Musing - Dreamwidth
Mar. 5th, 2010 12:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wilderthanIn the light of finding this on my flist today, I'm going to post about Dreamwidth and why I love it. But before I do, I'll explain the link -- it goes to a round-up of links about another of LJ's cockups, in which they started redirecting links, via a process that I don't understand, to increase their own revenue -- and preventing people from getting the revenue themselves.
That aside, and since I've been accused of being a "Dreamwidth fangirl"... Well, I am a Dreamwidth fangirl. I don't see how that could be a bad thing. It's not like I'm forcing anybody onto Dreamwidth: I keep up the mirrors of all my journals on LiveJournal, I comment on LiveJournal, nobody is ever forced to come to Dreamwidth to read my stuff. I do offer my invite codes whenever I see someone who already wants to move over, and I'm happy to talk about why I prefer Dreamwidth.
Here's a top ten list, let's see if I can manage it.
1. They have an open, clear, and easy to access Diversity Statement, welcoming all kinds of users. It encapsulates a lot of things I love about Dreamwidth in one go. For example: "We use the service we're selling, and we built it because we wanted it ourselves."
2. They have a set of Guiding Principles which, like the Diversity Statement, is open, clear, and easy to access. They state as priorities things like privacy and freedom.
3. They post regular updates about what they're doing, what they've done, and how they're dealing with problems that have arisen, on a single community,![[site community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/comm_staff.png)
dw_news. They involve the community and ask for their feedback on new features, and give as much information as possible about problems, such as the difficulties with the payment services.
4. They stick to their principles. When asked by Paypal to remove adult content from the site, instead of capitulating they looked for an alternate payment provider. They used Google Checkout. When they, too, asked for the same concessions, they began to look for an alternate payment provider. While doing this, they have been good about extending people's paid time and talking to non-US users (like myself) about providing payment options for them.
5. They provide useful tools for moving journals and crossposting, so you aren't locked into using a single site to interact with people. Currently you can import journals from other journalling services, and you can crosspost from Dreamwidth easily, and edit crossposts. They're working on making it possible to read your f-lists from other journal sites, even posts that are under a lock. Basically, not only is Dreamwidth a journalling site in its own right, but it's also turning into a client for posting to and reading other sites.
6. They changed the 'friending' system. Not only have they scrapped the potentially difficult term 'friend', they've made it a two-tiered system. You can now give access to people, which allows them to read your journal, and subscribe to people, which allows you to read their public posts, separately. So, for example, if you want to follow someone for their sewing patterns, but you don't want them to read about your sordid love affair which you only post about under a lock, then you can subscribe to them and see their posts on your reading list without allowing them to read those posts.
7. They've implemented a way to search your own journal. So if I wanted to look for a particular fic -- say, for the sake of argument, I wanted to find all the FFX fic I've written in which Lulu features -- I could just put in "Lulu" and get back a list of posts, with links, in which I mentioned the name "Lulu". You can't do that on LiveJournal. It seems like a totally obvious feature, but it's not possible.
8. They're working on accessibility things. I don't know how well they've done with it, but it's in their Guiding Principles, and I know at least one thing they've done, which is add a field for descriptions of your icons, so someone who can't view images knows what kind of icon you're using.
9. When you edit a comment, they now provide a field for you to put the reason in. Granted, it's easy to write "Edited to correct spelling" in your comment, but it's just neat and I like it.
10. They've fixed the small annoying things like the fact that you can't directly preview a comment, or jump straight to the start of a thread from a comment later in it, and you can set a sticky post without having to mess with back/forward dating. And when you set a post as containing adult content, you can include a reason. Basically, they implement a ton of features that people don't even think about but seem so obvious once you have them.
You can see other people's loved features in the comments to this news post.
If you'd like an invite code to come and join, I have at least four going spare.
(Cross-posted, with a few tweaks, from my personal journal, so it is now public and linkable.)
That aside, and since I've been accused of being a "Dreamwidth fangirl"... Well, I am a Dreamwidth fangirl. I don't see how that could be a bad thing. It's not like I'm forcing anybody onto Dreamwidth: I keep up the mirrors of all my journals on LiveJournal, I comment on LiveJournal, nobody is ever forced to come to Dreamwidth to read my stuff. I do offer my invite codes whenever I see someone who already wants to move over, and I'm happy to talk about why I prefer Dreamwidth.
Here's a top ten list, let's see if I can manage it.
1. They have an open, clear, and easy to access Diversity Statement, welcoming all kinds of users. It encapsulates a lot of things I love about Dreamwidth in one go. For example: "We use the service we're selling, and we built it because we wanted it ourselves."
2. They have a set of Guiding Principles which, like the Diversity Statement, is open, clear, and easy to access. They state as priorities things like privacy and freedom.
3. They post regular updates about what they're doing, what they've done, and how they're dealing with problems that have arisen, on a single community,
dw_news. They involve the community and ask for their feedback on new features, and give as much information as possible about problems, such as the difficulties with the payment services.4. They stick to their principles. When asked by Paypal to remove adult content from the site, instead of capitulating they looked for an alternate payment provider. They used Google Checkout. When they, too, asked for the same concessions, they began to look for an alternate payment provider. While doing this, they have been good about extending people's paid time and talking to non-US users (like myself) about providing payment options for them.
5. They provide useful tools for moving journals and crossposting, so you aren't locked into using a single site to interact with people. Currently you can import journals from other journalling services, and you can crosspost from Dreamwidth easily, and edit crossposts. They're working on making it possible to read your f-lists from other journal sites, even posts that are under a lock. Basically, not only is Dreamwidth a journalling site in its own right, but it's also turning into a client for posting to and reading other sites.
6. They changed the 'friending' system. Not only have they scrapped the potentially difficult term 'friend', they've made it a two-tiered system. You can now give access to people, which allows them to read your journal, and subscribe to people, which allows you to read their public posts, separately. So, for example, if you want to follow someone for their sewing patterns, but you don't want them to read about your sordid love affair which you only post about under a lock, then you can subscribe to them and see their posts on your reading list without allowing them to read those posts.
7. They've implemented a way to search your own journal. So if I wanted to look for a particular fic -- say, for the sake of argument, I wanted to find all the FFX fic I've written in which Lulu features -- I could just put in "Lulu" and get back a list of posts, with links, in which I mentioned the name "Lulu". You can't do that on LiveJournal. It seems like a totally obvious feature, but it's not possible.
8. They're working on accessibility things. I don't know how well they've done with it, but it's in their Guiding Principles, and I know at least one thing they've done, which is add a field for descriptions of your icons, so someone who can't view images knows what kind of icon you're using.
9. When you edit a comment, they now provide a field for you to put the reason in. Granted, it's easy to write "Edited to correct spelling" in your comment, but it's just neat and I like it.
10. They've fixed the small annoying things like the fact that you can't directly preview a comment, or jump straight to the start of a thread from a comment later in it, and you can set a sticky post without having to mess with back/forward dating. And when you set a post as containing adult content, you can include a reason. Basically, they implement a ton of features that people don't even think about but seem so obvious once you have them.
You can see other people's loved features in the comments to this news post.
If you'd like an invite code to come and join, I have at least four going spare.
(Cross-posted, with a few tweaks, from my personal journal, so it is now public and linkable.)
![[staff profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user_staff.png){kind=small}
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2010-03-05 03:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-03-05 09:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-03-07 11:52 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-03-07 11:59 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-03-07 12:03 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-03-05 11:41 pm (UTC)You are already aware that I enjoy DW, though I use it entirely for 'fic.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-03-05 11:42 pm (UTC)