Dreamwith optimism or cynicism?

[charmian]

A self-described Dreamwidth cynic speaks out.

I don't know if I'd classify myself as an optimist or a pessimist (lol, if anything, I'd like to be a Dreamwidth realist) on DW, but the thing is, LJ is a vast entity, and many parts of it are irrelevant to my usage. Even if DW fails to become larger than IJ or GJ at their peak, I suspect that for people in Western media fandom, DW will take off more than GJ or IJ in a relative sense. Entirely unclear on people in anime fandom or book scifi/fantasy fandom.

Anyhow, my reasons for interest in DW are mainly technical, and on both technical and non-technical issues, the proof of the pudding is in the eating.

Comments

[flourish]

Generally, IAWTC. It seems like that poster is concerned because

1) they have seen fandom "exoduses" before that failed and
2) they have had a bad experience with denise in particular.

As for 1, I don't really care that much - people with openIDs can comment on my DW account, and I don't actually use my LJ very much for posting. As for 2, I have had no such bad experiences, so I can't really speak for it. The technical way that DW is run is really interesting, and you're right that only time will let us know how that works out.

[charmian]

It depends on the fandom. Some fandoms did exodus to IJ or GJ, IIRC. Most didn't. The whole idea of a 'fandom' exodus is kind of flawed. The question people should be asking is, 'will my fandoms crossover?' Or, 'will DW develop its own active communities?' (communities are really a big sticking point, especially members-locked comms.)

Yeah, DW is a long away from site launch, therefore their policies are as of yet under construction. I think it's premature to judge either way until we can actually see how the policies are written and carried out.

Anyway, I didn't like using IJ because they have recurring technical problems. The people running DW on the technical end understand the code much better, so I don't think it's unwarranted optimism to believe that DW will be performing better than IJ. And let's not get into JF's past robustness issues. >_>

[flourish]

Yeah. Plus "InsaneJournal" with "asylums" is kind of offensive to folks with mental health issues, and JournalFen kind of screwed me over and then didn't respond to any of my emails to even let me know that they weren't going to de-screw me, so I'm not too enamored with either of them. /shrug

[charmian]

Yeah, JF's customer communication leaves a LOT to be desired. Also, some of the features appear to be broken/malfunctioning. I haven't heard much about Deadjournal or some of the other clones, except that they tend to use the older code.

[morineko]

I've seen (in comments) that Squeaky from IJ is thinking about using the DW code once it gets out of beta. This can only be a good thing--but it doesn't mean I'll be inclined to use that site.

I'm hoping that the communities here will become more active during open beta. Of course, that means making my own posts.

[charmian]

Well, hopefully that means that IJ will be technically improved. Though, personally speaking there is nothing on IJ that I read except for the meta_roundup comm there anyhow. With IJ having ads and DW not having ads, though, one then has to wonder what IJ's selling point is....

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

Well, there are people who are settled at IJ and who are not going to move, so I'd see it more as improving the code for the sake of the already existing userbase than improving the code as a way to try to get new users.

[charmian]

I guess that might be their idea. I've heard that LJ is not that great at maintaining the open source aspects anyway.

[mark]

I'm honestly glad to see someone posting some critique. Granted, it seems more on the personally-biased end of critical rather than the 'useful commentary Mark can actually do something with to make the site better' end, but oh well.

Thank you for sharing!

[charmian]

I think as a critique, it suffers from the fact that the person hasn't used the site, therefore it's not really focussing on specific problems with DW. (Though spare_change in the comments does make a specific criticism) IIRC, I think Yonmei left LJ over the whole breastfeeding icon controversy.

[morineko]

It seems almost anti-helpful. I admit to having my own cynicism about DW's success (ask charmian about it) but at least I'm trying to use the service to see if it works for me and to make it better. yonmei isn't even bothering to comment here with OpenID.

I'm a big fan of DW's OpenID implementation. I've used OpenID with my WordPress ID here, and on Blogspot, and they work equally as well. I'm wondering about the captcha or not policy on OpenID, though; here, is it just set individually by the journal? I admit to being very, very worried about spam.

[troisroyaumes]

I agree, not sure how it's going to affect people in animanga fandom with weak ties to media fandom. There seems to be more interest than there was a few weeks ago though, and most people seem to know about the service already. In any case, like you, my interest in Dreamwidth is for its features, so I think I'll be happy to be here regardless of how successful the "exodus" is.

[charmian]

Some people on my flist are interested. A few have weak ties to LJ anyhow, so ad-freeness might make them want to leave, I guess.

Yeah, my interest is in the features and watching the development. XD