The Whole LJ/Dreamwidth Debacle

[x-losfic.livejournal.com]

There have been so many big lj kerfuffles over the years--some justified, some histrionic, some histrionic ABOUT something justified, and endless variations thereof.

Actually I don't care THAT much about This Particular Outrage (tm). While silly little 'pingbacks' are still so buggy, it'll be dicey to post anything potentially-problematic in which we cite examples to the mod com so we can ask co-mods what they think we should do about it. But, for a com our size, we (comparatively) rarely have issues of that sort, so I'm not crying you a river? I understand why people do care, though, and I respect that. I am much more worried about other people, especially people in fandom, migrating to dreamwidth. Lj's been where I lived online for six years, and it's difficult to shake the belief that, like other nonsense, this too shall largely pass.

Kerfuffle # 678 has some people worried as to the future of b_e were something to happen to livejournal, or simply if there's a slow dribble of people from livejournal to dreamwidth, who close or stop using their livejournal accounts in this process.

You may have noticed there's no Dreamwidth!b_e. This question has actually come up a couple of times before. Dreamwidth doesn't allow community-importation at the moment due to copyright issues (i.e. a mod could agree to content-sharing, but not each and every poster). Ergo I could agree to transfer b_e, but they couldn't be sure that each and every poster agreed--which is interesting as they /will/ transfer comments on my livejournal sans consent. They also have a firm anti-mirroring stance--they'd prefer if, for the moment, people didn't replicate content on both journal platforms. And I'd prefer to respect them/not piss them off/not deal with a duplicate!com with comments and content that don't cross over, for twice the work (it would be, in many ways, managing two b_es, with messy and imperfect interaction).

As far as protecting b_e, we're looking into ways of storing the information for transfer in case dreamwidth changes their not-inflexible policy, or of otherwise replicating the whole com pretty much as it is. I already have the b_e name reserved. If people more techno-savvy than myself have ideas, I'd be grateful for them, but if all else fails, we'll store this info for the time being, replicate the set up (and hopefully the user-base), and re-open a much-the-same b_e over there, slowly and manually re-posting the old content by hand if we have to.

I'd like to underline, though, that these are back-up measures we're taking because I am cautious and want something more dependable than the wayback machine in case everything blows up in a nuclear war. But I don't believe it will. LJ is our home, and, for the moment, we're staying. Should something happen, there will be an official b_e on the other side.

As far as non-b_e D/M coms, on dreamwidth, lj, and the moon, it's splendid to have a diversity of them out there in the world! Each one can branch off and have its own atmosphere, do its own thing! Another com won't be b_e, but then, why should it be? They sure don't need my blessing, and will doubtless have their own quirks, specialization and flavor.

If you have other points to make, have some info on how to back up the data, or generally want to chat, let's do it.