Why I'm (still) not on Dreamwidth
Not precisely crossposted from Dreamwidth, but mostly the same as there:
I've been thinking about Dreamwidth, particularly since someone I know posted an annoyed message about LiveJournal, saying they'll be glad when everyone migrates to Dreamwidth. Mostly because I've had a Dreamwidth account since they first sold accounts and I've only posted twice--the first day I created it and today. So, why haven't I posted to Dreamwidth?
1. I don't trust it. No offense to its fannish creators, but quite frankly I trust "them" more than I trust "us," where them is SixApart and us is fandom as a whole. I still want to see Dreamwidth weather its first major fannish meltdown before I'll trust it not to take sides, not to fuck up even more than LiveJournal has, not to be as cautious in protecting itself from liability. Because there, we're not an often-invisible minority uncertain of our welcome, we're it. We're not trying to fly under the radar and there's no incentive for people to try to keep "management" out of our kerfuffles.
2. It's ugly. This isn't a big deal, or rather it shouldn't be, except for one thing. I'm a software developer, with experience and interest in CSS and other things that are part of site customization. And yet I can't find a single, clearly-written, vaguely-intelligible document on creating custom styles. Maybe it's out there, maybe it's somewhere obvious, but I can't find it.
3. Which leads to the third item, I can't find ANYTHING on that site. Nothing is where I expect to find it, nothing is in any arrangement that makes sense to me. I understand that Denise and Mark spent time and money on usability studies to rearrange where menu commands and icons go, and all I can figure out is that my brain doesn't work the way their testers' brains do, because to me purely random would make more sense.
I bought a paid account to create a journal--cyber-squatting on my own first name, to be honest--because I wasn't really eager to move over here and figured I shouldn't take invite codes away from people who were interested. Three months later I still see no need to move. (On the other hand, I probably have a boat-load of invites now, so if anyone still wants one, yell out.)
I've been thinking about Dreamwidth, particularly since someone I know posted an annoyed message about LiveJournal, saying they'll be glad when everyone migrates to Dreamwidth. Mostly because I've had a Dreamwidth account since they first sold accounts and I've only posted twice--the first day I created it and today. So, why haven't I posted to Dreamwidth?
1. I don't trust it. No offense to its fannish creators, but quite frankly I trust "them" more than I trust "us," where them is SixApart and us is fandom as a whole. I still want to see Dreamwidth weather its first major fannish meltdown before I'll trust it not to take sides, not to fuck up even more than LiveJournal has, not to be as cautious in protecting itself from liability. Because there, we're not an often-invisible minority uncertain of our welcome, we're it. We're not trying to fly under the radar and there's no incentive for people to try to keep "management" out of our kerfuffles.
2. It's ugly. This isn't a big deal, or rather it shouldn't be, except for one thing. I'm a software developer, with experience and interest in CSS and other things that are part of site customization. And yet I can't find a single, clearly-written, vaguely-intelligible document on creating custom styles. Maybe it's out there, maybe it's somewhere obvious, but I can't find it.
3. Which leads to the third item, I can't find ANYTHING on that site. Nothing is where I expect to find it, nothing is in any arrangement that makes sense to me. I understand that Denise and Mark spent time and money on usability studies to rearrange where menu commands and icons go, and all I can figure out is that my brain doesn't work the way their testers' brains do, because to me purely random would make more sense.
I bought a paid account to create a journal--cyber-squatting on my own first name, to be honest--because I wasn't really eager to move over here and figured I shouldn't take invite codes away from people who were interested. Three months later I still see no need to move. (On the other hand, I probably have a boat-load of invites now, so if anyone still wants one, yell out.)