journaling alternatives

[astolat]

Some people have been asking fanarchive about a journaling site in particular, but it's going to be a while yet before an informed decision can be made on what projects are going to be pursued, because we're getting the committees together now that will be studying the resource costs of a lot of the proposed projects, and also seeing what kind of human and

Comments

[amireal]

*nods* That's about my feeling, plus LJ currently supports an infrastructure that wouldn't be supportable if we fragment, yeah it's possible for fandom to continue, but some of the conventions we use here (storyfinder comms, challenge comms, etc) wouldn't work outside an environ like this.

So while I'm unhappy, I'm sticking around and hoping to strengthen what we have in terms of infrastructure and organization and backing up things up the wazoo and waiting for a better solution, not simply an alternative solution.

[sageness]

Here's a thought: if fandom were to build an LJ alternative and its hardware were located outside the US, the site's content (and TOS) wouldn't be subject to US law, would it?

[astolat]

I am not a lawyer and don't know the answer to this, but I suspect it is not quite that easy. I mean, the site would certainly be subject to the law of wherever the hardware is located, which means that you need lawyers who understand the law in that area to even think about it, and individual users are still subject to the laws in their own jurisdiction. So I don't know how much you can gain. It may be like that old joke about democracy -- "the worst form of government, except for all the others". :/

[nimnod]

I keep wondering why no-one does this. The US seems to me to be becoming increasingly conservative and restrictive in terms of its laws, and increasingly puritan and prone to witch-hunts. The rest of the world is very big and large parts of it are a lot more libertarian and open minded (the Netherlands for example - I've never seen a culture more relaxed about sex, where teenage boys walk past porn dvds for sale at Saturday markets and don't blink because they don't care because it's just not the big deal it is in the States).

[maryavatar]

Yep, when my websites and archives got TOSsed from a US-based webhost, I moved to Servage, which is entirely based in the UK. They're much more relaxed about pretty much everything, and I haven't had a problem since.

[minotaurs]

I've recently had the thought that the solution might not lie in creating/finding/building a single journalling site where fandom will be safe. Instead, how about a single site that concatenates *all* the journaling services? One place you could go to read and post to all your accounts on all the different journals? Kind of like Semagic, but web-based and able to read as well as post. I know enough about programming that I can kind of see how this could be made to work, but not enough to build it.

[djinanna]

Sort of a friends list aggregator. That's an interesting idea. I have no programmer skills or I would try to be more helpful.

[eboniorchid]

I only just stumbled across it, while looking for something else entirely, but over here (http://www.profilactic.com/index.jsp) they have what they call "mashups" which allow for multiple blogs to sort of be collated into one. As far as I can see, though, they can only mashup public entries and have no cut system. I don't know if there's a way to "mashup" blogs that aren't your own, but they don't ask for passwords (probably because they only take public entries), so you could, theoretically create f-list mashups for yourself too, I suppose.

I know it's not exactly what you're looking for - I would very much love to see what you're describing - but if you have enough sense of programming, maybe it'll help you think about how to do what it is you really want to do.

[blktauna]

I think that's going to be the actual solution. Now how to make it?

[feather_autant]

::nods:: My biggest problem with the mass exodus is the dispersal. I don't see that any other alternative will be better in the long run, and I fear that our whole community will truly fragment-- some of us here, some there.

I'm hoping, probably naively, that we will educate, instead of taking our ball and playing somewhere else. ::fingers crossed::

[syredronning]

Agreeing with your analysis, which is a pity as I'm currently rather unhappy with lj politics :/

A server in the Netherlands might be good idea over time...