The Old DW/LJ Issue, From The Other Side

[penpusher]

In 2017, I talked about how nobody is actually using Dreamwidth for their blogs, HERE, one of my entries in that year's LJ Idol, back when I tried to get people to leave the Russian owned LiveJournal for more American pastures.

Of course, everyone was completely resistant to the concept. It is hard getting folks to change their habits, especially when the audience I was playing to mostly consisted of people participating in a competition that celebrated the platform on which we were located! Not to mention I had an LJ permanent account, or, in the Яussian method of description: "Account with Permanent package of service" (which I can't help but hear in my head in a broken English style stereotypical Muscovite accent). Here, I'm just a second class nobody, with more than half of my icons and tags unavailable to me because I'm not a paid subscriber.

I'm not going to bother to make the case to leave the old El Jay again, even here at my new blog home, but I do have some observations on being a Daily DW user, with a mostly LJ reading page.

If the people you read on DW are actually writing from LJ, there are two big problems that occur.

The first is that LJ writers mirroring their journal on DW won't see any comment you make on their post until they come to DW directly and either see it in their "inbox" or find it on their entry.

To that, I say DW needs to institute email alerts, as LJ has had from the start, so folks can know when someone has responded to their entries as it happens. That's a major reason why it's more like a ghost town over here.

Conversely, LJ writers already have a community that is writing and responding to them, there. So, tramping over to DW to see the five, two, one(?!) other people, or person you may want to read is, in fact, a chore.

And it's a somewhat thankless chore. Because what if you check in every day? And days go by and there's nothing? The negative reinforcement will likely drop that down to once or twice a week, once a month or eventually, to whenever you think of it, which could be, never.

But today, I noticed on my DW reading page, a bunch of new entries... Well, new to me, but they were dated with dates from last week.

That means that either the interface from LJ to DW is slow to load - the entries that are being forwarded from LiveJournal to Dreamwidth aren't getting there fast enough. OR, more likely, it's that entries that are mirrored have a slower time populating on your reading list and instead of posting there as they come through, they show up in your feed... When they do.

That's a problem because I may miss days of posts, then get flooded by entries I simply didn't see until long after they were written.

And that contributes to the downward spiral. I check my reading page, comment where appropriate, receive no comments on my entries because no one is here reading them, check my reading page and find nothing new, but then, a day or two later, I see a bunch of entries all at once and feel compelled to answer them all, even though it might be days before anyone knows I did.

So DW needs to fix the reading page feed to make sure these mirrored entries get listed in a timely manner. At least that would help the feeling of isolation here.

Comments

[matrixmann]

I think it was with mirrored entries that they're first marked to not show up on your reading page (I could be wrong, but I think I've seen that on my old imported ones).
Whereas it's practically better if you crosspost from here to LJ, so they show up on both reading lists as you do them. Including that there's the option to edit an entry here and also transmit the change to LJ without having to do the editing manually on both sites (if an entry has only been imported, you have to do it separately for each edition of the entry on both platforms as they're not linked inside DWs posting system; it would only cause to generate a new post with the changed content).

[penpusher]

That implies that I am still looking to be active on LJ. I'm not.

I noted all of the points you listed in the several entries I wrote RE: Dreamwidth and LiveJournal. I think they're all under my LiveJournal tag, if you have absolutely nothing else to do!

I am essentially off LJ and it's only because several friends over there asked me nicely that I didn't go nuclear...

[matrixmann]

Errr, no, that was just mentioning the technical details that I noticed in between if using both platforms. Maybe somwhere there lie the reasons for the overall picture you get to see.
Otherwise I couldn't imagine either why this is so...

[penpusher]

I'm pretty sure that somehow DW is treating migrated LJ entries like a syndicated feed or something. They don't post to the reading list the way DW entries do. Or so I'm observing.

And let me say thanks for commenting. It's the first exchange I've had in my journal in a very long time.

[matrixmann]

Happy to see if I could cause someone a bit of joy with my emergence!

[kizzy]

My take from my DW/LJ experience thus far:

1. Most of my LJ friends who have accounts here, including myself, post here and have LJ as the mirror because it doesn't work vice versa. Most of us include the link back to DW but I have no idea if anyone reading me on LJ would follow it.

2. The replies I have from DW are DW specific, which means I have to actually sit down at my desktop and log in in order to read them. I don't do this every day because I tend to do stuff from my phone and DW doesn't have an app for that.

3. Bouncing between two platforms without being on a laptop/desktop is difficult, so I think people tend to favor the *easier* one to navigate, which at this point is LJ.

4. DW can't afford to develop its own app. You can navigate it via the web if you're desperate but it's very clunky to do so.

5. Idol did its last season here on DW and it was a failure as far as both contestants and traffic were concerned. They actually sent out emails to former contestants urging them to visit so those who were playing didn't feel as though they were shouting to the wind. This season it's back on LJ. Some people who, like yourself, who left LJ for here returned to LJ specifically for Idol. Whether or not they'll stay remains to be seen.

6 I've noticed that there's a huge lag with DW notifications. For instance, I've never gotten a notice that you've replied to one of my posts. Now that I think of it, I can't remember the last time I got a DW notification for anything DW related.

[kizzy]

The other thing I wonder about: Are those in charge of DW keeping as close tabs on it as they once were? The last big notice I received from them was over a year ago where they were talking about wanting to upgrade but not having the funds to do so. And then I think, well, that was the big problem with LJ in that because most of the users had free accounts, they outstripped those who had paid or permanent accounts...and this was before monetizing became a thing. I know DW is committed to no advertising but seriously, how can it continue to survive without any kind of funds coming in? If they had a dependable revenue stream, then they would have the $ to upgrade its servers and develop the tools to make using it much easier.

[penpusher]

LJ didn't love selling perm accounts. And they very rarely did it. But it was a good cash infusion.

And yes, if the site isn't covering expenses, at the bare minimum, it's only a matter of time till it closes. Considering how many are using Dreamwidth as their back up, that's something to think about.

[penpusher]

Hm.

I think people can still migrate their LJ entries, maybe weekly? I'm guessing when I should ask. But I never regularly posted on DW until very recently, so maybe I have some learning to do.

DW is 2001 LJ clunky. And I do miss my LJ permanent account.

I was not one of the people who was informed of the DW Idol season.

It's all a lag and a drag... (more in your next comment)

[kizzy]

Hm.

I honestly don't know about weekly migration or even if anybody is doing such. It's never occurred to me in part because I don't think of my DW/LJ as a feed or blog. It's a journal, dammit!

2001 clunky? Yep, right there with you. Or in my case, 2002 clunky because I think that's when I joined LJ. I taught myself the CSS to make my own layouts back then!

I have nothing on that. I have no idea.

I didn't know that about permanent accounts. I was always led to believe that they were seldom offered because they were *special*. I had a paid account for many years just so I could have the icons and do my own advanced layouts. Permanent was no doubt less expensive over the long run, but I couldn't bring myself to pony up all the $ at once whenever it was offered.

I think there used to be an LJ Archive site where you could download your entire LJ either to your own computer or print it in book form. I remember people saying it was clunky, and if you had years upon years of LJ entries it'd take days to download. You'd probably also get kicked off the server numerous times without realizing it too. I already have a backup of all my Idol entries over the years as well as all my entries about caring for my mom. Those are the only two things I really care about for posterity.

[penpusher]

I attempted to use that LJ Archive a couple of times, and I wasn't trying to print; I just wanted a stable copy of my journal to keep as an offline record. (Were they PDFs? I don't even remember now!) In no case did I successfully download even a portion of my LJ, though it was a fraction of the size it is, now.

DW is like starting all over again, only the price is a lot higher. I bought my perm LJ in 2005. It cost 150 bucks. At the (then) paid rate of 25 dollars a year, in 2011 I had a free perm LJ account. Here, to get a similar level account costs 50 a year, or 35 if you want to have a second tier paid account. No option of a similar perm "seed" (as DW calls them) journal.

DW probably should drop the "no ads, ever" concept, except for two things.

1. Traffic

2. Staff.

I don't actually know if people are coming to the DW site with any regularity, but we know that it's at a far lower rate than FB, IG, the tweeter and maybe even LJ. That means that advertisers would be less interested in buying ads on DW.

Additionally, in order to get ads on a site, you need an advertising staff, or at least one good ad person, to meet clients, pitch the site, figure out where to place these ads, among a laundry list (brought to you by Tide) of things needed to get that to work.

That's a little scary and also opens things up to other issues, like taxes, profit/loss, etc. These are all areas denise and mark likely don't know much about and probably want little to do with. And it would mean DW was getting further out of their control.

I talked with Gary about why I wasn't contacted about DW Idol and his only answer was he forgot to add me. I likely would have participated even as I wanted to move away from Idol, because it would have help boost interest in DW, as I had previously promoted LJ.

[kizzy]

I was going to say it was probably an oversight on Gary's end but since I'm not him, I didn't want to speculate.

I used my byes rather quickly this season because of work (aka I knew I wasn't going to make deadlines), missed a third and was booted to Second Chance, then missed a deadline there and was booted out entirely. A big thing I've noticed this season is that the longer you play as a *older* Idol vet, not only do you have less to say, you also have less wherewithal to write. It's happened the last couple of seasons too. No doubt the virus is amplifying it. Everybody who's still playing has mentioned it in some way. Given that most of them *are* older vets...well, there you go. Most are still there because they don't want to disappoint Gary, and he's still doing it because he's afraid he'll lose touch with everybody as in "Well, you might be on my feed somewhere else but here you're REALLY going to let down your hair." (My opinion, btw.)

A lot of Idolers cross post their entries. I have never seen any commentary on any of them here -- it all happens on LJ. A couple of seasons ago a few people used their own blogs to post and they got relatively little traffic.

I think I remember Denise and Mark saying that they just wanted DW as a little island They weren't interested in growth, they just wanted to be a sanctuary for those fleeing LJ. I think they've succeeded with that but is it sustainable?

[penpusher]

Hm. Less to say, you say?

To me the best part of Idol was getting the prompt and seeing how I could bend and twist it to my terms, or perhaps letting it bend and twist me! I would never run out of things to use for a story because there's a universe out there!

Besides that, it's not the story, it's how you tell it... "Working Girl." "Seven Pounds." "The Devil Wears Prada." These are all, essentially the same story: "Cinderella," the most oft told tale retold that I know. Yet they are all told differently enough that they all have a place.

I think all the commentary is on LJ because the game is there. Everybody unofficially agrees to that. But I have found that halfshellvenus is playing so I comment to her posts here. I'm not voting or reading anyone else (though I would have read yours if i had returned in time).

Is DW sustainable? It's a difficult question. With no interest in monetizing the site, everything is stagnant. DW will remain its clunky self for a very long time. And no one is rushing to this form of social media for ANY purpose... Even ONTD, which used to get thousands of comments on stories, now barely breaks the triple digits every third or fourth post.

My fear is a different one from LJ. There, I thought the Russians could use the site for whatever their plans called for. That could be propaganda, surveillance, or possibly even shutting down the site, maybe without warning. Here, it's that lack of a safety net and the cost prohibitive pricing for paid accounts. Obviously part of that is because so few people are here.

I'm not worried that any problems are imminent but I wasn't worried about the United States at the start of the year and, well, we all know how that's going.

[kizzy]

To me the best part of Idol was getting the prompt and seeing how I could bend and twist it to my terms, or perhaps letting it bend and twist me! I would never run out of things to use for a story because there's a universe out there!

It's been exceedingly difficult for me to construct such these past few seasons. The deadline might be HERE, but if I'm working multiple nights THERE which includes the deadline, and I only have a precious couple of hours to myself in the morning where my own needs are secondary...

The whole process gets to be a treadmill the longer you play. There are some Idolers like halfshellvenus who don't seem to struggle with it as much. I think it's a combination of her working from home and her wanting to stretch herself in the way you describe. A former Idoler liked to say that if you want to do something badly enough, you'll make the time to do it.

My fear is a different one from LJ. There, I thought the Russians could use the site for whatever their plans called for. That could be propaganda, surveillance, or possibly even shutting down the site, maybe without warning. Here, it's that lack of a safety net and the cost prohibitive pricing for paid accounts. Obviously part of that is because so few people are here.

If they are using it for those plans, they're being very stealth because there is no indication anywhere AFAIK that they are using for political or other purposes. They already scared off the majority, if not all, of the Russian users so we're basically all that's left. I presume there are some bots still out there so I lock everything down. But I've always done that anyway.

I'm more apt to believe DW will fold before LJ at this point just from a monetary perspective.

I deliberately keep political stuff of most of my social media including here, but, um, yeah.

[penpusher]

You raise a couple of good points. As far as viability goes, there are no cash concerns about LiveJournal.The Russian state owns it and they won't have any financial problems, even as the vast majority of their citizens do.

Dreamwidth, on the other hand, what's the actual story? Do they own the servers? What is their maintenance cost? Are they meeting expenses? The fact that a government owns one and a couple of blogger fans are controlling the other sums it up.

I mentioned my concerns about Russia using LJ surreptitiously because there was an early story about them squelching a Ukraine protest rally by finding the organizers on LJ. And if they can do it once, why wouldn't they use it for other, similar purposes, like trying to influence the election or learning as much as they can about the people of a country they despise and hope will crash and burn.

It's interesting how LITTLE we have heard both from and about Russia during all this, but guess what? The president talked with Putin three separate times last week. What's going on? Yeah. What's going on?

And admittedly if your job takes you away from writing, it requires that much more effort to get back to it. I have been fortunate to have time and motivation. Not everyone does, and I sometimes forget that.