I'm back - well, maybe.

[sam_t]

I'm in two minds about what to do about LJ. I'm just about getting my life back after over three months of not really being able to do anything much apart from work and necessary tasks to keep me and my cat from starving, which is why I haven't been around much. I'm almost better, apart from lingering aches and the frustration of not being able

Comments

[forthwritten]

I was wondering where you'd gone - I was actually thinking about you and Cleo for some reason the other day. Sorry to hear about the time and health issues and hope that life is less sucky now.

I have a Dreamwidth account but am reading my LJ flist and will do so for as long as there are interesting people on it.
You can log into DW with an OpenID account (such as your LJ one) and set up a reading list there, which will also let people give you access to their locked entries if you wanted; alternatively, I have a code which I'm happy to send should you want it (but no pressure if you don't).

[serrana]

Ditto to all this, and now that I know you're around, I'll make sure I've got the permissions set up right over there.

And good to see you again.

[sam_t]

Thank you. It's distinctly odd seeing all these entries with no comments - it gives the impression of a much patchier community. I'll probably wander over to Dreamwidth at some point this week and have a look around.

[serrana]

Yeah -- I think I'm mostly reading there these days, but (obviously) checking in here, too.

It's kind of a weird transition time, but I think things will settle out in the next few months.

[sam_t]

Thanks! (For thinking of me, and for the offer of the DW code)

I'm still thinking about Dreamwidth - I haven't really looked into it at all yet (feel free to try to persuade me), and it'll probably depend on how much I feel I'll use LJ/equivalent in the near future.

The combination of RaceFail + health/effective social isolation etc. at the same time rather put me off any sort of public journalling, but I'm feeling slightly less hermitty now. We'll see.

[forthwritten]

Well, the invite code's yours if you want it - email or pm me if you do.

I like Dreamwidth because they actually let me write userdocs for it! In all seriousness, it's open source, transparent, advertising-free, pays attention to accessibility issues, makes sensible, thought-out changes to the LJ codebase, has clear aims, has a clear business plan and is female led (something like 73% of code contributors are female [source]). There are little things, like the well-organised menus, that make it a much more pleasant environment for me.
The owners have experience in LJ support, abuse and development and are very aware of what's involved in running a site like LJ or DW. It's the first code fork of LJ I've seen that actually has a plan behind it, rather than "hey, let's get the LJ open source code and throw it up on a server".

I like the atmosphere there, but that's secondary to the code changes. I'm not saying the site is perfect - it's in open beta so some stuff doesn't work and it occasionally breaks - but I do like it a lot.