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

[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.

[niqaeli]

Data portability's higher ranked, but interoperability ties into it for me. They're not quite the same, but they're definitely linked up.

Interoperability is something I desperately want more of, ethical opinion aside, because I really kind of hate having three social media networks to deal with, all with very different interfaces. And that's really not very many at all to be managing, given all the choices out there. RSS definitely helps, some, but not fully.

I'll be very curious to see how many people bail on LJ when CARL goes live here. I can't begin to guess, to be honest, but I think whatever the result is it'll tell us something about the value of interoperability to Dreamwidth. Maybe not everything, because LJ is one pretty smallish fish in the sea for the English-speaking blogosphere, but I do think it'll tell us something.

[charmian]

Yeah, it is a problem. RSS helps with reading somewhat, but for commenting and other things, the protocols simply haven't been developed yet and the tech isn't there.

I don't think it'll be much of a difference. The feature is only available to paid users, which inherently limits it, and also, it depends on what the definition of 'bail' is. You'll still need to have some kind of LJ account to be able to comment on the posts and interact socially w/ the people on LJ, so is that considered 'bailing'? I'm also not sure what it would tell us about the value of interoperability: I'd be far more curious to what extent crossposting to WP or Tumblr gained adoption.

[niqaeli]

Probably true -- and I'd be really happy to see WP or Tumblr cross-posting implemented from either direction. Not particularly useful to me, personally, the cross-posting in and of itself anyway. But I know there's a lot of stuff on Tumblr that interests me but I just haven't felt like fighting with Yet Another Interface (TM) to actually follow. So any kind of interop there would be interesting to me personally.

And I really do think it'd be better for Dreamwidth as a service. It's a great product, but it's awfully niche. Niche can work and be profitable, I just really don't want to see the site fail in the long-run because it got locked into a Certain Site Culture and was unwelcoming to the greater internets.

[charmian]

I think the problem is that it's uh.... not going to be from that direction; that is, specifically for DW. Neither of these sites have a cross-posting option specifically for LJ, because LJ is too small, and so logically, they wouldn't for DW. What might be a good work around is to have some kind of RSS importing (into a journal), but this would impose issues of authentication. (Also, DW does not yet follow the Metablog API, so you can't crosspost from Posterous, which DOES have a dedicated LJ crossposter, as well as a huge amount of other sites you can x-post to)

Tumblr is pretty much not very difficult, and since you can't see the non-public part already, you had might as well just pull in the RSS feeds you like.

AFAIK, though, wasn't that the plan, for DW to be niche? I'm also not sure that the possibility of Site Culture Lock-in is something that will be greatly affected by the ability to push or login using FB or Twitter; I wonder whether it will have more to do with purely social dynamics on the site itself.

[niqaeli]

I always thought the intention was to be, yes, niche but -- I had honestly gotten the impression it *was* intended to become a dashboard in the long run, for a particular niche market. I haven't been following dev culture as closely as I was back in closed beta and early open beta, so it's possible that's changed. And, of course, it's also just as possible I was wrong to have gotten that impression in the first place.

I honestly wish there were better authentication protocols so that accessing and interacting with locked content cross-service weren't so ugly and difficult. But I'm not sure if that's ever going to happen, anyway. OpenID is not exactly a resounding success story, honestly -- and I don't know that anybody's going to be interested in making content on their servers super-accessible from anywhere else, from a business perspective. Even if it could be proven logically and all, with numbers/data/studies, to be better for business it still won't be an intuitive concept and that probably matters more than the hard numbers would. (And I'm not sure how easy it'd be to gather hard numbers and thus prove.)

[charmian]

I recall there was some talk about that, but I'm not sure to what extent that was a plan vs. a possible direction. In any event, that's going to be seriously difficult, especially given the plethora of sites there are nowadays.

There seems to be a lot of talk in the development community about the shortcomings of openID. However, I actually think that FB and Twitter have done a fairly good job of this... although in FB's case perhaps not for the best reasons. Twitter's APIs allow me to read locked Twitter posts through other websites, for example. FB's APIs allow you to view locked content via sites like Brizzly. I've heard people praising FB for its interoperability APIs as well. I have also read some things about FB making itself more accessible as part of a plan, which is supposedly why they hired David Recordon. Google, also, is also interested in interoperability.

[foxfirefey]

David Recordon is hearts. I really like him.

[charmian]

I think he's written some blogposts about FB's openness (in a certain sense). Maybe I'll try to dig them up later.

[azurelunatic]

Wait, they hired daveman692? That's awesome for them, and I hope he does very good things there.

[cesy]

OAuth has potential, I thought - I think that's what Twitter uses, too.

[charmian]

I think OAuth is a good idea, but I'm not sure it's less cumbersome than openID. The main reason that it seems to be more userfriendly in implementation is that sites often use the format where it's a button that says 'Twitter login' or 'login with Gmail.' I'm not sure DW is eager to go in that direction.

[matgb]

I don't know that anybody's going to be interested in making content on their servers super-accessible from anywhere else, from a business perspective

Depends. If Dave does what he seems to be implying, and build the next version of OpenID to essentially be a mix of Oauth and FB Connect, and FB adopts it as a standard, then there's a strong business reason for soft use of it.

Discus is already using FB Connect, Oauth and OpenID protocols, and a lot of blogs and news sites are using their implementation now.

Facebook represents a massive proportion of active web users, many of whom are logged in constantly. I regularly go to blogs and see a comment box that's already populated with my FB details, even if I've never been there before.

Ergo, there's a reason for sites to use whatever OpenID becomes, it makes use of their site more likely for lower end users. Especially if it's the same protocol for Twitter, there're a lot of sites doing stuff for there already.

[charmian]

Argh, I was reading an article which explained why it was actually in FB's interest to make content on their servers super-accessible, but I can't find it now. Actually, like I was saying, this latest thing w/ FB is exactly about how they were making their data super accessible.... in a not-good way.

[foxfirefey]

Dreamwidth could be lots bigger and still be a niche! Right now it's more of a microniche.

[sub_divided]

I'd be really interested in a crosspost to WP option. Currently I do it through an import-content-from-CSV plugin on Wordpress, which is a lot of work, though slightly less for me since I only do it once a month.

My number two dream would be a way for people who use other blogging platforms (especially livejournal) to easily comment here without having to go anon. OpenID doesn't count since it takes about as much work to sign up for OpenID as it does to create a new journal.

I do think there's something to be said for unique site culture. Some great things were created on livejournal that would never have developed if the denizens had been subjected to the harsh winds of the open web from the very beginning. However, Dreamwidth isn't aiming for a first-time-journaler audience, as far as I can tell. It seems like it's more targeted at experienced users who don't like the commercialization of other services.

[charmian]

Crosspost to WP would indeed be good. I wouldn't really use it either, but I think a fair amount of people on DW use WP.

Huh, how would that work? I wouldn't say it's the same amount of work though, because you need a code to get an account. While it's not as easy to login using openID as it would be to use Twitter or FB login, I would say it's much more easy than signing up for an account.

I think the web has fundamentally changed from ten years ago and that isn't really viable, except via obscurity (as in security by obscurity).

[sub_divided]

I don't know, aren't there still people who are discovering the web for the first time, even today? Plenty of those people are probably going to spen a lot of time with the first platform they come across, until they get their bearings, right?

It's not the same amount of work as to sign up for a Dreamwidth account because of the need for a code, that's true. However, it's as much work to sign up for open ID here as it is to sign up for an account on other blogging platforms. It's also not something you'd know you could do unless you already knew you could do it, if you know what I mean.

[charmian]

Yeah, but that platform is probably not going to be DW, especially with its high learning curve. If anything, it's likely to be FB. (Recall the thing where people were getting all mad at a blog because it had a post about Facebook and they mistakenly thought it was the facebook site, despite having an entirely different domain name and looking nothing like FB?)

Eh, I think compared to LJ, it's not as much work. Compared to Posterous and Tumblr, it's around the same amount, but both of those make it ridiculously easy to sign up.

Yeah, as I've blogged about earlier, openID as a user experience has a lot of problems.

[sub_divided]

The main problem with openID as it is currently implemented on DW, to my way of thining, is that you have to be already looking for it in order to find it. I am thinking about adding a simple page to my DW: "Don't feel like signing up for a DW account just to comment here? If you have an account with [X services] you can create a limited profile at DW just for commenting. Sign in using [] and your other service password. Passwords are not saved or utlized for any purpose other than to verify your identity."

Ideally people would see this similar message on the comment reply page and be able to sign in // sign up that way, and not have to bother with a separate page at all. (The first time they did it, they could get an authentication message confirm their identity.)

This seems really important to me because there are big barriers to signing up for an account at dreamwdith, so without something like this in place, you are limiting your audience to the small pool of dreamwidth users or folks who don't mind going anon.

Anyway, thus is my dream XD. I think where openID falls down compared to something like facebook connect is in the pricipled way it is typically implemented, which calls for a full explanation of how the login info is going to be used (and not misused) before anyone can sign in / create a profile. Most web users really aren't aware of that stuff and don't want to read the whole history and philosophy of a service before they sign up for it - they are content to sign first and figure out how it works later.

[foxfirefey]

My number two dream would be a way for people who use other blogging platforms (especially livejournal) to easily comment here without having to go anon. OpenID doesn't count since it takes about as much work to sign up for OpenID as it does to create a new journal.

If it helps, one of the GSoC projects is for a "named commenting level", which is kind of in between anon and OpenID where someone can name themselves.

[sub_divided]

That helps a lot! I would basically like people who are not Dreamwidth users to not feel "unwelcome" to comment in my journal.

[matgb]

Aye; there's more planned on improving the OpenID UX as well, to make it feel easy to comment using it (like it can be elsewhere these days, some sites you barely notice).

Um, yeah, "there's more planned" sort of means "Mat's supposed to be doing some designs", so I guess I ought to get on with that sooner rather than later.