Sophinisba Solis (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sophinisba) wrote2010-10-01 12:41 pm
sophinisba) wrote2010-10-01 12:41 pm
Entry tags:
Dreamwidth meme (aka avoiding the things I should really be writing)
So in the latest ![[site community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/comm_staff.png)
dw_news post, ![[staff profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user_staff.png)
denise requested that people who want to talk about how great Dreamwidth is focus on the positive rather than beating up on LJ, and rydra_wong linked to this Dreamwidth meme post by shanaqui, which is a couple weeks old but which I'd missed. So I'm doing it now, with a few alterations!
shanaqui's meme:
Favourite thing(s) you think everyone should know about DW:
Favourite feature(s) that is/are unique to DW:
Favourite comm(s) on DW:
Comm(s) I wish would get more attention:
Favourite user(s): ha ha no too personal
The kind of comms I'm looking for:
The kind of people I'd like to befriend:
Adding:
Common misconception(s) about Dreamwidth:
Dreamwidth thing(s) I feel ambivalent about:
Favourite thing(s) you think everyone should know about DW:
1. Crossposting across Dreamwidth and LJ is really easy (once you get it set up, which is pretty easy).
2. Dreamwidth is supported by users, not advertisers. It took me a long time to figure out what a huge deal this was. I mean, everybody was like, "No ads!" but I use Adblock so I didn't really care about that, and also I like stuff I don't have to pay for. :O The thing is, since that's their business model all of their development is aimed at making users happy! This means that whenever there's a news post telling us about new features we are excited, because they are things we've asked for! It also means that people who aren't paid users and don't have Adblock can look at my journal without seeing ads. Yay!
Favourite feature(s) that is/are unique to DW: I have really gotten to love inline cut tags, so when I'm reading my f-list and I want to see what's behind a cut I can click on an arrow next to it and see it right there, without having to open it up in a new tag. This is especially nice for quick things like spoilery episode review posts, where I'm not sure if I'm going to comment but I want to see what it's about. I've gotten used to this and I miss it when I'm reading on LJ.
Favourite comm(s) on DW:![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
camelot_fleet is my favorite, easy. I also like runners, homeeconomics101, and some other non-fandom comms. They feel nice and cozy in this way Dreamwidth has, where one tends to see a lot of the same names around different comms on the site so the conversation feels comfortable, even if they're not part of your "circle".
Comm(s) I wish would get more attention:chromicons, for icons featuring people of color! Also shanaqui pointed out overlooked, a fic claim comm that looks neat.
The kind of comms I'm looking for: My favorite comms are ones where there's a lot of interaction in comments, not just people linking to posts elsewhere.
The kind of people I'd like to befriend: Ah! I feel a little awkward about this one because I'm afraid it sounds like saying "I don't like those people who are angry all the time!" or "I don't like people who only post fic!" which obviously is not true! You're all great people omg! But um, I am especially interested in following people who are both into fandom and aware of social justice issues and face the tensions there with a positive attitude, as in, "Hey, let's talk about how awesome this often-neglected character is! Here are some of my favorite fanworks about her! Let's have some more!"
I also like it when people link to cool things they've seen, whether those things are related to fandom or not.
I like it when people answer comments!
I like it when people use cut tags when they're writing a lot about the same subject. If they go on and on about something without a cut, I tend to think, why are you not giving me the choice about whether to see your long rant about your pet peeves in Arthur/Eames fic, when I don't care about this pairing at all? This tends to end up giving me the impression that the poster is arrogant and self-centered. (I know that's kind of a leap but I'm just saying that's how it makes me feel! I know that I could just scroll.) D:
Common misconception(s) about Dreamwidth:
1. I often see people saying, "I go there every once in a while but it's so dead! I only see the same posts I see on LJ, and there are no comments on them!" I used to feel this way too, and then I started subscribing to more people who use this as their primary journals. Voila, content and conversations I don't see on LJ! Obviously if you're not interested in meeting new people this doesn't help much, but this has worked for me.
Often there are friending memes and I've met a lot of people through camelot_fleet, but the two other ways I like best for finding interesting people are the latest (public) posts page and my network. Latest Posts has a tag cloud with the most commonly used tags in...I think it's in the last 1000 public posts. This means that if I feel like seeing what other people on Dreamwidth are saying about Merlin, I can click on the Merlin tag. I can also click on tags for Dreamwidth, feminism, icons, photography, etc. I love this. Network is like friendsoffriends on LJ, only usually not as overwhelming because there aren't as many people. You can see it by adding network at the end of your journal url, but the version I like to use is http://sophinisba.dreamwidth.org/network?show=P, so I only see journal posts, not community or feed posts (because then it just fills up with blog posts and huge newsletter listings for SGA and SPN).
2. "All the layouts are ugly!" Okay, I admit, I don't personally like most of the off-the-shelf layouts, and in particular I don't like most of the ones people use, and I wish people would not force them on the comment pages. (I wish it were not the default to force them on the comment pages.) Why such wide sidebars and narrow text columns? Green text on a green background - WHY? However, people are working on this and there are way more themes than there used to be. Also (this was just a recent discovery to me) they have these defaults that are mostly pretty ugly, but they also make it really easy to customize, so you can take a layout someone else made and get ride of the huge sidebars and change whatever colors you like. I resisted doing this because I'm not very visual and I don't know any CSS, but it turned out to be a lot easier than I thought it would be (and easier than it is on LJ).
Dreamwidth thing(s) I feel ambivalent about: Whenever there is a "What's your favorite Dreamwidth feature?" conversation or meme, a lot of people will say "The split between access and subscription filters!" My first reaction to this back when the site was starting up was really negative. I thought, "Oh, that's very nice for you in your BNF-ness that you don't have to pretend to be 'friends' with us plebes anymore, but my LJ friends really are my friends!!"
I like calling my friends "friends", and I don't agree with the people who think that the access/subscription split eliminates friending drama. Some of the drama is the same (removing access? Why don't you trust me anymore what did I dooooooo?!?!) and some of it is different. For example, if someone gives me access but doesn't subscribe to me, that kinda weirds me out. It usually turns out to be because they would like to give me access to media they're sharing, but the impression it sometimes gives me is that they've looked at my journal and decided I'm harmless but uninteresting, so they want me to give them hugs when their cat is sick but they don't want to know anything else about me.
However! I have come around to seeing the advantages of this, and they are not just for BNFs. Some of the people I read on LJ and on Dreamwidth are not my friends, they are just people I like to read and I don't want to share my personal posts with them. I also find that subscribing to someone without granting access is a nice low-risk way of starting to get to know them. If we start commenting on each other's public posts a lot maybe I will grant them access and we'll get to know each other better. If we never interact and I find myself skimming over most of their posts I might unsubscribe. Or I might just keep reading their public posts and get a lot of interesting content that way without needing it to become more personal. There are options. It's nice.
What about you? What do you like best? What do you not like so much? I've seen some LJ friends mention that they don't like the different terminology for the same/similar things - are your reasons around the friends/circle thing the same as mine or is there other stuff I'm not thinking of?
dw_news post, denise requested that people who want to talk about how great Dreamwidth is focus on the positive rather than beating up on LJ, and rydra_wong linked to this Dreamwidth meme post by shanaqui, which is a couple weeks old but which I'd missed. So I'm doing it now, with a few alterations!shanaqui's meme:Favourite thing(s) you think everyone should know about DW:
Favourite feature(s) that is/are unique to DW:
Favourite comm(s) on DW:
Comm(s) I wish would get more attention:
The kind of comms I'm looking for:
The kind of people I'd like to befriend:
Adding:
Common misconception(s) about Dreamwidth:
Dreamwidth thing(s) I feel ambivalent about:
Favourite thing(s) you think everyone should know about DW:
1. Crossposting across Dreamwidth and LJ is really easy (once you get it set up, which is pretty easy).
2. Dreamwidth is supported by users, not advertisers. It took me a long time to figure out what a huge deal this was. I mean, everybody was like, "No ads!" but I use Adblock so I didn't really care about that, and also I like stuff I don't have to pay for. :O The thing is, since that's their business model all of their development is aimed at making users happy! This means that whenever there's a news post telling us about new features we are excited, because they are things we've asked for! It also means that people who aren't paid users and don't have Adblock can look at my journal without seeing ads. Yay!
Favourite feature(s) that is/are unique to DW: I have really gotten to love inline cut tags, so when I'm reading my f-list and I want to see what's behind a cut I can click on an arrow next to it and see it right there, without having to open it up in a new tag. This is especially nice for quick things like spoilery episode review posts, where I'm not sure if I'm going to comment but I want to see what it's about. I've gotten used to this and I miss it when I'm reading on LJ.
Favourite comm(s) on DW:
camelot_fleet is my favorite, easy. I also like runners, homeeconomics101, and some other non-fandom comms. They feel nice and cozy in this way Dreamwidth has, where one tends to see a lot of the same names around different comms on the site so the conversation feels comfortable, even if they're not part of your "circle".Comm(s) I wish would get more attention:
chromicons, for icons featuring people of color! Also shanaqui pointed out overlooked, a fic claim comm that looks neat.The kind of comms I'm looking for: My favorite comms are ones where there's a lot of interaction in comments, not just people linking to posts elsewhere.
The kind of people I'd like to befriend: Ah! I feel a little awkward about this one because I'm afraid it sounds like saying "I don't like those people who are angry all the time!" or "I don't like people who only post fic!" which obviously is not true! You're all great people omg! But um, I am especially interested in following people who are both into fandom and aware of social justice issues and face the tensions there with a positive attitude, as in, "Hey, let's talk about how awesome this often-neglected character is! Here are some of my favorite fanworks about her! Let's have some more!"
I also like it when people link to cool things they've seen, whether those things are related to fandom or not.
I like it when people answer comments!
I like it when people use cut tags when they're writing a lot about the same subject. If they go on and on about something without a cut, I tend to think, why are you not giving me the choice about whether to see your long rant about your pet peeves in Arthur/Eames fic, when I don't care about this pairing at all? This tends to end up giving me the impression that the poster is arrogant and self-centered. (I know that's kind of a leap but I'm just saying that's how it makes me feel! I know that I could just scroll.) D:
Common misconception(s) about Dreamwidth:
1. I often see people saying, "I go there every once in a while but it's so dead! I only see the same posts I see on LJ, and there are no comments on them!" I used to feel this way too, and then I started subscribing to more people who use this as their primary journals. Voila, content and conversations I don't see on LJ! Obviously if you're not interested in meeting new people this doesn't help much, but this has worked for me.
Often there are friending memes and I've met a lot of people through camelot_fleet, but the two other ways I like best for finding interesting people are the latest (public) posts page and my network. Latest Posts has a tag cloud with the most commonly used tags in...I think it's in the last 1000 public posts. This means that if I feel like seeing what other people on Dreamwidth are saying about Merlin, I can click on the Merlin tag. I can also click on tags for Dreamwidth, feminism, icons, photography, etc. I love this. Network is like friendsoffriends on LJ, only usually not as overwhelming because there aren't as many people. You can see it by adding network at the end of your journal url, but the version I like to use is http://sophinisba.dreamwidth.org/network?show=P, so I only see journal posts, not community or feed posts (because then it just fills up with blog posts and huge newsletter listings for SGA and SPN).
2. "All the layouts are ugly!" Okay, I admit, I don't personally like most of the off-the-shelf layouts, and in particular I don't like most of the ones people use, and I wish people would not force them on the comment pages. (I wish it were not the default to force them on the comment pages.) Why such wide sidebars and narrow text columns? Green text on a green background - WHY? However, people are working on this and there are way more themes than there used to be. Also (this was just a recent discovery to me) they have these defaults that are mostly pretty ugly, but they also make it really easy to customize, so you can take a layout someone else made and get ride of the huge sidebars and change whatever colors you like. I resisted doing this because I'm not very visual and I don't know any CSS, but it turned out to be a lot easier than I thought it would be (and easier than it is on LJ).
Dreamwidth thing(s) I feel ambivalent about: Whenever there is a "What's your favorite Dreamwidth feature?" conversation or meme, a lot of people will say "The split between access and subscription filters!" My first reaction to this back when the site was starting up was really negative. I thought, "Oh, that's very nice for you in your BNF-ness that you don't have to pretend to be 'friends' with us plebes anymore, but my LJ friends really are my friends!!"
I like calling my friends "friends", and I don't agree with the people who think that the access/subscription split eliminates friending drama. Some of the drama is the same (removing access? Why don't you trust me anymore what did I dooooooo?!?!) and some of it is different. For example, if someone gives me access but doesn't subscribe to me, that kinda weirds me out. It usually turns out to be because they would like to give me access to media they're sharing, but the impression it sometimes gives me is that they've looked at my journal and decided I'm harmless but uninteresting, so they want me to give them hugs when their cat is sick but they don't want to know anything else about me.
However! I have come around to seeing the advantages of this, and they are not just for BNFs. Some of the people I read on LJ and on Dreamwidth are not my friends, they are just people I like to read and I don't want to share my personal posts with them. I also find that subscribing to someone without granting access is a nice low-risk way of starting to get to know them. If we start commenting on each other's public posts a lot maybe I will grant them access and we'll get to know each other better. If we never interact and I find myself skimming over most of their posts I might unsubscribe. Or I might just keep reading their public posts and get a lot of interesting content that way without needing it to become more personal. There are options. It's nice.
What about you? What do you like best? What do you not like so much? I've seen some LJ friends mention that they don't like the different terminology for the same/similar things - are your reasons around the friends/circle thing the same as mine or is there other stuff I'm not thinking of?
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