Dream a little dream...

[alyse]

Just posting this one to dreamwidth in semagic, and doing the 'post to multiple journals' to try it out from that end.

I'm actually really liking dreamwidth so far. Things I like:

- I love the import function. It made it unbelievably easy to port 8 years worth of LJ, and its comments, over to a new site. And the countdown telling you where it was, very cool.

- I like the separation of 'reading' versus 'access'. It would be lovely to think that this would cut down on the whole friending/defriending wank but I suspect that, with people being people, it will simply turn into 'why have you given me access but aren't bothering reading me?' or 'why are you reading me but locking me out' wank instead. But still, it makes that default view filter rather pointless ::g::

- I'm assuming that more layouts are coming, so I won't comment on that, but I did like the fact that you could add multiple usericons on the one page as opposed to adding them one at a time. Of course, then I discovered the 'journal import' feature, and discovered it ported in userpics, too (so, so cool!) and therefore I wouldn't have to add them en masse (which is just as well, because I got bored and I have over 150 icons on LJ), but still. Given that every now and then I think 'oh, dear, I've added new icons to LJ but not IJ', it will make my life easier. Assuming that I get a paid account over here, which I'm dithering about. It may very well be that I only use it like IJ, i.e. as a way to keep track of people not on LJ, with LJ being my default, but we'll see. I won't be getting a seed account - they're out of my price range at the moment, and I prefer the dust to settle before committing long term to things anyway.

Things I'm not so fond of:

- the layouts, but as noted above, I suspect that this will change and probably quite quickly

Things I haven't yet tried (but will do)

- per temaris, you can post from DW's web interface to your other LJ clone sites. At first I was all 'meh, I have semagic for that' (which I ♥) but then I realised that semagic doesn't work on linux, which means that this interface may become very useful when I'm out and about with the wee Acer. And from Tem's testing, it appears that all edits also extrapolate across the sites, which will be immensely useful for I am the typo queen. And also for updating ficathon masterlists etc

Bugs/weird things that I haven't figured out yet how to report (or even figure out whether they're reportable):

- the lack of a 'default view' filter (the one that serves as your default friendspage when you're logged in). (Yes, I do use it as it helps me easily cycle comms in particular on and off my reading list depending on how much/how little time I have. And helps me stay relatively sane when fandoms are going 'boom!'). I discovered this when I realised that in spite of the filter being created by the import function, it didn't have anyone in it (in theory meaning I shouldn't have had any entries on my reading page) and yet my reading page showed all the accounts I'm subscribed to.

I'm not sure whether this is deliberate, because it's felt to be redundant due to the differences between subscribe and allow access (see above); whether it's deliberate because it's not something that dreamwidth wishes to support; or an oversight. It doesn't bother me too much, but it's a weird thing.

- when posting from semagic, tags don't work on Dreamwidth. With LJ and IJ, not only existing tags but also newly created tags in semagic are posted along with the entry, but with Dreamwidth it's neither, so I am tagless ::sniff:: I suspect that will get annoying in the medium to long term, so it would also fall under the 'things I don't love' heading as well, but for now I'm assuming it's a bug. Also worth noting - when I switch to my dreamwidth account in semagic, there is no tag input option. Semagic or DW? Don't know, but I suspect the latter given that the field exists on all my other accounts, including journalfen and originally journalfen didn't support tags and was missing that field as well on the semagic interface, and because even if I create the entry under another account that does have that field and cross post it to DW, the tags aren't there ah ha! I had vague recollections of this being an issue on journalfen once they enabled tags, and therefore googled it and found the instructions for enabling it under the userprofile using regedit. Did that, and I now have the tag and location fields under my DW account interface, and it should now work when posting. If anyone else needs it, the instructions I used were on queenbarwench's IJ here.

- there's some weird formatting issue going on with imported comments, whereby whenever someone uses the lj user tag in a comment, that account name and accompanying little head is followed by a huge big space before the next word. I suspect it's an issue with the definition of 'span' in the comment properties of layouts, because it doesn't seem to affect the main body, even with imported journal entries, but it is weird anyway.

I don't know if the same issue occurs with non-imported comments, as no one has commented yet, let alone commented and used an lj user tag. Perhaps I should check at some point, but I'm trying to limit the number of times I talk to myself in any 24 hour period.

Overall, I'm impressed even though I'm currently wedded to LJ. A naughty weekend or two may well be in the offing, just to familiarise myself with all of it's ::cough:: features.

Comments

[01]

I was slightly astonished to see that most people already treat the subscribe/access exactly like the friending function. Actually not surprised as such, I just had expected a little time to elapse before the relapse, considering it was always such a bone of contention on LJ.

[alyse]

I think that most people, at the moment, are treating DW exactly like LJ, in that they're seeking out the people they know on LJ and are therefore giving them the same sorts of access to their locked material as they do on LJ. After all, it doesn't make much sense - and might cause a bit of contention - if you give people access to your locked material on LJ and then shut them out on DW.

I think what might be more interesting is to see the reaction to not returning the 'reading' favour in the longer term. After all, if you're happy to give people access to any locked stuff, but aren't interested in reading what they're saying, you can grant access and not subscribe to their journal - which may be of more interest to people who, say, lock away their fic (so requesting access falls into the 'I'm over the required age' sort of disclaimer). But I also suspect that might be a bit touchy for people. After all, that implies that someone you're interested in reading, and has no qualms about letting you read everything they say, may simply not interested in what you have to say. In fandom that's sort of a touchy subject because of the elitism it implies, and fandom can go boom at anything suggesting that (less so in traditional blogging, probably, but most of the influx into DW so far seems to be fannish in nature).

On LJ you could get around that with the 'default view' function - friend someone back so that they had access if you wanted, but then actually filter their posts off your default reading list so they didn't show up on your friends page. They never know, and so the wangst potential becomes more limited, and your friends page stays a manageable size (I will admit to having occasionally done this when I couldn't face the drama, although most of my 'off filter' stuff has been comms).

Hello, btw. I don't think I know you :)

[01]

*nods* I think that was already introduced with the openIDs, in that people could grant access to others they wanted to read their posts but weren't interested in themselves. I was surprised when I noticed I was granted access, and clicked in return but already regret it because I'm not really posting and they haven't subscribed to me. Making that process more open here ... well, it's just a little more obvious, but I can't see much changing about the way people feel about it. They can still use the filter, and I know people on LJ had found some *handwaves* gimmicky way to find out if they were actually being read by their "friends" or filtered out.

Hello. Keeping with the above, I'm just trying out a compilation of journals here, mostly of names I know or slightly interacted on LJ in the past.

[alyse]

I always think that if people care so much about whether or not they're being read and by whom, to the extent where they have to embed things like lj-toys or sneaky pixels and stuff, then they pretty much don't get to bitch about what they've found out ::g::

I've largely got a DW account so that I can keep up with my friends who are moving over here permanently. There are one or two who are doing that, and I don't want to lose them. I've had other accounts on other LJ clones or similar before, and I find I use them in exactly the same way after a while, because it's far too confusing for me otherwise :) The one thing I have noted is that even with openID, it doesn't seem as though flocked posts on the other site show up on your flist through the rss feed, but that might be one of the things I check out here. If it does work, then I may simply do that, although I do like some of the other things in the DW interface that are lacking on LJ, like the ability to post across sites and edit across sites from the one location. I use semagic, normally, but I have a little linux Acer, and obviously semagic doesn't work with that, so I end up just posting to LJ. I may find now that I end up posting to DW and cross posting instead, so that might be useful, and I was incredibly impressed at how easy it was to import 8 years worth of LJ over to the new site, tags and all.

So that's my longwinded way of saying I'm not sure how active reading wise I'll be over here, but I'll probably at least cross post stuff and may use different communities over here if they offer something new.