my resentment is lingering

I have sufficiently recovered my shattered nerves from the horror of delicious to cheerfully take up my personal favorite thing; that is, speaking with An Experienced Voice.

Honest to God, there is no job on earth that truly sucks if at any time, you can draw it up as ironclad proof of your expertise on anything even vaguely related to that job, wrap it up in bitter, better-than-them text, and throw it at people like a brick. An awesome brick. As a fangirl who, like pretty much every fangirl on the net who wandered into the internet and realized the power of html, and who once did in fact go with a theme of black background/white text (In the X-Men section, series; I keep it to remind myself once I thought that was genius in design), and who has embraced white space with equal fevor, this is a bad design and they should feel bad. Ten links a page? I'm sorry that their developers have the apparent attention span of fleas.

Past the rage and some inappropriate language use for the last few hours, I'm just weirded out. Mostly because in general, I don't remember any site coming under new ownership with a pretty large userbase and do this much damage. This isn't the equivalent of either time we got new management at LJ--and Livejournal, you realize you are officially going to be many people's new perfect standard of changeover, right? No, seriously, you are. People are going to be saying how awesome and wonderful and sensitive you were!--or even quite like Facebook's random hits of redesign in hopes of beign able to one day exhaust people so much they'll stop fighting all that privacy invasion they're so fond of.

There's a very uncomfortable part of me that has the general feeling that the Genius Idea that someone--probably one of those founders of Youtube we hear so much about--had this Brilliant Vision that it was far easier to buy up an already thriving audience and simply force them by holding all their information hostage--which they are doing--to use their completely different site. Instead of that hideous, boring, so Web 2.0 way of gaining a following or population with a superior product. As superior products, I have heard, are also very Web 2.0. And that I am saying Web 2.0 had superior products make me want to stop and cry very hysterically. I am having sincere, rose-colored reflection of Livejournals multiple changes; I mean, I'm pretty much due for it.

Okay, now the part, before I was sidetracked, that's weirding me out: they literally stripped functionality out, not just messed it up or broke some things (though anyone who can't escape a fucking / or , needs to return to kindergarten; my three year old nephew and niece probably can't do that yet, but that's because they're three and not developers; imagine that), but they left--messed up, but there--the tag functionality while making it impossible to use in any practical way.

It's almost like they want the users so irritated, frustrated, and despairing of the entire tag system they'll just give that shit up and go to playlists just for the sake of getting their damn links--wait, they call them stacks now? Charming. How very hipster-chic of them.

I haven't had pretty much anytime to actually explore this, but here's a fast and dirty tutorial on the API use to actually see what you have. And weirdly enough, what you can still create.

To See All Your Bookmarks and MetaData
https://api.del.icio.us/v1/posts/all?results=X
OR
https://user:passwd@api.del.icio.us/v1/posts/all?results=X

For user, your username, for password, your password, for X, the TOTAL NUMBER of bookmarks you have. If you keep getting the login box on the first link, try the second one. It's exportable XML. You can use this to recreate your link library.

To See All Your Tags (If Yours Are Not Like Mine and Hiding)
https://api.del.icio.us/v1/tags/get
OR
https://user:passwd@api.del.icio.us/v1/tags/get

If you do not see all your tags, do not panic. Check the first link up there and take a deep breath. Exactly two of mine show up here, but they're fine in the XML.

To See/Create All Your Bundles (Experimental)

You can still make bundles. Yes, what the fuck. You can't see anything you made before, but you can see any that you make from now on.

Create New Bundles
https://api.del.icio.us/v1/tags/bundles/set?bundle=NAME&tags=TAG+TAG+...+TAG
OR
https://user:passwd@api.del.icio.us/v1/tags/bundles/set?bundle=NAME&tags=TAG+TAG+...+TAG

See the Bundle You Created!
https://api.del.icio.us/v1/tags/bundles/all?
OR
https://user:passwd@api.del.icio.us/v1/tags/bundles/all?

Tested this a couple of times in several conditions; it works. It still works. Dear God, this is weird.

Rename Tags

As one does.

Rename
https://api.del.icio.us/v1/tags/rename?old=OLDTAGNAME&new=NEWTAGNAME
OR
https://user:passwd@api.del.icio.us/v1/tags/rename?old=OLDTAGNAME&new=NEWTAGNAME

Now that's one at a time. I started work--and kind of finished, in a very rough way--a javascript that will loop, but the API is remarkably unstable and it seems to really not take that well when I try it. So until I know if it works, or until someone else releases a better one, well, we're stuck.

Warnings

If you use the tagging add-on, it will save whatever you just decided to bookmark immediately, as public. And there are no takebacks with cancel(at least, mine didn't, but that may be--shockingly, a bug, and yet I don't think so). You will have to go to delicious and manually delete.

Or do this.

https://api.del.icio.us/v1/posts/delete?url=URLTODELETE
Or
https://user:passwd@api.del.icio.us/v1/posts/delete?url=URLTODELETE

*sighs* There has to be a way around this.

Comments

[concinnity]

So...you heard, undoubtedly, that the fine ladies at the /report, rageprufrock and mklutz, offered to help A03/OTW develop a really decent bookmarking service, y? And that people with coding skills would be required, what with them working their little fingers to the bone already?

... I have to admit, you were the first person I thought of. Can't you just - build a better delicious? *bambi eyes*

[niqaeli]

There is a really good post on Tumblr about how we got such a clusterfuck.

I still say their programmers and database people need to be taken out and shot.

[ratcreature]

The thing to see all my bookmarks doesn't work. It gives me some, but not all in an xml file. Thankfully I have exported earlier this September, so my backup only misses the most recent ones. I tried exporting again, but that function seems to be broken and times out all the time. I don't see all my tags with your method either, only the ones that show on their new page.

[majoline]

This is what has happened to me too, with the added joy of being unable to use most of the actual site links.

[busaikko]

You have so much useful information in this post! My first instinct was, "I should bookmark this to read later!"... and then I remembered. *emoticon of sadness* Thank you! (I'll jsut be leaving this tab open in Opera "not a browser that Delicious likes now!"(TM).)

[margrave]

I agree with everything you say (you'll never see my yellow text on red background design, ever!). However, your patience is truly amazing (all the ways we can recover). I, um, have deleted my delicious account (744 links), and I was truly surprised at my lack of blackout rage (the anger, yes, but no rage), and was rather OK about deleting my account. It took awhile to realize that I have been subconsciously preparing for this. I had my initial rage blackout when delicious stopped showing new tags for OVER 5 days and have started stalking/subscribing to LJ/DW communities. Their is even a part of my brain that is contemplating using my URL (which I bought, never used, and continue to RENEW). Just - I'm suddenly motivated to do stuff!!! It has been a very long time since that happened.

Also, the fact that LJ is going to be the 'good' way in changing it's design and service is both hilarious and sad.

[lannamichaels]

Thank you so much.

[musesfool]

Huh. I can't get into any of the API links. I put in my username and password and the login box just pops up again.

[seperis]

Did you create a yahoo ID and then ues it to create a delicious account, or did you start with a delicious account? It's--weird--if it's yahoo first.

[brownbetty]

Two notes: export still works, it's just now at the new export page. The file produced is not super-useful to you, but worth holding on to, because any service that will import bookmarks will use it, and give you back 90% of your bookmark data.

The firefox add-on I use still lets me get all my bookmarks, and knows how to sort them by tag. I'm not sure if that's just because the add-on has cached that data, though, so if anyone tries it, let me know.

[morgandawn]

I keep getting a blank webpage when I try to export. Thinking the data might be there, I tried to save the webpage but it had 0 bytes of data.

[malkingrey]

It's almost like they want the users so irritated, frustrated, and despairing of the entire tag system they'll just give that shit up and go to playlists just for the sake of getting their damn links--wait, they call them stacks now? Charming. How very hipster-chic of them.

It's almost as if the new owners had a line item in their business plan that read: "Next step: Get rid of old userbase." And when somebody (maybe a PR person, maybe a lawyer) protested, "But we can't just close all their accounts and throw them out!", somebody else smiled a sharklike smile and said, "No, but we can make them want to leave."

(I'd think that this was unlikely, except that I remember a large and now-defunct online service, back in the Stone Knives and Bearskins Age the early nineties that would from time to time, for unexplained reasons of its own, inform its sysops that they had to take steps to cut down on the number of customers using their forums.)

[kellyfaboo]

When I wrote them I was all like, "Hey, thanks for taking a site and removing ALL of the functionality that made it great and creating the most crappy UI ever"

[mecurtin]

I found the following suggestion in comments to Oh, Delicious — where did it all go so wrong?:

To those interested in accessing your old data, there’s a trick. You can edit your hosts file and add the following entries to it:

98.139.50.166 http://www.delicious.com
76.13.6.190 secure.delicious.com
76.13.6.209 static.delicious.com

Flush your cache or reboot, and then login to the old delicious site with your old credentials. You can then export your data if needed.

It's *possible* that this will work even if you can't seem to log in -- but I'm not going to try it right now. It would be worthwhile to have someone trustworthy check it out, though.

[brownbetty]

I've just done this on my machine, and it worked. I would suggest anyone who wants to do this do this in a hurry, since it's contingent on yahoo leaving old servers up and running old code they're no longer responsible for.

[harpers_child]

i have never been happier that i backed up my bookmarks to my computer when the "delicious is closing" thing happened and haven't updated them since. never happier. i was only a casual user, but i won't touch it now.

[scy]

I will clap and add helpfully that it is very sexy when you talk geek. Please, continue considering how best to hobble the web and remake it in a functional form. I will hand you a wrench and we can rebuild it.

[fyrdrakken]

So last December when the initial round of fretting about Yahoo! dumping Delicious happened, I backed up my bookmarks (and also starting going through old ones, culling lniks that were dead or of no further use to me and eliminating some old imported tags, etc.) and wound up adding a weekly backup of my Delicious account to the Sunday night round of backups. So I've got three backups from the last three Sundays sitting on my netbook at home, and I'm wondering if I can get Google Chrome to import from the most recent unborked file and sidestep whatever the new!Delicious may have screwed up. (Also I'm thinking I need to make a special point of hanging on to those recent backups, rather than my current SOP of deleting the oldest every Sunday night when I download the newest.)

[nianeyna]

*blank* I... I really thought nothing could be worse than Yahoo. I guess I'll... give it time. just please let them not have actually deleted any of my bookmarks or tags.

God, HOW AM I EVER GOING TO KEEP UP WITH THE KINKMEMES, ugh.

[dossier]

thanks for the links--I did get an xml from that, so great instructions!

[onthehill]

latest from their engineering blog:

We are currently focused on the following known issues:
* Missing Bookmarks: Some users have reported that they are missing bookmarks. Rest assured that your data has been preserved. Yahoo! has delivered a snapshot of all data of opt-in users, and we are running a check against our database tier to identify any import issues that affect availability of bookmarks from the web application. Due to the large volume of data, this process will take a couple of days.

* Firefox/IE Browser Extensions: We are working to resolve an authentication issue for the Firefox Add-On and IE extensions. We expect to have an update later today.

* Chrome Browser Extension: We have an update ready, and will post to the Chrome store as soon as we get credentials from Yahoo.

* Support for special characters in tags: We are working on support for "/" and other special characters in tags. We expect to deploy this fix shortly.

* More links per page: We have seen a lot of requests that we display more links per page.

* Missing Tags/Alpha Tag Sort: We limited visible tags at launch to reduce the risk of a system outage. We did not have an outage, and the system is stable, so we are working now to start exposing full tag lists and associated sorts.

* Tag Subscriptions: We have retained all user tag subscription data, and ned to expose this functionality on the site. Part of this functionality available as a saved search, but we need to improve the UI for this, and add /{username}/tag support.

* Networks: We have all network data, and will are working on rolling this out with our user feeds in the near future.

* Tag Bundles: We have retained all tag bundle data, and are working to expose this for users.

[brownbetty]

Which, of course, I'll probably be pathetically glad to see, despite how badly they handled this.

But ARGH.

I'm currently playing around with Zootool

[thejeopardymaze]

Your mileage may vary, but it seems to load faster than Diigo's bookmarklets, and it's free.

There's also a list of bookmarklet services here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_bookmarking_websites

Re: I'm currently playing around with Zootool

[jumpuphigh]

They don't have a ToS in English, only German, but the Google Translate version (which is what they send you to if you want it in English) says:

3.4 The User shall ensure and guarantee that by him in private or in public zoo zoo posted contents do not violate the law or common decency. In particular, content may not be threatening, abusive, racist, violent, defamatory, harassing, offensive, pornographic or otherwise be harmful to minors.

As they don't define either pornographic or common decency and have that lovely "harmful to minors" clause [/sarcasm], it doesn't look like a stable and safe place for fandom. Or, heck, even for my non-fandom bookmarks.

[katsuko]

Popped over via swordage's link here, and I have to say thank you for this. Most of my links ported over (excepting the ones I made yesterday... but then again, I can't even remember if I actually did bookmark anything yesterday XD) and the tags seem to be there, too.

I have limited faith that the new owners will get things sorted and running again eventually (seriously, Yahoo!? you give 'em only 4 months to GTFO after firing the entire development team? stay classy 9_9) but at this point, I can only see that they're following the Meat Loaf Business Plan: If it ain't broke, break it.

[christycorr]

Do you plan to export and migrate, or will you wait it out?

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[loriel-eris.livejournal.com]

I think I love you for this entire post. My flailing last night was much more inarticulate. Have you seen rageprufrock's latest /report podcast? She and MKlutz (on DW?) discuss the Delicious fuck up.

I tried this link: https://api.del.icio.us/v1/posts/all?results=X last night with my total number of links and I don't think it caught them all...? it doesn't quite work the way I expected. I was anticipating newest to oldest, but yeah, not so much. (Haven't quite figured out what it is sorting, but I haven't exactly put much any thought into it either.)

Also, are you following deliciouslymad? They've got some links round ups / many other concerned users / potential solutions etc.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

I noticed that too! They're--almost in teh right order, but not quite, though generally. I'm wondering about when we edit links or tags and it's pulling that date.

dig deeper into your favorite topics

[pingback-bot.livejournal.com]

User clari_clyde referenced to your post from dig deeper into your favorite topics (http://clari-clyde.livejournal.com/285928.html) saying: [...] From : fast and dirty tutorial on the API use to actually see what you have [...]

[tavella.livejournal.com]

As of a few hours ago, delicious seems to have rolled back most or all of the changes, at least from my vantage point. Tags with slashes work again, I get a front page tat's a list, no mention of stacks, etc.

[tavella.livejournal.com]

...and back to the new style. Wonder if I was getting pointed at Yahoo's old servers for a few hours? It definitely wasn't just local caching, I was doing searches and clicking on tags.

[be-a-rebel.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much for these explanations and links. I suck with this sort of thing anyway and just gave up last night and watched terrible tv shows.

*clings to you and whimpers with joy*

Also, I will hate them forever for this. Just the sheer level of stupid is ASTOUNDING.