InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "All your base are belong to me"

skalja (skalja) wrote in scans_daily,
@ 2009-10-23 00:50:00

Entry tags:

admin: mod post

[Admin] Proposal for a new home
[Mirrored at noscans_daily.]

Moving to Dreamwidth

In recent weeks, the mod team have been discussing options to make our particular corner of the internet more secure and user-friendly. Since our TOSing at LiveJournal, the community has regrown here at InsaneJournal. However, there still remain a number of issues with our new home - not least that we have no guarantee we won't get suspended from InsaneJournal just as we were from LJ. InsaneJournal was only ever intended to be a temporary home while we explored other options. Our search has been suspended over the past couple of months, but we've finally had the space to get back to it, and our top choice by a long shot is Dreamwidth.

We're now in discussions with the Dreamwidth admin and this is why we feel it's important to bring you guys to the table and get the input of the membership on a very important decision.

What is Dreamwidth?

Dreamwidth is a blogging/social networking site, much like LiveJournal or InsaneJournal. Where IJ is a clone of LJ, DW is a code fork - they've taken LJ's code and improved upon it. A crucial difference between DW and many other journaling sites, is its firm commitment to community, open source and free speech. You can read more about the site and its creators here: Ethos, Guiding Principles, Diversity Statement, Differences between Dreamwidth and LJ.

Why Dreamwidth?

There are a number of reasons why the mod team feels that Dreamwidth will make a good home for our community.

The biggest benefit is one we've already mentioned - the chances of the entire community being nuked because of a single copyright claim are seriously reduced. Dreamwidth believes in acting within the letter of the law while protecting its users, and if they received a DMCA complaint for a particular entry, they would issue a takedown notice for that entry only. At that point, the poster of the entry would have the option of either removing the entry, or filing a counternotification indicating that they believe their use of the material is protected under copyright law.

(In the latter case, the poster would notify Dreamwidth (under 17 USC 512(g)) that they believe their use of the material is non-infringing. However, the rights-holder would then be able to file suit in Federal court, and sometimes they do - Marvel in particular is known for being a bit litigious, so the nuke button is the recommended option.)

That's the biggest advantage to the move, but there are other, notable ones as well:

Dreamwidth is ad free.

It's run by the former customer relations manager at LJ and one of the original programmers, who brought on board many former Livejournal staff lost in the recent takeover. So they understand the technical and social aspects of LJ, effectively making it more of a "run by the fans, for the fans" atmosphere over the corporate Livejournal as well as providing the technical savvy. They've been able to make a true fork of the code and then maintain it, not just clone LJ's code and hope that the parent site makes bug fixes available. InsaneJournal currently uses an ancient version of the Livejournal code which is noticably clunky.

Dreamwidth also offers the option of crossposting and importing content from another site using OpenID. While we can't import the community directly (more on that below), users have the option of importing content from LiveJournal or other journals and/or crossposting entries made on Dreamwidth to LiveJournal. ETA: OpenID also allows you to comment to Dreamwidth entries using your LJ or IJ account without having a Dreamwidth account.

When talking to the Dreamwidth admins and looking over their legal documentation, we were very impressed by their commitment to building a strong and diverse community. Their improvements to the LJ model aren't just aimed at creating a more user-friendly journaling site, but also one that's open in its business policies and its acceptance of customers with all kinds of needs, beliefs, and ways of life. (Many of those customers are fannish, just like us, so we can count on being understood.) We believe that Dreamwidth's ideals are similar to those that the community strives for.

Getting an account/Move schedule

Dreamwidth is currently in open beta. This means that right now there are only two ways to get an account: by purchasing one, or by getting an invite code from a current user. We've spoken to the Dreamwidth maintainers about the logistics of moving a thousand-plus member community en masse, and they've said that if we can poll the community about the number of people who will need invites, they will provide them to us in bulk. We'll probably distribute them through a closed community where people can comment to request a code.

[ETA: There seems to be some confusion on this point, for which we apologize. If you don't have an account already and don't want to buy an account, we will make sure that you get an invite code. We have a poll here that we're asking members to take so we can get an accurate headcount for the Dreamwidth admins. They will give us as many codes as we need, and then we'll distribute them, the exact logistics of which we'll get into later when it's time to finalize details.]

Anyone interested in purchasing a paid account, on the other hand, should know that prices rise on November 1st, if you wish to take advantage of the lower prices for yearly or six monthly accounts. We've been asked to mention that although Dreamwidth is slightly more expensive than LJ, it's completely member-supported and will never be ad-subsidized. More information about how the account price points are set is here.

The New Tagging System

At the moment, the one drawback with the move to Dreamwidth is that the tagging system is more limited than InsaneJournal. Dreamwidth only allows 1000 tags per community (1500 on paid communities). Currently on this community we run over 3500 tags, so obviously many will be lost in the move.

We're discussing with our tag wranglers the best way of handling this change, but currently the proposal is to use a combination between in-journal tags (set by the original poster) and a Delicious account which will allow more detailed tagging and act as an external back-up that can will be edited by mods and volunteers. More details to follow when the system is finalized.

Scans Daily on IJ

The existing InsaneJournal community will remain in place. There is no advantage in deleting any posts and the posts and comments will be kept in perpetuity. In addition, with the community's agreement, we'd like to import all of the existing posts on InsaneJournal across to Dreamwidth. Unfortunately, because of the way that Dreamwidth's importer works and the copyright issues involved, it's not possible to simply use their importer. However, a work-around is possible which will import all entries, adding an "Originally posted by... to the top of the entry. Unfortunately comments won't be imported, but they will still be readable here.

Obviously, we wish to advise our members of our intention before simply importing entries. If a majority are in favor of importing the entries, we will do so; any original posters who are unhappy with a post being reproduced, can request we remove it from the archive.

The InsaneJournal version of Scans_Daily will be closed for new entries after the move.

Why can't we just stay here? I don't want to move.

Well, we could. But ultimately, the mod team feels our position at IJ is almost as precarious, if not equally precarious, as it ever was at LJ, and we certainly haven't lost any visibility to the wider comics community. Given the choice between waiting to get booted in some amorphous future, or taking the initiative to move to a better place now before we're entrenched at IJ with years of archives, we'd rather move now.

Scans Daily on Dreamwidth is here. If you already have an account, or access to an invite code, please go ahead and join. The comm is currently locked down, and won't be open until the move is complete.

The invite code distribution community is here. Membership will be limited to mods, but when we've got things set up, we'd appreciate you coming over and sharing your codes for the cause!

Comments, questions? Let 'em loose. And if you haven't already, be sure to take the invite code poll over at noscans_daily so we know how many are needed.

ETA: We've already had some very awesome folks offer their dreamwidth codes to donate to other members in need. If you're interested in doing so, please head to this post and comment with your codes. All comments are screened by default. We might not be able to reply to you immediately, but we will definitely keep you posted.

Thanks, guys!
- the mod team

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buttler
2009-10-23 05:55 am UTC (link)

Oh sure, everyone has the things they care about and the pros of this move happen to be the ones the mods care about that mean nothing to me. I get that. I just would expect that in a discussion of this kind of move, the pros and cons would be laid out, rather than getting all ready to sign a lease on a new apartment before someone mentions that the ceiling's only 3 feet high.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

angelophile
2009-10-23 10:36 am UTC (link)

I think that's rather a flawed metaphor, personally. 3 feet high ceilings are something that everyone would be inconvenienced by and couldn't do anything about. The icons aren't quite such a widespread issue.

It's more like, I don't know, living in an apartment block that could collapse at any minute, finding a new apartment block, but discovering it doesn't have cable.

I agree the icons issue, for me, personally, is a horrible drop. It has to be said, the only reason I've bought a paid account over there is so I get more icons. I like having lots of icons. 6 is... horrible. But the other advantages seem to balance it out. The one good thing that InsaneJournal has going for it is the 100 icons, but it's fairly unique in that. Livejournal also only allows 6 icon slots for basic membership.

I personally find the benefit of icon slots on InsaneJournal to be counterbalanced by the ads everywhere - the only reason they aren't all over the comm here is that we have a paid account. But I personally loath the rest of the site because of the intrusive ads.

It's swings and roundabouts and everyone has their issues. Paid accounts allow for 60 icon slots, though, so if you feel they're worth paying 25 bucks a year for, that's an option. They were for me.

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buttler
2009-10-23 03:32 pm UTC (link)

I've never seen the ads on IJ because the rest of the site is beside the point, either for me or for the discussion here. It's only scans_daily that we're talking about. If people want a new LJ alternative for their actual journals and making friends and whatnot, that's cool -- but from what I've seen most of us still use LJ for that (if we ever did), and have just set up blank journals on IJ for the sole purpose of visiting s_d, and would do the same on the new community.

It's only the functionality within and for the comm itself that's at issue. Whether there's anything or anyone else on DW or IJ at all or whether a few steps out of s_d just leads you into an endless void may be interesting to some, but that's an outside interest that doesn't affect life within the comm the way the icon and tag concerns do.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	angelophile 2009-10-23 03:36 pm UTC (link)
	Apart from the fewer icons, is there any in-comm functionality you're thinking of? Actually, the tags issue may not be as much of an issue as we initially thought (more to come as we know it), but aside from that I'm not aware of any limitations to ways communities work that are specific to DW. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

buttler
2009-10-23 03:54 pm UTC (link)

This is where I feel like I'm beating a dead horse, but because you asked: The trouble is that I don't know. It's a new service, to my mind untested -- and in a sense literally untested because it's still in beta

The icon thing only came up because someone mentioned it as an aside earlier in this comment thread as if it were a known thing, when in fact those kinds of differences hadn't even been brought up in the original proposal. As Skalja said in the "look, buttler" comment above, those functionality issues are being left for us to discover, and I personally have neither the time nor the tech skills to go on that kind of easter egg hunt. But I know that some people in here do.

Because a lot of these issues are coming out in particular comment threads rather than having been laid out in the original post, I'm hoping that at least out of this overall discussion -- not just this one part that I find so depressing, but the overall discussion on both posts in both communities -- that we can come up with some kind of organized list of the pros and cons that have come up in a followup post so that we can really have an overall sense of what we're talking about before we make our final decision.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	angelophile 2009-10-23 04:03 pm UTC (link)
	That is, indeed, a major point of the post - so members could bring issues to our attention we might not be aware of and we can then attempt to address them with Dreamwidth's admin. (Reply to this) (Parent)

skalja
2009-10-23 04:27 pm UTC (link)

schmevil or perhaps

nezchan and

azurelunatic (if they don't mind my volunteering them) could perhaps talk to you a bit more about the stability of Dreamwidth. What I'm aware of is that it set up open beta earlier this year but launched in 2008. They're in good financial standing and they're growing strong: out of the livejournal clones tabled on Wikipedia, Dreamwidth ranks fifth in registered users, barely behind DeadJournal and InsaneJournal, both of which are 6-7 years older. They rank third in registered users with recent updates, only behind LiveJournal and InsaneJournal (which, again, are much older sites).

There will be a follow-up post that addresses some of the concerns people have been raising in these discussions, although I can't give you an exact timeline other than "ASAP once we ask DW a few more follow-up questions."

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