Signs you might not be from LJ originally (some of LJ's rules, both social and not-so-social)
- People in LJ tend to cluster into the same sorts of social groups that people face-to-face do, with the same kind of evolved social standards. ( Be careful about talking smack. )
And yes, I completely agree with your comparison between an individual journal and a living room. I treat my own journal as such, and I do everything I can to make everyone who visits it feel comfortable. This includes treating everyone as equally as possible, and making sure that neither I nor third parties commenting in my journal cause awkwardness to anyone.
Again, I may come back to this when I'm more awake. Thanks so much for this, Azz. ^__^
EDIT (7:35 AM PST): Okay, not really any more awake now than I was last night, but eh. Anyway...
I applaud you on bringing up the social circles and talking smack about others thing. I know that gossiping about others is a part of human nature (and even I have been guilty of it in a very few instances in the past), but it's something that I just cannot stand to watch happen nor get involved with, whether online or in RL. It often leads to or is caused by that horrid test of loyalties that some folks love to impose upon you. =P And besides, using your own journal or a community you're a member of to rant about an identifiable person, even in a locked entry, is just uncool, period.
On friending... yes, I know some folks put in their profiles "go ahead and friend me if you want," etc., but whenever possible, I always like to "warn" them first before adding them, even if we already know each other. This is one of the reasons that my own Friends list has been relatively small, compared with others'. I'm just too shy and too self-conscious to add someone without getting their direct permission.
On the other hand, I don't mind at all if people I already know add me without asking me first, but if it's someone I've never heard of and they add me without introducing themselves, I will generally try to get a hold of them to ask them how they learned of me and why they decided to add me (in much nicer language, of course). ;) And I will almost always just quietly ban serial adders or trolls whom I don't know and have a reputation for trouble.
I rarely remove people from my Friends list. If someone I have had little or no issue with starts posting entries that break my Friends page in some way, I simply temporarily remove them from my Default View until that problem has been resolved (ie., I periodically check back to their journal to find out, etc.). But if I feel the need to completely remove someone from my Friends list, though, I always do it without public comment and usually try to contact them privately to let them know why, especially if we had been mutual friends. I think that's only fair to them and that they deserve to know why I've removed them.
More details on my own "friending/defriending" policy are here, if you're morbidly curious.
About the disabling comments... You already know I posted an entry on this due to my confusion with the phenomenon (ie., why post something for others to see if they aren't allowed to provide feedback?), but thanks to everyone's comments on that, I have a much better understanding of this and am respectful of that. This is one of those things that makes me feel like a clueless and insensitive clod (won't go into more detail here as to why for privacy's sake, but you probably know what I'm talking about anyway).
(Continued in a separate comment, due to length. ^^;; )
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I occasionally use HTML to change the formatting of my text (usually just single words or phrases), but I try not to do it in an obnoxious manner. Most of the time, for the reasons you gave, I try to keep the formatting as plain and as simple as possible. And I've even gone so far as to poll my Friends list as to what kind of style I should use for my journal itself because I do want it to be readable and easy on the eyes for any visitors who might drop by. (Care about other people's opinions, much? XD )
And yes, I am a HUGE friend of the lj-cut and wish others were, too. ;) Many people are of the philosophy that unless an entry contains potentially Friends-page-breaking HTML, that it should never be lj-cut, regardless of length, because then people will never read it. I say poppycock to this. In fact, I am one of those who are more likely to read a long entry if it's behind a cut, because then I can easily open it in a separate page and can focus on it instead of all the distracting stuff surrounding it on my Friends page. (As you may recall, I can only concentrate on one thing at a time.)
And finally, regarding protected content, I have always been respectful of that and have encouraged others to do likewise. In fact, when someone is about to tell me what was in a locked entry that I don't have access to, I admonish them not to tell me anything because for whatever reason, I was not meant to know what was in it. By the same token, I do my best to maintain the confidentiality of protected content to which I have access, as well. And for that matter, before reposting chat logs and such, I always try to first get the permission of anyone who was present during the chat.
Okay, I know, this whole thing is tl;dr. Sorry about that, Azz. ^^;;
EDIT: Now that I think of it, this entire comment thread may indeed be too long and may be missing the whole point entirely. If such is the case, please feel free to delete it. ^^;; The last thing I want to do is put my foot in my mouth somehow, or to screw up your comment page here.
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(no subject)
Bored now.
( Read more... )
That doesn't tell you jack about the contents. I like teasers. I like people who know when to summarize and where to cut. I like enough stuff outside of the cut to know whether I want to finish reading it. I want to at least see the first paragraph. I want to know what I'm getting, unless that's the point of the post. I don't want to force it on everyone, obviously, but I want people to know what they're getting.
I think people who complain about never getting love for their posts likely don't know how to use it to their best advantage.
And you know me. Is there such a thing as tl;dr in my world? ;)
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There are right ways and wrong ways to do this, not just in relation to LJ culture, but with regard to the design of HTML in general as well. (That said, I'm bending one of those guidelines in this very comment.) The attitude you expressed here is pretty much the main idea behind the right ways to do it.
Using "what am I trying to convey" markup, such as , , , and (and even ) is generally better than "how it should look" markup like , , , etc., and that in turn is nearly always better than "control freak" markup like . (That last rule applies more strongly in a place like LJ than out on your own web site, but it's a good rule to follow elsewhere anyhow. The point is not so much plainness (though that certainly is a virtue as well!) as it is a matter of delaying choosing the exact details of the rendering until as late as possible so that the reader has as much choice in how things look (and the reader's browser has as much flexibility in how to make things fit on the screen) as possible.
So if somebody wants emphasized text to show up in red instead of in italics, they can set that as the default rendering for in their browser; if they want strongly-emphasized text to be in smallcaps, they can set that for ; and so on. I use to set off quoted text (I should use for that but I haven't found it to consistently default to something useful across multiple browsers, alas) and book titles (there's probably another tag I should use for that as well), versus for emphasis, and in most browsers they'll look the same ... but if somebody has changed their browser's default behaviour they'll see a difference. Or, probably, if they're blind and using a screen-reader.
Thing is, even if you're using and all the time where and are technically more correct, based on the paragraph I quoted you're still in the right ballpark and aren't likely to annoy anybody.
I sometimes resort to style overrides (
) to tweak an entry, but I can't recall a time when I've wanted to do that in a comment -- and even in entries it doesn't come up often except to ensure space around an image or to do the "grey box sidebar" effect like in a magazine article (again, it seldom comes up).
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Just the other day I took a call at work (I work for a local hosting/email/domains/bells/whistles shop) where the customer, who taught web design classes, and wanted me to confirm that his plan of using .pdf files for the whole website was the best way to do it, so it would look exactly the same for everyone.
I gaped for a while, and then (as politely as possible) told him that I couldn't find language strong enough to express how very bad that would be.
About the only time I use serious markup in comments is if I'm making a mockup of how I think a particular bit of LJ-vaporware should look. I've also colored text red, but that was in a flamewar where I was correcting the spelling and grammar of the other combatant before responding to his incoherent flames, and I think the rudeness inherent in the markup was far overshadowed by the rest of the flamewar.
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You may actually want to stop doing asking for direct permission (as opposed to telling them that you are doing so, so that if they have a problem you can remove them), if you have a habit of asking for permission. People who have those notices in their profiles have them there for the very specific reason of having people stop asking them.
In my head, "Hi, I'm adding you, hope you don't mind!" is very different from the "Hi, I'd like to add you, may I please?" One is "If there is a problem, let me know, but I'm going by your posted instructions unless you specify something different." The other is "Hi, I know you posted instructions that said it was OK, but I'd like to know, since this is me, so is it really really really OK?"
The first does not require a response. The second does require a response. The kind of people who are likely to post that sort of notice are likely to be busy and/or popular. Posting a comment that requires a response to a person who is likely to be busy and/or not care to take notice of you comes off as a presumption upon their time, even though it was intended to not presume upon their social boundaries. But since they've clarified their social boundaries with a posted notice, the attempt at politeness is swallowed up by the "wait, can't they read?!? I said it was OK already!", and is further sunk by the fact that it could be considered rude to presume upon the time of someone who has little of it to spare.
(And please don't take this wrong -- I haven't noticed you personally being presumptuous at any time that I can recall, but this is a general social rule that I'm elaborating upon from the scenario as given.)
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I usually do acknowledge that they have that in their profile, if it's there, but I still don't feel comfortable adding them without some kind of warning. It's like when I ride on the bus, I always ask if it's okay if I sit next to a stranger who may possibly not want to sit next to me. Guess in my case, it's a self-esteem issue. ^^;;
EDIT: Bunnehed by your edit! XD No worries, no offense taken, either. =)
I do try not to be presumptuous, but I do often come across that way anyway. ^^;; Usually not so much with friending, but with other things... elsewhere. Certain social rules tend to be lost upon me, which is why I'm very grateful you posted this guide. It's helped bring to light certain things that I didn't even realize were good etiquette.
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