Usenet gank
The following is some messages I've ganked off alt.poly - not that they have anything to do with the subject of polyamory mind.
Message-ID: <871vr3awh8.fsf@windlord.stanford.edu>
(Aahz Maruch) writes:
> Russ Allbery wrote:
>> (I personally will be moving as completely to Dreamwidth as I can,
>> for a whole host of reasons that I can get into at more length if
>> people here care.)
> Does "as completely as I can" include abandoning Usenet, or is that
> just referring to Livejournal?
No, no, just referring to LiveJournal. Usenet is still way better for
discussions than anything web-boardish. But a journaling site is useful
for keeping up on the sort of details of other people's lives that they
don't post to Usenet. (I personally wrote my own blog engine, but most
people aren't going to do that.)
> And yes, I'm mildly curious why.
Let's see....
1. http://www.dreamwidth.org/legal/diversity.bml, which I've seen
first-hand be reflected in the people involved in the project and
modelled by both of the founders in their interactions with others.
2. http://www.dreamwidth.org/legal/principles.bml, particularly the
understanding that putting advertising on community space is
fundamentally broken.
3. I know and respect many of the people running the service and have
gotten to know the two founders somewhat and have been very impressed
by how they've handled themselves, including under pressure.
4. A sustainable business model based on paying accounts rather than
advertising and therefore beholden to the users of the site rather
than to advertisers when making business decisions. See
http://dw-biz.dreamwidth.org/332.html
5. Will implement optional ownership of syndicated feeds, so that I can
continue to maintain my own blog engine but get notification when
people comment on syndicated feeds in Dreamwidth (or optionally can
redirect their comments elsewhere, but I'm fine with the comments
being in Dreamwidth if I get notifications). This is the major
feature that I've always wanted from LiveJournal and they seem to
have no interest in it.
6. Dreamwidth is run like a real open-source project with source code in
Mercurial and an open Bugzilla installation, as opposed to
LiveJournal's half-assed open source bit where they throw portions of
the source code over the wall but appear uninterested in anyone's
contributions.
7. Dreamwidth is actively mentoring new code developers, teaching people
how to learn enough of the underlying languages to contribute, and
actively providing code review and encouragement to grow their
developer base, something that I've rarely seen in open source
projects let alone this sort of social networking site.
8. Serious, concerted effort across the site to make it accessible,
including work on full compliance with the latest W3C standards and
code changes to the LiveJournal code base to improve the experience
for screen readers (such as adding the capability of alt text for all
user pics).
That's off the top of my head. There are more.
--
Russ Allbery
Message-ID:
Rob Wynne wrote:
> Two, this is one of the few posts to address the "Why I'm going to
> Dreamwidth" question that doesn't entirely seem to devolve into "The people
> who run LJ are a bunch of poopyheads" that I've seen. Kudos for putting
> forth a positive rationale to consider.
I don't know if my rationale is "LJ is run by a bunch of poopyheads" or
a positive rationale for DW, but here goes:
I am less and less a fan of the way our entire society revolves around
the idea that everything is and should be motivated by individual greed
for as much money as possible. I find it vaguely preposterous that
firstly an economic theory could be set up that said "let's assume
people are individual independent agents acting out of greed to acquire
as much of a single linearly quantitised approximation of material
wealth (money) as possible", secondly that not enough people laughed at
the preposterousness of that as an assumption of human behaviour to kill
the application of the theory dead in its tracks, and thirdly that the
theory has been so successful I now meet people who seem to have grown
up to follow that behaviour pattern and think people who don't are
somehow wrong or deficient.
I think human beings are complicated social creatures and there's a very
complex balance between individual rights, individual need for
community, and the resultant community's demands on the individuals in
order to function. I think most people instinctively reject money as a
primary measure of an individual's position in a community - watch how
most people squirm when marriage is laid out entirely in terms of money
- it becomes prostitution.
I'd prefer to participate in and support organisations that more closely
reflect what I see as the right balance between humans creating
relationships with each other and thereby healthy, individually
nurturing community; and money as a convenient medium of exchange for
material support of the individuals who maintain that community.
There's not much doubt in my mind that the money I am willing to
transfer to others in exchange for the type of online community
participation I can get in Livejournal-like places should go to Mark and
Denise rather than Livejournal.
*******
Also, intertwined! Unfortunately paid work is eating my time right at
the moment but I can't wait to start seriously posting there. I never
had much urge to participate in communities in LJ. And yet on
dreamwidth, the urge is strong enough I created one. I was pondering
the paradox that my own behaviour was helping to make DW a place I liked
better than LJ, but I am a creature who is very sensitive to what I
think other people think of me, and my behaviour closely reflects how I
think I am valued.
Aqua
Message-ID: <87fxffp4cv.fsf@windlord.stanford.edu>
Aqua writes:
> Because they've thought about that and put it into their rules. They
> have 50% ownership each, if either decides to sell the other gets
> first option *and* owners do not automatically have input into
> management. In the meantime it appears to me that they are creating a
> management in the form of a horde of enthusiastic volunteers, who I
> expect would steamroller any attempt by an outsider to change the
> management style and general attitude of the site.
>
> I know it's not a guarantee, but it looks to me like they've thought
> about it pretty carefully and are putting things in place to make it
> all work for my lifetime at least. Partly by helping make people like
> myself care enough to work to keep it good.
There also putting some other controls in place. They're trying to make
it easy to pull your data out of Dreamwidth, and I hope to see LJ code
improvements in that direction down the road. (The importer contains a
lot of that logic.) They're also committing to improving the Dreamwidth
code base for installation at other sites and are considering non-DW
installations of the code to be part of their user base. Not only is
this a much more open source approach, but it means that someone else
can fork the site if they go insane and have the advantage of all the
code and improvements they've done. (Similar to what Dreamwidth is
doing with LiveJournal, except with way more goodies that Dreamwidth has
developed already on top of the LJ code.)
--
Russ Allbery
Message-ID:
Serene Vannoy wrote:
> Stef wrote:
>> It's possible that DW won't last and that it will become more
>> commercial. If that happens, I'll probably try to support another small
>> company doing blogging/journaling software.
>>
>> Stef, supporting DW and not leaving LJ yet
>
> Same here. That is, I'm supporting DW with a paid membership, but I have
> found some measure of community on LJ and don't want to leave it.
See, this is one of the things I am completely failing to understand
about the "DW vs LJ war" that seems to be happening in some corners.
There's (to me, and even to Denise, who I noticed on one of the threads)
a very big difference between "leaving LJ for DW" == not willing to
support the economic model and management style of LJ and finding DW
more amenable in that respect and "leaving LJ for DW" == having big
dramatic fights with your friends, unsubscribing them because they're
not using your preferred service, etc.
In other words, I see a distinction between the platform and the
community of people using that platform. And I'm not "leaving" the
friends I've made on LJ just because I prefer the management of DW. And
the management of DW feels the same way and are doing everything they
can (bugzilla 702 springs to mind) to maintain relationships between
people across platforms.
And certainly just because there are good people with LJ accounts,
doesn't mean I have to think LJ (from a management point of view) is the
greatest ever and anything else is a betrayal of those good people.
Aqua
Just thought it might provide an interesting data point (since I'm having to stay up to wait for an email for daughter anyway).
Message-ID: <871vr3awh8.fsf@windlord.stanford.edu>
(Aahz Maruch) writes:
> Russ Allbery wrote:
>> (I personally will be moving as completely to Dreamwidth as I can,
>> for a whole host of reasons that I can get into at more length if
>> people here care.)
> Does "as completely as I can" include abandoning Usenet, or is that
> just referring to Livejournal?
No, no, just referring to LiveJournal. Usenet is still way better for
discussions than anything web-boardish. But a journaling site is useful
for keeping up on the sort of details of other people's lives that they
don't post to Usenet. (I personally wrote my own blog engine, but most
people aren't going to do that.)
> And yes, I'm mildly curious why.
Let's see....
1. http://www.dreamwidth.org/legal/diversity.bml, which I've seen
first-hand be reflected in the people involved in the project and
modelled by both of the founders in their interactions with others.
2. http://www.dreamwidth.org/legal/principles.bml, particularly the
understanding that putting advertising on community space is
fundamentally broken.
3. I know and respect many of the people running the service and have
gotten to know the two founders somewhat and have been very impressed
by how they've handled themselves, including under pressure.
4. A sustainable business model based on paying accounts rather than
advertising and therefore beholden to the users of the site rather
than to advertisers when making business decisions. See
http://dw-biz.dreamwidth.org/332.html
5. Will implement optional ownership of syndicated feeds, so that I can
continue to maintain my own blog engine but get notification when
people comment on syndicated feeds in Dreamwidth (or optionally can
redirect their comments elsewhere, but I'm fine with the comments
being in Dreamwidth if I get notifications). This is the major
feature that I've always wanted from LiveJournal and they seem to
have no interest in it.
6. Dreamwidth is run like a real open-source project with source code in
Mercurial and an open Bugzilla installation, as opposed to
LiveJournal's half-assed open source bit where they throw portions of
the source code over the wall but appear uninterested in anyone's
contributions.
7. Dreamwidth is actively mentoring new code developers, teaching people
how to learn enough of the underlying languages to contribute, and
actively providing code review and encouragement to grow their
developer base, something that I've rarely seen in open source
projects let alone this sort of social networking site.
8. Serious, concerted effort across the site to make it accessible,
including work on full compliance with the latest W3C standards and
code changes to the LiveJournal code base to improve the experience
for screen readers (such as adding the capability of alt text for all
user pics).
That's off the top of my head. There are more.
--
Russ Allbery
Message-ID:
Rob Wynne wrote:
> Two, this is one of the few posts to address the "Why I'm going to
> Dreamwidth" question that doesn't entirely seem to devolve into "The people
> who run LJ are a bunch of poopyheads" that I've seen. Kudos for putting
> forth a positive rationale to consider.
I don't know if my rationale is "LJ is run by a bunch of poopyheads" or
a positive rationale for DW, but here goes:
I am less and less a fan of the way our entire society revolves around
the idea that everything is and should be motivated by individual greed
for as much money as possible. I find it vaguely preposterous that
firstly an economic theory could be set up that said "let's assume
people are individual independent agents acting out of greed to acquire
as much of a single linearly quantitised approximation of material
wealth (money) as possible", secondly that not enough people laughed at
the preposterousness of that as an assumption of human behaviour to kill
the application of the theory dead in its tracks, and thirdly that the
theory has been so successful I now meet people who seem to have grown
up to follow that behaviour pattern and think people who don't are
somehow wrong or deficient.
I think human beings are complicated social creatures and there's a very
complex balance between individual rights, individual need for
community, and the resultant community's demands on the individuals in
order to function. I think most people instinctively reject money as a
primary measure of an individual's position in a community - watch how
most people squirm when marriage is laid out entirely in terms of money
- it becomes prostitution.
I'd prefer to participate in and support organisations that more closely
reflect what I see as the right balance between humans creating
relationships with each other and thereby healthy, individually
nurturing community; and money as a convenient medium of exchange for
material support of the individuals who maintain that community.
There's not much doubt in my mind that the money I am willing to
transfer to others in exchange for the type of online community
participation I can get in Livejournal-like places should go to Mark and
Denise rather than Livejournal.
*******
Also, intertwined! Unfortunately paid work is eating my time right at
the moment but I can't wait to start seriously posting there. I never
had much urge to participate in communities in LJ. And yet on
dreamwidth, the urge is strong enough I created one. I was pondering
the paradox that my own behaviour was helping to make DW a place I liked
better than LJ, but I am a creature who is very sensitive to what I
think other people think of me, and my behaviour closely reflects how I
think I am valued.
Aqua
Message-ID: <87fxffp4cv.fsf@windlord.stanford.edu>
Aqua writes:
> Because they've thought about that and put it into their rules. They
> have 50% ownership each, if either decides to sell the other gets
> first option *and* owners do not automatically have input into
> management. In the meantime it appears to me that they are creating a
> management in the form of a horde of enthusiastic volunteers, who I
> expect would steamroller any attempt by an outsider to change the
> management style and general attitude of the site.
>
> I know it's not a guarantee, but it looks to me like they've thought
> about it pretty carefully and are putting things in place to make it
> all work for my lifetime at least. Partly by helping make people like
> myself care enough to work to keep it good.
There also putting some other controls in place. They're trying to make
it easy to pull your data out of Dreamwidth, and I hope to see LJ code
improvements in that direction down the road. (The importer contains a
lot of that logic.) They're also committing to improving the Dreamwidth
code base for installation at other sites and are considering non-DW
installations of the code to be part of their user base. Not only is
this a much more open source approach, but it means that someone else
can fork the site if they go insane and have the advantage of all the
code and improvements they've done. (Similar to what Dreamwidth is
doing with LiveJournal, except with way more goodies that Dreamwidth has
developed already on top of the LJ code.)
--
Russ Allbery
Message-ID:
Serene Vannoy wrote:
> Stef wrote:
>> It's possible that DW won't last and that it will become more
>> commercial. If that happens, I'll probably try to support another small
>> company doing blogging/journaling software.
>>
>> Stef, supporting DW and not leaving LJ yet
>
> Same here. That is, I'm supporting DW with a paid membership, but I have
> found some measure of community on LJ and don't want to leave it.
See, this is one of the things I am completely failing to understand
about the "DW vs LJ war" that seems to be happening in some corners.
There's (to me, and even to Denise, who I noticed on one of the threads)
a very big difference between "leaving LJ for DW" == not willing to
support the economic model and management style of LJ and finding DW
more amenable in that respect and "leaving LJ for DW" == having big
dramatic fights with your friends, unsubscribing them because they're
not using your preferred service, etc.
In other words, I see a distinction between the platform and the
community of people using that platform. And I'm not "leaving" the
friends I've made on LJ just because I prefer the management of DW. And
the management of DW feels the same way and are doing everything they
can (bugzilla 702 springs to mind) to maintain relationships between
people across platforms.
And certainly just because there are good people with LJ accounts,
doesn't mean I have to think LJ (from a management point of view) is the
greatest ever and anything else is a betrayal of those good people.
Aqua
Just thought it might provide an interesting data point (since I'm having to stay up to wait for an email for daughter anyway).