alexandral | LJ troubles: do not panic!

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LJ troubles: do not panic!

However annoying the last 2-3 days have been (I had terrible LJ withdrawal symptoms yesterday) , I do not worry. There are not many absolute truths that I know of, but I know one of them: any Internet application that is built by humans will be out cold once in a while. And the bigger it gets more chance it will. And if you know an Internet application that never has a problem it will definitely be one of the two: a) built by aliens from outer space or b) small. None of the two options suit me personally.

So I do not worry, just try not to use LJ heavily at the moment as they are doing whatever they are doing to protect themselves from DOS attacks and their servers must be busy. And yes, let's blame Russians for this! How dare they express their opinions freely and invite DOS attacks to the place where I post about Korean dramas!

PS: I do, however, have a DreamWidth account (I always want to call it DreamWeaver :D). I have had it for years: you never know what can happen! It is the same as here, alexandral . I am very very unlikely to move there, though. If LJ goes out of operation I am going to take a plunge and create a "proper" blog.

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heh. I had Dreamwidth to keep the withdrawal symptoms to a minimum. I didn't miss LJ. I missed my LJ friends.

You see, this is my main problem with DW- until they get big enough to have all my friends and communities there , I am not likely to join. I am more likely for start Twittering of Facebooking in serious (I have more friend there).

Plus - I will give my last pound to bet that once in 5 years DW will be down too. But this is really not the point.

See? That's why DW doesn't have that many users yet. Because everyone thinks the same thing: my friends and comms are all here so I won't move. *shrugs* I noticed that most of my DW-friends are ex-ljers who, like me, still keep in touch with LJers because it's either that or losing touch with 90% of our online friends. Still, I have yet to see ex-LJers now DWers complain about DW. Mind you, DW is not perfect, it still has some bugs, but at least you know people are working on them and are actually listening to you.

Maybe, but not the point. I've been an LJer since 2004 and I've seen Lj fail many times (I'm not talking about the recent Ddos attacks, mind you. LJ has been quick with those) and though I loved it, I don't anymore. It's too...commercial? The ads, the games, the frills don't appeal to me. What does is the sense of community, but that's quickly disappearing and fragmenting. The LJers I consider RL friends have all scattered: they're on facebook, twitter, wordpress and/or DW. My fandom friends can either be found on AO3 or on LJ/DW. Those who want to keep in touch with all my Net activities can track my DW even if they're not DWers adn that's about it.

The only reason I'm not deleting my LJ is the comms. I'd happily comment on my LJ friend's journals using my DW open ID if I could, say, mod and post at the

kyungtae_bl comm with it, but I can't and so I'm staying. If I could, I'd totally move it, but I'm just a mod, not the owner and besides I know there'd be an uproar so heh.

See? That's why DW doesn't have that many users yet.

Hehe! True. Do you want to know my objective (this is something unrelated to the fact that I like or dislike DW) opinion: DW is not growing as fast as it's creators want because it is too much like LJ. Places like Facebook or Twitter offer something different, DW does not.

Still, I have yet to see ex-LJers now DWers complain about DW.

hee! Also true! They mostly complain about LJ :D. This is one of the my personal subjective things that I don't like about DW, the unhealthy competition with LJ.

PS: I also don't think LJ is ideal, far from that, but I don't see any alternative. The only alternative for me is blogging sites, but it is different.

Edited 2011-04-05 22:58 (UTC)

DW is like LJ minus the witch-hunts imho. I still remember how many journals shut down and how many fics got lost because LJ was on a crusade a few years back? I wasn't even into the fandoms that got targeted, but the whole thing smelled fishy.

And all major websites are becoming more similar to each other because they "steal" the good ideas their competitors have and implement on their sites to attract more potential users and appeal to those of their competitors (see the FB-like games here on LJ). All social networks are converging into one giant mess of wayyyy too similar websites imho. I don't think that's actually a pro for them. The fact that DW seems to be more "stagnant" is a plus for me. I want a journal which my friends can read and a way to get in touch with them. I don't need a bajillion flashy features, which I won't even be able to use even if I'm a paying user because I don't live in the US (*cough* LJ phone posts *coughcough*)

They mostly complain about LJ because they loved LJ and got burned. That's why. Case in point *points to self* When you love something and it goes downhill you can't help but being a bit bitter. Are there negative people on DW? Sure. Are there negative people on LJ? Of course. There's always going to be complaining on both sides and to both sides and that's not likely to change.

I am more about practicality and fit-for-purpose than about community feel.

I wish I could crosspost from LJ for DW, but I don't think DW will allow for that.

That too, of course.

Er, I think that has more of an LJ problem. Aside from Twitter and Facebook, LJ itself doesn't crosspost to ANY sites, esp not other blogging platforms. Maybe with a client? Hmm, I'm not sure.

DW, on the other hand, lets crosspost to LJ and a number of other platforms (deadjournal, insane journal, JournalFen and "other sites"). DW's crossposters is far from being perfect, but the good thing is that you have complete control over your account and who accesses what (BTW, one of my favorite DW features is the "split" flist. You can subscribe to a journal, but not give access of your journal to that person, which is especially great if you follow many artists/writers who will never, ever read your entries anyhow); it doesn't force-implement random "automatic" crossposting features on you. It's all very simple and clear in that regard.

I know of other platforms, say, Wordpress that lets you crosspost to LJ through plugins, but the other way around, I don't think it's possible yet.

That said, if LJ had a crossposter, do I think that DW will allow crossposted entries? I'm almost certain they will. They're all for satisfying their users (like, when Paypal said that it wouldn't keep on financially support DW unless DW checked what its users wrote and eventually censored them)and a huge chunk of their userbase is made of ex-Ljers or DWers who have many LJers as friends.

The only thing DW hasn't implemented yet and may never do is have a single "flist" where you can you read your DW flist and your LJ flist. There's been a debate about that and many problems arose (from LJ end? Lj didn't let them? ) so, iirc, they let that possible feature go. Man, I was really, really looking forward to that, but oh well.

I hope LJ will allow crossposting to DW, I would use this feature.

Are you saying that DW doesn't support Paypal? This is a big minus for me (if I ever get a paid DW account which is unlikely). You see, this is where I think my priorities are more aligned with LJ than with DW.

Do I care about writing some censorship-dodgy fic about child sex? NO

Do I mind censorship? No

Do I like Paypal? yes

In the same way, because I never write anything I don't want EVERYONE I KNOW (I mean everyone: my bosses, my pastor, etc.) to read I never really was bothered by Facebook cross-posting.

But I am a creature of convenience and No PAYPAL = BAD for me.

I am sorry, but really I think it is all about individual preferences. If anything, I keep thinking of moving towards "real" blogging (on Wordpress or anywhere else), but I don't think my blog will be popular.

Edited 2011-04-06 14:19 (UTC)

I'd like that.

Yes, it doesn't anymore. As I said, Paypal wanted DW to monitor every journal and eventually censor them no matter the content. It's not about dodgy fics. It's about, well, everything. If Paypal said "I don't want this issue discussed, act accordingly" -and we're talking about any topic here- then DW should have had to delete entries or whatever. If one day paypal ceo woke up from the wrong side of the bed and decided all mentions of pink shoes annoyed him, then all mentions of pink shoes had to go. o_O

I'm surprised you don't mind censorship. Maybe I read that sentence wrong...

I understand. For me that's not such a big deal. I've got a debit card disjointed from my bank account so whether I use paypal or that card makes no difference to me, but I do see where you're coming from.

Yeah, makes sense.

It's not about dodgy fics. It's about, well, everything

It is always about dodgy fics. I remember the biggest LJ upheaval I lived through (luckily, still with Six Apart, no Russians involved!) when LJ tried to introduce censorship of some kind. There was a list published of journals affected: all communities of underage porn fics (mostly Harry potter) , no pink shoes journals involved. LJ had to stop the censorship and apologise at the end. This was actually the beginning of LJ Exodus and the reason DW was conceived. It was an eye-opener for me personally, I have never seen so many "give me freedom to write my porn" posts in my life. It was waaaaaay bigger than Racefail. I didn’t know that porn is so important but I do know now. ;D

I'm surprised you don't mind censorship. Maybe I read that sentence wrong...

To be specific, I don’t mind "Western" variety of it, as in: talk big talks, do nothing. I personally think there is much child porn and it is way too accessible. I won’t mind it being censored somehow, but I don’t know how , really.

Well, it's not just about dodgy fics. I'm not saying there aren't dodgy fics on LJ or DW because of course there are, but it's the principle of the thing.

I'm talking about DW right now. "I won’t mind it being censored somehow, but I don’t know how , really. " The problem with the Paypal fail was exactly this. What if, along questionable content, perfectly innocent content and journals were affected because Paypal or any other DW-partner demanded that certain things were to be censored?

The problem with the Paypal fail was exactly this. What if, along questionable content, perfectly innocent content and journals were affected because Paypal or any other DW-partner demanded that certain things were to be censored?

You see, I have never seen this happened in RL. LJ censorship: everyone apologised to everyone. There was an anti-gay-porn kerfuffle on Amazon (something with Amazon stopping gay porn fics from being accessible for review or something): Amazon rolled it back and apologised. You see, I am not so much of a "pure principle" as of a "reality check" girl. I will have to see it to believe it. In contrast, I tell you good old communist day: there was so much talk about freedom and principles, and so little of it in reality. Because of it , I don’t trust principles for the sake of principles, I trust what I see.

As to DW/Paypal, my view on this is as follows: Paypal finances DW. One day they think "Wait! We give them money! What about us? Surely we need to have something back!" and demand some share of decision power. It is not as if they want to stop people from posting about pink shoes, they just want some power for their money. But DW owners think "Nooooooo! We don't want to give anyone any power! We want it ourselves!" (again, understandable). They show the door to Paypal and produce lots of propaganda for their users about how they want to FIGHT FOR FREEDOM OF SPEECH and this is why NO PAYPAL. But in reality, it is not NOT about freedom of speech, it is just a normal day-to-day capitalism. I don't object to any of this apart from the propaganda part.

We just have to agree to disagree on this. ^^

this is fine! It is not as if I dislike DW or anything (or like LJ too much), I must be just "all about meeeeee".

Nah, I understand. We're cool, right?

Of course ** hugs **

Awesome! *hugs back*

BTW, what is you journal in DW - I have been adding everyone I know (just in case :D)

http://intermezzo.dreamwidth.org/

Lol @ at the Russians comment. I never thought that Russians have trouble expressing themselves online. Probably because Chinese censorship overshadows everything else I hear about in terms of freedom of speech.

I personally think that Russian-dissident relatedness of DOS attacks is a bit of a red herring , but who knows? And yes - HAHA!

I have the DW since the last time something was worrying us but I have never used it. However I did say that I have it to my lj friends just in case.

I don't plan leaving LJ since it's been so long since I'm here... moving to another country and moving from my fav place at the same time is something I don't consider *pout*

However I must confess that yesterday I was in a foul mood because I couldn't be around LJ (and my photobucket keeps acting up too so it was no funny at all)

I have DW account too (got it just in case, like you). I think I have subscribed to your account, I will check!

hehe! Good luck with the move!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

There is no way I can remember to crosspost to two sites - I can barely manage to remember to post to one. So I'll be staying here. I do have a dreamwidth but everytime I think about having to recreate the wonderful circle of friends I have on LJ, I just despair.

** nods ** Where else would have I been able to find out about Roman underwear (I told it all to my hubby, in great detail )??????

Underwear is a vital thing to know about! And I learned something too - I knew about the Roman bras, but nothing else.

I am still processing the fact that they didn't have too much in way of pants.

I had DW, too, to keep me semi-busy. Sadly, not many people actually post there as well, which is sad, considering how easy it is to cross-post (just set it up and then check the ticky box or you can even make it the default so you don't have to remember ticky boxes).

It's not that it's so robust, it's just that it's smaller and, w/o open sign-up access, a bit harder to "break into". Gotta have an invite code and considering so many don't even know about it, not a big demand. So DW is way below the radar, the way LJ was before I got my invite code back in the old days.

LJ's had so many problems with the spam accounts last month getting on the Spamhaus blacklist that's hard to combat while keeping free sign-ups (not that I think they're going back to invite codes like in the old days!). I agree with you that the DDOS could be a lot of things. It's annoying. I've spent an hour trying to get far enough into LJ to read your post (not assiduously clicking, just walking by every now and then to see if LJ was up).

I have a DW account too, just in case (just in the same way I have two external hard disks for backup). Things can happen.

So DW is way below the radar, the way LJ was before I got my invite code back in the old days.

Yes, the main "problem" is that Lj has become too big/noticeable/whatever. Anything can be broken or attacked, but the wider the filed, the likelier it is to be hit. But there are some advantages in the size too: communities, etc. ** sigh ** This is always so annoying.

not that I think they're going back to invite codes like in the old days!

They just might decide to do this. ** sigh again**

LJ was fine during GMT day, but now the peak time hit and their servers are definitely struggling. DOS attacks are always so hard to fight against.

Psst, I think DW is going to do the register-without-an-invite thing they did a few weeks ago on a semi-regular basis now (I think of them as stealthy still-secret-ish ninja-attacks ^^). Here's to hoping that's going to help build more comms there. *crosses fingers*

And not many know about dw-codesharing which is just a shame.

Yeah, they said there'd be some repeats! I do love DW since it's a very well-maintained LJ fork that's added some lovely new features.

I'm going to put up a codeshare post that will x-post to my LJ-friends list in hopes of enticing a few more to sign up there, too! It would be nicer if they helped build and populate DW communities in parallel, too. *dreams*

Yup! I love it too.

I got a new invite yesterday and it'd be great if we'd get more active comms there, esp more layout comms.

I'm highly resistant to change so, yeah, I'm relying on LJ to pick itself up again.

I actually feel for LJ guys here: DOS attacks are really hard to do something about, especially if you have a world-wide application.

Yeah, I just created DW as a LJ backup (and backed up my entire LJ onto my harddrive) but I am not going anywhere. I like it here.

I've seen a bunch of comments to the effect of "ugh, evil Russians, express yourself elsewhere, stop interfering with my fun" which is - WTF? Assuming the DDoS really is related to political Russian stuff, then seriously - yeah, I will survive without talking about dramas for a few hours. People have a right to political speech even if it interferes wih my fangirling. (What is it with Russian phobia, anyway?)

Yep, the Russian hate part does bother me from time to time. What's up, folks?

I don't blame Russians who "dare to express their opinions freely", I am proud of them. However, due to the fact that they actually do that, I am afraid that LJ can be in danger :(
I hope everything will be all right but I've saved a copy of my journal in PDF. Just in case...

** agrees **

I don't have a pdf copy - if it all goes belly up, I will just continue where I started.

And yes, let's blame Russians for this! How dare they express their opinions freely and invite DOS attacks to the place where I post about Korean dramas!

Hee. It is an imposition is it not? :)

I don't think anyone is blaming the Russians who are expressing their opinions. I think people are angry with the oppressors perpetrating the DOS attacks. Because personally I, and I'm sure a lot of other people in the free speaking world and people who believe in freedom of speech, feel like those people have a right to say whatever the hell they want.

If that is indeed what is happening. Like you, I'm a little skeptical.

I have seen various comments , some of them are sensible and some are not. I guess it gets on my nerves a tiny little bit that whenever anything happens in LJ , it always gets linked to it's Russian headquarters. I just think that if headquarters were somewhere in Canada, for example, this wouldn't have been mentioned as much.

Another thing is that I have seen negative comments from the English-speaking part of LJ about the Russian-speaking part of LJ (for example, when we had spam attacks) . I would have expected people to be all "YAY! let's be multicultural! This is great!" but the comments I saw were "I wish we didn't have all those Russians here! I don't understand their language!"

PS: the comments I mean are not from any of my friends, I just saw them in comms, passing by.

I don't even think LJ headquarters are good, but when I hear "oh, those Russians" again!" I can't help but feel as if I want to protect them. But I don't ( I think LJ could have been managed much better!), which makes me even more annoyed.

Edited 2011-04-06 12:28 (UTC)

Yep. It has nothing to do with the nationality of who is handling LJ. It could be any nationality that is managing things poorly. It's immature and shortsighted of people to blame a race of people for poor business practices when it's really just the individuals involved.

Plus, I am not convinced the attacks themselves are anything to do with Russian government. What would they achieve by this 9apart from bad publicity)? LJ will buy new equipment and fix the issue. I would rather think of LJ competitors.

I've got a Dreamwith account too but I've yet to use it for anything. I've thought about x-posting but somehow never get round to actually doing that.

I doubt I'll be leaving LJ any time soon either. Unless it gets totally unmanageable.

I want to be able to crosspost from LJ to DW. But I don't think DW will ever allow that.

I'm not worried either. At least not because of the DDoS attack.
If at all then I'm actually more annoyed about their inability to keep us informed via their status page (http://status.livejournal.org/). They are always way late to inform people that there's a problem. And as I write this they still say they are under attack even though, as far as I can tell, they are up and running for 24 hours now. So the page is pretty pointless.

I think DreamWidth is a cult. ;)

I agree. I think everything could be managed much better and when you have to find out what is going on from the press: you know that their status page is useless. But you know me, as soon as I hear "This is THE HAND OF MOSCOW!" i get rather annoyed too.

I think DreamWidth is a cult. ;)

hehehehehe! I think you might be close. :D

Edited 2011-04-07 15:25 (UTC)

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LJ troubles: do not panic!

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