pound-on-the-CDN-with-baseball-bats-agai
[Edited to add 2009/04/04: LJ has since switched Content Delivery Networks, and, surprise surprise, this doesn't seem to be happening anymore.]
When you meet me on the internet, you are not entitled to know the legal identity that my local government recognizes me as. You get to see the screen name I am using to interact with you. If I choose to, I may have listed a face-to-face name I answer to. The name I share with you is the one I would like you to address me by. You do not win magic points by knowing the name that was on my birth certificate, or my current legal name. To pick a public and well-known example, insisting upon calling someone "William" when they have repeatedly stated that the name they answer to is "Ferrett" is really a dick move.
You can call someone anything you want to in the privacy of your own head, but when you are speaking to them, or speaking of them in a public forum, it is only basic courtesy to address them by their preferred name. If you address them by a name you know they do not like, you have failed basic politeness and should go back to kindergarten. If you act like a dick to me, you are not entitled to be treated like you are not being a dick.
( You are not entitled to know whether I am someone you have met face-to-face. )
Creating A Journal
Creating a journal allows you to leave comments on the entries from some journals that do not allow anonymous commenting, join communities, add users as "friends", be added as a "friend" by other users, read entries of others on your "friends page", read certain privacy-restricted entries from other users that allow you to do so, as well as post entries of your own.
If you haven't already created a new journal, you are likely to want to create one after hanging around the site for a while. You can certainly use lots of parts of LiveJournal without having an account, but it's helpful to have one even if you aren't planning on sharing the personal details of your life with the world. This FAQ covers the account creation process in brief. You start out from the Create New Journal page and follow the step-by-step instructions. You will need to have a 15-character or shorter username in mind. This is the username that your fellow users will see. You will also need a valid email address. When possible, use an email address that you will have control of forever, since the email address used to set up the account is important, and the first email address used cannot be removed from the account
Using Your Own Journal
There are limitless ways to use your account. ( Use. Privacy and Security concerns. Interacting with others. Technical issues. Click here to read more! )
- Location:85225
- Mood:
productive
- Music:Nikkfurie de La Caution - Thé à la menthe
I have used LiveJournal for over seven years now. I signed up in May 2001. I use LiveJournal as a journal, as a communications service, as entertainment, and much more. I have dedicated countless hours to not only using the service, but also helping make it better.
It is a nightmare to think of LiveJournal in the hands of people who drive it into the ground in a misguided effort to make it succeed. It is easy to make management assumptions that are completely rational given a generic online service, but are entirely the wrong thing for LiveJournal due to its culture and history. This document covers not business management, but user management, as LiveJournal's users are an idiosyncratic group with strong opinions, a history, and disparate factions with different goals and different uses for the service. The unifying wish of all groups of users is for LiveJournal to succeed, still be around into the far future, and to remain a fun and free-thinking place, in the spirit of the way it was under the watch of
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
bradfitz. To manage LiveJournal properly, you must be:
- familiar with the service yourself
- invested in nurturing and maintaining the current user experience as well as developing in exciting new directions
- willing to engage with the userbase as people who hold a stake in LiveJournal's development and future, not just content providers or visitors
(There will be members of the service whose input is misdirected, or who do not have the background to give useful advice, however, this is not the document for covering those issues.) - aware of the history that your users will be aware of, even if not in the same detail
- able to realize that there is no one true way to use LiveJournal
Do not underestimate the amount of time and energy that people put into LiveJournal. There are people who barely use it. There are people who use it a reasonable amount and have no more attachment to it than they have to any other company providing a needed service: SRP for power, Cox for internet, Gmail for mail, LJ for blogging. The real strength of LiveJournal, however, is that the most active users have formed an emotional attachment to the community above and beyond their need for the service that LiveJournal provides to them.
( Read more... )
- Location:85225
- Mood:...okay, maybe more like 10k words. Heh.
- Music:Cowboy Mouth, "Jenny Says"
Twitter is a stand-alone microblogging service -- you don't have to have an LJ to use it. You make teeeeenytiny posts to it. You can do this from their website, from text message, or from a dizzying variety of clients. Twitter was not originally intended to be fed into LJ, but people are just crazy like that, so naturally things evolved.
In common use, stuff gets posted to Twitter that one might never consider making a full LJ post about -- location of the moment, weather, fleeting moods, passing thoughts, and daily trivia.
museumfreak sums it up quite accurately: The original function of LJ was to answer the question "What are you doing today?" Twitter answers the question "What are you doing right now?" The former is of course the integrand of the latter. I post these to LJ because I want to archive them better and I want my LJ friends to know what's going on with me even when I don't have time/energy to post.
I find that since starting to use Twitter, I post much of the same content to Twitter that I would ordinarily save up for a link soup post, and the same not-topic-focused thoughts-of-the-moment that I would usually unload irrelevantly to whatever IRC channel I happen to be in. It's not often important enough for its own post, but put it all together and you have a post. However, since I am a feedback junkie, I want to get these thoughts out there NOW to my people, not wait for enough content, or focus long enough, to have an actual LJ post. It's only after tumbling things around in my mind for a while that there's enough coherent to create a real post.
IRC is designed to support multiple channels on multiple focused topics, even though we stray from them and stray from them badly. Since a lot of the usual suspects on IRC are now also on Twitter, the general focus in the usual channel has improved, while conversation has dropped off somewhat. IRC will generate side-channels to support conversations that the general channel isn't interested in following, although when moving to a side-channel a lot of the conversational momentum gets lost in ensuring that everyone is on board.
IRC is for my topics. Twitter is for my people.
Granted, a lot of my people on Twitter are also my people from IRC, and I don't think that's a coincidence. In turn, IRC has pretty much replaced most of the single-person chatting I used to do (there are exceptions).
How To Use It (technically), and Stuff You Should Know
To get started, first you sign up for twitter here: http://twitter.com
Figure out whether you're going to want it to feed into LJ or not. If you are, find a service that will do that. One of the most popular is LoudTwitter: http://www.loudtwitter.com/ -- but you can also run a script on your own server if you prefer that, and have a server available.
You can choose to make your Twitter updates Twitter-friends-only, however, doing that generally interferes with your ability to post them to your LJ unless you're doing something really fun with your scripting.
If you don't mind a public Twitter, but your journal is friends-only, you can post stuff from Twitter friends-only; the easiest way that I know of to do that is by setting your minimum security, which you should do if you have a friends-only journal anyway.
Regardless of your settings, you then update from Twitter, and make sure that stuff is coming through when scheduled to (sometimes Twitter, or LoudTwitter, or both, are flaky).
People on your friendslist who also use Twitter will notice that you are now doing this, and either add you on Twitter (or not). Socially, some people may choose to not follow you on Twitter on the grounds that they will be reading it all on LJ anyway. On Twitter, it's called "following" rather than "friending". You can also block someone from following you, unlike LJ. Like LJ, however, public is still public.
The convention for Twitter usernames is to preface the username with the @ symbol. Twitter will autolink this for you. If you want to flag someone down on Twitter (comment to them), start a tweet with the @ symbol and their username. They will see it if they check their replies. (If you just put @whoever in the body of it, even if it is the second thing like there are 2 people, they won't necessarily get it, even though it autolinks. Them's the breaks. Other things that don't work: @ whoever, because they're not touching.) Some people also don't check their replies on Twitter, so it's not safe to assume that someone has actually seen a Twitter-reply. Some people choose not to watch the @somebodyelse updates in their Twitter stream, so don't assume someone has seen something if you've put it in a message to someone else, even if they're watching you and it's public (unless, you know, you know otherwise).
You can get the firehose of twitter-friendslist via text message, nothing via text message, or many settings in between.
Twitter allowed subscription to certain words. This isn't available via the web right now; I'm not sure if it's still available via SMS. Stuff has grown up around that, though, to allow somewhat of the same function via different routes. If you are making an announcement to the world on a topic, you can include the symbol # in front of the name of the topic to make it easily searchable. Optionally, add @hashtags as a friend. This was notably pioneered during a 2007 California fire, with tweets including the keyword #sandiegofire. The syntax is reminiscent of IRC channel definitions, but can be used anywhere in the tweet.
Some commentaries and utilities:
http://twitter.pbwiki.com/ -- huge wiki of Twitter-related stuff
http://a.wholelottanothing.org/2008/1
http://paulstamatiou.com/2007/01/26/sta
http://tweetscan.com/ -- search public Twitter and other microblogs
http://www.twittermail.com/ -- post by email (why?!)
http://twittervision.com/ -- view random recent tweets mapped
http://www.hashtags.org/ -- search opted-in twitter accounts (people following @hashtags) for topics marked with #topic
http://twemes.com -- hashtag search without opt-in
http://twitterless.com/ -- track twitter defriending
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/171
http://flourish.livejournal.com/25
http://jott.com -- transcribe voice stuff and send it somewhere (like twitter. or LJ.)
http://ping.fm -- update multiple places at once
- Location:85225
- Mood:
informative
- Music:Eve 6, "Inside Out", in my head
Friends on LJ
Unlike sites that are pure social networking (collect your existing friends, define the hell out of your relationship to them, and maybe collect more friends), LiveJournal is a social media site, where the main technical focus is on your journal entries and letting (or not letting) people read them, or reading other people's journal entries. The "friends" label for the relationship could just as easily be called "watching/trusted". This means you can add anyone, and they can add you, regardless of whether or not you are actually really friends.
Real friends vs. LJ Friends
Rule number one: Just because you have added someone on LJ as a friend doesn't mean that you're actually their friend offline, or even on other websites.
Rule number two: Just because someone has added you as a friend on LJ doesn't mean that they're actually your friend anywhere other than in that little label on LJ that says that they list you as a friend.
Rule number three: Just because someone does not list you as a friend on LJ does not mean that they're not your friend in any other arbitrary context. It just means that for whatever reason, they either have not yet added you on LJ, or there is some portion of the multi-faceted happy funball that is LJ-friendship that they do not want. If speculating on this makes you crazy, either ask them point-blank, or try not to speculate so much.
Rule number four: Just because someone is your friend in some other context does not necessarily mean that you will or should add them as a friend on LJ. It may mean that you have to have an uncomfortable conversation on the topic of "why my LJ interests are accurate and the erotic fiction I write would probably disturb you very deeply so let's just avoid going there", or a slightly-less-awkward conversation about cat pictures and knitting minutiae.
Friends on LJ means: (Technical bits, cut for those who already have this down cold)
For purposes of this illustration, let's first say that you have added them, but they haven't added you.
( Read more... )
Friends on LJ doesn't mean: (More technical bits)
( Technical myths about friending! )
Rules of the Road
Friending Rules and How to Find Them
The first thing to do when you're thinking of adding someone is go and check out first their profile, and then their journal. ( This is generally where friending rules can be found. )
Reasonably Common Scenarios
People use their journals in all kinds of ways. They set their personal friending policies to complement the way they use their journal, which may or may not be the way you use your journal. ( Read more... )
Getting Friends
There's a Frequently Asked Questions entry on how to find people on LJ! ( Read more... )
Ways People Use Their Journals
This isn't all-inclusive, of course, but I think it provides a pretty good sampling. These are often mix-and-match, with a journal being used for a mix of scenarios, as sometimes it's simpler to use one journal for a variety of uses. Then, there are the people who keep their journals divided, and have one for each of several uses or projects. ( Read more... )
Ways People Use their Friends List
( Read more... )
Weird Scenarios
( Read more... )
Yeah, there's a lot more.
LJ friending is a complex, complex, and really interesting thing. Each of the topics I've mentioned could probably fill an essay. But if you see something I've missed completely, give me a shout in the comments.
Event Planning
People use LJ to plan events, issue invitations, and manage invitees, as well as write up the events afterwards.
Issue Tracking
While a community is no substitute for an actual issue tracking system for something that's large enough to need one, it can work as a makeshift one for a small organization, or a staging area if not everybody has access or there needs to be discussion before items are entered. LJ volunteers use communities this way a lot, in fact.
- People in LJ tend to cluster into the same sorts of social groups that people face-to-face do, with the same kind of evolved social standards. ( Be careful about talking smack. )
- That "friend" thing. If I list you as a friend, it means either a) I like to read your writing, b) I trust you to read my locked-down stuff (at least some of it), or c) both.
It doesn't mean that I think that you think of me as a friend. There are people who I have listed as friends who may not have ever noticed my presence, or who may not remember me well and think of me as a cordial distant acquaintance.
Or we may actually be friends. Who knows. - When you add someone as a friend, ( it's generally polite to inform them. )
- [Edit: that friend thing. "Hi! I saw you and you're nifty! I'm adding you!" is absolutely not the same as "Hi! I saw you and you're nifty! Can I add you?" The former is an optional courtesy. The latter is a big red stamp across the forehead that says either NOOB, or DUMB-ASS NOOB WHO CANNOT READ, depending on whether the person being asked has a friending policy in their profile that says that anyone may add without asking. More discussion in comments. ]
- [Edit: Friend rules. Different social groups have different friending/defriending standards, and if you assume that the standards that hold true in your group are obviously going to apply to their group, you're in for a world of social awkwardness. A stated friending/defriending policy from another user, usually as written or linked from their profile, trumps all other points of etiquette that you may have learned elsewhere. Their journal, their rules. ]
- That "friend" thing. If I remove you as a friend, it may mean that I just don't need to see you on my friends page for whatever reason. ( tl;dr and other sins )
- It is considered polite to let a person you're removing as a friend know why you're doing so, ( under most one-on-one circumstances with no hard feelings involved. )
- Non-mutual friending! Some people actually care about making their friends match up with their friend-ofs. The existence of non-mutual friends drives them up the wall. I have no insight into this, and I don't think I want any.
- Serial adding, and other forms of unrequited love! Some people think it reflects badly on them to have someone ( acting like a twit on their profile, but that's them. On the other hand, drama-mongers pick up detractors with supernatural speed. )
- Someone's LJ is a little bit like their living room, or at least their garden party. ( Gatecrash politely, and don't brawl. )
- If someone has disabled comments on a journal entry, chances are they don't want to have to field comments from the general public or the viewing audience, if the viewing audience is smaller than the general public. Unless you know them well enough to be reasonably assured that they won't take it ill if you contact them through other channels, don't. (If you do know them well enough to feel it's appropriate, or if you know that they have other standards, act accordingly.)
- In a flat message-board environment, comments are presented in strict chronological order( ... and on LJ, they are not. Respect the threading. )
- Signatures. ( Not bad, just foreign. )
- Consider what you're going to say before you post to a community with people you don't know. ( You can save yourself looking stupid in front of a large audience. )
- Commenting with unrelated material to a post, either in a personal journal or in a community, is generally some form of misstep. ( It's worst in a community or trying to sell stuff. If you're friends, you can get away with it. ) LiveJournal is not a commerce-friendly site.
- Intrusive text formatting is frowned on. ( Sometimes it's acceptable, but certain things are considered horribly rude. ) Yes, it may just be that you're making sure that your text shows up as pitch-black wherever it's at.
Congratulations. You've just rendered your text unreadable to the person with the black background. Not only that, but you went out of your way to do it. Yes, they may be able to read it with a little work, but the fact remains that you made it harder for them to read, and it was a change you made deliberately, and they won't thank you for it.
Some people may not be affected or only minimally affected; some people would only have to squint a little; some people would have to go out of their way to make it readable; some people, especially visually impaired people and blind people with screen readers, may be completely unable to read whatever it was you wrote.
Any imagined cool-factor your precisely-chosen size/font/color combination is intended to create will be overshadowed by the fact that you're violating the social standard. Something like this can be overlooked in your own journal, ( but it still is not a good idea. ) Posting to a community with altered text, or posting comments with altered text, is a profoundly antisocial activity. There may be isolated pockets where altering text is accepted or even encouraged, but it's a standard that even known trolls rarely violate. - Excessively long, wide, markup-intensive, and/or bandwidth-intensive entries get <lj-cut> under most circumstances. So do items that are of dubious safety. LJ has a lot of standards about being responsible to the community as a whole.
- Userpics. ( They're everywhere! And they actually mean things! )
- Respect the lock. ( What happens behind locked entries stays there, under most circumstances. ) If in doubt, don't spread it around. You don't want a reputation for not respecting locks and filters. Really.
- Journals are for posting in, if you live here. If you don't post in your livejournal, like, ever, you're treated as if you don't belong here. (barakb25, I'm looking at you.) This is because you mostly don't belong here. You don't know the culture, you don't know the people, and you're not driven to chronicle the same way the rest of us are.
Even if you only do have the journal for the purpose of commenting, or of reading the locked entries of your friends, it is polite to post to your journal at least once to announce this. Comments may be set in any which way, but there should be at least one public post. Even completely private journals should be posted in. It really unnerves LJ citizens to see a journal that has never been posted in. The casual user may never notice, but we'll know. - [Edit: replies! When replying to someone's comment to you, always hit the "reply" link to that comment, and never the main "reply" link for the whole post. Sometimes weird issues will cause you to accidentally reply as a top-level comment, and that's regrettable, but not your fault. "Replying" to someone else but not using the reply link on their comment means they are never notified that you have replied, which is an integral part of LJ social interaction. People depend on these notifications to continue discussion, and may not ever revisit the post without that notification. Plus, it breaks threading. There are legit reasons to reply to the main post and address issues brought up in comments, but if that is intended to be a reply to any of the commenters, at least drop them a reply letting them know to see the full reply at top-level.]
- [Edit: I have a whole separate post on friending now.]
- [Edit: If you aren't reading someone regularly, and they don't know about this (and you don't really want them to know), and they say something that baffles you, go get caught up on their recent entries (if the context allows it) before you ask what's up. Otherwise you risk blowing your cover about not reading them.]
There's nothing wrong with wanting to put yourself in the story and writing about wonderful and beautiful things happening. Nothing at all. It's a great deal of fun for you; if you're writing your friends in it, it's a great deal of fun for them as well. It isn't likely to be a universal classic, though -- unless everyone knows you and your friends, and likes you and your friends, they're probably not going to be interested enough to read it, and would probably prefer to avoid it if given the option. It is possible that you've written a universal classic, but the odds are very much against it.
Whatever you do, don't stop writing. All this writing that you're doing is helping you hone your technical writing craft, even though there will be places that very much need some work. ( Read more... )
If you have scenes that have to be cut, for gods' sake save them somewhere! ( Read more... )
Consider where you're sharing this story. Given that this is no longer the Century of the Fruitbat, you probably have it up online in some fanfiction archive or other, or in your journal, and you have the summary of the story written to be aimed directly at your intended audience -- your closest friends, the ones you're writing this to share with. The trouble with this is that while the story is your private little party, and you really wouldn't mind if the general public became friends with you and shared in the fun, the general public is not likely to share in your happiness with your shiny and would-be utopic (or dark and grim and would-be dystopic) bit of fanfiction. They're expecting fanfiction shared in that much public to be fanfiction intended for sharing with a wider and less specialized audience (all Harry Potter fans who like Hermione/Harry, for example, rather than all Harry Potter fans who like Hermione/Harry and are also your friends). If someone expecting a story of wide appeal comes in and winds up mistakenly reading your story of very narrow appeal, you may wind up in possession of a stinging review. And oh, how those fuckers hurt.
Instead of sharing on a fanfiction archive where anyone looking for the pairing you like can stumble across your fic by accident, consider archiving it only in your journal. The people who matter are going to wind up there anyway, and you can always post it to your favorite fanfiction archive site later, if the response you get in your journal from people who aren't close friends of yours is good enough to suggest that your story has wider appeal. Consider labeling your story with a summary that includes "Original character who is an idealized version of me", or "How would my friends and I fit into canon?" If people who really don't want to read those sorts of stories know this up front, then they'll be more likely to avoid your story and move on to something more to their taste.
Consider what you want to convey with the story. ( Read more... )
A lot of idealized characters are stunningly beautiful, with perfect skin, lovely bodies, unique eye color, perfect hair in unusual colors, and so forth. If your idealized character has any of these things going on, or other things like special powers or something, consider giving some of these things (or if not those exact things, things similar to them) to those around your idealized character. ( Read more... )
If you're playing with characters who are people you know, but they haven't told you that they want to be in the story you're writing, insert some plausible deniability into the situation by renaming everyone. ( Read more... )
If you're writing this not just because you're telling a story that's fun, but because the story has a lot of deeper meaning to you, be careful about who you share it with and how you share it with them. ( Read more... )
Showing it off in public is inviting criticism. If you can't take criticism, don't share it in public. There are many ways to share it that aren't in public, though. You can share it one-on-one with someone; you can share it via e-mail to a person or a group; you can put it up online in a restricted-access area (like a locked, perhaps even filtered post on LJ). If you do share it with someone, let them know what kind of feedback you're looking for, before they start looking it over. ( Read more... )
One of the most stinging quasi-constructive pieces of advice out there is the raw statement "Get a beta." The usual unhappy flailing response is either "I have a beta!" or "I can't find a beta!" Either way, that review means that there are so many technical and structural flaws in the piece that it shouldn't be let out in public on its own. ( Read more... )
If your reviewer suddenly winds up screaming and flailing at you and coming out of nowhere with a very strong and personal reaction that leaves you hurt and spinning, it may not actually be you or your work. You may have just managed to push the hot-button of that particular reviewer, one of the things that is guaranteed to drive them completely insane. Get a second opinion from someone who you don't think has that particular hot button.
Above all, just keep writing. You may only ever wind up writing for your own amusement; you may wind up at the top of the New York Times' Bestseller List; you'll never know unless you keep writing.
- Location:home (whee, internet.)
- Mood:
contemplative
- Music:"'Til I Hear It From You", in my head
I will do my best to make the feedback I leave for LiveJournal developers constructive in nature.
If you wouldn't do it in fandom, don't do it to the devs. I know that this is the choir section here that I'm ranting at, but I've spent the past couple hours in a room with some rather irritated engineers who are really code people, not people-people. They've been busting their asses for months to track down random crap that goes wrong. This site is so bloody huge and robust that Bantown could not take it down for long, even though they tried. Slashdot fails to have the Slashdot Effect on LJ. LJ is thriving and functional thanks to the developers who put it together and the engineer-types who keep it running day-to-day and the people who keep the money coming in to feed the monster bandwidth and all the rest of it, and the people who make sure that other people know how to use it, and the people who stay here and hang out and talk with friends. The developers work hard to keep things working and keep the site evolving so it doesn't become a great big code dinosaur. Lately it's been seeming that the harder they work to fix things that are broken and update things that are out of code (building code metaphor, not computer code; work with me here), the more they get screamed at for trying to ruin LJ.
In every
news feature-type post where something new and bell/whistle is announced, there is the inevitable complaint that things like virtual gifts are a waste of developer time that would be better spent on problem X, Y, or Z. And when LJ has been having a couple weeks where there are problems, and the problems stay there even though people are complaining about them, and the problems are still there, and still there, and still there -- yes, it does seem illogical that developers would go and do something like make it possible to put a flaming bag of poo on your least favorite serial adder's profile page. But sometimes you have to step away from a problem to get it back in perspective. I'm not in LJ Central, so I'm not there watching them bang their heads into a stubborn problem until headaches ensue, but I trust that they are allocating their time reasonably. You know what I think the number one biggest waste of developer time is?
Dealing with unaccountably rude and hostile users.
LJ as a culture has the hugest sense of fandom entitlement ever.
LJ users want the same thing they've always had from LJ, namely, a place to put their journals and communicate and be with friends, and a geek-friendly, open, caring, open-source, user-supported, small-town environment.
LJ geeks want pretty much that same thing. Really. Truly.
Somewhere along the line, LJ users as-a-collective got the idea that if the development team did something that they didn't like, the best way of solving this was not to give constructively critical feedback and debate it with vigor and the knowledge that the developers had the good of the site in mind, but to jump on any available surface and flame away.
Imagine the utter fucking joy that the LJ developers must be having, wading through gods know how many hundred comments of flame to find the legitimate kernels of actual problems in between the complaints. Go through one of those posts announcing changes to LJ some time, and pretend that the changes to LJ are a fic that's already been beta-read, and the comments to those posts are comments in response to the fic. Read those comments with an eye to constructive criticism. The analogy doesn't stretch particularly far, because the core site pages of LJ are not a piece of fanfiction, but the principle of effective communication holds true.
Dear users, the way to get the development team to listen to your concerns is not to scream abuse at them and then expect them to abandon their ideas of what is right for the site and adopt yours. The louder you scream, the louder they're going to hit the delete key and say "Na na na can't hear you na na na." I don't actually think they're doing that now, but the temptation is very much there and very much real. LJ is a maverick site in that it has such open forums for user feedback and discussion. Plenty of services do not have anything resembling that. Do you really want to convince the developers and volunteers that an open forum will only collect whining and flames?
Hint: Bantown tried forcing the issue by attacking LJ. We all know how that turned out. Pwned, craxx0rbitches, pwned. In a similar case, visible nipple is still not allowed in the default userpic, and the flaming tantrums thrown at LJ's support staff by assorted self-proclaimed "boob nazis" have assured that visible nipple will never be allowed, on the principle that it's bad precedent to cave when the toddler has a meltdown because they didn't get their little way. Even though there are many people who do love the boob.
Tell them what you like about the shiny new stuff. Let them know what they did right. Sit on your hands for a few hours until you try using it a few times before you flame off at them. If you have to say something immediately, remember what you learned in those sensitivity training sessions and use your "I" statements. "I'm frustrated with this new user interface, and I'd really prefer something with the look and feel of the older version" comes over a whole lot better than "What the fuck did you do to my user interface, you morons? I liked it the way it was! Put it back!"
LJ, even current LJ under 6A management, is capable of recognizing if something goes really badly. The developers actively ask for reports of broken or unusable behavior. Things may not be fixed immediately, but there are little things coming out every here and there to make things better, things that you may not be aware of unless you're watching
lj_releases or changelog. LJ really is a group effort. I do not have Super-Secret Inside Information that no one else has. I'm a relatively average occasional Support volunteer. (Very occasional, since Life Attacks.) I put time and effort into making LJ a better place, and I see the results of that effort. Things may not always go my way when LJ policy and I disagree with each other (I wouldn't mind seeing nipples in any boobtacular default user pictures, for example), but at least my technical suggestions are often dead-on, and my social suggestions are at least listened to respectfully.
I really do think it all boils down to three or four questions:
- Do you trust the people who are running LJ, including Six Apart core and the developers?
- If you do not trust the people running LJ, what can they reasonably do to demonstrate that they're worthy of your trust?
- If there is nothing the people running LJ can do to gain your trust, why are you still here?
And you know? I find that I'm never short on database handles after this update. How about you?
(bottom of this post if you need to skip it)
news: Now that you've heard the back-alley rumors, we're confirming them! It's not just Free and Paid anymore, there's a Sponsored+ level! Be assured that we won't tell you that you need your man-bits enlarged, even though from your behavior in the comments we can see that you're really insecure about that! Anybody want to beta-test? Oh, and if you make an LJ banner ad that is totally t3h winz, we can use it! Have at! frank: "Will work for pants!" Refugees from
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/syndicated.gif){kind=small}
slashdot: "First!" Someone who's never been to
slashdot: "Is there some kind of competition?" slashdot User: "Welcome to the Internets. Here's your free eyespork. You'll need it." Refugees from
metaquotes: "Icon Love!" Friends & Family of Support volunteers: *hand out flame shields and asbestos underwear*
Support Volunteers: "Thanks. ...hey, will this give me cancer?"
LJ Staff: "... I'm not nearly drunk enough to deal with this."
Users who missed the rumors: "...WTF."
Broke Users: "Wow, awesome."
Laid-Back Users: "Interesting."
Pervy Users: "No inappropriate ads? No fair!"
Disenchanted Users: "Bloody sellouts."
LJ Supporters: "It's LJ, so it's got to be good."
Disenchanted Users: "No, it doesn't 'got to be good'. How much crack have you been smoking?"
LJ Supporters: "Less than you, evidently."
( ... read more^h^h^h^h threaded flamewar... )
LJ User Trying To Read The Discussion: "Damn this is a lot of comments."
LJ Staff: "OMG. Why did I not remember to buy another bottle of Scotch?"
Paid Users: "Could be worse. At least they're not going all MySpace on us."
Free Users: "Perish the thought."
MySpace Diehard: "When are they going to make it so you can take people off your friend-of list?"
Support Volunteer: "MySpace shows only mutual friends. You, too, can choose to show only mutual friends on your userinfo page! At least LJ tells you when someone's reading you, vs. MySpace where someone can so totally be stalking you without you realizing it if they have you private-bookmarked."
Disenchanted LJ Users: "This ad crap is so totally too much like MySpace."
MySpace Diehard: "So you spend enough time on MySpace to know what it's like? Hypocrite."
Paid Users: "Just glad I won't have to see these unless I get logged out."
Paid Users with Free Accounts: "Or logged in under an alternate free account."
Paid Users: "Who seriously goes around logged in under another username any significant amount of time?"
Locked RP Enthusiasts: "You'd be surprised."
FireFox Users: "Meet my friend ... Adblock."
LJ Technicalities People: "Meet your enemy, the part of the LJ TOS that says you can't."
FireFox Users: "Weeaaall, shit. They can't ban me if they don't catch me..."
LJ Technicalities People: "So what are you doing talking about it in a
news post, then?" brad (belatedly): "Drat those lawyers! I never meant to say that!"Legally-Savvy LJ Users: "Is it time for new lawyers, then?"
New Sponsored+ Users: "Whee! Features! Thank you, LJ!"
Would-Be Sponsored+ Users: "GHA! It fux0red my layout!"
lj_ads: "Care to give a little more feedback on what isn't working?" Free Users with Standards: "Not with those features. Now if I got to do X and Y, I'd consider it..."
Curious Users: "Who's got screenshots?"
Curious Paid/Permanent Users: "This sounds nifty to try out. How do I turn it on if I'm paid/permanent?"
Bitter Users: "... you've got to be on crack."
LJ Users with Standards: "Flash ads? Fuck no."
Bitter Paid Users: "LJ is t3h suxx0r."
Pissed-off Users Trying To Read Comments: "Dude. Get a fucking life."
Bitter Paid Users: "The value of my journal has depreciated!"
Pissed-off Users: "The value of my life has depreciated by watching you whine. LJ Geeks, how's about that killfile so I won't have to read this person even by accident?"
LJ Geeks: *probably aren't reading the thread or else they might agree*
GreatestJournal Supporters: "GJ > LJ."
LiveJournal Supporters: "LJ > GJ."
GJ Supporters: "Sellouts."
LJ Supporters: "Your momma."
Old-School LJ Users: "Why did they ever get rid of invite codes?"
Early Adopters: "Where's the love?"
Longtime
news Readers: "Page 6? You're slipping." permmembers: "Yay for permanent accounts!" alexlucard: LJ, in general, according to my oh-so-scientific poll, has the following overwhelming feeling about the ads: 'PIKACHU!!!' " alexlucard: *is presented with the Internets* Seriously Ad-Opposed Users: *create communities*
LJ Realist: "OK, if you think making a community about it is going to make a difference, go right on ahead!"
Disenchanted Users: *join anti-ad communities*
Concerned Free Users: "Wait, so you're advocating that we give the silent treatment to everybody who wants to try out the Sponsored+ thing?"
Seriously Ad-Opposed Users: "If you cared about the INTEGRITY OF LJ, you would too!"
Support Volunteers: *ask intelligent questions*
LJ Staff: *answer*
Trolls Masquerading as Legit LJ Users: *have a field day*
Formerly Decent LJ Users: *start slinging nastiness too*
Sarcastic LJ Users: *mock the typical comments and nasty attitudes*
Old-School LJ User: "Let's just give ads to the
slashdot refugees and the trolls." Lots of LJ Users: "I love you."
Normal LJ Users: *burn out on reading the discussions*
azurelunatic: "I summarize it so you don't have to read all of it! Where'd I put my eyespork?"LJ Staff: "Still not drunk enough!"
- Location:home: Phoenix, AZ
- Mood:
*eyespork*
- Music:IM chimes
Перевод на русский
mcmartyn ]Malicious Security Crackers: "We used to take an account and try out about 40,000 passwords on it in about 5 seconds to see if it would unlock. LJ doesn't let us do that anymore. Damn that LJ! We'll show them! Here, have a malicious script!"
Malicious script: *takes 5 most commonly used passwords, tries them on 40,000 different accounts*
4000 LJ accounts: *unlock*
Malicious Security Crackers: "Score!"
LJ Geeks: "O RLY."
LJ: *stops allowing even remotely easy passwords*
4000 LJ users: "Hey! That was a perfectly good password! Why'd you make me change it?"
LJ Support: *facepalm*
LJ Geeks: *write more code*
LJ Admin: "Release the code!" *pokes server*
LJ Server: *falls over* "Error 500! Ow!" *can't get up*
LJ Admin: *blush*
LJ Addicts: "OMG ERROR 500!!"
LJ Support: "We know."
Bantown Crackers: "Hey, cool security flaws in Javascript, IE, and Firefox!"
Security Flaws: "How are you gentlemen?!"
LJ: "What happen?"
Bantown Crackers: "All your base are belong to us."
LJ Admin: "Subdomains for everybody! Fuck off, craxx0rbitches."
Free Users: "Yaaaay!"
Paid Users: "...no fair. Like we ever use voice post."
Permanent Users: "STFU, n00bs."
LJ Admin: "What they said. Suck it. Security reasons. Plenty of other sites out there."
Early Adopters: "Where's the LOVE?"
brad: "STFU, n00bs." ![[info]](http://stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
_____xo_so_em0_x_xx_____: "MY UNDERSCORES! WTF!" LJ Support: "You got a rename token, so suck it."
so__________gratuitous_x_x_x: "WTF? They got a free rename token and I didn't?" LJ Support: "It's called restrictions on what subdomains can be named. Your username still works. Deal."
so__________gratuitous_x_x_x: "OMG THE HYPHENS!" note_to_cat maintainer volunteering in Support: "Suck it." Bantown Crackers: "We still got cookies, yo."
LJ Admins: "Oh no you don't."
All login cookies: *expire*
Bantown Crackers: "Well, fuck. Eh, more suckers to hack out there."
All previously logged-in users: "WTF? We're logged out!"
LJ Support: "Big frickin' deal. Log in again. Duh."
The half of LJ that wasn't paying attention: "...Dude. What did they do with the passwords and URLs and shit? How come I got logged out? Somebody? Anybody? Bueller?"
LJ Support: "OMG HEADACHE."
Profile
- azurelunatic
- The Reverend Miss Lunatic (bolt of blue)
- Azure's Asylum (old content, mostly abandoned)
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