ATTN: MOD POST

[copinggoggles]

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 (

Comments

[the_croupier]

I'm sure this has probably come up in discussions already, but it's worth pointing out that this isn't so much 'moving' Milliways as 'copying' Milliways,' given the possibility of crossposting from DW to LJ.

I've been bothered by a lack of a backup for Milliways ever since I started in 2005, and one of the bonuses of trying this is that it might end up being a proof of concept that we could create a *real* backup for the community. Just copying it to DW isn't that, but it's a step in that direction. And it will offer the opportunity to learn first-hand what kind of challenges would be involved in creating that genuine backup. (For example, just how big a problem will broken links be? Dropped icons? Old and deleted pup accounts? Etc.)

Given how much time and thought and care so many people have put into this game since 2004, I definitely approve of not leaving its sole survival in the hands of a single site, no matter what it's done or how it's behaved.

[copinggoggles]

Unfortunately, while individual accounts can crosspost from DW to LJ, at the moment there isn't anything in place that allows for automatic crossposting to communities on either of the two sites, nor do I think that functionality is planned (though I could always be wrong). Plus, even if community crossposting were possible, that wouldn't address the issue of separate comment threads on LJ vs. DW, or how those could be reconciled or... man, I don't even know what, it makes me dizzy just thinking about it. @_@

The long and short of it is, while we would have a copy of Milliways as it was up until the move, continuing to duplicate the game across platforms on an ongoing basis would be an almighty headache. If we move, the archives of milliways_bar here will remain intact (LJ permitting, anyway), but active playing here would cease. Meanwhile, all of said archives would also be imported to

[the_croupier]

Yeah, I can see how the dizzy would build up awfully fast. Very good to see how they're working OpenID into the process, though. I agree, that's a big step

[magneticxman]

I agree with this comment. It doesn't hurt anything to leave the journal on the site, unused.

[never_b_free]

+1

Oh god, how that got me twitchy when there was talk from muns about DELETING EVERYTHING BECAUSE LJ IS HORRIBLE. Especially since LJ has gotten into the habit of deleting comments owned by deleted journals. I know that LJ does that to respect the privacy and intellectual property rights of authors, but GAH.

This collaborative fiction thing is complicated. Who really owns what?

Of course my pup was cackling with glee at the prospect of Milliways dying a death of a thousand ragequits. Silly pup.

[copinggoggles]

Actually, just to interject for a second, the comments by deleted journals are still there in the database, at least for the moment, and they do show up in the right S2 styles and when imported by DW. They're just displayed as deleted in the new style. THANKS EVER SO FOR THAT, LJ.

[the_croupier]

Yeah, I'd like to think LJ is at least sensible enough not to attempt something like a purge of comments from deleted accounts from their databases--which would be insane--but I'm not sure how confident one can be about that.

[the_croupier]

That's great! In the end a lot of this is LOCKSS ("Lots of copies keeps stuff safe.")