personal thoughts about r69
Whee, more LJ features! r69! Lest people not have caught on by now, this meta is brought to you by Azz-the-blogger, not Azz-the-LJ-volunteer. I have slightly mixed feelings about these features, but since it's given me something that I can use in a way consistent with my deepest darkest adolescent fantasies, I'm immensely happy.
(A lot of my online presence is explained by the fact that basically, I want to grow up to be Ariane Emory. Except without the taste for teenage boys, without the cancer, without the getting murdered, without the slave-labor society, without the family problems, and without the being a complete ruthless powerhungry unloving battleaxe things.)
If you have a Facebook account and want to comment on LJ, you can do that with Facebook Connect now. From what little discussion I've seen around, these appear to be treated mostly like OpenID accounts on LJ, which means that the accounts can set up their profiles and comment, but not post entries of their own (to their own journal or in a community), and (probably still) can't join communities. I have enough conflicting feelings about this that I am effectively neutral. On the one hand, it makes it easier for people on Facebook to interact with LJ, reducing the walled garden effect: happy social whee! On the other hand, it makes it easier for people on Facebook to interact with LJ, reducing the walled garden effect: oh god I may lock myself in my room and never come out again. On the gripping hand, it's here, and we'll manage to cope somehow.
If you have an OpenID or (shiny new) Facebook Connect account on LJ, you can turn it into a Real Account (http://www.livejournal.com/manage/settings/?cat=account -- http://pics.livejournal.com/marta/pic/000pg6pq). Not sure if this is documented yet, but people in Suggestions have wanted this for years, and I'm very happy they're getting it.
Link accounts to cross-post entries and/or comments to Facebook (http://www.livejournal.com/manage/settings/?cat=extensions):
I don't care for this and won't use it, because I keep my real name and my legal name separated. Mostly this does not concern me, because the connection is made in the LJ settings and is opt-in, rather than having Facebook assume that since I'm logged in to Facebook in this browser, it's perfectly OK to make the connection. This is why I'm not in sudden hysterics.
The part that I actively dislike about the sudden ease of interaction with Facebook is entirely down to the fact that I maintain a separation between my real identity (who I am when I'm at home) and my legal identity (the driver's license/paycheck/parent name). I use my real name on LJ and my legal name on Facebook. I do not link between my Facebook and my LJ, and I ask that my friends who know both my names keep the names separate based on place. But as more interaction happens between the sites, and as I get more overlap between my Facebook friends and my LJ friends, inevitably somebody's going to come in via someone else's Facebook link, see me chattering away in the comments, recognize me, and make the connection between the names. And it's going to be someone I would rather not make that connection. I am not looking forward to that day, but I also refuse to live in fear of it.
Link accounts to cross-post entries and/or comments to Twitter: I like this, I have it set up, and I'm using it. More about that after I describe it.
Once one opts in, by entering one's Twitter username in the thingy on the page http://www.livejournal.com/manage/settings/?cat=extensions, and then one ticks the checkboxes for whether this is done by default or not, for entries or comments.
How I'm using it: I've got a bit of a complicated dodge going now, that I actually just set up a few days ago for some other stuff. Followers of my Twitter account will see that I have a lot of Delicious links in there. I am also using http://readitlaterlist.com/ to manage my proliferation of tabs, which is ... actually doing more than I thought. Thanks, afuna! And I do want to log the things I read, but not all of them are suitable for public linking, because of one or all of the following: too high-volume, too much like a recommendation of the link, because other people don't need to know that I was reading that. So I've set up a locked Twitter account, used Twitterfeed to connect the one to the other, and then Twittinesis to connect the other to the ... default entry security private secondary journal that I have set up for backups. :-P
So I just set up my main account here to deliver my comments to that locked-down Twitter account, so the backups will ship with comment links as well as massive, massive linkspam.
Why do I do this? Because Ariane Emory had a lot to do with how I set up my brain as an adolescent, and I work better when I'm able to store a lot of the less-relevant things elsewhere. Since my brain files fairly well on the "What day did I do X? It was sometime around Y, maybe Z..." and if I can find Y and Z, and I have a log that would include X that's date-sorted, I can go through the logs to then locate X.
[Edit: Now that I'm awake, I have heard about pingbacks leading to locked entries, and this is apparently a bug under investigation which you should file a support request for if it happens to you; I hope they get it fixed soon because that is worrisome.] Pingbacks! I love pingbacks. I was sorry when they went away the first time. http://www.livejournal.com/manage/settings/?cat=privacy This is only on-LJ, public entry pingbacks, and they're on by default unless you previously turned them off. [Edited to correct: this is opt-out, not opt-in.]
(A lot of my online presence is explained by the fact that basically, I want to grow up to be Ariane Emory. Except without the taste for teenage boys, without the cancer, without the getting murdered, without the slave-labor society, without the family problems, and without the being a complete ruthless powerhungry unloving battleaxe things.)
If you have a Facebook account and want to comment on LJ, you can do that with Facebook Connect now. From what little discussion I've seen around, these appear to be treated mostly like OpenID accounts on LJ, which means that the accounts can set up their profiles and comment, but not post entries of their own (to their own journal or in a community), and (probably still) can't join communities. I have enough conflicting feelings about this that I am effectively neutral. On the one hand, it makes it easier for people on Facebook to interact with LJ, reducing the walled garden effect: happy social whee! On the other hand, it makes it easier for people on Facebook to interact with LJ, reducing the walled garden effect: oh god I may lock myself in my room and never come out again. On the gripping hand, it's here, and we'll manage to cope somehow.
If you have an OpenID or (shiny new) Facebook Connect account on LJ, you can turn it into a Real Account (http://www.livejournal.com/manage/settings/?cat=account -- http://pics.livejournal.com/marta/pic/000pg6pq). Not sure if this is documented yet, but people in Suggestions have wanted this for years, and I'm very happy they're getting it.
Link accounts to cross-post entries and/or comments to Facebook (http://www.livejournal.com/manage/settings/?cat=extensions):
I don't care for this and won't use it, because I keep my real name and my legal name separated. Mostly this does not concern me, because the connection is made in the LJ settings and is opt-in, rather than having Facebook assume that since I'm logged in to Facebook in this browser, it's perfectly OK to make the connection. This is why I'm not in sudden hysterics.
The part that I actively dislike about the sudden ease of interaction with Facebook is entirely down to the fact that I maintain a separation between my real identity (who I am when I'm at home) and my legal identity (the driver's license/paycheck/parent name). I use my real name on LJ and my legal name on Facebook. I do not link between my Facebook and my LJ, and I ask that my friends who know both my names keep the names separate based on place. But as more interaction happens between the sites, and as I get more overlap between my Facebook friends and my LJ friends, inevitably somebody's going to come in via someone else's Facebook link, see me chattering away in the comments, recognize me, and make the connection between the names. And it's going to be someone I would rather not make that connection. I am not looking forward to that day, but I also refuse to live in fear of it.
Link accounts to cross-post entries and/or comments to Twitter: I like this, I have it set up, and I'm using it. More about that after I describe it.
Once one opts in, by entering one's Twitter username in the thingy on the page http://www.livejournal.com/manage/settings/?cat=extensions, and then one ticks the checkboxes for whether this is done by default or not, for entries or comments.
- If you don't opt in, none of your entries or comments are posted to your Twitter account. The link to the settings and the greyed-out checkboxes remain near the bottom of the comment form and when posting an entry, you know, in case you ever change your mind or get an account wherever. Until the Greasemonkey script so people who want to put it out of their minds can ignore it completely is perfected.
- If you do opt in, but don't tick either of the boxes, nothing crossposts until you tell it to when making an entry or a comment.
- If you opt in and tick the 'Publish my entries to Twitter by default' box, every public entry you post will go to Twitter with the first hundred or so characters and a link, unless you untick the box-on-the-entry at the time of posting. (If you post something locked, the box is unticked, but you can tick the box. If you do tick the box, your logged-in LJ friends on Twitter will be able to see the entry, but logged-out people and non-LJ-friends will just see Frank taunting them.)
- If you opt in and tick the 'Publish my comments to Twitter by default' box, every comment to a public entry that you make will go to Twitter with the first hundred or so characters and a link, unless you untick the box-on-the-comment at the time of posting. (If you comment to a non-public post, the box is unticked, but you can manually tick it. If you do manually tick it and your Twitter account is viewable by people who are not the people who can view the entry, this does erode -- or actively violate, especially if you're top-quoting something they said -- the privacy of the journal owner. This is a greater or lesser degree of privacy erosion depending on exactly what you said, and the fact that there's now a link to a locked entry floating around that wasn't floating around before. Some of your friends are going to get mighty pissy at you if you do that shit.)
- There is not a way to prevent someone else from posting a link to their comment in your space, except by advising your friends that this is not cool with you.
How I'm using it: I've got a bit of a complicated dodge going now, that I actually just set up a few days ago for some other stuff. Followers of my Twitter account will see that I have a lot of Delicious links in there. I am also using http://readitlaterlist.com/ to manage my proliferation of tabs, which is ... actually doing more than I thought. Thanks, afuna! And I do want to log the things I read, but not all of them are suitable for public linking, because of one or all of the following: too high-volume, too much like a recommendation of the link, because other people don't need to know that I was reading that. So I've set up a locked Twitter account, used Twitterfeed to connect the one to the other, and then Twittinesis to connect the other to the ... default entry security private secondary journal that I have set up for backups. :-P
So I just set up my main account here to deliver my comments to that locked-down Twitter account, so the backups will ship with comment links as well as massive, massive linkspam.
Why do I do this? Because Ariane Emory had a lot to do with how I set up my brain as an adolescent, and I work better when I'm able to store a lot of the less-relevant things elsewhere. Since my brain files fairly well on the "What day did I do X? It was sometime around Y, maybe Z..." and if I can find Y and Z, and I have a log that would include X that's date-sorted, I can go through the logs to then locate X.
[Edit: Now that I'm awake, I have heard about pingbacks leading to locked entries, and this is apparently a bug under investigation which you should file a support request for if it happens to you; I hope they get it fixed soon because that is worrisome.] Pingbacks! I love pingbacks. I was sorry when they went away the first time. http://www.livejournal.com/manage/settings/?cat=privacy This is only on-LJ, public entry pingbacks, and they're on by default unless you previously turned them off. [Edited to correct: this is opt-out, not opt-in.]
- Pingbacks only apply between two public entries and two people who have pingbacks turned on.
- If you don't have pingbacks turned on, you won't ever get the pingback_bot visiting your journal, and no-one else will be notified (at least, via the pingbacks, they may be using Icerocket or some shit) that you're talking about their entry in public.
- If you turn on pingbacks, but the person whose entry you're linking to doesn't have them on, they don't get notified. (If they have it on and you don't, they don't get notified either.)
- If both of you have pingbacks on, but their entry isn't public at the time of your entry, nobody pings or is pung.
- If both of you have pingbacks on, and their entry is public but yours linking to it is not, nobody pings or gets pung.
- As near as I can figure, if you post a link to a public entry, in public, but then you realize that OMG, that shit should not be public? It's a race against time between you and pingback_bot, and g-d and the ninja pirate monkeys guarding the servers only know who's going to get there first.