I have held back no water in its season

A thank you

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 21:16:16 GMT

I would like to let it be known that iniquiti is a very fine person. Upon receiving a request to get rid of one of those dreadful "raep" 'jokes' on the profile of a comm s/he mods, s/he promptly did so. Things like this restore my sometimes wavering faith in the existence of decent human beings.

Opening Celebrations and Public Service

Sun, 03 May 2009 15:06:43 GMT

~~So, I have filled my invite request list and still have two DW codes free! Anyone want them?~~ Taken!

In other news, it keeps coming to my attention that OpenID intimidates people. It shouldn't. It's exactly like any other log-in, only easier.

To do my bit for a distributed internet, allow me to offer the following extremely simple, step-by-step (there are only two) directions for using OpenID on DW:

1) Go here and enter your LJ/IJ/JF/etc. username (like this: branchandroot.livejournal.com).

2) When the confirmation page comes up, click on "yes, always".

That's it! You're logged in, congratulations. Go comment or make an flist or load a userpic or whatever.

Now, to be really spiffy, you can add a third step.

3) Go here and enter an email address. When you get the confirmation email, click the link to validate.

Now you can receive email notification of replies to comments you make while you're logged in like this.

To log in again, just go back to that first linked page (which is also linked from the log-in form with the handy text "log in via OpenID") and enter username.livejournal.com again. Because you selected "yes, always", you won't even have to deal with the confirmation page again, because it's now automatic. For greatest ease, check the little box on the "welcome back" page that says "remember me".

OpenID is not arcane. It's just another log-in. Only easier.

Demystifying Dreamwidth some more

Sat, 18 Apr 2009 21:09:33 GMT

Since I've seen a number of odd notions running around lately, I figured I'd post some quick explanations.

DW is not a clone. It is a fork, like a fork in the road you know? It means starting from the same code but then changing it. In the case of DW, this means both cool new features (which may well also pop up on LJ given the extent of cross-site brainstorming already taking place) but also a lot of major re-writing of the code that won't be visible to most users but will allow more cool new things to be done in the future.

DW is not elite. No, seriously. What DW currently is is broken. It is under construction. That's why registration is not open yet and invites have gone out only to those known to have a reasonably strong interest in the project (who hopefully therefore know about the unfinished parts and won't mind helping test them, sometimes catastrophically). If a hypothetical reader wishes to convince me that being unable to flush the virtual toilet yet is elite... I'm sorry, but no. Pull the other one, it's got bells on. In about two weeks the major construction should be finished and anyone who wants to risk the virtual breaker tripping when you turn on the virtual microwave or virtually sitting on wet paint will be able to venture in.

Users will not, once the site is actually open, ever need an invite to create an account.

Users will need an invite to create a free account. This is because DW does not use ads to support the service (which costs money, after all) and therefore must have a way to make sure that there are only as many unpaid users as the paid users can support. Corollary to this...

DW is not expensive, at least not to the average user. Someone without a code can make an account for as little as $3. If you want to let it lapse back to free after that payment expires, the account will still be there, in all it's free-account-level glory.

The Seed accounts, basically permanent accounts, which are two hundred dollars, will go on sale for one time only, to raise money for the first year of operation. There are only four hundred of them being sold because the site really doesn't want many people to buy one; it will be far better for both the economic health of the site and the flexibility of the user if pretty much everyone who wants paid account perks buys regular paid accounts.

DW will not force you to reveal who you read any more than the LJ friends list does. Reading filters are (or will be in a few weeks) available, including the ever-popular Default View filter. If you wish to subscribe to someone and not include them in your Default View, this will be just as invisible a decision as it is on LJ when you friend someone and leave them out of Default View. The subscribe/access split of the friends list can be used in exactly the same manner as you have used the friends list if that is what you wish to do.

DW is not by or for fans. One of the owners is involved in fandom. That's about it. DW is by users for users--any kind of users. There are going to be features that fandom, among other parties, may find quite useful, but if anyone is suggesting that DW is a fandom project, they are mistaken.

DW has nothing to do with OTW. I suspect this one is the source of the above misconception, in some cases. OTW is a non-profit fan-run fandom organization which is working on an archive, a wiki, a journal and some other projects. DW is a LLC which is producing a social media site and software based on a fork of the LJ Open Source code.

Both are Open Source projects; this means that the various software involved is freely available for other parties to use and alter without paying licensing fees to the originators. Open Source is a philosophy, not any kind of organization to which the projects in question belong. LJ is partially Open Source itself--the early development, at any rate. Most additions after the sale to 6A are proprietary and may not be used by other parties, which is why DW is having to completely re-write a few things, using volunteers who have never looked at the LJ version. Fun times.

DW does not want to sink LJ. LJ will get wherever its going on its own without help from anyone. While many users who wish to move to DW will undoubtedly encourage (beg, bribe, etc.) their friends to come along, the goal of DW is simply to be as good as possible at being what it is: a small, sustainable social media site, committed to providing its users a good place for personal and creative expression of all kinds.

Indeed, there are LJ volunteers currently involved in DW, and some DW concepts have already been integrated back into LJ.

DW does not need a ton of users, though it is built to accommodate them if they show up. It needs, rather, to have a good ratio--to always have enough paid users to subsidize the unpaid users, regardless of total numbers, and that is what the invite system is there to ensure.

*****

As for any personal accusations against the owners, based on Denise's time working on the LJ Abuse team, I suggest anyone who has genuine concerns read the diversity statement, the guiding principles, the FAQ and the business FAQ. It's best to get things from the horse's mouth and make up your own mind.

In which Dreamwidth is not Microsoft

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 15:01:29 GMT

So, as Dreamwidth approaches the next big production step, I thought it would be worthwhile to make a post about this thing that comes next.

Next is open beta.

Open beta is NOT site launch.

Contrary to what Microsoft has tried to train the public to think for lo these many long years, "open beta" does not equal "stable product". Open beta is the smoke test. It's when we say "this seems pretty stable and the big things are done, it's time to load it up and jump up and down on it and see where the smoke comes out so we can fix that before actual product launch".

Site launch, in another handful of months, is what will declare "yes, this product is stable". Site launch is where we say "okay, this is a (though not the because we keep developing) stable product, this is version 1.0, we're open for all public business".

So, for those who are thinking of coming in during open beta, remember, not everything will be done. Not everything will work. It is just about certain that we will break something as we jump up and down on it at full load. Because that's what open beta means.

Come ahead, intrepid testers and explorers! Just remember this is not Microsoft and no one is pretending that it's all done and ready yet.

Answers to Dreamwidth questions

Thu, 02 Apr 2009 17:10:45 GMT

Our lovely co-owner has been watching the DW posts and put a post of her own together to answer some of the questions that have come up frequently.

DW fact sheet

Just to add a few of my own:

The current default journal style will not likely be the final default style. It's just the first one that got ported over completely! There are still a few bugs with it, as with all things during closed beta. (If anyone currently in testing wants to make use of the Core 2 Testing skin I made, instead, feel free to copy this into a theme layer.)

The default site scheme is still being poked at a bit, but it should be readable now at high res and low, no matter your font size.

On other topics, I'm interested to see the culture that's developing. A number of people are a lot more open in their posting and disclosure of identity. Being the web-cynic I am I hope this doesn't come back and bite anyone as time goes on, but right now it's all very bright and cheerful. Some people are using DW for a new start and some are importing all their history. Special interest comms are starting to pop up. There's still sawdust everywhere and the wallpaper isn't hung, but the roof seems to be on and the plumbing is working!

Dreamwidth Open Beta Date Set

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 21:42:34 GMT

Dreamwidth's open beta is coming!

The date is set, and on April 30th the site will launch open beta on full production hardware. At that time, the one-time sale of seed accounts (permanent accounts for $200) will begin.

Invite codes for free accounts will be released as the site proves it can handle the load, but anyone who wants an account can also pay $3 for a month of paid time, after which the account may then be let to lapse back to free. Or, you know, keep it paid and get all the frills.

Some major things that are in the pipe for open beta: journal importing, entry crossposting between sites, the watch/access split of the friends list, expanded standardized options for journal styles so that you can pick based on the look you like instead of being limited by the functionality you want, vastly improved maintainer options for communities.

A lot of other functions will not be finished by open beta. There will still be rough edges to be sanded down and anyone who moves over completely at that time can expect a few bobbles. I have to say, though, I've been very impressed by the number and vigor of DW's working programmers, so bobbles should be steadied reasonably quickly.

For those who want to look around the current testing site, you can start from Denise's journal. Check out the comms, look at people's journals to see what the closed beta testers have done while they kick the tires. Sign in with OpenID, if you want, and you will have a stripped down (non-posting) account to poke around with.

(And if you don't like pink, well, I submitted three alternate site schemes today, and you can see the screenshots here: Celerity, Blueshift, Gradation.)

Dreamwidth promises to be a very cool thing, and a project committed to Open Source. The improvements Dreamwidth is making are available to everyone to use, including LiveJournal. In addition to simplifying the installation of the software, plans include the ability to port LJ-based databases into the Dreamwidth system, so that LJ-based sites can easily switch over if they wish. No restrictions, no fee, no hook (and no more mind-bendingly complicated and undocumented code). And we're going to have drafts and real hierarchical tagging and memories that work and exporting to pdf in whole or by time-span or tag and and and... *waves hands* cool stuff!

I'm enthused. You can tell.

Take a look around. The testing site and all the improvements you can read about in dw_news and the other comms have been accomplished in nine months. Just nine. In people's spare time, because almost everyone working on this has a day job too. And this? Is just the beginning.

Dreamwidth: breaking silence in a cause

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 01:15:51 GMT

[Crossposted from my InsaneJournal.]

For those who may have noticed my new icons, or seen mention of this in passing, Dreamwidth is a fork of the LiveJournal code. That is, it takes the current open source code and, instead of making future updates from the LJ version, starts writing it in a different direction. (Kind of like fanfic, really, only different.)

Two months or so from now, when Dreamwidth.org goes live for open beta, I will move there.

The reasons are many and varied, and I have to go back a little ways to explain them all. See, around 2000 when I first made myself present on the web, I figured I would just express myself in static websites. I knew that I am a) a very unreliable correspondent, b) prone to keeping diaries and journals only bit fits and starts, and c) not comfortable with hurly burly verbal interaction when I can't see the other people. So none of the other then-options such as mailing lists or bulletin boards appealed to me.

2003 rolled around, and I was getting properly into the swing of my fandom (my primary reason for an online presence). Blogs were starting to roll but they looked a lot like BBs to me so eh. But a ficcer I had started emailing with waved an LJ invite at me a few times, and I thought I might as well. At least I'd know one person there.

Imagine my startlement when the LJ format fitted me to a T. It had these nifty threaded comments that helped manage conversations in a way the didn't bombard me, and it had equally nifty privacy options that let me have a private diary and a public discussion on the same account. And there were cool people all over! People who liked the things I did and talked about it all the time! What could be better? I settled in and got used to having, not just a presence, but a home--a stable place where I could get to know people and they could get to know me and we could talk about life, the universe and anime everything.

So my websites became a secondary presence and LJ became my HQ, my historical record, my point of interaction, my home.

Then came The Buyout and 6A's ham-handed management, ads, boldthrough, increasing interference and decreasing trust. And finally I had enough. I chose to move my home to another service, one I could trust, and that service was InsaneJournal. And I sighed with relief because it felt like home again. It was slower, there were glitches, but I had left that nasty edge of "you are a product/problem, not a person" behind. Enough other people moved around the same time to support a nice little community. I liked it. Hell, I liked it enough to volunteer to make the new site schemes, which would have run a few thousand dollars if I'd taken it as a commercial contract!

But I read a lot of entries about moving and not moving, about history and inertia, about platforms and migration, and the thing that stuck in the back of my mind was the bit about how people don't move for ethical convictions, at least not many of them. People move because some other model has been invented/completed that gives them more than the place they're at then does. IJ, with the best of intentions, even with a good and responsible admin, doesn't have the infrastructure to do that kind of development.

Dreamwidth does.

DW has an advantage over every other danga-code site, most especially including LJ, in that it's being created from the start with a clear business model and vision of what kind of site it's going to be. And that vision is a small site--something that supports its admins and programmers and other staff at a living wage but isn't looking to make a big profit, to be the next big thing, to be a commercial product that can be sold for astronomical prices before the current bubble bursts.

That's the home that I remember having happened more or less by accident at LJ, by chance and evolution and stubbornness. That's the home that I want back, and this time I can have it by design and be more assured that it will endure.

DW also has a networking advantage. Its founders are part of a group of people who know and love LJ-the-community, as opposed to LJ-the-moneymaking-venture, who have worked on it in the past, who are ready and willing to volunteer for the programming, the brainstorming, the testing, the boilerplating, the deal-with-people-ing to give people more and sustain the effort over time.

I hope that all this will draw enough people over to a) make a thriving community and b) get enough people to transfer/back up their content that we don't lose too much when LJ finally reaches the end it's heading towards.

So! To that end, let me mention some of DW's advantages. At launch, DW will import entire journals, and multiple journals if you want, (including entries, comments, tags, userpics and flists) from other danga-code sites. It will recreate your flist(s) with RSS feeds (the problem of offering you locked posts from other sites is one of the high priority projects and may be available soonish, let us hope and cheer on the programmers). It will split the flist into a 'watch' list and a 'trust' list, just like we've been asking for for ages. It will even let us have longer usernames and comments and entries.

On the to-do list, DW aims to overhaul the horrible Memories function to act more like a sensible bookmarking tool, and to introduce a parent/child account structure so that we can finally link all our journals (from our point of view only, of course) and switch from one to another without all that tedious logging in and out. Even if you don't use Firefox.

There are a lot of other ideas being bandied back and forth about subscription to specific tags, entry and comment management, making OpenID sign-ins both non-anonymous and a way for people to control imported comments and even cooler stuff. There are people combing back entries in lj_suggestions to see what it is users (as opposed to prospective buyers) actually want.

Go see! Mouse around the Wiki. Page through some of the mailing list archives. Maybe chip in your two cents, because this? This is for us.

We're home.