beatrice_otter | Entries tagged with dreamwidth

So, first, astolat created and melannen modified a little bookmarklet that is super easy to use to signal boost!

melannen posted: Signal Boost: SignalBoost✔ bookmarklet

All you do is log in to DW, go to the page you want to signal boost, highlight any text you want to quote, and then click on the bookmarklet. If it's access-locked, you'll get a pop-up warning you and asking you if you want to continue. On any other webpage, it will automatically redirect to the DW posting window.

It's not quite as easy as reblogging on tumblr, but almost. So if you, like me, often want to share cool things your circle post and wish there was an easier way to do it, there we have it!

On a very different topic, here's a really interesting post on what problems people often have expressing emotions if they weren't taught how as children, and ways to learn how to do it better and also connect with people and (hopefully) get support and connection while you do it:

staranise posted: (no subject)

But if you haven't been socialized to acknowledge and express an emotion growing up, you don't have those paths ready-made, either to express an emotion or to request social interaction. So there's a ton of us carrying catastrophically huge emotion around who don't express it in a recognizable way, nor know what kind of response we want. We have to build all that neural infrastructure from scratch.

This is great

I figured, given that it's been years since I deleted my LJ, I should probably make a DW protest icon to replace my old LJ one. This is based on the old LJ protest icon I had that I have no idea where I got--sorry, whoever it was, I've been using it without crediting it for years.

(For tumblr peeps, a brief explanation of icons: one chooses icons for each post and comment based on what fits. They can be used for commentary in much the same way as gifs can. Lots of people make icons to share. The polite thing to do is to give credit to the artist who made them, by listing their name in the comment section when you upload the icon to your account.)

Protest Icon

So there has been kerfluffle and wank over community norms and terminology between tumblr refugees and Ye Olde DW Hands. Basically, what's the etiquette for sharing someone else's content (which seems to have been greatly magnified by tumblrites using "reblogging" for what DW peeps call "linking").

legionseagle has a roundup and some funny (albeit dense) British legal witicism about the whole thing.

Also,

melannen has some thoughts on adult content warnings on DW, and what actually happens when you set your whole journal as 18+.

And given how long it's been since I've even HAD an LJ, maybe it's time to create a protest icon for DW?

sylvaine has a big rec list of communities.

umadoshi has a couple of posts rounding up lots of guides and stuff about how to use/get to know DW.

conuly has yet more stuff on how to DW.

siderea wrote interesting meta on how to encourage a flourishing community on DW.

flamebyrd is looking to make DW more user-friendly.

I feel like a large flaw in Dreamwidth as a fandom platform right now, other than multimedia content, is that a lot of the site (non-user pages, like profiles and inbox) still has poor mobile support. Unfortunately, there isn't anything I can do about that.

So! For those who use desktop browsers, are there any annoyances a bored fan with Javascript skills can fix with a bookmarklet or userscript?

--Join the discussion and see the tools they've already developed at their post.

Over on tumblr, things are shaking up--tumblr is changing how people track tags and search for tags, and also they've taken away (mostly) the ability to reply to a post.

madamehardy hits the nail on the head as to why:

"When you consider the latest highly annoying changes to Tumblr, never forget that they aren’t meant for you. Yahoo, Tumblr’s owner, is under a lot of pressure to make some money. That means that Tumblr has to either pull its weight or be shut down. In the Web-ancient adage, “If you aren’t the customer, you’re the product.” That is, if you aren’t directly paying for any Website, then the Website is selling you, in the form of advertising. Tumblr desperately needs to monetize you. To monetize you, they need to know your personal demographics, so that they can sell groups of similar users to advertisers."

“If you aren’t the customer, you’re the product.”

Let me repeat that again: “If you aren’t the customer, you’re the product.”

This is why I really, really don’t like websites where advertising is part of the revenue stream. I would rather pay up front–in donations or user fees–and be the CUSTOMER who is catered to instead of the PRODUCT that the website is SELLING to its advertisers.

What Tumblr is doing now? That’s what LJ used to do, back when LJ was the fandom hub. The great advantage of DW over LJ is that DW’s users are its CUSTOMER base, because DW organized their finances from the very beginning so that they didn’t need ads. User revenues–paid accounts, merchandise from the store, extra icons, etc–pay the bills. DW is never going to be a huge goliath of money-making, but it doesn’t have to be because it is financially self-sustaining and makes a decent income for the owners. (And they manage it on a freemium basis, where basic accounts are free, and you get more features if you pay but you don’t have to to use the site.) DW has other issues, but we are not the commodity we are the customers.

AO3 is similar. The whole POINT of AO3 was that a big enough segment of fans got fed up with being the commodity and not the customers, and wanted to own the servers that fannish work was on. AO3 has problems–huge problems–but at that they are quite successful. We own the servers. Our donations fund a service designed by, for, and about US.

Pinboard is also user-supported. That fee you pay? That means that we are the customer, not the commodity. Which means that while Pinboard may eventually close down, it won’t do like Delicious did and make itself unusable for us while making itself more attractive to its advertisers.

I know tumblr has a lot of great features. But maybe that shouldn’t be the number one thing we as fandom look for in a website. Because what do the features matter if they get yanked out from under us every time they’re not profitable enough?

LJ has a new bug where people can be accidentally logged in as other people--you can't change anything, but you can see flocked posts of whoever it is the system logs you in as incorrectly. IOW, random people may be able to see your private stuff if they get logged in as you. Not cool, LJ, not cool. Fix soon, plz, kthnxby.

eruthros has a good roundup of what's going on.

In other news, I have 18 unused Dreamwidth invite codes if anyone wants them.

There are several people in the Dreamwidth support queue right now (me among them) who aren't receiving e-mailed notifications of comments on entries we post or replies to our entries unless we click on the icon to track that entry. (And, for added bonus fun, some of us are only getting some of the notifications on entries we're tracking getting to us, which might be spam filters somewhere along the line.) So check your inbox for comments that you haven't received!

Also, COMMENTS ON ENTRIES IN OTHER COMMUNITIES DON'T GET SENT TO YOUR INBOX. This is just the way the system works, part of the legacy code from LJ, I don't know why but entries in coms get different treatment than entries in your own journal. So if you aren't getting the comments e-mailed to you, there is NO WAY to find out you have comments other than to actually go to that entry and check, or to track that entry so that the comments will at least show up in your inbox..

If you're surprised you haven't gotten as many comments as usual lately? That's probably why.

If you find you're not getting your comments:

1) Open a support request
2) Include specific information. If you're getting some things e-mailed to you and not others, include links to the stuff you're getting e-mailed about and also to what's not getting to you.

No idea how long it'll take them to figure out what's going on (there's at least one report of this that's three weeks old), but the more people who report the problem the more data they have, and the more incentive they have to figure it out and fix it.

I have multiple invite codes for both Dreamwidth and Archive Of Our Own. Comment below with your e-mail and which type (or both) of code if you want one; comments are screened.

AO3 is an awesome multifandom archive. It's easy to upload fics; the tagging system is frankly awesome, particularly for readers who want to find new fics to read. The collections feature is great; so is the series feature. And if you want to run a fic exchange, the Archive provides software to handle signups and matching, and automated checks on who has fulfilled their assignment and who hasn't. Basically, as both a reader and writer of fanfic, AO3 is my absolute favorite archive for a lot of reasons. And, it's built, maintained, and owned solely by fans for fans!

Dreamwidth is similar enough to LJ to make the transition easy, except that Dreamwidth is run by people who actually give a damn about following their own ToS and about their users privacy and wishes. They've pledged themselves to transparency, both business-wise and code-wise, and so far they're doing a darn good job of it. (Remember Strikethrough? When a nutty group out to Save the Children complained to LJ and its advertisers, and got many accounts suspended or deleted without warning, among which were a support group for incest survivors and a book discussion group that was reading Lolita? Yeah, so does DW. So when they started getting pressure from a similar group, they stood their ground, even when it cost them money because it meant they had to switch banks twice in two months and have online payments down for about that long.) Plus, it's really, really easy to import all your stuff from LJ to DW using the DW importer, and it's also really easy to crosspost to LJ using the DW posting interface.

Both projects are open source, and both (particularly DW) make a point of nurturing new code developers, particularly those with little or no prior experience, so if you want to learn how to be a computer programmer, either project is a great way to start.

There's a lot of newbies around, who are fleeing the LiveFaceTwitBook debacle. They have formed a community called

lj_refugees, and regularly ask questions about how to use the site, what coms are out there for particular things, etc. They could probably use some people who have been here for a while to answer questions and rec communities. If that's your thing, go for it.

Given the large numbers of people signing up in the wake of the latest LJ shenanigans, I thought I'd post a handy faq: Guide to DW for LJ users.

Given the overwhelmingly negative response to LJ's newest "feature," being able to crosspost to FB, and the privacy problems with the way it was implemented, now seems like a good time to mention that I have many, many Dreamwidth invite codes just waiting to be used. Comment to this post with your e-mail (comments screened) and I will send one to you.

(My biggest problem was that tags with a "/" in them weren't working this morning. I'm assuming it was an unintended side-effect of fixing the one case of reposting where tags weren't working correctly?)

Anyway. Fun stuff! Pro author Patricia C. Wrede is doing very interesting writing meta in her blog; the latest one is on writing humor. Well worth checking out; she's a great author and knows her stuff. (I love her Enchanted Forest series, and Sorcery and Cecelia.)

I has 'em, if you want 'em. Comment below with your e-mail if you want one, comments are screened.

So, because I'm on DW these days, and want all my comments in the same place, comments are disabled on my LJ as you might have noticed. So I occasionally get anonymous comments by people who don't have DWJs and want to comment. But! If you have an LJ, you actually can sign in using your LJ identity to DW, through a process called OpenID that LJ pioneered and also works at several different blogsites. Using your OpenID you can't make posts, but you can store icons for use on DW, make comments, get notified through e-mail when people reply to your comments, and subscribe to people so that you get a DW reading page that's similar to an LJ friends page, if you have multiple people/communities on DW you want to follow. The only thing you can't do is post entries. Best of all, the whole system is pretty easy to set up and use. So, here's how to use OpenID.

The Affiliate Thing (ganked from

rydra_wong):

LJ would like you to know:

Last week, we became aware that a recently-implemented script was overwriting affiliate referral fees for some of our users. Once we confirmed this, our Ops team quickly removed the script. Please be aware that, while we may beta-test other affiliate scripts down the line, we will take greater measures to ensure that no existing user-referral arrangements are impacted in any way.

In other words: they will be redirecting your links to slap affiliate codes on them and make money out of them in future.

As comments from the reps indicated, the "mistake" this time was that it stripped existing affiliate codes (thus massively violating the affiliate agreement with Amazon and pissing their lawyers off).

But hijacking your links and redirecting them through a third-party site for fun and profit? That was the point.

Stay classy, LJ. Stay classy.

I have Dreamwidth invite codes, free for the taking to whoever wants them! Comment with your e-mail and I will send them, first come, first served (Comments will be screened, so you don't have to worry about your email hanging out there). Also, since the Remix Redux will be hosted on AO3 this year, if you want to participate you need an invite code, which they will be happy to send you. (Also, if you're going to participate in the Remix, you need to friend

remixers_lounge so you can stay current with what's happening.) AO3 is a multifandom archive run by fans for fans, on new code written just for it, and so far I'm loving it. It's a lot more flexible than, say, ff.net, and I love the tag system.

Three Dreamwidth journal-creation codes available. Comment with your e-mail to claim one; comments will be screened.

Dreamwidth has implemented a new feature in beta form: text search for paid users. From my understanding, you can't search private journals that don't belong to you, but you can search your own journal and communities. And things posted/edited in the last 24 hours won't come up. Still, very cool.

I have two invite codes, first come, first served. Reply with your e-mail if you want one, comments are screened.

I have five DW invite codes, which will go to the first five people who request them. Comment here to request them. Comments are screened.

For those of you who have just gotten accounts: http://zvi.dreamwidth.org/503716.html (Yeah, I know, it was written for closed beta. It's still got some good information in it.) Also, the official communities for news and stuff are both more interesting and more informative than the LJ versions.

ETA: all used.

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Otter's Rock

Entries tagged with dreamwidth

Signal Boost: SignalBoost✔ bookmarklet and How To Express Emotions

DW Protest Icon

Linkspam

Roundup of all the guides and stuff people have been posting about DW lately

Signal Boost: Dreamwidth Browser Tools

The difference between being the customer and being the commodity

LJ privacy breach

Apparently I'm not the only one. PSA--COMMENT NOTIFICATIONS

AO3 and Dreamwidth: invite codes available!

LJ refugees

For those new to DW: a FAQ

Oh, LJ.

Dreamwidth invite codes!

For those of you on LJ who want to comment to my posts: a primer on how to use OpenID

Reason number ten billion why I prefer DW to LJ

Invite codes!

Dreamwidth invite codes

I can haz search!

Two Dreamwidth Invite Codes!