jack

Don't need to worry about this now if you're still in the middle of setting up a dreamwidth account at all (or if you don't have DW or don't want to crosspost), but if you already crosspost to LJ or another lj-code based site, and would like to add a link between the posts, I did this as follows:

Go to http://www.dreamwidth.org/manage/settings/?cat=othersites

In the list of foreign accounts, click "details". You should see "edit external account". Make sure the "Display Cross Post Links" checkbox is checked and click the update button. This shows a link from DW to LJ.

Back in account settings, other sites. Select "Always" in "Add the footer to the post on the other site".

Add some text in the first footer text box. I used: "<span style="font-size: smaller;">You can also comment at %%url%% using OpenID. %%comment_image%% comments so far.</span>".

Save button.

I stress, there are very good reasons for not crossposting (not to be on LJ at all, not trusting DW with their LJ password, not wanting to need to lock two sites, not trying to keep icons etc in sync, etc) and many people actively don't want to. But if you want to crosspost, I sometimes find it helpful to be able to see comments on both sites, or see that someone has an account on the other site at all.

(If you want to, you can set up crossposting from that page, but I can't remember how because I did it once ages ago.)

So, I post to dreamwidth, which crossposts to livejournal, which crossposts to twitter, which crossposts to facebook.

This seems completely ridiculous, but I honestly think there's no better way of doing it?

Macroblogging posts need to go to DW (because it's non-evil) and LJ (because lots of people are only on LJ) and Facebook (because even more people are only on facebook). And might as well go on twitter, because if you read my random real-time mutterings, you might as well see my longer comments too.

Microblogging posts go to twitter (because that's what it's for) and Facebook (because facebook tries to do both macro- and micro-).

Dreamwidth can only post to LJ. LJ can post to Twitter and FB. Twitter can post to facebook. FB may be able to x-post, but I don't want to rely on it. But since twitter posts to FB, I don't want LJ to post to FB too or everything from DW/LJ would be double posted. Hence the four-site chain.

Occasional f-locked posts go to DW and LJ only, because I trust them to keep them f-locked by default, rather than at the whim of the next security update.

Is there any client that manages this for you?

I think I asked this before, but it seems a fb-killer wouldn't so much be another _site_ but an interface that reduces FB from king to commodity.

I didn't notice, Dreamwidth have introduced support for markdown syntax!

I find that an awful lot more useful than HTML or rich text because I usually only want bold and italic, but I like to be able to copy the text into a text editor or read it without a lot of html tags.

You can easily make unordered lists

• just
• like
• this

And you can make automatically-ordered lists

1. although
2. they
3. only
4. use
5. successive
6. positive
7. integers

And the one thing I always found a pain in LJ/DW HTML, making a

Blockquote

And it's even easy to

Blockquote several
different lines
of text
by putting a >
at the beginning
of the first

And it even has

int main()
{
  cout << "automatic formatting" << " of code " << "samples";
}

It's a very recent, very quick and dirty beta, so it's amazing it just works as well as it does. Ironically the one thing it doesn't do is applying the formatting before it crossposts a post, so the dreamwidth copy of this post has the formatted version, and the livejournal copy has the original source (see link below for the other one). I imagine there's a dreamwidth bug for this, or maybe eventually livejournal will copy the code changes.

If I see a debate, particularly online, I'm often much more eager to jump in with a contribution if it's on something that I've just recently worked out in my mind. I'm fresh with an idea, and want to share (even if it seems silly and naive later).

If it's about something I'm confident of, I'll comment if it actually adds the specific information needed, or if I think I can actually explain it better than anyone else, but if I think the reply is obvious, I'm happy to let someone else make it.

I think this is natural. It's like, if someone says the sky is green, there's little to say, but if they argue badly about infinity, you instinctively want to correct them.

But it does mean that people are perpetually getting into arguments about things just on the cusp of their understanding, when they may learn useful things, but may also make an idiot of themselves.

A controversial post on infinity, or feminism, or the welfare state, is likely to draw 50 comments from people who feel the battle isn't fought yet, and one or two from people who are ready to learn from a blank slate, or feel the issue is settled in their mind.

In some ways this makes sense, but it means that while discussions may be interesting to participate in, they tend not normally to be very informative unless you're at that exact level of ignorance yourself.

Q: Aah! The sky is falling! All of my friends are going away and nobody loves me.
A: Please phrase your question in the form of a question.
Q: Aah! The sky is falling! All of my friends are going away and nobody loves me?
A: Hmph.
Q: OK, OK. What should I do?
A: Don't panic.
Q: But that's what I shouldn't do. What should I do?
A: Be calm. Ask for specific and relevant information.
Q: OK, OK. What's Dreamwidth?
A: It's a copy of LJ, with a bunch of new features people have been clamouring for for ages.
Q: Do you have a girlfriend who made a post explaining in simple terms why that should matter to me, someone who doesn't want to invest any headspace thinking about it?
A: http://livredor.livejournal.com/283649.html
Q: And why I should believe Dreamwidth will actually work, when sites that simply copied the LJ code wholesale, hoping that whole communities would migrate to them en mass, and that their servers would stand up to the entire LJ user base invading at once didn't?
A: See above.
Q: You mean, see my question, or the link to livredor's post?
A: Both.
Q: OK, so are you moving?
A: Eventually, assuming things all go well. Lots of other people being excited about it, a company that's actually making massive strides in improving functionality, and no ads were my selling point.
Q: And for the moment?
A: I'm posting via dreamwidth, and using the cross-post feature to post to LJ. Hopefully this has been entirely transparent to anyone who's read any of my posts in the last week?
Q: And friends pages and so on?
A: I'm still reading friends via LJ, since reading friends-locked posts from another site is inherently problematic. I'm posting from dreamwidth, and if all goes well I'll be able to disable comments on LJ and direct people to posting on the dreamwidth with their LJ id, which ought to be pretty transparent to everyone, but enable a gradual shift to Dreamwidth.
Q: So will I be left behind?
A: Not by me, not unless we reach a tipping point where *most* people I care about have switched. (Although that seems quite possible -- an awful lot of people already have. However, I expect some people won't until it's trivial to do so, and you're guaranteed benefits with no losses. We're already getting close.)
Q: And if Dreamwidth doesn't work out?
A: All my posts are still on LJ, so I can simply switch back.

I don't know how many people noticed, but last Friday (aka Good Friday) many people participated in a live-journal strike. The key facts are:

* The company running livejournal has been sold again. The ownership do several things which piss off to a greater or lesser extent people using livejournal. Removing the option to create free advertless accounts. Disallowing certain topics which are questionable to some people (eg. slash writers, but eg. breast-feeding and abuse survivors groups get caught in the fall-out). Disallowing certain interests. (Some of my friends barely noticed any of this. Some felt they had to leave.)

* But most importantly a lack of transparency: policies unilaterally decided, and vague and inconsistently used, and lying about why things happen. I can understand why the owners don't want to get into arguments and only care about paid users, but like it or not, livejournal now hosts a massive sprawling community. These things all hit paid users too, (even worse if a paid account is banned), and paid users are here because many of their friends with free accounts are (to a greater or lesser extent).

* Many people feel very personal about this because they made a lot of friends on livejournal and feel they'd have to give this up. That's understandable but not quite true. LJ has less lock-in that web-forums, though more so than newsgroups.

* Many people think the problems aren't really important. I don't think livejournal has become unusable -- it still does what I use it for, and probably will do so for years. But I think it will, it's just too big and will only get more ossified, not less.

* Some people say livejournal has a right to do what they like. That's mostly true -- they provide a service, and can do so as well or badly as they like. Although you might argue that someone who bought a permanent account has an expectation it won't be made useless by policy changes. However, you still have a perfect right to point out that their policies, while allowed, might be counter-productive and an implicit betrayal of what they previously offered people.

* Many people think a strike is useless. Certainly it doesn't directly harm the company at all. And many people do it simply because they feel an entitlement to what they were given before and want to make a fuss. However, if you're genuinely willing to leave livejournal, I think it's a perfectly good way of saying "Here are all the people who wanted to pay for the old service, and don't want to pay for the new service. Go ahead and do what you like, but remember, we don't like it, no longer feel any loyalty, and won't pay for it."

* However, I don't think it will achieve anything. I don't think the company will suddenly change it's mind. I think it's inevitable that the large the company is, the more bureaucracy becomes necessary. If I used a small community on a friend's server, there'd be no policies about what icons were ok apart from what he said, and I'd trust him.

* If livejournal were the first phone company, I'd be worried. A phone company is essentially a monopoly, if you don't like what they do, they have to be nationalised or you're stuck.

* However, I think a combination of openid, rss readers, and other blogging software can nearly replicate what livejournal does, without needing all your friends to move to the new system (or do anything at all) and a minimum of effort on your own behalf. Whether this "nearly" is close enough or not I need to find out. Currently, shifting to insanejournal or an openid website is a certain amount of hassle. But I expect there to be some tipping point where it's easy enough that you can move without losing your friends, when I expect/hope people to move across to independently run servers en mass.

* And if so, that'll also have the useful properties that (a) you're no longer reliant on one server being run in a sane manner, you can use a friend's server, or use a commercial server and leave if you don't like it any more (b) a long laundry list of features LJ never had the time to implement can be implemented on individual servers according to whoever has the time to code them.

* However, a truly distributed system suffers from lots of headaches. I don't know what'll be possible, if anything.

Sorry, not really. (Well, not necessarily. Uh, I mean, I didn't have any reason to say that, other than as a humorous example of a controversial subject. Argue amongst yourselves if you so wish, but don't blame me. Just look at this bracket, it's amazing how many words saying nothing takes up :))

Where is everyone? My "inbox" has been nearly unclogged of lj updates recently -- have you all become productive or something? Have you all moved to chiark or myspace?

ETA: OK, that seemed to work :)

By the way, this came up on monday, and it is as I thought, and in case it wasn't clear at the time: the film for which what Soylent Green is is a spoiler is "Soylent Green".

PS. And please don't say what it is in a comment to be funny. I know the meme is more popular than the movie now, and everyone knows what happens (the last person who didn't was told on monday today) but just humour me, the irony would be too painful otherwise.

Edit: PPS. Other spoilers are as ok as normal though. Elim Garak, I am your father!

PPPS. I think this being the first time I've made explicit a comment policy. I know some people explain, but I've always left it implicit, assuming that the default amongst people I know is clear, even if it annoys some people, being approximately the rules of the living room:

* I reserve the right to enforce my will on my place, but in actual fact everything will be controlled by social etiquette.
* Except people I don't know trying to sell stuff to people indiscriminantly. They will be ejected.
* People breaking the law in a major way, ditto.
* Be polite, no gratuitous hate, no gratuitously work unsafe stuff, be careful with legally dodgy stuff. Or I'll ask you nicely not to :)
* Never edit something without making it clear, if it changes the meaning.
* Everything I write copyright me. Everything you write, I'm not sure.
* If I ask you to abide by an etiquette, please do.

You probably noticed I hit a deluge of catching up on LJing last night. I notice the posts seem to be in two sorts:

* Medleys of things I did, which attracted no comments.

* Thoughts on topics, which attracted many comments and in some cases webpages (:) thanks, Owen).

Is it that a medley makes it hard to read, or to pick one thing to reply to, or just that topics often have something that needs a reply to, but things I did don't?

What are your top twenty tags? Do they accurately represent your life?

The regularly used ones are life, meme, invitation, wittering, gakked, whine, review, introspection, rant and work. These will overtake the one-offs as I lj for longer.

What do you use? Is meta different to lj[1]? Should wittering be 'thoughts', 'witterings', 'random', 'stream-of-consciousness' or what?

[1] OK, *here* it is, but will I ever use it again?

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