seperis: (Default)
seperis ([personal profile] seperis) wrote2018-12-03 11:11 pm
Entry tags:

i think i hit everything?

Hi new DWers/returning DWers!

If you are new and baffled, or been away so long it's like you're new and also baffled, you're probably wondering what the hell you're looking at and what it does. I am a native LJ/DW and will try not to confuse the fuck out of you but it's also been a while, so anyone want to correct me or clarify something I made sound incredibly byzantine, feel free.

Let's talk about your posts:

Same

Your posts are just that--you're posting words to your journal. Just like in Tumblr; it shows up on your journal home page, your reading list, and on the reading lists of those who are following you.

You can tag it with personal tags, and no, shitpost tagging is not a thing though you can if you want? But unlike Tumblr, you can use the tagging system of your DW to actually organize your own journal and find shit, like that post you did on that thing like two years ago and had cats?????

Different

You have options.

At the bottom of your post is a lot of stuff; tags, mood, location, whatever. Then there's "Show this entry to" and here you can choose who sees what you write.

Options:
- Everyone - this is public. Anyone can see this post anywhere.
- Access List - everyone you have granted Access to your posts can read this. We used to call this 'friendslocked' in LJ. The next section will explain this.
- Private - just you.
- Custom - this is where it gets fun. You can create subgroups of those you granted access for posts only they can see. See next section.

Posting Summary

Posting to your journal with "Show this entry to Everyone" is public. Anyone can see this.
Posting to your journal with "Show this entry to Private" is private to YOU. Only YOU can see it.
Posting to your journal with "Show this entry to Access List" is restricted to PEOPLE YOU GIVE ACCESS TO. Only people on your ACCESS LIST can see it.
Posting to your journal with "Show this entry to Custom Filter" is restricted to people both in your ACCESS LIST and also in a custom group you can create.

Let's talk about your circle, friends, and follows.

Same

Your Circle is who you follow aka want to read. When you add someone to your Circle, you are saying "I like this person's thoughts and want to read them." So like a Tumblr follow. They appear on your reading list (tumblr: dashboard). We're good? Awesome.

Different (ish)

Your Circle is your reading list; this is how you control who you read.

Access List is how you control who can read your posts.

Granting Access: granting access means you are explicitly letting someone have access to your locked posts. At the bottom of your Post page, "Show this entry to: Access List". Anything you want to limit access to, this is how it's done.

You can also create custom groups out of your Access List, giving certain people access to access-locked posts but not others.

Summary

Add to Circle - Who I want to read
Add to Access List - Who I want to read MY access-locked posts.
Add to Access List in a Custom Group - Subgroup of my Access List who can read my Subgroup-locked posts.

Let's talk about images and art

DW does have native image hosting. [personal profile] kore talks about it here in comments.

Also of Interest

Network - PAID FEATURE - You'll see something called "Network" - that page contains all the public posts of the friends of your friends aka, the people who belong to the Circles of those in your Circle.

...seriously, just call it friends of friends.

Search - PAID FEATURE - okay, I get it's not perfect but IT ACTUALLY WORKS AND YOU CAN FIND SHIT. Search here.

Inbox - no, this is actually useful. For [insert reason], you want to see all the comments you've gotten on any post? You want to see who added you to their Circle? You want to check your IM's Your inbox: you can see it all or use those links to break it down a little.


Conclusion

You'll notice one word I use a lot up there: control. That's the biggest difference between tumblr/twitter and DW/LJ.

DW/LJ give control of content to the creator; you choose exactly who sees what you post. You can edit it, delete it, whatever you want; your content never leaves your control and cannot be edited/changed by someone else. Someone could copypaste the entire post to their own journal, change it, and post it, but your original is still under your control.

DW/LJ give control of comments to the owner of the journal. You can disable comments on your posts, screen them, delete them.

Me

Okay, it's possible I wrote this for myself to make sure I remember everything. Did I miss anything important?

Note: this is being updated and clarified in progress.

More Reading:

This will be for links to comments or posts on DWness. Some of this stuff I didn't even know or forgot so feel free to link me.

[personal profile] kore How to filter by tags for people on your feed. Kore's been all over my comments with some fantastic advice and info, btw.

[personal profile] independence1776 has a fantastic master post of links here. So. Many. Beautiful. Links.
hopelessheathen57: (Default)

new to dreamwidth and mourning tumblr's imminent demise

[personal profile] hopelessheathen57 2018-12-04 05:43 am (UTC)(link)
Long-time reader, huge fan. :)
Also, tragic tumblr user watching the end draw near and seeking new homeland. :(

I have a question for you as a DW native - How does one find people to follow, or add to one's circle, I guess? I see the "explore interests" function up there, but it seems to give me either no results or just a list of random usernames with no way to sift through them. On tumblr, I was able to find new blogs I knew I'd like by seeking out the creators of content that people I already followed had reblogged, and a lot of writers on AO3 gave their tumblr usernames in their profiles or end notes. Do you know any starting point or advice for doing the same here in order to build up a circle?

Also, throwing in one more question while I'm here - does anyone use DW for gif sharing, or am I out of luck on that front?
jamethiel: A blue sky with a pompom raised in the lower right corner (CheerSky)

[personal profile] jamethiel 2018-12-04 05:49 am (UTC)(link)
Thanks for posting this! I shall link it! (Do you want to put something in about posting/hosting images?)
aerialiste: love isn't the answer it's the problem (æon flux)

[personal profile] aerialiste 2018-12-04 06:03 am (UTC)(link)
The main thing I'm hearing from tumblr users is...the gifsets. We're addicted. And now we have to hand-code 'em, at least until someone hacks out a macro or something? I have...no clue how to do this. :/
jamethiel: A cartoon sheep, lying on its side asleep and dreaming of dreamwidth (Dreamsheep)

Re: new to dreamwidth and mourning tumblr's imminent demise

[personal profile] jamethiel 2018-12-04 06:03 am (UTC)(link)
... jumping in! Hi!

How to find people to follow! First of all, read the comments on people's post. Find people who seem awesome, click through to their journals to see if their thing is what you're interested in, strike up a conversation and subscribe to them
(You don't have to strike up a conversation, tbh. You'll see their public posts if you just subscribe, but if you want them to grant you access to private posts, you probably need to talk to them. Not everybody grants everybody access: some people just go "yeah, whatever" and let everybody in, others go "... only for people I've known for a while, thanks")

Secondly, search interests and then click through and read people's blogs. Comment on a public post--as above, you can subscribe to them without them subscribing to you.

Third: Communities! Find a community for your special interests and join it. Go and look at cool people who replied!

Fourthly, go to friends-of-friends! If go to your reading page and then change the name in the URL to be someone else's reading page instead of yours, you see all public posts that are on their reading page!
For example:
https://seperis.dreamwidth.org/read
or
https://jamethiel.dreamwidth.org/read

Lastly, there's Latest Things
https://www.dreamwidth.org/latest
Which produces a chronological unfiltered feed of everything public on the site. Read through there, drop in and say hello! Er, obviously caution needs to be taken there given that DW is officially NSFW content friendly. I just came across a weight loss pill spam post :(
Edited 2018-12-04 06:06 (UTC)
jamethiel: A cup of coffee, next to a red notebook (Coffee)

[personal profile] jamethiel 2018-12-04 06:04 am (UTC)(link)
Oooh, aeon flux icon! Nice!
aerialiste: (Default)

[personal profile] aerialiste 2018-12-04 06:08 am (UTC)(link)
It's not the making of the gifs, it's that tumblr put them in nice grids of eight or six or whatever. That would have to be done via CSS or (gasp) a TABLE (j/k, it's 2018 not 1998)...
aerialiste: (Default)

[personal profile] aerialiste 2018-12-04 06:09 am (UTC)(link)
Thank you! It's been me for so long I tend to forget some people might find it, uh, creepy?
jamethiel: A cat lies in a basket of wool, looking happy (CatWool)

[personal profile] jamethiel 2018-12-04 06:15 am (UTC)(link)
Man, those 90s MTV cartoons were the BOMB. The Maxx is still up there with Daria and Ghost In The Shell for favourite works of animation ever.
dhara: (Default)

[personal profile] dhara 2018-12-04 06:45 am (UTC)(link)
Thanks for posting this!

(It's been five years, nearly six, since I was last around here. I didn't think I'd ever forget how LJ/DW stuff worked, but I guess tumblr broke me!)
hopelessheathen57: (Default)

Re: new to dreamwidth and mourning tumblr's imminent demise

[personal profile] hopelessheathen57 2018-12-04 06:46 am (UTC)(link)
thanks! this is super helpful. :)
hopelessheathen57: (Default)

Re: new to dreamwidth and mourning tumblr's imminent demise

[personal profile] hopelessheathen57 2018-12-04 06:47 am (UTC)(link)
thank you!
kiratael: When life gives you a lemon, wing it right back - Calvin (Default)

[personal profile] kiratael 2018-12-04 12:46 pm (UTC)(link)
Geez, thanks for this. It’s weird to be going BACK to Dreamwidth, Instagram, and Twitter, but simultaneously feeling like I’ve been released straight from my 14th century monastic cell into 2018. *shakes iPad in confusion*

(I had a WAVE OF NOSTALGIA when I went to upload an icon, for pity’s sake.)
christycorr: Good Omens (by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett) (Have a nice doomsday.)

[personal profile] christycorr 2018-12-04 02:28 pm (UTC)(link)
This was a really great post ♥ Thank you so much for writing it!
archaeologist_d: (Default)

[personal profile] archaeologist_d 2018-12-04 02:29 pm (UTC)(link)
That was helpful. Even though I've been here for years, I still hadn't figured out the difference between access and circle. That makes sense, now.
azurelunatic: Vivid pink Alaskan wild rose. (Default)

[personal profile] azurelunatic 2018-12-04 04:05 pm (UTC)(link)
Speaking as DW Support: "circle" is the entire collection of reading list + access list, as it's used in the tech support documents.
kore: (Dreamwidth Island - xkcd)

[personal profile] kore 2018-12-04 04:58 pm (UTC)(link)
This is great!

I would add: the splitting between reading list and access list happened on DW specifically in response to how welded they were on LJ. And the access list is the "granular privacy controls" Pillowfort keeps talking about. XD You can post something publicly, or something with different access levels like you describe, or just for yourself. People can also filter their friends feed to just people, or just communities, or filter out certain tags as well. (I just know a lot of Tumblr people were enthusiastic about Pillowfort, so mentioning some of the stuff Pillowfort and Dreamwidth have in common -- user-created communities, privacy controls, &c &c -- might ease the transition some.)
jjhunter: Gray-faced sheep w/ dreambubble reading 'dreamwidth'; texture of sheep, background is cloth with 'stitches' around edges (orange stitched dreamsheep)

[personal profile] jjhunter 2018-12-04 06:40 pm (UTC)(link)
This is reminding me that I should really go dust off my old Dreamwidth calendar master post of repeating public events open to all and update it - I know [personal profile] jenett has resumed hosting weekly Salon posts (now on Fridays), and I still do ‘How Are You? (in Haiku)’ posts on my own whimsical schedule of 1-3 times a month, but I’m not sure how many of the rest are still active.

If anyone knows of other repeating events open to all that aren’t on that calendar post yet, please comment there and let me know!

Also, just for fun, if the idea of an entire comm devoted to celebrating different aspects of Dreamwidth in haikai form delights, check out [community profile] dreamwidth_haikai. The one about the tag merge feature is one of my favorites. :o)
Edited 2018-12-04 18:45 (UTC)
batrachian: (Hanging Frog)

Re: new to dreamwidth and mourning tumblr's imminent demise

[personal profile] batrachian 2018-12-04 06:55 pm (UTC)(link)
For the record, the DW spamwhacking team is generally really good about removing stuff like that, if they know about it. Report the journal with a support request if you see them in the future!
thornsilver: (Default)

[personal profile] thornsilver 2018-12-04 07:07 pm (UTC)(link)
Do you need to have an upgraded account to see "Network" page?

(Also, Hi, I did not know you were on this site!)

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