You remember a little while ago how I talked about stalking people on LiveJournal via RSS? Well, it's come to my attention that people might be interested in learning the find-replace fu by which I turn a friends list into an OPML file for import into something like Google Reader. The trick is actually pretty simple. Here's how it works.

You Will Need

1. A friends list. This can be found on the profile page of any LJ Server-based journal.
2. UltraEdit. Strictly speaking you can do this with any text editor (see caveats below), but UltraEdit is what I'm going to be using.

( Dee's Easy Guide to Making OPML Files )

So, yeah. Easy.

Mirrored from v-s.net. Comments are preferred on the original.

I think I have developed a new vice; lurking in people's journals. Not blogs, but journals.

See, invariably, whenever I subscribe to someone's blog via RSS, I end up reading two or three of their entries and skimming the rest. The occasional interesting post buried in the quagmire of life stories and long-winded, mediocre writing.¹ I can count the number of personal blogs I actually read seriously on the fingers of one hand… well, maybe two, but anyway it's not a lot. It's certainly a hell of a lot more than the number of personal blogs I subscribe to.

But there's something about journals. Some different style to the writing that appeals to me. Shorter, generally. More honest. Less pandering. I dunno, something.

So I started reading other people's friends lists. It felt like such a dirty thing to do, too. Not even necessarily my friends' friends lists, but complete randoms with interests or personalities I found appealing. I kept thinking, "What am I doing?" And then, because at heart I'm a lifehacker, "How can I make this more efficient?"

I think a lot of people still don't realise it, but all LJ Server based journals have RSS feeds; just append /data/atom to the end of their main journal page (like so). You can actually even read your friends' locked posts via these feeds if you use URIs in the format of http://you:password@username.livejournal.com/data/atom?auth=digest.² These feeds plus my procrastination plus Google Reader make a potent combination… but how to bulk import someone's entire f-list?

What you need is a text editor that can do a find-replace on an end of line character. UltraEdit's my weapon of choice, and I do believe that Word will actually do this as well. So I start copy-pasting people's f-lists from their profile pages and with a couple of find-replace queries across line endings format these lists as OPML files. These can then get bulk-imported into GReader, and viola! Next step? Doing the same thing for the 'Similar Users' lists at IJ and JF (alas, LJ has theirs turned off). Or communities I like the sound of.

Google is every obsessive-compulsive's best friend, and its Trends page will happily report on things like journals that have never been updated (usually indicating something f-locked) and it will even try and give you percentages on how many items from a feed you've read (I'm not entirely sure how it works this out). It's like creepy journal-stalking taken to a whole new level.

The obvious question is why do it this way in the first place. Why not just add people to my f-list like a normal person? Well, because my f-list is, in fact, for my friends. And there's that thing, you know, where friending someone creates like this obligation that they friend you in return? And then they do, and then six months later when you realise that they're actually a tosser and you'd rather gouge your own eyes out than continue to read their journal but you don't want to, like, offend them by taking them off your list. So then you've got the complication of the Default View Shuffle but they can still read your f-locked posts so then you make a bunch of custom groups and—

Look, all that social obligation stuff is way too stressful. I just want to read some journals, man.

Just pretend I'm not here.

1. Yeah yeah yeah. I know. Bite me. ^
2. Though not, it must be mentioned, in all readers. Google Reader doesn't, most desktop readers – including Mail and Thunderbird – do. ^

Mirrored from v-s.net. Comments are preferred on the original.

You'll all be so proud of me. The other day I finally got off my ass and made myself a better custom layout for my LiveJournal. Well, okay, actually I adapted it from one called Simplicity is Best by damnicons. Same general layout, but different colours and I ripped out the nasty habit LJ layout makers seem to have of making all their text 8px high with no line-height. What's with that?

Anyway. Other fun features include a meta-link image swap for those of you with access to the S2 Developer Area, and super-bonus Smooth Sailing base layer for those of you at places like InsaneJournal and JournalFen.

It's great, I swear.

Or, for those of you who are very clever or just lazy, here are the files you're looking for: style.css, override.txt and smooth-sailing.txt.

Icon sets resized from Silk, as usual. One day I'm going to use a new set I swear.

Mirrored from v-s.net. Comments are preferred on the original.

Well, interesting.

So I was tottering along today, commenting in communities like I've a wont to do, when lo and behold I get involved in a discussion of how the DMCA is implemented at LiveJournal. And it just makes me stop and thinkg, "… buh?"

Here's the deal, if I serve LiveJournal with a properly formatted DMCA takedown notice, they then pass that information onto the infringing user. Two options are essentially presented; take down the content, or file a counter-claim. Easy, right?

There's a problem. See, the thing is, LiveJournal doesn't screen notices for 'reasonableness'. So, say I was being a prat and I decided to file a notice against randomredux for that post the other day where he used some of my artwork to create faux DS and Wii game covers. Now, the legal legitimacy of me doing this is pretty much zilch (even discounting my after-the-fact approval), since my art isn't commercialised and I can't really prove damages in this situation. So even though it is technically a breach of copyright, randomredux is pretty safe since the claim is so petty it's highly unlikely I could get a court to hear it.

But LiveJournal will. So long as my takedown notice is formatted to a standard that complies with section 512(c) of the Copyright Act (one assumes that's the US act; nice implicit assumption, LJ). In case you were a bit unclear on this, LiveJournal provides a handy check-list. There's also a check-list for how to file a counter-claim, but note that it's significantly harder to file a counter-claim than it is to file and claim. The main point behind the filing of claims and counter-claims, incidentally, is so that LiveJournal can keep its status as a "safe harbour" under the DMCA. By removing access to content and acting on the initial claim, LJ absolves itself from liability from the party filing the complaint. By allowing a counter-claim, it absolves liability from its users. Is LJ allowed to judge the validity of a claim? I don't know, but I assume that if it does it opens itself up to liability in any subsequent legal action. Net result: It's easier for LJ not to make validity judgement on any claims at all, just enforce the DMCA and pass on the message.

My problem isn't so much with this. Okay, I think the DMCA is a prime example of Bad Law, and I resent the implication that I might be subjected to it (not being a US citizen and all). But copyright is copyright and the law is the law.

No, my main problem here is with the way LiveJournal presents options; take the content down, or counter-claim. And what it doesn't mention is that by taking the content down you are admitting to guilt. Never mind the legitimacy of the claim in the first place.

Thing is, if you get a couple of takedowns and you, trying to being a good kid, comply, LiveJournal can then deem you to be a "serial infringer" and banninate your ass.

Are you smelling what I'm smelling, dear reader?

Because what I'm smelling is a situation – similar to the one that started this discussion – where someone gets a vendetta against a user or community. User or community has posed, say, quotes from Captain Vendetta's blog posts or comments. Now, these are technically covered by copyright as published materials, so Captain Vendetta files DMCA notices against everyone she finds 'plagiarising' her words. LiveJournal doesn't do any assessment on validity, so serves notices against the targeted user/community. User/community decides fighting is too much wank, so takes the content down, thereby admitting guilt in LiveJournal's eyes, and getting their accounts one step closer to bannination without ever having done anything wrong.

Yeah, you heard that one right, kids; the system (that is, LJ's system) is set up so the onus of proof of innocence falls on the user. Even better, LiveJournal isn't exactly vocal about the fact that it treats compliance with notices as an admission of guilt. In fact, I can't actually find it stated explicitly anywhere (though it's implied by the page linked above, as well as several places in the FAQ), and it's certainly not included in the notice LJ Abuse sends off the users who've had DMCA claims filed against them. It's also interesting to note that in its rush to absolve itself under US law, LJ doesn't take into account the jurisdictions of the parties who are actually involved; what if one or both of them fall outside of the US, and therefore aren't subject to the DMCA and US copyright law? It gets kinda wonky here since by agreeing to use LJ's service you effectively submit yourself to US law when dealing with it, but when LJ writes itself out of the picture… then what?

And you know the really weird thing? Considering the wank that goes on at the drop of an LJ-hat, this interesting legal titbit seems to've thrown up exactly zero comment.

Anyway, the take-home message from this whole incident? Never comply with DMCA take-down notices served to you by LJ. Nice use of the law, there, eh?

Edit

Edited a couple of passages for clarification and pro learning. Mostly to remove references to fair use and make LJ's requirements under the DMCA clearer. Also removed one reference to criminal law; I used to think that certain types of widescale IP-related fraud fell in a criminal rather than civil jurisdiction, but now I'm not sure. The net complaint is the same, now hopefully it won't get a lost in the nitpicking details…

Mirrored from v-s.net. Comments are preferred on the original.

You're changing your heart.
(Oh, oh, oh.)
You know who you are.
(One, two, three, four, five, six, nine and ten.)
Money can't buy you back the love that you had then.

Quoted From: FEIST, '1234'

Well, I know it will come as a shock to you all, but the wank over at LiveJournal has erupted again after SUP announced they're trialling a new 'Sponsored' account type; essentially you'd get the features of a Paid account, but without paying anything. In return, your journal would be brand-locked to a sponsor, affecting your layout and userinfo, and possibly giving the sponsor a modicum of editorial say over your journal's content. You wouldn't know it from the hype, but SUP is only currently trialling this for its Russian userbase. Predictions of its success vary wildly, but they're all irrelevant for the purposes of this post, because what I'm going to do instead of complaining is, for once, to try and offer some help.

So, here it is. Sick of LiveJournal but don't know how to live without it? Don't worry, you're not alone. And you also wouldn't be alone in following the exodus of people who are flowing out of places like LJ and into the private blogging market. Getting out is not as hard as you think, nor does it cut you off from your existing friends and communities. Sure, there'll be some adjustment required and you can't move expecting everything to be exactly the same as you left it. Because it won't be; it'll be better. Trust me, you'll like it once you're in, I swear.

So, without further ado, here's Dee's beginner's guide to migrating to WordPress from LiveJournal¹.

Step #1: Finding A Host

Here's the thing, you want a journal with no ads and no editorial interference? Well, the good news is that there are literally hundreds of nice people out there with a vested interest in helping you out. The bad news is you're going to have to find them (but it's not that hard).

Your first option is to sign up at WordPress.com. WP.com is a commercial entity, however, and while they're not as ad-saturated as LiveJournal, they've still got 'em and by putting content there you're still living at the direct behest of a company. Plus, some of the features we're going to be using later on are locked-out. So it's probably not a great option. (In fact, for the rest of the post I'm going to assume you're not doing this.)

Your real second choice is to find someone's personal domain to mooch off. This is called 'sub[domain] hosting' and almost everyone who has a private domain nowadays offers it for free. In a nutshell, you find a domain name you like (say, void-star.net), insert some wrangling, and the net result is you come out the other end with a subdomain all of your own (say, you.void-star.net). You can then do pretty much whatever the crap you want with it, including sticking a blog there. It's fun, I swear; I've been doing it since circa 1999.

But where do you start looking? Lists like the ones at Get What You Give, Link Lounge and Despair.nu. And, yes, even yours truly. Or ask your f-list; you'd be surprised who owns what. Some things to keep in mind when you're looking for subdomain hosting:

• You'll need somewhere that will run WordPress. This is pretty much everywhere; your main requirements are PHP and at least one MySQL database. The host you apply to should be able to help you set these things up.
• Your host will have access to your files. That's just the way it is, and while most hosts are pretty good, don't leave the password to your GMail or bank account lying around on a shared server (or, in fact, anywhere).
• Make sure you get a host that gives you your own FTP login, that will only allow access to your directory (some hosts try and share one login between all hostees; this is bad, don't do it).
• Your host will have a host, which they likely pay money to (or, possibly, their host has a host). Try not to get them in trouble; if you're unsure about any of your content, ask them first. 9,999 times out of 10,000 it will be fine.
• If you haven't done this "standing on your own two e-feet" thing before, make sure you get a host who's happy to help you figure out things like how to set up scripts and use FTP. Most are; some will even do basic installs for you.

The third option is to (gasp) register your own domain. Domains are pretty cheap nowadays; if you're paying over $10 a year for a .com, .org or .net you're paying too much. The hardest part here is finding a decent registrar; I mostly use GoDaddy but I wouldn't say they're the best option on the table (they tend to be difficult if you accidentally let your name lapse, and they upsell). Once you've got a name, you'll still need some hosting; there are people (again, yours truly) who offer free domain hosting. Otherwise, you're looking for something paid; DreamHost has always been popular, as is Site5, while I use Surpass Hosting. If you've got a computer that's constantly connected to the 'net, you can even host your own (I'll finish writing the other half of that tutorial one day, honest)!

Yes, incidentally, you read that right; owning your own domain costs less than a paid LiveJournal account. Just so you know.

Step #2: Installing WordPress

WordPress is one of the most common blog tools currently in production. It's a mighty fine product, hence I pimp it so much. And it's really, really piss-easy to install.

1. First up, make sure you've got that MySQL database set up. You'll get four pieces of information with it: a host name (usually localhost, but not always), a user login, a password and a database name.
2. Download the latest WordPress distro.
3. Unzip WordPress somewhere on your computer. Find the folder that contains readme.html.
4. Read the readme, and follow the instructions. They are very easy; remember to fill in your database details (the ones we noted above) when asked.
5. For step #4, you'll need an FTP client. My favourite is FireFTP; a plug-in for Firefox. Your host should have given your an FTP server, a username and a password.
6. If you do something wrong at any point, you can delete everything and start again. It's all good; everyone screws up the first couple of times. Ask your host to help you or, at worst, me.
7. Anyway, if you've followed all your instructions correctly, you should have a glimmering new WordPress install. Take a moment to inhale its shiny beauty.

Step #3: Configuring WordPress

So, we've got a blog. Now, what're we going to do with it? The WordPress admin panel can be a bit confusing if you've never seen it before, but the tool is tremendously powerful and – believe me – its admin is much easier than most other blogging/CMS tools. Don't be afraid to muck about, change some values; at this stage, anything you break you can un-break easily, so go nuts. Make some test posts, some test pages, a test blogroll.

One of the things you definitely want to do while you're here is make 'neat' permalinks. These mean that instead of URLs like /?p=123, you get something 'human readable' and bring great kudos upon yourself. To change these, visit Settings > Permalinks in your admin panel. Note that this will require the creation of a special file in your blog folder. On most modern hosts, WordPress should be able to upload this itself; if not, it'll give you instructions on what to do.

To block search engines from your blog, visit Settings > Privacy. To stop your blog from notifying directory services of updates you make to it, visit Settings > Writing and delete the text from the box under Update Services.

Settings > Discussion has options for comments. You can set moderation and pingbacks (attempting to notify other blogs when you've linked them; the blog software on the 'receiving end' needs to understand these, and for the record, LiveJournal doesn't), as well as the use of Gravatars. Gravatars aren't as flexible as LiveJournal's user icon system but, well, you win some your lose some.

Step #4: Making it Pretty

The most important step; themes! Now, you can certainly have a stab at making your own (and as someone who's done both, believe me they are much easier to make than LiveJournal themes), but there are jillions of people out there in internet land who are keen to make free WordPress templates for you to use. The hardest part is finding good ones, but a good place to start is Smashing Magazine, which goes around periodically rounding up some really sweet ones.

Installing WordPress templates is also easy: Download, unzip and upload the folder into /wp-content/themes. Then visit the Design section in your admin panel; wow!

Step #5: Making it More Like LiveJournal

Thing is, you aren't going to be able to replicate all of LiveJournal's functionality with WordPress. LiveJournal is more community orientated than WordPress, which is more of a publishing tool. Such is the price of freedom. That being said, there are some things you can do, and they're all going to be accomplished via plug-ins. Like themes, there are thousands of WordPress plug-ins out there, all with varying functions and levels of awesomeness. Installation is pretty easy; download, extract and upload the files to /wp-content/plugins. Then go to Plugins in your control panel and press 'Activate' as appropriate. That's (usually) it.

The first one is putting in threaded comments. Out of the box, WordPress supports these technically but the ability isn't implemented in the UI for some reason. Probably the most mature solution for this out there is the Brian's Threaded Comments plug-in. This plug-in is one of those ones that requires a slightly different installation, so make sure to read install.txt carefully.

The one thing that is hard with WordPress is making the equivalent of f-locked posts. You can start to add this functionality with plug-ins like Post Levels, but it's never as smooth as LiveJournal's system and it requires getting your friends to register at your blog. There are also other fun things like your locked posts not appearing in your RSS feed (so how do people know you've made them?). On the other hand, WordPress does know how to natively password protect entries (under Password Protect This Post at the bottom of the Write > Post screen), so experiment a bit to try and find what you like.

Finally, the one really easy feature to duplicate is LiveJournal's 'Memories'. We're going to do it with a super-fun service called del.icio.us. Sign up for that, install the handy browser extension and get bookmarking! Getting these into your WordPress blog is also easy. You can either post all your bookmarks for the day as batch post, or simply add the RSS feed from your account to your sidebar. To do the latter, visit Design > Widgets and click RSS; in the box that pops up on the right-hand side (you might need to expand it by pressing Edit), fill in the URL for your del.icio.us feed (it will be http://feeds.delicious.com/rss/username), check other options as appropriate and hit Save Changes.

This, of course, is only really scratching the surface of what you can do. For a much, much more extensive list of modifications, see this list.

Step #6: Importing Your LiveJournal Entries

They're not going to go to waste; you can, indeed, import your old LiveJournal entries into your brand spanking new WordPress blog. Handy instructions on how to do this are here. Note that this might take a while, because you're probably going to be restricted on the size of the file you can upload (it's a PHP thing). Still, it's totally doable.

Step #7: Exporting Back to LiveJournal

Leaving LiveJournal is all well and good, but I'm guessing that – like me – you've still got lots of mates there and you don't want to abandon them. No worries! You can still export the posts from your shiny new blog back to your old LJ friends. As usual, there's more than one way to do it.

The first one is to set up a Syndicated account at LiveJournal using the RSS feed of your new site (it's probably /feed if you've changed to short URLs as above). As an option, this one kinda sucks since your friends (bless their hearts) will likely have a habit of commenting on the syndicated entries, and you won't get notifications when they do.

A much better option is the LiveJournal cross-poster. This will automagically mirror your blog entries into your existing LiveJournal; as far as your friends are concerned, it'll be (almost) like you never left! But you, on the other hand, won't have to worry about SUP plastering your journal with ads or deleting your account for 'inappropriate' content. Schwoit! (On the other hand, if you're one of those "get off my content, SUP!" types, you're probably after the feed option.)

Step #8: Homing Your Fen Content

Got fic, art or manips? Then I've got good news for you; WordPress will help you organise all this stuff much better, using its static pages feature (Manage > Pages and Write > Page). These are hierarchical (Page Parent on the write screen), so you could create a page for 'fics', a sub-page for 'DCU' and a pages beneath than for individual stories.

Do art or vids instead of fics? No worries; WordPress has a handy upload and embed wizard for these, too.

There's two things you should know about Pages. The first is that they don't appear in the RSS feed for the site. So if you make a new one, and want to announce it, that's a blog post.

The second one is about comments. Now, theoretically you should be able to comment on Pages in WordPress but it's not always enabled in all templates. Check this thread for more info.

Step #9: LiveJournal, Your Way

Okay, so you've set yourself up a new blog, you're crossposting it to your old LiveJournal – no disruption of service required – and you've re-homed all your old fic and art from the posts it was previously buried in and onto static, categorised Pages. What now?

Now, we go back to LiveJournal. The whole point of moving is not to leave the place cold-turkey, but rather to find a new home for our content, free from management interference and ads. Chances are, you've still got a lot of friends left over at LJ, and probably a buttload of communities, too. So, what to do about that?

Well, obviously your friends page is still there, and the truth of the matter is that there's no real replacement for the communities on LJ, short of getting the entire lot to follow you to a privately hosted forum. So to participate, you're going to have to go back. There are, however, a couple of things you can do to make this experience a little more enjoyable.

Firstly, invest in an RSS reader. This can be a standalone client (Thunderbird, for example) or an online service such as Bloglines. A fun fact about LiveJournal is that all accounts – communities and users – have RSS feeds, and you can read them without ever touching the site itself. The URL for a user's RSS feed is http://username.livejournal.com/data/atom while for communities it's http://community.livejournal.com/username/data/atom. RSS feeds don't get notification of f-locked posts, of course, which kinda bites, but they're good for reading communities at the very least. Good news, everybody! Turns out this isn't true, and you can read f-locked posts at LiveJournal via RSS. See this article for details (info care of no_lj_ads).

Secondly, get the LiveJournal Addons for Firefox (y'all do use Firefox, right?). This natty extension will give you a heads-up on new f-list posts, messages and other random events. Net result: Less time spent actually on LiveJournal, no loss of content.

And finally, for godssakes get Adblock Plus. Now not only are you using LiveJournal's facilities, but you're not viewing any ads while you're there, and thus not helping their revenue. You're a grade-A moocher!

Step #10: Profit!

So, that's all there is to it, kids. Now you too can have an ex-LiveJournal blog without actually having to sacrifice much in the way of your overall LJ community experience.

And, best of all, when people start bitching about censorship this and ads that, you can rock back on your heels with a hearty, Puritan HA! HA!, safe in the knowledge that you are safely ensconced on your private server and screened from the damage by your RSS feeds and your Firefox addons. And, who knows; if your friends see how easy it was for you to go, maybe they'll start moving off-server too.

Zero content, zero investment.

Good luck with the exodus.

Edit: Wouldn't you know it, there's even a pre-existing LiveJournal community dedicated to exactly this process! lj2wordpress. Natch.

1. Note that for the rest of the post, when I say 'LiveJournal', assume I also mean InsaneJournal, JournalFen, DeadJournal… in fact, any site that runs on the LJ codebase. ^

Mirrored from v-s.net. Comments are preferred on the original.

Sick of hearing about LiveJournal yet? Well, tough, 'cause here's some more.

It was gnosis who pointed out the pink elephant in the room about this whole "Good Friday Content Strike '08" thing. He asked, Do strikes online really work?

And I thought about it, and I was gonna answer him there but instead I'm answering him here, because I think the answer is… complicated.

In short form, it's "yes"; online strikes work just as well as they do in real life.

In short form, it's "no"; online strikes work just as well as they do in real life.

Thing is, strikes and protests are, when you get right down to it, a way for an individual to up their importance relative to a powerful minority. Traditionally, strikes have been about labour. One coal miner complaining about pay is easily replaced, but a thousand coal miners complaining about pay aren't. And a thousand coal miners refusing to work are not only hard to replace but put a big dent in the money pockets of the employer; a bigger dent, in fact, than would have been produced if the employer had simply increased pay in the first place. So employers listen – often grudgingly, these things are rarely smooth and tensions and livelihoods are on the line on both sides – to striking workers because the pain of not listening is worse. In the really real world, the strike is the primary tool of the union, and the original point of unions was to give individually replaceable workers a way of demanding fair working conditions. The employer looked out for himself and the union – which, when it came down to it, was essentially your mates on the factory floor, plus some suits from Elsewhere – looked after you. The union's sole power came from its members, because they had the thing – labour – that the employer wanted. Withholding that resource by striking was their bargaining chip.

Protests are a similar thing but generally aimed by citizens towards governments or consumers towards corporations. Individually, the government doesn't much care if I don't like their policies but when three, ten, a hundred thousand people don't like it they listen; democracies listen because their mandate for government comes from the citizenry, and non-democracies listen because a hundred thousand angry citizens is, in effect, an army.

Protesting corporations is a newer idea again and, in practice, is often fairly ineffective. For a protest against a corporation to work, such a significant slice of consumers need to be involved that it becomes almost physically impossible to organise that many people to all do that all at once. And at the end of the day, Nike still makes shoes in sweatshops (they just say they don't).

So, 'negative' (avoidance) protests against corporations are historically doomed to failure and that is why, as far as I'm concerned, the Good Friday LJ Content Strike is a rubbish notion. It's a nice bandwagon to jump on but at the end of the day you're a noisy minority and SUP knows that. You aren't gonna change their mind. Protests might feed you small victories – the interests list being uncensored, for example – but when it comes down to Money, they just don't care. The 'strike' is the functional equivalent of you deciding not to use your computer for one day because you don't like Microsoft. Yeah, real effective.

That being said, however, as an individual consumer you are never helpless in the face of enterprise, you just gotta think different. The strike is about changing SUP, and it's worthless. What's really needed is for people to change themselves.

You remember how everyone really hates Internet Explorer? And how people bitched and moaned and Microsoft went, "Ha fucking ha what are you gonna do about it?" And for years and years the browser wars were considered dead until some young upstarts came along with the product that would eventually become Firefox. And the users saw it and they moved. In droves; Firefox was a superior product to IE6 and people flocked to it. It was a protest, but instead of a protest against Microsoft it was a protest for Firefox. And Microsoft's business model suffered; just like it's taking hits from companies like Google and Apple (remember the Zune? No-one else does, either). The monopoly is crumbling, and it's not just because people are angry at Microsoft, it's because they're supporting its competitors.

And this is what it comes down to; if you don't like LiveJournal, don't use it.

Don't try and dress it up in self-righteous justification about how the company 'owes' you change. It doesn't. Yes, you're a consumer and yes without consumers LJ is worthless; so what? You are not going to kill LiveJournal through direct action, just like no-one killed Microsoft through the same. The only thing you can change is yourself.

So just. Stop. Using. LiveJournal. Not for one day; forever.

Don't bitch about how "all [your] friends are there". If you really don't like LJ that much, then erase your shit and get the fuck out of dodge. It's not like they're the only game in town; InsaneJournal, JournalFen, WordPress, Blogger, Vox, hell, your own fucking domain.

Because it's true that if enough people go, the service fails – like MySpace is failing and like Friendster failed before it – but it's also true you can't force the failure. You can only force yourself.

So you wanna do something useful? Instead of the 'content strike' this Friday, hold an exodus. Archive your journal and just leave.

You'll feel better afterwards, honest.

Mirrored from v-s.net. Comments are preferred on the original.

(Argh, I get so twitchy when people link to me from locked posts; it's a disorder, I know. But hi anyway to all you people trickling in from tealizard's journal.)

Some of you (by which I mean "none of you", hence I'm pointing it out) may have noticed that today I went through and changed my interests list on LiveJournal to the following:

basic accounts, bisexuality, bondage, boys, depression, faeries, fanfiction, girls, guys, hardcore, making fun of lj, making fun of sup, no_lj_ads, pain, porn, removing advertising, sex, thoughts on yaoi, yaoi, интернет, кино, книги, компьютеры, кошки, литература, любовь, море, музыка, психология, путешествия

Who cares, y'all're saying, right?

Right, well. I kinda do. See, turns out that SUP's decided its user base isn't presenting an attractive enough image to the outside world, and has gone through and censored its "popular interests" list. Super-fun happy details are here, but in a nutshell it's gone through and removed anything that has to do with sexuality (especially homosexuality), anything Russian-language and fanfiction. For some reason.

And normally I'm one of those people who believes in the Living Room Theory of the Internet; that is, a website is like someone's living room, and they have the right to do whatever they want with it. If they want to censor their own living room, that's their prerogative, y'know? But…

But there's something that shits me off more than I believe in the Living Room Theory and that's this puritan notion that sexuality – especially 'non-standard' sexuality – is some massive boogeyman that needs to be hidden from view for the children! And while I'm at it, the removal of the Russian language stuff bothers me too; there's something deeply… racist? Cold War-esque? About it all. Which is kinda ironic 'cause, yanno, the reason SUP (a Russian company) bought LJ in the first place was because of its massive Russian user base. And now they're gonna pretend like it doesn't exist? Why, exactly? To pander to some backwards anti-non-English-speaking sentiment? Because I can't think of any other reason right now…

So, hence the changed interests. Because a little civil e-disobedience never hurt anyone…

Mirrored from v-s.net. Comments are preferred on the original.

So, once upon a time   matt convinced me to sign up for LiveJournal. This was back in '99 and I've had that account ever since (albeit with one name change). Strictly speaking, I don't post to my LiveJournal; I post to my blog and LJ's excellent XML-RPC interface allows me to mirror my posts from here to there. This interface is free; any user can take advantage of it, and people do, mostly thanks to the neat plug-ins written for 3rd party logware like WordPress. The fact of this interface is why I use LJ and not other, similar services like Vox that don't offer it. I like my domain more than I like any of those third party sites but of course that begs the question…

Why bother to do it at all?

And the answer is simply that I make friends on LiveJournal; there's something about the community that… I dunno, encourages interactivity in a way that free-standing blogs often don't. Maybe it's the enforced egalitarianism of default templates; I dunno. But whatever it is, the fact remains that no matter how gently I try and encourage people to comment here rather than there, they don't; most of my comments (and discussions) come from LJ. Which is vexing but, alas, the truth. And the flip side of that coin is that I comment on LiveJournal; a lot. I comment more on people's journals than I do on the blogs that I read. Because, at the end of the day, it's a community.

This is why I have a permanent account. Yeah, I shelled out the US$150 in the last sales round to buy one. Not for the features. I honestly don't give a crap that I get some ridiculous number of userpics. I don't post by phone or email (because of the XML-RPC thing). Strictly speaking there's not much more that I can do as a Permanent Account that I couldn't do as an Early Adopter, but after eight years of use I figured it was time to give something back to the site.

The reason I'm thinking about this right now, incidentally, is because of something LJ creator Brad Fitzpatrick said in his post about the recent account type changes SUP has made at LJ:

In any case, SUP apparently sees no value in freeloaders not looking at ads, not paying, and oh wait… producing most the content for other members to read, other members who are looking at ads and paying for their accounts.

Quoted From: Brad Fitzpatrick

And that's… interesting because that's what LJ is to me and maybe I never really consciously realised it before. LJ is not its features – technically, it's back in the Web 1.0 stone age – but rather its people. The reason I don't care much about places like JournalFen¹ is purely because I don't have an active friends list there. I can shout out into the silence well enough from v-s.net; I don't need a third party site to do that for me, no matter how many bells and whistles they claim to have.

So… I dunno. Maybe SUP doesn't get this. Maybe. Maybe we all got blinded by chrome and the potential for revenue and forgot that LiveJournal is the longest running, consistently successful social networking site on the internet. MySpaces and Friendsters come and go but LiveJournal stays eternal by… what, exactly?

Not money, that's for sure.

Edit

Reading through the comments I've gotten on this post has made me think about the features that I think make LiveJournal 'work' for me, as opposed to every other social networking site I've abandoned. It seems everyone's answers are fairly similar, but here are mine:

1. The remote posting client. Because if it's a choice between here and my domain, my domain wins.
2. The ability to have f-locked posts. Most free-standing blog software (other than sk.log, which I based off LJ) has limited if any support in this regard, especially linked with…
3. The friends page. Not for its own sake – because, really, that's why God invented RSS – but when combined with the above. I think it makes the community more… private? I guess; because people don't have to worry so much about who's reading their Deepest and Darkest Most Thoughts.
4. Threaded comments, with notifications. Flat comments drive me nuts, so does not getting notifications of replies to me personally (as opposed to 'blanket' responses to the whole post). This is another thing I ripped from LJ to put into sk.log.
5. Communities. The fact that they're so tightly-coupled with the rest of LJ is a pretty unique feature, especially in the otherwise pretty free-standing world of blogs.

So, there you go. Those are the features that I think help build the community that makes me keep coming back to LJ. Note that in an of themselves they're not the incentive, but rather they're the tools that I think LiveJournal does well that other social networking/blogging tools are lacking. If you build it, and all that.

So, while we're here; what keeps you coming back?

1. Incidentally, if anyone wants a JF account, let me know. ^

Mirrored from v-s.net. Comments are preferred on the original.

So I went and signed up for InsaneJournal and JournalFen the other day, mostly just to test the Glue and see how sk.log handles multiple journal crossposting.

Really well, as it turns out, so now those journals are mirrors of this one.

Also, there's a new home for Yummy Delicious – the Delicious Glue interface – which now supports those two sites as well as LJ. Hooray.

Mirrored from v-s.net. Comments are preferred on the original.

Oh yeah. Remember how I was talking yesterday about having set up Delicious Glue? Well, you guys can use it too, if you want. Because I like looking though other people's links.

1. First you will need an account at LiveJournal, InsaneJournal or JournalFen.
2. Second, a del.icio.us account. del.icio.us is a social bookmarking tool; grab it, grab the Firefox plugin and start bookmarking links.
3. Log into del.icio.us and visit the daily blog posting page in the settings.
4. Click add new thingy.
5. Set out_name and out_pass to your LiveJournal username and password (del.icio.us doesn't steal your login info and neither do I, just in case you were wondering).
6. Set out_url to http://glue.void-star.net/livejournal (http://glue.void-star.net/insanejournal and http://glue.void-star.net/journalfen work too).
7. out_time is a bit more tricky because the LJ client is a bit stupid and doesn't understand time zones. It also won't accept a new post made 'before' a post you've already made. To make it more complicated, del.icio.us uses GMT while the Glue script uses AEST. So I set out_time to 13 because 1pm GMT is midnight for me, and by making a post at midnight I'm not likely to get time clashes. So out_time controls when a post is made, but the timestamp on the post will be in AEST. Your best bet it probably just to set it to whatever and if you get issues to keep moving the time around until you find something that doesn't give you problems. I should probably work on making the time thing a bit more configurable… Oh, and if you want to know what the current time in GMT is, just ask Google (and for AEST).
8. Press Submit Query (you can leave the other two options blank; they don't do anything).
9. Now wait until your post is scheduled. The actual script usually runs about 20 minutes after whatever hour (in GMT) you've specified in out_time

And there you have it. Wait until your time rolls around and hopefully you should get something that looks like this. Too easy!

Mirrored from v-s.net. Comments are preferred on the original.