branchandroot | Entries tagged with journals: dw

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So, um, I know it's not the solution that a dedicated mobile app would be, but I did write the Mobility style specifically so that it would scale reasonably for use on mobile devices. (Including the top-bar menu.) In case anyone who browses mostly on mobile might find it helpful. If anyone happens to make a sweet-looking theme for it, think about making that public? I only made two, out of the box.

In case I get in-comers from the blue hellsite... Welcome to a much nicer site!

Profile pages will be a big help in navigating around; that's where you can see what communities and users someone you find interesting reads. That's a good way to hopscotch around to things that have a good chance of interesting you. Or, if you feel lucky, you can hit Random Journal under Explore in the site menu.

Security and visibility are completely in your hands here. If you want to make a post that three specific people who read you won't see, behold you can do that. I'm not saying it's incredibly easy, but it's also not rocket science; just hit Manage Filters under Organize in the site menu. First link on the page is the one you want.

Incidentally, behold the site menu! It doesn't disappear and reappear randomly, how cool is that!?

/heavy sarcasm

The equivalent of tracking a tag is, loosely, a community. Make sure you put the name of the topic (the show, the book, the singer, the team, etc.) in the Interests field when you make the community's profile. That way people will be able to find it when they search. Helps if you talk it up a bit, so there's a group of people who all subscribe and start posting.

Also, lots of questions have been answered on the latest

dw_news post, and the FAQ has a lot of how-to answers.

I would just like to thank the DW spam killing team: overnight I got one of those idiotic "contact me with your credit details so I can send you money from overseas" personal messages, and by the time I logged in this morning the user was already suspended.

*kisses to the spam team!*

Let the record show that, when I link a fic-offering from LJ to my DW, I get no feedback at all. When I link a similar fic-offering from LJ to AO3, I get 3 kudos out of 21 hits. That's a bit over average response rates, normally I get around 1 in 10.

So, my take on a Ticky/Kudo/I-Read-This button on DW posts? Go for it!

Since we seem to be getting another wave of new folks, I thought it might be a good time for a new "Hi, glad to see you!" post.

Welcome to Dreamwidth, pull up a chair, what's your pleasure? *passes around the ~~cookies~~ comms*

So, anime and manga fans may like to check out

anime_manga, which is a lovely community for all things having to do with any anime or manga series. Fic, art, reviews, meta, anything can go there. I started out thinking the individual series-comms would be where the action is at, but those seem to be pretty slow over here. There's a lot more action on individual journals, and

anime_manga is just about the only place I've seen that action come together. I like it a lot, and I hadn't expected to enjoy a general comm so much!

Another lively comm is

fucking_meds. Have you ever been given medication and found it doing something weird? Had to deal with side effects of mixing meds? Just wanted to write a love or hate letter to your antibiotics? This is the place to do it. Great moral support and often funny.

For a little sparkle for your journal, in manageable lots, you might check out

smallbatchicons.

If you like prompts for your journal entries, you may like

thefridayfive, which posts five questions on a given theme each Friday.

And if you want femslash, I can tell you that

girlgay is a wonderfully active but not overwhelming comm.

Of course, if you want to keep following someone from elsewhere who posts unlocked, there are always feeds. I personally get a lot of entertainment out of

ursulav_feed.

Follow Friday links, also for the benefit of the GSoC people:

synecdochic because she's just the much fun.

kaigou if you want your brain turned inside out in interesting ways, especially on the topic of narrative.

snarp who I just picked up and has the distinction of making an April Fools post I actually enjoyed (I hate April Fools with a passion).

copperbadge because Sam's Life in Chicago is endlessly entertaining.

fucking_meds for anyone who has every wanted to complain about a side effect to some medication.

Quick reminder to new readers! I post a lot of content in filters, and most of those are purely for content division and are available to subscribe to. Just fill in the poll on my filter subscription post and I'll get you added. It's the sticky post on my journal, too.

I was wondering when the comment-importing skirl would start.

And it's true, the transfer of content such as comments lies in a rather strange and precarious area. There are two major competing precedents I can see.

One is the correspondence precedent, which says that comments on a blog are as personal email--they are personal communication whose copyright is retained wholly by the originator and which may not be transferred or copied without permission, beyond such quotation as may be covered by fair use. This is complicated by the public nature of a comment and the fact that acceptance or rejection of its publication is in the hands of the blog owner as well as the comment author.

The other is the contributor or submission (or even 'letters to the editor') precedent, which might consider comments to be as articles or notes, contributed or submitted to the 'editor', that is the blog owner, and subject to publication, deletion and republication at the editor's will, though only under the original terms of access/remuneration/etc. This is complicated by the personal nature of a comment and fact that no blog/journal site I know of has any explicit statement to the above effect.

Personally, I think DW has struck about the best balance that can be struck in this push-pull, by ensuring there is no content alteration, retaining all original access and terms and providing (currently in the works) a mechanism for mass screening by the comment author.

*waves* Hello, new people on this jounal! *bounces with excitement*

Don't forget to go here and say what content filters you want to read!

At the moment I'm spending a lot of time swearing about the css the site has inherited and squeaking over the progress of cool DW things, but normal posting will resume shortly.

Okay, it's time for me to move my IJ content over to DW.

I will also be moving my posting over to DW.

Alas, the new crossposter doesn't support filters yet and may not for a few months to come. So I won't be crossposting at once.

I'll be more than happy to put any IJ people who want a DW account to read with on my invite code list, to be executed in a bit less than a week!

Any IJ people who don't want to get a DW account can still read my locked and filtered posts over there, of course. All you need is a "reading account" (aka OpenID).

( Directions follow; they're simple )

Of course, one of the things cooking at DW is the ability to read your whole flist from LJ or IJ or etc, even the locked posts, on your DW reading list. I will be so geeked when that one comes out. And Squeaky is thinking of maybe switching IJ to run the DW codebase, so you could, hopefully, read fpages from other services right here eventually! Progress is so cool.

Since I've seen a number of odd notions running around lately, I figured I'd post some quick explanations.

DW is not a clone. It is a fork, like a fork in the road you know? It means starting from the same code but then changing it. In the case of DW, this means both cool new features (which may well also pop up on LJ given the extent of cross-site brainstorming already taking place) but also a lot of major re-writing of the code that won't be visible to most users but will allow more cool new things to be done in the future.

DW is not elite. No, seriously. What DW currently is is broken. It is under construction. That's why registration is not open yet and invites have gone out only to those known to have a reasonably strong interest in the project (who hopefully therefore know about the unfinished parts and won't mind helping test them, sometimes catastrophically). If a hypothetical reader wishes to convince me that being unable to flush the virtual toilet yet is elite... I'm sorry, but no. Pull the other one, it's got bells on. In about two weeks the major construction should be finished and anyone who wants to risk the virtual breaker tripping when you turn on the virtual microwave or virtually sitting on wet paint will be able to venture in.

Users will not, once the site is actually open, ever need an invite to create an account.

Users will need an invite to create a free account. This is because DW does not use ads to support the service (which costs money, after all) and therefore must have a way to make sure that there are only as many unpaid users as the paid users can support. Corollary to this...

( Read on for further examples )

As for any personal accusations against the owners, based on Denise's time working on the LJ Abuse team, I suggest anyone who has genuine concerns read the diversity statement, the guiding principles, the FAQ and the business FAQ. It's best to get things from the horse's mouth and make up your own mind.

So, as Dreamwidth approaches the next big production step, I thought it would be worthwhile to make a post about this thing that comes next.

Next is open beta.

Open beta is NOT site launch.

Contrary to what Microsoft has tried to train the public to think for lo these many long years, "open beta" does not equal "stable product". Open beta is the smoke test. It's when we say "this seems pretty stable and the big things are done, it's time to load it up and jump up and down on it and see where the smoke comes out so we can fix that before actual product launch".

Site launch, in another handful of months, is what will declare "yes, this product is stable". Site launch is where we say "okay, this is a (though not the because we keep developing) stable product, this is version 1.0, we're open for all public business".

So, for those who are thinking of coming in during open beta, remember, not everything will be done. Not everything will work. It is just about certain that we will break something as we jump up and down on it at full load. Because that's what open beta means.

Come ahead, intrepid testers and explorers! Just remember this is not Microsoft and no one is pretending that it's all done and ready yet.

Our lovely co-owner has been watching the DW posts and put a post of her own together to answer some of the questions that have come up frequently.

DW fact sheet

Just to add a few of my own:

The current default journal style will not likely be the final default style. It's just the first one that got ported over completely! There are still a few bugs with it, as with all things during closed beta. (If anyone currently in testing wants to make use of the Core 2 Testing skin I made, instead, feel free to copy this into a theme layer.)

The default site scheme is still being poked at a bit, but it should be readable now at high res and low, no matter your font size.

On other topics, I'm interested to see the culture that's developing. A number of people are a lot more open in their posting and disclosure of identity. Being the web-cynic I am I hope this doesn't come back and bite anyone as time goes on, but right now it's all very bright and cheerful. Some people are using DW for a new start and some are importing all their history. Special interest comms are starting to pop up. There's still sawdust everywhere and the wallpaper isn't hung, but the roof seems to be on and the plumbing is working!

Having once again witnessed LJ's own Patriot Act Squad in action, on an LJ news post, I am, once again, disgusted and saddened.

And I hope that attitude never, ever, ever sets in here at Dreamwidth.

It's exactly the same attitude that leads US citizens to insist that patriotism means unquestioning acceptance and, indeed, adulation of all aspects of one's country, and that criticism or the desire to change things invalidates one's citizenship and identity as a countrymember. This, of course, brings out in me a mighty need to beat them over the head with copies of Franklin and Jefferson until the typeface actually makes contact with their brains in one way or another.

Let us never, please, never fall into that trap of insisting that no one can stay who has any criticism. That's wrong. Worse, that's the kiss of death to an open source project of any kind. "Love it or leave it" is the counsel of fear, and I want my new home to stay braver than that.

Dreamwidth's open beta is coming!

The date is set, and on April 30th the site will launch open beta on full production hardware. At that time, the one-time sale of seed accounts (permanent accounts for $200) will begin.

Invite codes for free accounts will be released as the site proves it can handle the load, but anyone who wants an account can also pay $3 for a month of paid time, after which the account may then be let to lapse back to free. Or, you know, keep it paid and get all the frills.

Some major things that are in the pipe for open beta: journal importing, entry crossposting between sites, the watch/access split of the friends list, expanded standardized options for journal styles so that you can pick based on the look you like instead of being limited by the functionality you want, vastly improved maintainer options for communities.

A lot of other functions will not be finished by open beta. There will still be rough edges to be sanded down and anyone who moves over completely at that time can expect a few bobbles. I have to say, though, I've been very impressed by the number and vigor of DW's working programmers, so bobbles should be steadied reasonably quickly.

For those who want to look around the current testing site, you can start from Denise's journal. Check out the comms, look at people's journals to see what the closed beta testers have done while they kick the tires. Sign in with OpenID, if you want, and you will have a stripped down (non-posting) account to poke around with.

(And if you don't like pink, well, I submitted three alternate site schemes today, and you can see the screenshots here: Celerity, Blueshift, Gradation.)

Dreamwidth promises to be a very cool thing, and a project committed to Open Source. The improvements Dreamwidth is making are available to everyone to use, including LiveJournal. In addition to simplifying the installation of the software, plans include the ability to port LJ-based databases into the Dreamwidth system, so that LJ-based sites can easily switch over if they wish. No restrictions, no fee, no hook (and no more mind-bendingly complicated and undocumented code). And we're going to have drafts and real hierarchical tagging and memories that work and exporting to pdf in whole or by time-span or tag and and and... *waves hands* cool stuff!

I'm enthused. You can tell.

Take a look around. The testing site and all the improvements you can read about in dw_news and the other comms have been accomplished in nine months. Just nine. In people's spare time, because almost everyone working on this has a day job too. And this? Is just the beginning.