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 (official and unofficial) on community imports, we figured it was finally time to pop the question:
Milliways, will you move to Dreamwidth with us?
Most of you have probably heard the arguments for moving by now - or if you haven't, you can probably pretty well imagine them on your own. But this is a hell of a big decision, and we'd be doing both the game and all of you a disservice if we didn't go thoroughly into our reasoning, and allow you to do the same.
Probably the biggest argument in favour of staying (aside from the hassle of having to get set up and figure your way around a new platform, or of having to divide your attention between LJ and DW), is that LJ has promised to provide, at some point in the future, an S2 style that mimics the old look of the site and restores functionality such as subject lines.
Our counter-point to this is twofold: firstly, to be perfectly frank, we no longer trust LJ as far as we can throw them. They have consistently demonstrated a policy of disregard and dishonesty towards a large part of their userbase, and as far as we are concerned, the promise of an individual user style, to be delivered at some unknown date and that will theoretically make the site usable again, is no longer enough to go on.
Secondly, Ilya Dronov has also stated that LJ's new comment 'innovations' will eventually be applied to S2 styles as well, removing subject lines and thus well and truly breaking LJ for anyone who wants to use it for anything involving long threads. This may or may not affect the 'old look' S2 style; you'd think that it wouldn't, but we wouldn't bet money on it. This also may or may not include such current highlights from the new default as: no longer displaying any comments, anywhere, made by now-deleted journals, busted icon selection, etc.
If you're not convinced by the nebulous spectre of further redesign flustercucks, we submit to you the full list of LiveJournal redesign prototypes, courtesy of Art Lebedev, the design company responsible for the new comment pages. One way or another, these changes are coming, and if the response to Release 88 wasn't proof positive that LJ does not and will not listen to user protests, then we don't know what is.
LiveJournal is no longer a friendly home for fandom. Whether or not you believe that LJ is embarrassed by us, or actively wants us gone from the service, the truth is this: for several years now, LJ has been moving further and further in a direction that is fundamentally oppositional to fannish usages of the site, and is likely to continue to do so. (See also: this translation of an interview with Ilya Dronov, about LiveJournal usage models.)
Will people continue to try and find hacks and tweaks and workarounds to solve the problems that LiveJournal creates, and fix the things that LiveJournal breaks? Undoubtedly. Will they be effective in the long term? Who knows. What's more important is that we shouldn't have to be treading water, here. We shouldn't have to be fighting LiveJournal at every step just to make the site usable again.
We'd love to be able to stay. LiveJournal has been our home since Milliways first opened its doors, and the prospect of leaving it behind is causing no small amount of heartache. If we thought that staying put was a viable option, or in the best interests of the game, you wouldn't be reading this post. But if not now, we believe that the situation will soon become untenable; that LJ are liable to end up removing more and more functionality that is absolutely key to communities such as this, without regard for the users who rely on it. Given the choice, we as mods would rather make sure the game is safe and its continued existence secured, than wake up one morning to find that LJ has irretrievably broken or deleted some part of it.
At the end of the day, Milliways itself, its amazing history and the incredible community of players surrounding it, are more important to us than the platform supporting it, and we want to preserve that as best we can.
But that's where you guys come in. Without players, there's no game, and although we fervently believe that moving to Dreamwidth is the right choice for Milliways, it's important to us that you all get the chance to have your say, and to be a part of this decision. This poll will remain open until midnight EST on Tuesday. Without a majority vote in favour of the move, Milliways will be staying put.
Poll
If you're uncertain about the move, or have any concerns you'd like to discuss with us before casting your vote, please, please do speak up. This is a crucial decision and you guys are the lifeblood of the game, and we want to do everything we can to assuage your worries about any aspect of the move.
Some final notes:
ETA: The comments are starting to get a bit lengthy, so to save you having to wade through all of them to see if we've addressed your concerns already, here's a quick list of the issues that have already come up:
Per Cam's last post on the subject, and given the fact that Dreamwidth staff will soon be lifting the final restrictions (official and unofficial) on community imports, we figured it was finally time to pop the question:
Milliways, will you move to Dreamwidth with us?
Most of you have probably heard the arguments for moving by now - or if you haven't, you can probably pretty well imagine them on your own. But this is a hell of a big decision, and we'd be doing both the game and all of you a disservice if we didn't go thoroughly into our reasoning, and allow you to do the same.
Probably the biggest argument in favour of staying (aside from the hassle of having to get set up and figure your way around a new platform, or of having to divide your attention between LJ and DW), is that LJ has promised to provide, at some point in the future, an S2 style that mimics the old look of the site and restores functionality such as subject lines.
Our counter-point to this is twofold: firstly, to be perfectly frank, we no longer trust LJ as far as we can throw them. They have consistently demonstrated a policy of disregard and dishonesty towards a large part of their userbase, and as far as we are concerned, the promise of an individual user style, to be delivered at some unknown date and that will theoretically make the site usable again, is no longer enough to go on.
Secondly, Ilya Dronov has also stated that LJ's new comment 'innovations' will eventually be applied to S2 styles as well, removing subject lines and thus well and truly breaking LJ for anyone who wants to use it for anything involving long threads. This may or may not affect the 'old look' S2 style; you'd think that it wouldn't, but we wouldn't bet money on it. This also may or may not include such current highlights from the new default as: no longer displaying any comments, anywhere, made by now-deleted journals, busted icon selection, etc.
If you're not convinced by the nebulous spectre of further redesign flustercucks, we submit to you the full list of LiveJournal redesign prototypes, courtesy of Art Lebedev, the design company responsible for the new comment pages. One way or another, these changes are coming, and if the response to Release 88 wasn't proof positive that LJ does not and will not listen to user protests, then we don't know what is.
LiveJournal is no longer a friendly home for fandom. Whether or not you believe that LJ is embarrassed by us, or actively wants us gone from the service, the truth is this: for several years now, LJ has been moving further and further in a direction that is fundamentally oppositional to fannish usages of the site, and is likely to continue to do so. (See also: this translation of an interview with Ilya Dronov, about LiveJournal usage models.)
Will people continue to try and find hacks and tweaks and workarounds to solve the problems that LiveJournal creates, and fix the things that LiveJournal breaks? Undoubtedly. Will they be effective in the long term? Who knows. What's more important is that we shouldn't have to be treading water, here. We shouldn't have to be fighting LiveJournal at every step just to make the site usable again.
We'd love to be able to stay. LiveJournal has been our home since Milliways first opened its doors, and the prospect of leaving it behind is causing no small amount of heartache. If we thought that staying put was a viable option, or in the best interests of the game, you wouldn't be reading this post. But if not now, we believe that the situation will soon become untenable; that LJ are liable to end up removing more and more functionality that is absolutely key to communities such as this, without regard for the users who rely on it. Given the choice, we as mods would rather make sure the game is safe and its continued existence secured, than wake up one morning to find that LJ has irretrievably broken or deleted some part of it.
At the end of the day, Milliways itself, its amazing history and the incredible community of players surrounding it, are more important to us than the platform supporting it, and we want to preserve that as best we can.
But that's where you guys come in. Without players, there's no game, and although we fervently believe that moving to Dreamwidth is the right choice for Milliways, it's important to us that you all get the chance to have your say, and to be a part of this decision. This poll will remain open until midnight EST on Tuesday. Without a majority vote in favour of the move, Milliways will be staying put.
Poll
If you're uncertain about the move, or have any concerns you'd like to discuss with us before casting your vote, please, please do speak up. This is a crucial decision and you guys are the lifeblood of the game, and we want to do everything we can to assuage your worries about any aspect of the move.
Some final notes:
- Dreamwidth can be a little complex to get to grips with. While much of it has grown from the LiveJournal source code, both its greatest asset and (sometimes) its greatest weakness is the abundance of choice it provides. So many options! For everything! Fortunately, they have a wealth of resources to help LiveJournal refugees find their way around the new site - and if you're ever lost, simply speaking up in the comments of a news post is usually enough to guarantee you an avalanche of helpful replies.
- Seriously, if you're ever in any doubt about how much Dreamwidth values their userbase, or how well they grok the needs of fandom, just check out the comments to any news post. Or their Diversity Statement. Or their Guiding Principles. Without getting sanctimonious, it's not hard to see why we think Dreamwidth is the best possible home for Milliways.
- Yes, we have had a number of people come out of the woodwork when Milliways has been mentioned in DW news posts, saying that they'd love to join (or re-join) if Milliways were to make the move. But while that is a pretty damn sweet thing to hear, we do not value courting new players over making sure that the players we do have are as happy as possible with whatever the eventual decision is.
- Given the massive and continuing influx of users from LJ, DW has decided to let account creation remain open indefinitely. This means that if you have not yet created or mirrored any accounts that you might wish to, you can still do so for free without an invite code.
- Before you ask, we have been thinking about the specific mechanics of moving the game to Dreamwidth, and we have also been considering ways in which a move might be used as an opportunity to (optionally) free up retired characters. However, to avoid complicating the issue and trying to have conversations about too many things at once, these topics will be up for discussion separately, at a later date. This post is purely for deciding whether or not the move should happen, and for us to address your concerns regarding the issue.
ETA: The comments are starting to get a bit lengthy, so to save you having to wade through all of them to see if we've addressed your concerns already, here's a quick list of the issues that have already come up:
- Is this decision being made in haste? (2)
- Can Dreamwidth even handle the increased load in traffic? / Can they handle an import of our size?
- How can I track activity in the game if it moves? Can I keep up with it via LJ?
- Couldn't we just keep crossposting?
- What about broken links/OOMs/deleted journals?
- How is Milliways going to handle the need for invite codes? (2)
- What if people can't get the same username on DW?
- Shouldn't we just wait and see if LJ fixes/find workarounds that fix the problem?
- What if DW sells out and puts ads on its site?
- What if we lose players who don't move with us?
- Isn't DW more expensive than LJ?