crossposting

[pauraque_bk]

I've been crossposting for many years — longer, now, than the span of time when I was exclusively posting on LJ — but with the latest botheration (and how many times have I said that in the past eight years?) I suppose it's a good time for a reminder that I'm also pauraque on Dreamwidth and will happily add anyone who adds me (t)here. It does everything LJ does (often better), it's free, it's fandom-friendly, it won't present you with mysterious ultimatums in languages you don't understand or delete your account for no reason.

The fact that the old guard of fandom has stuck with LJ for so long I think speaks to the awesome power of inertia. It certainly doesn't speak to the quality of the service LJ provides.

Crossposted from Dreamwidth. Feel free to comment wherever you're comfortable.

Comments

[dexstarr.livejournal.com]

You've reminded me that setting up crossposting is on today's to do list, along with double backing up my fic in case the very worst happens.

I don't think we have much to worry about, since I think they're more concerned with big communities/politics, but can't be too safe.

[pauraque]

I backed up everything on my LJ when I started crossposting, so that's all safe. Really we should all be sure to keep backups, regardless of how trustworthy we think a platform is. You don't always get a warning before shit goes down technically or policy-wise.

[dexstarr.livejournal.com]

This is true, I just lost several RP journals at InsaneJournal because their purge happened early.

I have Time Machine on my laptop too, but this is is a good get-off-my-lazy-butt to make sure I have everything I want.

[pauraque]

I didn't know there'd been purges on IJ too, that's really a shame. After strikethrough I remember there were a few LJ clones that popped up and were touted as safer alternatives, especially RPers, but turned out not to live up to the hype.

[dexstarr.livejournal.com]

IJ did purges because of database space, not content/change of ownership/etc. It's still in the same hands it's always been in. But the site went down for a week in the middle of the period you had to reactivate accounts. So once the site went back up, Squeaky resent the "this account will be purged because it hasn't been active in 2 years" email but for the second batch, instead of the notified 2 weeks to take care of accounts, the purge happened early, after 10 days. I am procrastinator extraordinaire, so... byebye accounts.

I'd say IJ is still a good place for RP, I don't know anywhere else that's as active. Although, that could be inertia, too.

[black-dog.livejournal.com]

I did the Dreamwidth thing too, ages ago, but despite crossposting it didn't seem to have the same critical mass. Maybe that's changed? Should probably check it out more, not that I'm more than semi-comatose about LJ these days.

Do you how to backup a whole journal? I thought I'd heard about that but can't find it in the FAQ. Will continue looking around about it.

Anyway: hi there! Just occurred to me that it's poetry month, when I've tended to revisit the old haunts and post a little. So, maybe see you around a little.

[pauraque]

Hi! The concern about lack of critical mass to succeed as a fandom platform has held DW back for years, and of course it's a self-fulfilling prophecy: nobody moves because nobody thinks anybody else will. I'm sure when DW decided to support crossposting they thought it would make it easier for people to move to their service, since you could still stay in touch with those who hadn't, but in the end it just meant hardly anyone "moved" at all because all the comments and interaction were still on the LJ crossposts. But in the current situation where significant numbers of people are actually deleting their LJs rather than just crossposting, that pattern could change.

There are a few ways you can backup your LJ. They do provide an Export Journal option but it seems extremely limited (doesn't include comments, doesn't download in a normal document-ish format). But there are outside services like Blogbooker that claim to do it better, though I don't have personal experience with that. You can also import your past LJ posts into your existing DW journal or a fresh one used solely as a backup, which is what I did and found it worked well.

[black-dog.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I'll try the DW import journal thing tonight when I have a little time to play with it. I loved the comments I got on some posts and the debates I got into and I don't want to lose them, even though they're so ancient now. It's at least a little bit more security against fate, no?

I'm not actually terrified of deletion, or of the Russians, but it's something to think about. I read the new terms and their references to Russian law which didn't sound too awful, but it's not exactly the most rule-of-law kind of country and Putin is so reactionary about unconventional sexualities that the fandom stuff may freak them out if they ever get around to looking at it.

[pauraque]

Yeah, that's kinda the thing. With the current climate in Russia, many of the things we write and discuss in fandom could easily be found in violation of obscenity laws. And we know that LJ is already very much on the government's radar screen because of its use by dissidents in Russia and the Ukraine; it's not just some random site they'd have no reason to care about. So the concern I think is valid.