you need somewhere to start— i will be here

[erika]

Signs you have spent too much* time on Dreamwidth:

*too much time on DW? is that even a thing that is possible?

Alternate Title: Things Dreamwidth Does Right, both as a company and as a community

Real Title: The Ways Dreamwidth Has Infilitrated My Brain Personally, Even Though This Is In Second Person

Companies that don't explain why stuff is broken or give any explanation for downtime confuse you and make you go elsewhere. Really, how can you trust a fail won't happen again if they don't tell you that they know what's wrong?

Open source just makes sense.* (*In my defense, I've always thought this, but it's definitely gotten 'worse'.)

You're happy to pay for things done right, and you quite possibly spend more money than is really "required" to pay for services because you actually like the company.

Speaking of which, you now consider whether you actually like the company's business ethics before you make large purchases. Or small ones.

You have seriously changed your diet in any of the following ways: vegan, organic, cage-free, free-range meat, gluten/allergen-free. Perhaps you experiment with subscribing to a CSA, starting your own garden, contributing via a community garden, preferentially purchasing cruelty-free cosmetics [or ONLY doing so], and similar. This can be partially attributed to the fact that you didn't really know this stuff existed before you hung out online with people who were more aware in general.

You seriously contemplate whether you should split an email thread to include a trigger warning in the new subject, but eventually decide not to because sometimes the first line of the email is auto-displayed ANYWAY. This makes you sad, because you don't want to upset the people you're communicating with.

You get frustrated and possibly angry when your great suggestion about [Idea|Product|Company] is not carefully & lovingly considered, then discussed and/or voted upon by the people who actually use [noun], and, if software-based, entered into a feature/bug-list on an publicly-accessible codebase for implementation where you can contribute to it yourself should you be able to do so.
Instead, your beautiful suggestion appears to disappear down a black hole and is never heard from again. This may also make you sadfaces.

People who respond to your gentle noting that they are openly supporting problematic opinions, language, or actions with "fuck you, I'm not ______" seem like not only assholes, but also completely out of touch. Seriously, dudeperson, are you back in 2008 or something? Examining oneself for internal prejudice and publicly apologizing when you cross a line? That's like, so in.

The supposedly 'runaway unexpected success' of Kickstarter surprised you not one bit. (I was reading an article about this in Newsweek at my endocrinologist appointment today. It was hilarious because the entire article was written in this tone of OMG PEOPLE ACTUALLY WILL STILL PAY FOR CREATIVE ENDEAVORS THEY WANT TO SUPPORT. Um, yep...?)

You actively try to contribute to the economic betterment of people that you know are in need, and in your opinion, Modest Needs doesn't go far enough as a charity. (And you note that they seem to be pandering to the "boot-strap" theorists out there. >_>)

You have no impairments that would ordinarily make it difficult to use a computer, but you still spend a larger amount of time than "none*" thinking about accessibility (and/or implementing it in ways such as descriptions of graphics you post) regardless, because ... duh, of course people should be able to get what you're saying, no matter how they're using the Internet.
*None appears to be how much time MOST sites think about this. ... yeah, rolling my eyes too.

Wait, women and/or people who are new to programming but demonstrate interest in learning to program aren't typically actively recruited as programmers? Why?! A convert is the best evangelist!

Okay, seriously, why would anyone choose to spend a lot of time online somewhere where they can't directly reach the head honchos or at the VERY LEAST someone who can help you with whatever problem you're having? (See: reddit, 4chan, facebook, etc. <_<)

You can't remember the last time you read your LJ friends page as like, a LJ friends page. You just go to the journals of the people you like there that remain extremely stubborn.

Subscribe and access make so much fucking sense.

You have converted at least one person to the point where they just gave up and deleted their LJ because everyone here is pretty much awesome.

You ran your own friending meme.

You watched a video on MRA/PuA hatetrolls attacking a woman blogger based on her size... because she dared to make video about not liking an oreo cookie. Basically, she was fat online and didn't appear to hate herself. (Sorry, I can't find the link, because I haven't slept like more than 9 hours in the last 48, but it was a big speech that was pretty moving.) And you think "God, I'm so glad I'm not afraid to read my own comments."

You no longer have to feel the need to read site updates obsessively to TRY to figure out how you're going to be screwed over next and then read the comments to see if some kind person has taken the time to explain how bad it really is and what they didn't tell you. (I'm not naming names here... I'm sure no one has any idea what service I might be talking about! Although, to be fair, this applies to... let's see, Facebook, Google, ummmm basically EVERY CORPORATION THAT WANTS TO USE YOU AS A PRODUCT...)

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Feel free to add your own!

This entry was not crossposted for obvious reasons.
:P

Comments

What made me move

[cumuluscastle]

I think what made me move finally and delete my 'other account' *ahem* was the thought that although I am not super interesting or anything, I just had no desire to contribute my content to that platform anymore, since it's the content on it that keeps it going!

[finding_helena]

I like it. LJ is still the first place I go, though. I guess to change that I would need to a. have more friends migrate/quit LJ (to reduce the incentive to go there) and probably b. meet more people here.

[zombie]

/butts in I recommend finding more people here. Seriously, I did, and now my flist over here is more active than my lj ever was, in a lot of respects, with a greater assortment of people who's entries I actually like to read. Totally worth the effort of migrating full over here, imo.

[zombie]

Pretty much all of this. To be fair, I moved over here pretty permanently a while ago, and then kind of stopped doing the whole personal journal thing and ended up trolling other places, but I always end up back here, for whatever reason. Probably because DW's staff is awesome, and jumps on fixing things when they break, and lets everyone know what's going on before they do it.

I can't remember lj ever having that kind of attitude, and I was there a long, long time.

Re: What made me move

[batrachian]

This, exactly. I may not want to 'profit' from my blog, but that doesn't mean I want to give someone else permission to.

DREAMWIDTH FOREVER!

[bluemeridian]

Fantastic :) I won't delete my LJ any time soon, but a lot of my content is for the benefits of other people (recs, in particular) and DW makes it easy to keep that accessible. Having said that, I do use filters so I'm not seeing duplicate content and my LJ feed tends to be either a) people I don't know well, whot don't necessarily subscribe to me, have a lot of readers, and are against DW generally because they don't like that it's not a nameless/faceless organization or b) communities. Both those tend to be very impersonal relationships, so DW is definitely "home".

What I actually wanted to say was that it absolutely floored me when I received a random email one day regarding a suggestion I'd made at BlueMelon (where my photos live and are linked from). They have system where you can offer them up and all members have a certain number of "votes" to apply and that lets them in on what the users consider most important. In this case, they implemented FTP uploading and then returned the votes I'd "used" to me.

I guess I'm more shocked when another site operates more like DW than anything else!

[goodbyebird]

It took me a while to build up a new circle over here - since I made the jump a while back and just about everybody clung to lj - but what I've found is that interest and site searches does wonders in finding interesting new people to follow. There's also been a couple of friending memes recently that are well worth checking out.

I think a lot of people give up too soon, because they're used to being catered to on lj(friends wise) and have forgotten they had to build up that one too.

[delight]

This. And I never ever really post or comment anymore because I'm not doing well, but I still read and what there is to read is superior to what I had on LJ. Except for community activity, which still makes me sad, but if I can't even contribute to my own DW I can't really contribute to communities right now. :(

[moonvoice]

Just seconding this comment as well. There are active people in DW for sure, and many of them can be found on friending memes. It's a fantastic way to meet new people / have an active page. :D

[moonvoice]

You're happy to pay for things done right, and you quite possibly spend more money than is really "required" to pay for services because you actually like the company.

Heehee, yes, this. It's easy to support a company when they're lovely! :D

You no longer have to feel the need to read site updates obsessively to TRY to figure out how you're going to be screwed over next and then read the comments to see if some kind person has taken the time to explain how bad it really is and what they didn't tell you.

I remember sinking so much time into this process, for so long, during so many of LJ's issues. I think Strikethrough was the one where I really started to sink a lot of time into that process, and I believe that was around the time I made my DW account, though I didn't officially move here for some time.

[umadoshi]

Bless this post, as they say. ^_^