ATTN: MOD POST
Hello, Milliwaysers! I meant to get this post up yesterday, but then I accidentally a house full of cousins for twelve hours. Twelve! Relatives, I love you, but don't you know that I have the internet to attend to? Anyway.
Per Cam's last post on the subject, and given the fact that Dreamwidth staff will soon be lifting the final restrictions ( ( Read more... )
Per Cam's last post on the subject, and given the fact that Dreamwidth staff will soon be lifting the final restrictions ( ( Read more... )
1) I would not call this, particularly, a heat of the moment decision? Release 88 was deployed on December 21st; that's nearly three weeks ago. The question of whether or not it was time to move came up almost immediately, and we have been mulling it over since then as we've watched DW open up community imports and deal with the influx, and other RP communities move over. This is not lightly considered.
2) This will be an inconvenience for some players, to be sure - but DW is young enough and small enough that in fact, most players are more likely to get the username they want (or that they wanted all along) on DW than they are on LJ. Game-wise, it would certainly be more convenient for us if all mirrors were given the same usernames as their LJ counterparts, but if they are not, it's not an insurmountable problem.
3) LJ have already stated their intentions as regards this: a new S2 style to mimic the old look of the comments. I've pretty well summed up our collective modly feelings in the OP on why we don't think this is enough of a safety-net on which to stake the future of the comm, so I won't repeat them here.
4) See my comment above re: the cost breakdown.
5) It's true, we can't know for certain that DW will never sell out, or never introduce ads on their pages, or etc. etc. However, at this point in time, I have a great deal more trust in DW than I do in LJ; they have already been through multiple scuffles with payment processors (Paypal and, I believe, Google Checkout?) who have refused them service unless they agreed to censor user content. DW point-blank refused, and although it meant having to go for several months without being able to accept payment, and having to severely deplete their war-chest, they were able to keep running, find a new payment processor who would work with them, and climb back into the black without ever compromising on their guiding principles. While we can't know for certain, I personally trust DW to stick to their guns, and failing that, to always try their best to do right by their userbase.
Also... we have been playing on a site with ads for years. In the hypothetical scenario where Dreamwidth does introduce ads, we won't exactly have lost anything.
(They are also strongly committed to accessibility and web standards, so even if they were to ever introduce advertisements, I have no doubt that they would do so in a way that had the least possible impact on the usability of the site.)
6) Again, this is in the OP, so I'll try not to repeat myself too much. But... well, basically, our feelings are that we shouldn't have to get around it. LiveJournal has been our home; we shouldn't have to employ style hacks and tweak browser settings and etc. etc. just to attempt to restore an essential part of how we use the site.
Also, many of LJ's changes have rendered the site literally unusable for some users with accessibility issues. Waiting around for stop-gaps and band-aids to drop out of the sky to fix these problems is not, to our minds, an acceptable solution.
7) This... yeah. This is one of the hardest parts of the decision for me, personally, and it's why we're very invested in trying to address people's concerns as fully as possible and to try and make any move as palatable as we can. However, if everyone stays for the sake of everyone else who is staying, then Milliways will have stayed because... it stayed. And at the end of the day, it's our job as mods to think about what might be the best course of action for the game as a whole, and to safeguard that as best we can. Sometimes you gotta make the hard choice.
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The only one I would respond to is the heat of the moment one. I'll rephrase it, though, to it being more of a case of people who are so upset they have not calmed down, which might be worth doing, even if their opinion is the same, before a decision is made. I have had some experiences that lead me to think this, where people who are normally quite calm have become, and remained, absolutely livid about the issue and in some cases unable to even talk about it rationally, especially with someone who disagrees. And that part, not being able to talk rationally to someone of another opinion, worries me.
To me, that says that tempers are high and need to calm. The opinion may be the same, but it's just generally wise to take a few breaths in cases like this.
(Accessibility is a huge issue for me as well, and something I quite like about dreamwidth. I need DragonSpeak at times, and I'm also devoted to it as my mom's blind and uses Jaws.) I'm not arguing for not moving at all; I want to make that clear. I voted "No" in the poll, my actual opinion is, "Let's wait a few weeks, be it three or six, and then vote." It allows for some emotional distance.
There's another benefit to it too, though, that's more practical: I know DW has said they can handle the influx. Waiting a few weeks--and I do mean a few--allows us to see if that's really so without losing any info. At least once a month when I'm dealing with my boss as an email sys admin, he's cursing to high heaven because what SHOULD have been able to handle everything just...isn't. I wouldn't mind watching how things go for DW with a heavier user base, but I realize that's not important to everyone.
I just want to make sure that any concerns I can think of, even if they're not my own but do seem to have a basis in logic/are valid are brought up and considered. (And I really do appreciate how you've addressed them.)
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