Interoperability vs. Preservation of Site Culture

[charmian]

Recently, there was a suggestion about crossposting to Facebook Notes. In general, public opinion was against the suggestion, and in the comments, there was some discussion about whether this option might create problems for DW site culture or not.

For example, this comment by damned_colonial:

2) I dislike Facebook culture and the style of interaction that happens there. I fear that making it easy to crosspost to Facebook would result in lots of people coming here from Facebook and bringing Facebook social norms, which are at odds with the social norms I enjoy here on DW. (For instance, things I enjoy on DW include: lengthy, thoughtful posts and comments, a respect for pseudonymity, and the ability to segregate one's journalling from one's "real life").

In response, there was an interesting comment left by matgb, who said:

More of my readers come to read my stuff from Twitter and Facebook than do from LJ or DW. Even more come from a UK politics aggregator (or at least did when I was posting regularly). I'd like them to be able to comment effectively. I'd also like to 'push' to those sites I make use of to aggregate my stuff.

Essentially, who are you (or anyone else) to determine what sort of culture I want in my personal journal, and why should a whole site be tarnished because some people don't like the bits they've seen?

[......]

I didn't sign up for a fandom blogging platform, I signed up for an LJ fork that would take the good idea and make it genuinely interoperable. Refusing to deal with other sites because there are "normal" people there and they have a "culture I don't want to see here" is, well, annoying.

I don't think that an influx of FB users is likely destroy the culture of pseudonomity at DW. (Especially since a lot of people on DW already are FB users) The culture of real name usage at FB is something which exists mainly because it is the policy of the site, and enforced by FB itself. It's explicitly against the rules at FB not to use it under your real name. In contrast, there are no such rules at DW prohibiting people from using pseuds or from having multiple accounts or personae. The culture at FB is something that is developed by both the technology and the ToS, and at DW, both are different and don't reinforce those aspects of the FB culture.

In general, also, I am sympathetic to Matgb's desire to use DW in a highly interoperable way. IMHO, one of the reasons behind LJ's decline is that in an age where interoperability is becoming more and more important, it's still lagging behind. Tumblr, Posterous, WP.com, all of these allow you to easily push your updates to other platforms. I think it is highly desirable that DW also become an open platform in this way; however, if outside readers/commenters are considered a negative force, then this openness will be decreased.

Or is the site culture of DW really is that fragile? May be better for DW to differentiate itself from other blogging platforms by avoiding interoperability with anything but LJ, by making interoperability only possible by the technically inclined who are able to mess with APIs etc in order to crosspost? What do you all think?

UPDATE: foxfirefey has alerted me to the fact that an earlier suggestion about crossposting to FB was already accepted into the bug database. So the point itself may actually be moot.

Comments

[niqaeli]

I prize interoperability from an ethical standpoint and I -- am sort of surprised to find how vehement my reaction to the notion that DW site culture will be damaged by making it possible for people to use the site to their best interests. But, wow, I am at some seriously irritated how about no.

Frankly, I'd always seen Dreamwidth as moving towards being a sort of dashboard site -- a convenient, usable space to gather all the content you want to interact with on the internet to. That's what I want it to become for me, anyway. And increased interoperability is obviously necessary for that. I mean, I'd be really happy if I could do everything with facebook that I want to do via Dreamwidth. The interface here is so much more usable for me.

I feel like... ugh. I love Dreamwidth culture. And I'm kind of annoyed to be told that my participation in it should be in some way contingent on not bringing 'the wrong sort' onto the site. The site culture's not that fragile (and, honestly, for the long-term health of the service? I'm pretty sure it needs to be more complex than a single culture). And, frankly, it's my space. If you don't care for the space I create, awesome. The unsubscribe button's right there.

[foxfirefey]

And I'm kind of annoyed to be told that my participation in it should be in some way contingent on not bringing 'the wrong sort' onto the site. The site culture's not that fragile (and, honestly, for the long-term health of the service? I'm pretty sure it needs to be more complex than a single culture).

Hear, hear. DW culture could use a good influx and shake up.

[charmian]

Really? In what sense? (Not disagreeing w/ you, just curious)

[foxfirefey]

In a selfish sense? DW could use more nonfandom. I'm not saying there's a dearth of things for me here, I manage quite well. But I'd appreciate a more flourishing ecosystem for that.

Secondly, I personally think Dreamwidth needs to have a bunch of users from places that aren't LJ (or at the very least, people who ditched LJ years and years ago, before the brouhahas). I want some dilution of this damned obsession of what LJ's done wrong. Am I as guilty of that as anyone? Yes. I mean, hell, LJ meta is a hobby of mine and has been for years, and while I do less of it, I haven't stopped. I just think less of it would be a Good Thing™.

And ironically, having a bunch of users not from LJ would make the place more attractive to LJ users, too. Because right now the equation is all wrong for it. Sure, there's some technical features we have that LJ doesn't, but that applies visa versa too. But when it comes to content? Heck, almost everyone cross posts to LJ, so an LJ user doesn't really have anything interesting to gain content-wise by coming over here since only a few people stop cold turkey. And if people do stop cold turkey, there's often hurt feelings about it. But Dreamwidth people that didn't come from LJ wouldn't have that kind of baggage associated with them, and they'd hopefully be more likely to make new content on Dreamwidth that wasn't on LJ.

[charmian]

Yeah, I wish that DW did have actually more communities on fiction/movies/games/w/e from a non-fandom perspective.

Heh, I try to obsess less about what LJ's doing wrong too, because really, it's not like my opinion on whatever LJ Be Doing WROOOONG Today really matters to LJ anyhow, or will accomplish anything. (It's why stopped commenting on LJ news) But yeah, I think that is what people on the site do have in common. For example, my posts here on LJ get more attention than my posts on non-LJ matters.

But yes, I do agree that it would be good to get more non-LJ users in. And your point about it becoming more attractive to LJ users/DW users as well is important. As LJ continues to create more new technical features, it can also become more competitive with DW. However, I think marketing DW to non-LJ users will demand an entirely new kind of 'talking about the site.'

[niqaeli]

I agree that, ironically, yeah: it would help make Dreamwidth more appealing to LJ users if there were more non-LJ users on Dreamwidth. Because it'd be unique content and there wouldn't be the same kind of history to it.

I know I do try not to go on about how DW relates to LJ when I talk about why I love it. Because I don't think it's actually particularly useful to anyone at all. I am, in fact, a rather bitter ex-LJ user. But I recognise that that's not a very appealing thing to listen to -- it's not what I want to focus on myself, why would people who don't even have that context or whose context for it is very different than mine want to hear about what amounts to an LJ rant dressed up in "ooh shiny DW!" clothes.

I think a lot of people need to just let go of LJ which is, I know, really hard. I haven't really managed it, myself. But if we've bailed on it, if it's not our future... then why are we stuck on comparing Dreamwidth to it? Dreamwidth might have its roots in LJ, but its future's ought to be its own. And yeah, if it establishes itself as a unique thing all its own, with lots of unique content, it's more appealing to everyone.

tl;dr summarised: I agree!

[morineko]

I think it's too late; I'm actually surprised that users like matgb and thorfinn are still around, but apparently other things are trumping their lack of involvement in media fandom.

(If charmian and another friend didn't blog here, I'd be gone.)

[foxfirefey]

It gives me half a mind to just go and implement Facebook connecty stuff myself, except I know I'm kind of a ditz with no stamina, so I'm not sure I'd have enough follow through.

[charmian]

Well, I guess new things can always happen, but I think this relies a lot on 'marketing,' as viral growth is kind of difficult to do when targeting a market dissimilar from existing users.

[matgb]

I'm here for the interoperability, a functioning feeds system, the ability to hack around with my layout using well marked up/commented code that makes sense to a novice, and because the UI is better than LJ.

I don't read a huge amount of DW content, but what I do read I like. I was never on LJ for the comms, nor am I here for it. For a personal journal, the privacy functions on LJ/DW platform sites are useful for the rare times I want to write about stuff locked, but DW is actually improving things, ergo it's better.

Important to me is allowing anyone that wants to read/comment to be able to. While the UI on OpenID on DW still stinks, it's so much better than LJs that it's silly. I want to substantially improve it, and have been asked to contribute to that.

That means a lot to me; the site wants to be better at the stuff I ned it to be better at, and is already good at the stuff I like.

DW's still in beta, and still improving. When it formally launches, I can start pushing it to others that'll make use of it, there're already a number of senior-ish party types on here, I can push for more when the site's ready.

[thorfinn]

I can't speak for matgb, but for me, what trumps the lack of involvement is the software engineering practice and quality.

I've been a professional unix systems admin, software engineer and architect for 17 years now. The engineering practices of the vast majority of open source projects out there are, frankly, from my professional viewpoint, just awful. The long term code quality and functionality of most of those projects suffers badly as a result.

I have absolutely no desire to maintain a personal blog using some horrendous piece of software written by a bunch of poorly organised non professionals. I'd rather hand code something myself than do that. It'd be much quicker and easier and safer.

DW is very well set up from an engineering practice standpoint, including being set up to encourage the development and retention of quality people, and I'm very happy to support and pay for the software as a service as a result. :-)

[charmian]

Hmm, why from an ethical standpoint? Personally, I'm for it from a pragmatic standpoint: for a small site, it becomes less of an opportunity cost to use it if it can push notifications/allows users from other sites to interact w/ it more easily.

That does sound like an interesting idea: there was also a discussion in that post (lower down the page) about DW and APIs, and whether DW should simply only support standardized, widespread APIs (or popular non-standardized ones) or build the interop features themselves. I think that if DW simply supports APIs w/o providing an interface for users to use them, it's going to be the dashbordee rather than the dashboard (not that that is necessarily a bad thing: it all depends on the vision of the developers). /tangent

Yeah, I also agree: I don't think it is necessary for there to be a single culture, and I think multiple cultures can coexist. I'm pretty sure that on LJ there are groups where it's the norm for people to blog under their legal identities/write short posts/whatever, and that doesn't make it difficult for there to be large groups where the opposite norm prevails.

[niqaeli]

I don't think that any service should try to hold my information hostage -- I've chosen them to host it at this time, nothing more. So, forme interoperability's an ethical issue when it comes to OSPs: it's about treating their customers respectfully and acknowledging that they don't have the right to keep your information pent up on their servers and impossible to retrieve or to push to other OSPs.

And, yeah. I know people who use LJ to blog professionally. One of my favourite blogs, actually, is la_bricoleuse. It's a professional costumer's professional blog and it's great. I read it here via RSS feed, because hey: the beauty of RSS means I don't have to read the content where it was originally posted. (Which is good because I Really Don't Like LiveJournal, personally.)

[charmian]

I guess personally I feel more strongly about data portability than interop per se (defining data portability as the ability to extract my info from the service in a readable format). Pushing data/login to me is more of a convenience issue.

Indeed: I think in these discussions people do forget the people who use LJ/DW as an open (unlocked) blog, rather than as a locked form of communications.

[damned_colonial]

I have to say that my comment on dw_suggestions is very much meant to be "here's how I feel about it" and not "here's how everyone should feel about it". Lots of people disagree with me, and that's fine. I can certainly see the arguments for expanding beyond the LJ-ish niche.

My problem is, I have a lot of issues with segregating work stuff from play stuff. I have been very active on the Internet for 15+ years under my real name, and am also a somewhat public figure in my work under that same name. Facebook is the site of a lot of tension for me around that.

thorfinn is my friend on DW, on Facebook, and in RL. We met on the Internet 15+ years ago, in fact, and lived and worked together at various times. I know him and trust him, but I also know that we have a lot of mutual Facebook "friends" who I'm not entirely comfortable with on a personal level. *Speaking for myself*, the idea of those people following thorfinn's links back from Facebook to his DW and then, potentially, to my DW, makes me twitch.

Currently, I keep a lot of what I post public, but I've been locking down an increasing amount of it because I have a huge amount of anxiety about people reading and commenting on my stuff who don't get it, don't know where I'm coming from, don't understand my context, or whatever. (And by "anxiety" I mean literal, disabling anxiety. Yes, I have issues. Yes, I am getting help for them.) This anxiety gets triggered most often when the streams get crossed between my professional and personal lives, especially since, in the last year, I've had a number of abusive/harrassing incidents from people who know me in a professional or para-professional context (eg. from the online tech community).

At present, the way I use DW balances my desire to publish with my need to protect my mental health. An influx of people from Facebook, many of whom I know in (para-)professional contexts, who don't know my personal context here, would quite likely tip that balance for me, and make me change the way I use my DW -- lead me to lock down my journal more strictly, change my identity, or stop journalling. (That's not a threat to flounce, it's just a list of possible options that I might consider.) I'm not sure that a Facebook crossposting option would necessarily lead to that (in fact it probably wouldn't), but it is something I fear, and that fear is real, and affects how I use this site.

So yeah, that's where I'm coming from.

ETA: I should also probably note that it's Facebook in particular that I'm most twitchy about, because of the way Facebook has a TOS-requirement for 1:1 mapping between identity and accounts, in a way that doesn't let people effectively segregate the personal/professional/whatever parts of their lives. I'm more comfortable with the idea of crossposting to Tumblr, Wordpress, and other platforms that don't have that kind of identity setup, and where people more often have a blog-like-thing that is focused on a particular interest or subject. In fact I would love to see more crossposting options for those platforms! So, I'm not sure whether that makes me kind of inconsistent or not. And I'm not queen of the universe anyway, so it's not up to me. What will happen will happen, and I will adjust as necessary.

[charmian]

I guess the thing with dw_suggestions is that regardless of whether I am speaking for myself or not, whenever I post there it comes down to essentially advocating that something should or shouldn't become policy for the entire site; in other words, I'm saying that everyone else should be allowed to/disallowed from doing something, regardless of whether I'm telling them how to feel about it, which is why people might have expressed more irritation than was needed.

I am sorry to hear about your problems and hope that you can somehow resolve the split between your private and public blogging. I really don't want to be presumptuous about the difficult situation you face, so please tell me if I am out of line; however, isn't that really a problem about what happens when people who segregate their personal/professional lives have social media links to people who don't? I mean, if Thorfinn had a WP blog that imported into FB, and he frequently referenced your DW journal, and had it prominently linked in the sidebar, wouldn't the same problem potentially occur?

[damned_colonial]

isn't that really a problem about what happens when people who segregate their personal/professional lives have social media links to people who don't?

Yup, I think you're onto something there.

I'm in a weird position, in a way, because I do a soft segregation: my real-world identity is not secret (it's in my DW profile), but I downplay it to some degree, mostly post about different things here, and try to discourage people from the professional side from coming over here unless they really *do* want to interact with me on a personal level. Conversely, when people from DW come over to the professional side of my life (as happens occasionally), I give them my work email address and try and do most of the professional interaction there. This mostly works OK for me because the people I know on DW are, in general, very familiar with navigating pseudonymity online, and are good at respecting boundaries around that.

At present I have a slow trickle of (para-)professional people who I get to know personally and connect with on DW, and a slow trickle of DW people with whom I've wound up doing professional stuff. It's currently happening at a rate I can handle, but I fear a destabilisation of that balance.

[thorfinn]

*nod* The soft-segregation is pretty common to people around our age on the net, I think. I can understand the crossover issues, I just happen to fortunately be in a position to not have to particularly care about privacy that much.

That said, I have just gone through and locked everything on DW and LJ that might not be best to have splashed across the front page news.

[charmian]

I see this as a problem, but IMHO, it's not one that should be solved by limiting interoperability on DW, especially since the desired effect (limit FB users from coming to DW) is not actually something which I think DW should be discouraging? The problem about social links between people who try to segregate their RL and pseudononymous identities, and those who do not is one which pretty much is at the center of social media.

If DW were for example to get a lot more popular (say Thorfinn suddenly convinced people to join it), even without this feature being implemented, the same problems could potentially occur, also. So I guess what this situation is, is that to some the obscurity and 'walled garden-ness' of DW is a feature, and to others, it's a bug.

[niqaeli]

That would be, I suspect, the heart of my irritation -- it's not the fears expressed which I can sympathise with. But in the context of dw_suggestions, it becomes a matter of site policy for myself as well. So there, it isn't talking about how you yourself feel about whatever feature, but talking about what you believe site policy should be and how other people should be able to experience the site as well.

I was honestly startled to realise I had such a severe reaction to the whole notion. And if you reframe it out of being an issue of site policy and acknowledge it only as a social dynamics issue that crops up when those who blog under their meatspace name have social media links to those who blog pseudonymously, with serious implications for those blogging pseudonymously, the irritation pretty much melts away.

I guess basically I don't think the site policy should attempt to enforce social norms above and beyond eliminating/preventing genuine harassment. It strikes me as -- a bad way of going about it, all around.

[charmian]

Exactly, whether one is telling people how they should feel or not, one is telling people what they should be able to do. Certainly people may have strong opinions about how they should feel about something, but often their opinions about what they should be allowed to do are even stronger.

Yeah, I agree it is a problem, but I'm not sure if that problem is one that is DW's responsibility to deal with, and I don't think the solution is to limit interoperability, now that I've thought about it before.

[libitina]

I hadn't realized it had gotten into that deep a discussion. Dreamwidth needs to grow. Why are we not helping it grow?

There were a ton of communities and cultures on livejournal that I never saw and interacted with, and we were both happy that way. I see no reason why more people would disrupt the culture on my reading circle.

Treating dreamwidth as a clubhouse with a sign on it saying, "No poopyheads allowed," isn't going to make it a better, nor a more widely accepted, journaling service.

Just because a feature exists, that doesn't mean I have to use it.

Seriously, more functionality - as long as it's optional - is pretty much never a bad thing.

[charmian]

Yeah, I pretty much agree. I just don't think that this feature is likely to have the negative effects feared as well.

[libitina]

Well, I do think the new kids will likely be every bit as annoying as people worry. Just the lawn that I'm going to claim and want them to keep off of is not all of Dreamwidth. I only get to claim happiness on my reading circle. If someone else wants to subscribe or be obnoxious elsewhere - that's not my problem. If I wanted the whole of Dreamwidth to be my happy place, then I'd doom it.

[charmian]

No matter where the new people come in from, there are going to be differences in site culture, I think. Ah well, like you say, as long as I can keep those kids off my lawn, it's okay. And this doesn't even take into account that people on DW might develop all kinds of practices obnoxious to me on their own.