[Patreon, LJ, meta] "SOME BLOG": Possible Changes?
I am thinking about possibly starting a blog for my Patreon-supported posts, and wanted to solicit your opinions about that.
I've got some feedback that suggests some people would like that for a couple of reasons.
• Not everybody loves my sense of graphic design. I make my journal look the way I do because it's how I like what I read to appear, and, yes, I'm still using the old-style friends' page instead of the new "feed". While savvy LJ-users know how to edit the URL to make it look more palatable, that doesn't help people wandering in off Twitter or Facebook. So I could put my longform pieces in a place where it's a nice generic dark-grey-on-white scheme, and nobody has to read along with me in my fabulous gemtone extravaganza.
• Mention has been made of wanting to point professional contacts at my stuff, but being uncomfortable with the possibility that those professional contacts might encounter the referrer's LJ identity. If the posts weren't at LJ, that would be at least less of a problem.
Additionally, doing so might have other benefits:
• Siderea-Post-only RSS feed.
• LJ lacks caché. I actually kind of like that this place is somewhere between a ruin and a dive, but words printed on other platforms have more credibility.
I'm actually rather torn about that. Getting handed credibility for basically nothing is both (1) cool and (2) horrifying. It's like everyone here has passed a test: they took what I wrote seriously even though it was on LJ, and even though it was on a site that doesn't attempt in any way to look "responsible" and "trustworthy". One part of me is cynically saying, "Hey, play the game by its rules!" while another part of me smiles a Mona-Lisa smile, shrugs, and says, "If someone is the kind of reader who reads styles instead of substances, then perhaps it's just as well they pass by these posts; what would we want with them here?" and then the first part of me retorts, "THEIR MONEY FOR ONE THING", and then the second argues back, "ARE YOU SO CERTAIN THOSE WHO READ WITH THEIR SENSE OF DECOR CONVERT TO PATRONS?", and the first replies, "READERS YOU DON'T HAVE DEFINITELY DON'T CONVERT", and the second replies, "I KNOW, WHY DON'T WE JUST GET A SPIDER TO WEAVE A HEADER IMAGE THAT SAYS 'SOME BLOG'" and the first says, "That's... not actually a bad idea," and the second says, "I WAS BEING SARCASTIC." And so forth and so on.
There are two basic ways I could see doing this.
1) Post the Patreon-supported posts to a blog somewhere else, and then post here on LJ that there's a new post up. It would look pretty much like it does now, but the "read more" would take you off site. But I wouldn't allow discussion there, only here.
2) Same thing, only I shift to allowing discussion there and turning off discussion here.
In either case, when I post to Patreon, the link would take one to the blog, and not this journal, though in case #1 there might also be a link to the journal for discussion.
Things I am smarter than to do:
• Maintain two copies of the same post in two locations.
• Moderate two discussions of the same post in two locations.
• Shift identities mid-stream, by attempting to hide this LJ's association with the remote blog, or connecting my professional identity to the blog. I'll still be Siderea in both places.
This latter means that someone would be theoretically able, if pointed at a post on the blog, to follow it back here, by way of Patreon, even if I don't post a link right on the blog post saying "DISCUSSION AT THIS LJ POST". That may be fine, in that it still gives you plausible deniability of learning about it via LJ.
Possible negative consequences:
• I kind of like how all the other stuff I post here contextualizes my Siderea Posts. This is that Presence Writing vs Artifact Writing thing I talk about in the thank you note patrons get.
• Driving less traffic to my LJ will drop me in the LJ ratings, and I gather I'm now getting some traffic from breaking the top 25 from time to time.
• I still like supporting LJ, especially the new-and-improved management, and this sort of is a vote of no confidence.
• I have anti-publicity, and I'm not sure I want to give that up. These days, generally the only way you show up here is if you've read something I wrote and liked it. Maybe it was a comment in some other space. Maybe you were pointed at something I wrote here. This is seriously off the main drag of the infobahn. I think this is a feature. Maybe I don't want to promote my writing to a larger audience.
• Relatedly, spammers, trolls, violent misogynists, and other sociopaths. Quite aside from their intrinsic unpleasantness, there's the added labor of managing them.
• Maybe my readers would read things less often if they had to click off site? I don't know.
• Maybe readers actually really love the purple-blue-gold thing, and would be devastated to have to read my stuff in black and white?
• ?
The two platforms I am considering are Medium and Wordpress. I'm leaning toward Wordpress, because as chic as Medium is, as best I can tell it gives its bloggers absolutely no controls over commenting there, including no way to just turn it off (so I could drive discussion here.)
Thoughts? Suggestions? Requests?
ETA: Whoa, that was surprisingly unanimous. Righto, not messing with success.
Belatedly it occurs to me that the concept I was not realizing I was looking for, wrt LJ's being a wasteland is a liminal space. Gurus, oracles, wizards and related sage archetypes are supposed to be in remote, hard-to-access, foreboding, undercivilized locations. Comes with the job description. It's no doubt one part representing the worlds-crossing, wild and uncouth nature of the sage, and two parts the housing bubble. (Hey, I have a permanent account here!)
LJ these days always reminds me of David Alexander Smith's short story "Dying in Hull".
I've got some feedback that suggests some people would like that for a couple of reasons.
• Not everybody loves my sense of graphic design. I make my journal look the way I do because it's how I like what I read to appear, and, yes, I'm still using the old-style friends' page instead of the new "feed". While savvy LJ-users know how to edit the URL to make it look more palatable, that doesn't help people wandering in off Twitter or Facebook. So I could put my longform pieces in a place where it's a nice generic dark-grey-on-white scheme, and nobody has to read along with me in my fabulous gemtone extravaganza.
• Mention has been made of wanting to point professional contacts at my stuff, but being uncomfortable with the possibility that those professional contacts might encounter the referrer's LJ identity. If the posts weren't at LJ, that would be at least less of a problem.
Additionally, doing so might have other benefits:
• Siderea-Post-only RSS feed.
• LJ lacks caché. I actually kind of like that this place is somewhere between a ruin and a dive, but words printed on other platforms have more credibility.
I'm actually rather torn about that. Getting handed credibility for basically nothing is both (1) cool and (2) horrifying. It's like everyone here has passed a test: they took what I wrote seriously even though it was on LJ, and even though it was on a site that doesn't attempt in any way to look "responsible" and "trustworthy". One part of me is cynically saying, "Hey, play the game by its rules!" while another part of me smiles a Mona-Lisa smile, shrugs, and says, "If someone is the kind of reader who reads styles instead of substances, then perhaps it's just as well they pass by these posts; what would we want with them here?" and then the first part of me retorts, "THEIR MONEY FOR ONE THING", and then the second argues back, "ARE YOU SO CERTAIN THOSE WHO READ WITH THEIR SENSE OF DECOR CONVERT TO PATRONS?", and the first replies, "READERS YOU DON'T HAVE DEFINITELY DON'T CONVERT", and the second replies, "I KNOW, WHY DON'T WE JUST GET A SPIDER TO WEAVE A HEADER IMAGE THAT SAYS 'SOME BLOG'" and the first says, "That's... not actually a bad idea," and the second says, "I WAS BEING SARCASTIC." And so forth and so on.
There are two basic ways I could see doing this.
1) Post the Patreon-supported posts to a blog somewhere else, and then post here on LJ that there's a new post up. It would look pretty much like it does now, but the "read more" would take you off site. But I wouldn't allow discussion there, only here.
2) Same thing, only I shift to allowing discussion there and turning off discussion here.
In either case, when I post to Patreon, the link would take one to the blog, and not this journal, though in case #1 there might also be a link to the journal for discussion.
Things I am smarter than to do:
• Maintain two copies of the same post in two locations.
• Moderate two discussions of the same post in two locations.
• Shift identities mid-stream, by attempting to hide this LJ's association with the remote blog, or connecting my professional identity to the blog. I'll still be Siderea in both places.
This latter means that someone would be theoretically able, if pointed at a post on the blog, to follow it back here, by way of Patreon, even if I don't post a link right on the blog post saying "DISCUSSION AT THIS LJ POST". That may be fine, in that it still gives you plausible deniability of learning about it via LJ.
Possible negative consequences:
• I kind of like how all the other stuff I post here contextualizes my Siderea Posts. This is that Presence Writing vs Artifact Writing thing I talk about in the thank you note patrons get.
• Driving less traffic to my LJ will drop me in the LJ ratings, and I gather I'm now getting some traffic from breaking the top 25 from time to time.
• I still like supporting LJ, especially the new-and-improved management, and this sort of is a vote of no confidence.
• I have anti-publicity, and I'm not sure I want to give that up. These days, generally the only way you show up here is if you've read something I wrote and liked it. Maybe it was a comment in some other space. Maybe you were pointed at something I wrote here. This is seriously off the main drag of the infobahn. I think this is a feature. Maybe I don't want to promote my writing to a larger audience.
• Relatedly, spammers, trolls, violent misogynists, and other sociopaths. Quite aside from their intrinsic unpleasantness, there's the added labor of managing them.
• Maybe my readers would read things less often if they had to click off site? I don't know.
• Maybe readers actually really love the purple-blue-gold thing, and would be devastated to have to read my stuff in black and white?
• ?
The two platforms I am considering are Medium and Wordpress. I'm leaning toward Wordpress, because as chic as Medium is, as best I can tell it gives its bloggers absolutely no controls over commenting there, including no way to just turn it off (so I could drive discussion here.)
Thoughts? Suggestions? Requests?
ETA: Whoa, that was surprisingly unanimous. Righto, not messing with success.
Belatedly it occurs to me that the concept I was not realizing I was looking for, wrt LJ's being a wasteland is a liminal space. Gurus, oracles, wizards and related sage archetypes are supposed to be in remote, hard-to-access, foreboding, undercivilized locations. Comes with the job description. It's no doubt one part representing the worlds-crossing, wild and uncouth nature of the sage, and two parts the housing bubble. (Hey, I have a permanent account here!)
LJ these days always reminds me of David Alexander Smith's short story "Dying in Hull".