DW users 'smug'?

[charmian]

Is the 'smugness' of some Dreamwidth users causing 'tension between the two sites'?

What's this all about? I recognize the username from somewhere or other. I'm not so sure about 'tension between the two sites,' as probably most LJ users have never even heard of Dreamwidth.

Comments

[turlough]

Probably from dw_suggestions and suggestions, at least that's where I usually encounter triadruid.

[azurelunatic]

Ditto.

I've generally found his observations to be pretty keen, and he often steps in to situations that are looking as if they're going to go south in LJ suggestions before I have to.

DW users in LJ news comments do actually have an attitude that I wouldn't necessarily call smug myself (looked like he was pulling that from watersword's comment as being a convenient self-description of the attitude), but somewhat holier-than-though and engaging in a certain amount of vocal schadenfreude and evangelism to anyone who looks like they want to jump ship, when various LJ situations do their thing.

[turlough]

That's interesting. I still do the majority of my journaling on LJ (mostly because my fandom stubbornly clings to it) but my mental focus is all on DW these days. I haven't read the comments on LJ news in ages, in fact I hardly do more than skim the entries themselves.

[azurelunatic]

You're not missing all that much. The news entries themselves have settled into something approaching the old format, with a good number of actually informative things, and the new employee's tactic of setting an arbitrary discussion topic for the news comments and handing out vgifts to those who participate in it has led to a far-less-scary news comment environment.

It's taken her a while to start spinning up, but at this point I'm not actually regretting that they hired her anymore.

But any time an explosion breaks out on LJ that would be solved by a DW innovation or simply being-not-LJ, there's a certain amount of smug-bystanding from DW users (though they mostly avoid using popcorn.gif); it's not quite the LJ-bashing that D was trying to keep the lid on, but it's the sort of thing that, if you're in the middle of the problem and you're seeing someone standing there being ever so slightly amused and untouched by the problem, you might accept their offer of help, or you might want to break their face.

[charmian]

I swore off participating in news comments awhile ago (especially since I hardly ever post at LJ these days, which makes me feel like there's less of a point in participating), but I'm glad to hear that news posts are more useful, and the comments area less rowdy.

I guess it's natural that they would do that, but I do kind of think that it's... somewhat inappropriate? for them to be doing it in the LJ news comments. It comes off like advertising for another service, and as you say, people who choose to use LJ are not going to appreciate the schaudenfreude.

[watersword]

::wince:: I totally did not mean it in that way. I am smart enough to not go over and get all defensive, especially since D has stepped in, but I just meant that I made a good decision with my money and I am pleased. (Hell, I haven't used LJ since....2007? Something like that.)

[foxfirefey]

I found an instance of this in the wild for you to observe, like a photo safari:

http://kylecassidy.livejournal.com/585577.html?thread=13035369#t13035369

[charmian]

Hmm, 'just saying' does tend to accompany those sorts of statements. And then the accompanying irritation in response.

I do feel sorry for Kyle Cassidy for having to deal w/ all of this.

[foxfirefey]

I don't! I mean, he's a fine guy and all, I like him just fine, but it's not that bad of a wankstorm, especially not in his journal (55 comments for the day, most people are just going Thanks awesome rep!), and it lets him feel like he's earning the apparently $200 a week LJ pays him for the position (finding this out annoyed cambler to no end, too, ha, he has the most rapt interest in all measures of fairnesses for LJ rep elections, taken to sometimes ridiculous extremes). And the position this time around clearly stated the rules around being designated LJ whipping person, too.

[charmian]

Ahaha, that was before I saw that he's actually being paid for this ($200 is more than fair, considering that most of the time nothing happens), but I am still really not sure what the position is for. I had thought it was that the rep would simply run on a platform of ideas and such, and then when elected they would state them in meetings and talk about what the users had said, but it is turning out to be some kind of customer service position.