Salon post: January 11

[jenett]

Yikes! I had a sufficiently complex morning that I completely forgot about posting. Sorry!

Topic of the week
I've been seeing a number of discussions around Dreamwidth about different ways people use social media, different customs (and how sometimes those are formed as ways to deal with a particular site's features or bugs.)

How do you use your Dreamwidth account? Has that changed over time? What's important to you? What do you not care so much about? And while we're at it, do you have a favourite feature you don't think enough people know about?

Not interested in that? As always, whatever other topics people want to talk about very welcome. Start a thread, see who joins in.

What I've been up to
Moving is exhausting! I got most of my kitchen unpacked last weekend, then fell over in a pit of exhaustion other than more or less keeping my head above water at work.


Useful notes
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Comments are welcome whenever you get a chance - even if that's hours or days later. Feel free to jump into whatever sub-threads intrigue you. More discussion is the point of the salon posts!

Got a question you're trying to sort out, or a thing you'd like to discuss? Lots of thoughtful interesting people with a wide range of interests show up here! Feel free to ask about things you're thinking about or trying to solve, as well as other kinds of chat.

House rules:
This is a public post, feel free to encourage other people to drop by, just note the 'if posting anonymously, include a name people can call you in responses' rule.

1) Consider this a conversation in my living room, only with a lot more seating. I reserve the right to redirect, screen, and otherwise moderate stuff, but would vastly prefer not to have to. Keeping conversations SFW is appreciated.

2) If you don't have a DW account or want to post anonymously, please include a name we can call you in this particular post. (You can say AnonymousOne or your favourite colour or whatever. Just something to help keep conversations clear.)

3) If you've got a question or concern, feel free to PM me.

Comments

[muccamukk]

I originally got this account for fic, well the LJ account that turned into this account, but saw everyone was personal journaling. Looking back at old entries, I had a lot more day to day life stuff ten years ago. Now my DW is probably 80% fandom stuff like reviews, reactions, fic, linkspams, etc, so on.

I am mostly here to talk to people? I love having a really busy reading page with all kinds of people posting about their personal lives, their fandoms, meta, dorky shit they've done, whatever. It feels like such a community.

[jenett]

I learn so much from people talking about the random bits of their lives.

(I say that broad reading and knowing lots of people who do all sorts of different things also makes me a much better librarian. But really, I just enjoy it a lot.)

[muccamukk]

Oh, for feature I use A LOT that not everyone seems to know about. Obviously I try to subscribe to people or comms in my fandoms, but if I'm just looking for the latest chat about whatever, I use the content search function, which will look at all public posts (that haven't opted out), and find me people talking about thing I love! Mostly. If anyone IS talking about it.

[jenett]

Search is such an amazing tool (though I mostly use it to find stuff in my own journal, or occasionally communities).

[muccamukk]

Yes! "When did I post that picture of a marmot"? (In ten years of picture posts.)

Very helpful!

[yantantether]

...I had never used content search before. Thank you!

I've just found someone talking about my current slightly niche obsession and have bounced into their journal to say hello :D

[finch]

I'm pretty much the opposite - when I came over here I was much more fandomy, especially in the realm of fanfic writing, and now it's almost all daily life and metaphysical pontificating. I think that has more to do with my life changing, though, because like you I love having a busy and varied reading page.

(also I love your icon!)

[muccamukk]

Thanks! I made it from one of the alt covers for 13's comic, and is totally sharable, if you want it.

[jenett]

So, I started on LiveJournal in mid-2001, partly because I was starting to get more serious about exploring Paganism and a journalling habit is often recommended. Pretty much since the start it's been a "Let me make note about things".

Sometimes it's pretty quotidian. Sometimes it's "Let me write this out to an audience so I make sense of it in my head". Sometimes it's keeping things so I can find them later (medical notes, work things, librarian smash...)

I turn out to really like the 'write for some set of a known list of people' without needing anyone in particular to respond (where email feels a lot more like an explicit request/demand for people's time.)

I do have most posts locked, mostly so I can talk about multiple things (like work) without worrying about identifying details being easily found by search engines, but I am very amiable about granting access to most people.

[redbird]

I started on LiveJournal, ages ago, and use DW more or less the way I used LJ. It's a combination of keeping notes on my life that I might want later, including but not only for practical reasons; communicating with people I already know; and getting to know new and interesting people.

Those overlap, of course: my friends don't care about minute details of health or exercise, but might care that I'm planning surgery or what my doctor said last.

I came to this from paper/print fandom, so I'm used to corresponding with people I've never met face-to-face. There's definitely an overlap between my journal and an apazine, and my comments to other people fit into the same mental space as mailing comments or letters of comment. (And if that means nothing to you, don't worry about it.)

[thecitymouse]

I...don't use my Dreamwidth account! I was a heavy Livejournal user back in the day, though. I had my account from about 2004-2012, and I was using it for fandom and daily blogging. I think over time, I became less comfortable sharing (or frankly, dramatically oversharing) personal stuff online, though I do miss the community that LJ provided. My fannish activity has also just dropped off a lot lately.

In other news, we are bracing for snow here in DC! I am a snow lover and am eagerly awaiting what I hope will be a weekend of sipping hot cocoa and watching the flakes come down. Any fellow snow fans here?

[thecitymouse]

Oops, I thought we were in the metafilter community. I have forgotten how to use journaling software! Well, hello!

[jenett]

Totally fine! This is my weekly salon post where people hang out.

(I am also on Metafilter, as you might have figured out, a few other people who comment here occasionally also are. But also many other nifty people with interesting stuff they know.)

[jenett]

Yay for dropping in! Hi!

I was praying it wouldn't snow before I moved apartments (I moved to a place that's a walk-out basement, down a weird flight of stairs), but we have been almost totally snow free near Boston this winter (one bout in... November?)

So I'd like some, in a manageable amount to figure out how shovelling works at the new place, ideally.

(I also like snow a lot more now that either I get told not to come to work - I work at a school but not with students - or if they don't cancel, my boss is fine with me working from home most of the time.)

[(Anonymous)]

I lived in a place a few years ago with that setup and snow/ice planning was definitely important! Particularly keeping the drains clear. Glad you are all moved in.

Getting to stay inside on a 'snow day' as an adult is the best. I have a job where I can definitely work from home if it's snowy and gross outside. I walk to work so I've definitely taken a remote work day in the interest of not sliding around and breaking my tailbone. I'm also based on Washington, DC, so even though we're a private company we follow the federal government's snow operations policy. I have no idea how that's going to work with the whole shutdown thing.

(And glad it wasn't rude of me to drop in! I mistook the feed of all Metafilter community users' posts for the community feed. D'oh.)

[jenett]

No worries on dropping in - that's exactly what these posts are for. (And in general, folks on DW who make public posts are generally pretty amiable about comments in keeping with the topic of the post - a lot of people have an intro post with any specific things they prefer pinned at the top of their journals, if you're nervous.)

I fortunately don't have to do drains, but do have to clear the steps and my own car, and maybe help with the driveway. But not having to do it in time to leave at 7am is definitely a benefit. (I've got a bunch of chronic health stuff, so I am also a "I do 15 minutes, then I sit down for 15, then I do another 15..." sort of person.)

[thecitymouse]

Oops, that anon comment is me. This day has been an entire comedy of errors.

[silveradept]

Yes, to snow, which was a part of my life for a lot but has since become nearly nonexistent since I moved to a rain climate.

[thecitymouse]

I bet I am jealous of your summers, though!

[silveradept]

You very well may be, although "cooler" does not mean "cool," and the rain, no matter when it is, is always cold.

[eclips1st]

I made my LJ account in 2001 because a bunch of online friends were getting them. Fastfoward in time, it became a way for me to deal with stress and emotions, to gain perspective, but also to socialize with real life and virtual friends.

I particularly enjoy reading about people's lives. It's very similar to what I tell my students at the end of the school year: it's not just that I enjoy reading, it's that I enjoy stories and every single person has their own and getting a glimpse of it is wonderful.

Unfortunately though, since I've had my kids, my time blogging has become more and more limited. (And let's be honest, so has my content!)
I'm trying to come back though.

[jenett]

Yay for coming back! And I definitely go through ebbs and flows. (The thing I'm currently contemplating is doing some more public content, and how that might work.)

But I love reading about people's lives, and snippets of what's going on for them, and learning how people solve stuff in their lives that's different than what I would do. (And often better!)

[jazzyjj]

I had journals elsewhere when I used Windows, and I honestly thought a bit about trying out LJ. But when I checked it out it didn't seem that accessible. I guess I was right, which is quite unfortunate. But I started on Dreamwidth in 2014. My journal is mainly open to all, but I do have some private entries on there. These are mainly things like friends' contact info and such, but I also have some other stuff that I've made private. Other than that, I mainly write about technology since that is basically all I do during the day when I'm not with my neighbor or with one of my tutors. But I've been known to throw in other random things.





I just had another good workout this morning at the Y, and took Uber both ways. I'm most likely not gonna use Uber all the time, due to financial issues. But I've had great experiences thus far, both in terms of the rides themselves and their app. I read elsewhere that the Lyft app is currently having issues with Apple's on-board screen reader.

[cbrachyrhynchos]

This started out as a Sims 2 story blog back on lj over 15 years ago. Way back in my history, there's probably still a fair bit of stuff built from screenshots and captions. Unfortunately lj is not the friendliest to get images out of, so most of the data will probably vanish at some point.

I migrated to dw with a community that I'm gradually moving away from. My actual journal was fallow for many years, and I revived it recently as a mirror of my primary blog about bi news and various SFF media I'm engaging in.

Important to social media: Community curation and control. Had really bad experiences of being brigaded by people using search engines to find people to harass.

Not so important: Getting lots of notes.

[ilyena_sylph]

I use DW almost entirely as my major distraction and escape, source of fannish interaction, and storage-spot for recipes, things I want to be sure I remember, and art.

Before we had AO3, I used my LJ to host my fic, and so my DW has some of it too, but I've rather foolishly gotten out of the habit of posting here with the share info of when I've put something over there.

Not sure why that is, going to have to poke the brainpan a bit on that.

I don't post all that often, but I am always on my Reading page -- and my Network page, too. Network is Amazing and one of my favorite things.

But the thing I think needs more exposure than it gets is the Latest Things page, sensibly located at dreamwidth.org/latest, which shows you the latest, mmm, thousand? entries posted, with a 5-minute delay so any quickly-caught mistakes (like forgetting to access-lock) don't go to that page.

[musyc]

Linked here from muccamukk. I originally started my LJ from a link via a friend in an IRC chat, I think. I started using it primarily for fandom - to follow fic communities and to have a place to post my own. As I got more into fandom, I got really heavy into fests and exchanges and my LJ was probably 75-80% about that.

Over the years and after moving to DW, my fandom participation has dropped (partially due to fests not moving over - Harry Potter fandom is a very small part of DW in comparison to LJ). I've become more of a life/links blogger. I've been willing to post a lot more personal entries than fandom based.

I think a large part of that willingness is due to DW's separation of the subscribe/access concepts. Without the baggage of the word 'friend', I'm actually more friendly. When I can divide "give access" and "get access", I'm far more likely to subscribe to someone new. I might post a locked entry once every couple of years - my journal is completely public for almost all purposes - so I don't grant access. (My two test journals and my two best friends, neither of whom actually use DW. XD )

Since the concepts are separated here, I don't feel ... hmmm. Not guilty exactly, but in that vein, if someone gives me access and I don't reciprocate. It grants me more freedom to be open in public posts. And that in turn lets me be more friendly. I'm not susceptible to the old LJ feeling of "they won't friend me, what's wrong with me". (Or the reverse of "why did this stranger friend me?!") Here it's "oh, there are public posts I like to read, subscribing!" instead. And that's much more comfortable to me.

[silveradept]

The access/subscription separation is one of the things I like the most about Dreamwidth, even if I don't use it, because it gives me the ability to not have to think of all my posts as public ones, even if I were posting under the lock on LJ.

[jenett]

Hi and welcome!

And yeah, I love the subscribe and access distinction. In practice, I both give access to basically anyone on request, and subscribe back (and I skim everything that goes by on my feed) but I love the idea that I don't have to connect those two things.

(I also use smaller filters for a few specific things.)

[silveradept]

I started LiveJournal when people needed to be invited to the party, by a person that I had a falling-out with over differing views of politics and religion. It has always been a place to share ideas and links and interesting thoughts and gather them from other places around. As I've gotten older, my posting pace has slowed down significantly due to the realities of being employed and not having the necessary time to keep things going. I like to believe that what I post has value to other people.

Dreamwidth entered the picture after the Strikethrough event as a place to have a backup in case LJ decided they were going to engage in mass deletions for flimsy reasons on the regular. (Hello, Tumblr folk. We feel your pain.) And, as LiveJournal continued to make decisions that favored advertisers over users, I basically stopped going there and have made my home full-time on Dreamwidth.

Now I'm slowly starting to be more overtly fannish in my space. The truth of it is, though, is that you're more likely to get a sense of who I am if I'm hanging out in your comment sections than if you just read my journal.

It's a nice place, Dreamwidth.

[sporky_rat]

I try and use my journal as a sort of brain dump.

I don't always manage it, but when I do my brain does better.

[sporky_rat]

It helps that I can email in a post from my phone.

[dhampyresa]

I post mostly fandom stuff, with occasional bits of RL and posts about history. My journal is like 90% public or more.

I am here to get to know people! Andget to know what they know! (I followed mucca here, btw.)

The thing that's changed about DW most for me recently is that I started posting some art to it.

[julian]

I started over on LJ in 2002, basically because some folks from my main role play MUSH were starting to use it. (GarouMUSH, this was.) There was also a small core of my ftf friends who were using it around that same time.

For a long time, the ftf-and-RP-group friends were the core of my LJ/DW experience. That core's mostly gone now, but there's still folks who hang around my DW with me.

I migrated over to DW around when it first started, in the 'let us own the servers' sort of political decision, but obviously, I've kept the LJ connection even after a lot of people punted it.

Mostly I post in order to remember things later, to think about things, to vent about things, whatever. It does take some activation energy, more than it used to, so I'm a sporadic poster, and only occasional commenter, but I figure that's OK, it's what I can do.

Even at that beginning, I wasn't into LJ fandom, in the fanfic-and-picspam sense. I'm interested in similar sorts of shows and books and comics as fandom is, I just don't have the fanfic writing urge myself. But I quite like talking/posting about Book X, or whatever.

I used to post more linky political stuff, but most of that now goes to Twitter. I may ponder ways to change that, in the next few months. I don't at all like the Twitter-to-DW broadcast -- the two services serve entirely different purposes -- but I could certainly link interesting stuff on DW and comment on it more.

[sanacrow]

I started on LJ back in the friends-only days, and originally posted most about paganish and thinky things, with a bit of meme. I really got into some of the fandom areas, and moved over here permanently after some of LJs shenanigans. Then I kind of fell off the face of the earth for awhile.

I'm not exactly back, now, but I'm in the process of getting there. This is currently my only long-form blog space, and I'm wanting to build back a habit of reasonably regular day-in-the-life stuff with a bit of thinky and projecty stuff mixed in. We'll see how well I manage that over this year. I do really miss the exchanges in this kind of long-form space, and love reading about the lives of others with similar interests. It's a totally different animal than private paper journaling.

[ofmonstrouswords]

I guess I started at LJ though I never really got into LJ the way it was used by the people I know -- the entire social aspect of it.

I started blogged way before that, on Blogdrive (RIP), and there I WAS into the social aspects of it. There was a circle of blogs I followed and they followed me and we all commented on each other's stuff...and then it slowly fizzled out and died, for various reasons.

I first joined LJ in 2007 but was never really good at keeping up the social thing. I guess after the death of my social blogging at Blogdrive I didn't want to go through all that again. Also, my blogging at Blogdrive had been mostly daily life type stuff, and the social aspect of LJ seemed more fandom-focused, which...interested me, but seemed a walled garden I couldn't crack.

And then as time went on I became bad at blogging at LJ, period, because I was doing more stuff on public blogs via Wordpress.

I started on DW in 2009 (10 year anniversary in May!), and for a while I was crossposting some posts to my LJ. I stopped doing that with the last true implosion of LJ though (when the servers moved to Russia).

In that time, it's been the same sort of focus, primarily -- a place for me to journal. But I've also tried to do the social aspect of it more and more, and I think this year might be the year I don't utterly fail at it. I'm making a true effort now, because the truth is I really love Dreamwidth and after being here for 10 years I feel I should, I don't know, have more of an actual presence here.

I'm also trying to break my FB addiction and DW seems like the only thing that will actually give me a chance at that.

Things I especially love: access lists. They mean I can actually be honest about things here, because if I need to I can uber-filter it down to a very small group of people or even just me. I can't have that same honesty at Facebook, where being honest is just asking people to attack you.

Cut tags. Being able to cut down lengthy posts or, even better, skip right on past most fic in my reading page because I like choosing when to sit down and read some slash porn about characters I ship really improves my experience.

ICONS. I'm lustful for icons. I can't wait until my practicum ends and I start working for real live money so I can continue supporting DW and GET MORE ICONS.