LJ vs Dreamwidth

[brigdh]

My paid account for LJ has run out, and so I'm considering moving my money to Dreamwidth (though I will still have an LJ and cross-post here). What do you guys think? Those of you who have moved to Dreamwidth: do you like it? Any surprise advantages/disadvantages? Those of you who are deliberately staying on LJ (as apposed to staying on LJ out of laziness, which is my main motivation): what are your reasons?

I have to say, I'm finding the LJ ads- which I never had to deal with before- supremely annoying. Also, I want my 100+ plus icons back, so I'm going to be giving someone money soon. Help me decide!

Comments

[p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com]

I'm calling this one for Dreamwidth (to whom I also need to give some money soon). The big disadvantage -- and the only one I've found so far -- is that DW is still very much the land of the Early Adopters. There's a lot of content on LJ that just isn't on DW, and may never be. So to some extent even once you make the move you're still stuck checking your LJ reading list. And figuring out what to do about the goddamned ads, which are indeed intrusive as hell. (I'd planned on going to a basic account, but that too turns out to be problematic: I've been told that they'll no longer email you comment notifications with a basic account.)

But there are real advantages to DW. My favorite of these is that the system allows you to do much longer entries (people who manage to write long stories speak glowingly of being able to post them in a single entry), and more important, to write much longer comments. This is great for extended discussion -- there's a reason I've been posting all the meta over there rather than at LJ, and it's not that I'm hiding the unpopular opinions.

And the more LJ fails, the better I like DW's ethics. They stood up to the would-be anti-pr0n crusaders when it was a real problem for them to do it. They don't take advertising. When I have a technical question and raise it in my own journal, just asking whether it's something I should be worried about, damned if someone from their support/tech team doesn't show up and tell me precisely why I don't have to worry. I don't think they might snoop and make inappropriate and offensive comments on what are supposed to be locked posts; I don't have the nagging suspicion that they really want to be Facebook, and to sell our data to anyone who comes by who has a checkbook.

Finally, while I'm no judge of technical skill, they seem to have a tremendous amount of sheer competence going for them. Squeaky over at InsaneJournal has clearly had his heart in the right place, but the DW team has developed code that puts IJ's as well as LJ's to shame; they'd never tolerate the comment-rot problem that IJ had; they show every sign of wanting to continue to take the platform in interesting and useful directions.

Also, the community's smaller but very cool people are there, and there's a better chance of actually meeting them -- or so I've found. Not that the chance to be a quasi-BNF is affecting my evaluation or anything, no, not at all, never . . .

[threewalls]

My basic account emails me all my comments. So, that's strange.

[p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com]

I'm relieved to hear it. I don't mind going to a basic account, too much, but I dreaded the thought of a plus account

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

The two reading-lists problem had occurred to me, but honestly, I'm basically doing that now, to keep up with the people who are only posting to DW. And I am very supportive of DW's ethics, particularly since LJ seems to be having fails every other week lately. I rarely write enough to go over the limit in either posts or comments, but it's nice to know that's been improved. I definitely leaning toward DW at the moment, though I'll wait to hear some other opinions.

Also, I have to concur with threewalls: they've been emailing me comments on my currently-not-paying-anything account. True, it's sometimes a day or so late, but it's not like that didn't happen even when I was paying.

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think I'm going to be paying them both for a bit at least, because when my paid DW time runs out I'm going to re-up. Being able to edit comments is just too nice to get rid of.

I have Adblock and still am finding the ads annoying when I'm not logged in or whatever.

[threewalls]

I say DW. I adore being there, feeling *safe* for myself, my fiction and my posts is the biggest thing for me.

As for surprise advantages-- more and more of my LJ flist who said they were staying with LJ when I left have since migrated (albeit sometimes to cross-posting to both rather than DW-only).

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

There does seem to be more and more people on DW lately. And I can't complain that there's too small a community if I'm not willing to be active there myself.

[ranalore.livejournal.com]

Another vote for Dreamwidth. Not only are there no ads, but DW's staff is very transparent about what they're working on, where they are with it, why and how they prioritize things (which always involves user feedback), and when and for how long they anticipate any downtime. Also, they pay attention to server lag and reconfigure data and have set up new servers when there's concern that the site might slow down or crash. This aspect has really stood out to me the last two months because LJ has gotten worse about responding slowly or timing out.

The DW community is still small, which means feedback and discussion levels are on the low side. You can easily set up cross-posting with comments enabled if you want more of them, though. There is no scrapbook option, so if you don't have a personal site on which to store images, that could be inconvenient. The icon file size limit is either the same as LJ (40Kb) or only slightly larger (45-50Kb), but that's only a problem if you try to import animated icons from someplace like IJ, which allows up to 100Kb icons. For the most part, DW improves on LJ's advantages as a social networking tool, and eliminates its drawbacks. And the DW staff have already proven that they won't cave to pressure from groups trying to police legal content, even when holding to their principles means switching financial institutions multiple times.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

That all sounds excellent. I think I have been convinced to go over to the Dreamwidth side, at least as soon as I stop panicking over Remix. ;)

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

I'm mostly staying because I have a permanent account here and I want my money's worth. :) Also because I have found the migration to Dreamwidth irritating -- the cross-posting algorithm has lots of flaws, I frequently find I cannot comment or vote in polls or message, and of course I have no way to tell them so -- and therefore do not wish to cause that annoyance to my friendslist. And because I have critical mass here, and I doubt the ability of any single latecoming site to garner the same -- there are just too many choices these days to re-find all my friends on any one of them.

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

I'm confused-- what do you mean you have no way to tell them so?

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

If the comments and message function aren't working, how do I tell them? Normally I would use a comment or a message. These are people I don't have email addresses for.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, really? I've never had a problem commenting or voting over at Dreamwidth, so it's important to know that other people have had problems. I hadn't considered that as an issue; thanks for mentioning it.

And yeah, I worry about how many people will follow me over to Dreamwidth, too. But at this point, I think at least half of the people I'm closest to are primarily posting at DW, which makes it tempting.

[nrrrdy-grrrl.livejournal.com]

If you get a DW account, there's built-in feature for cross-posting so you could still keep an unpaid account over here with no real extra effort. It's kind of isolating over on DW- not sure why but I've notice it just is. You're a bloody brilliant writer and I hope you keep a spot over here. Cheers.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

That is good to know, thank you!

And awww. #^^# I'm all embarrassed now. But I will certainly keep posting on LJ in one way or another, no worries!