Time to move on from LJ?
Apr. 8th, 2017 08:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
breakinglight11You may notice that I am posting this to, not my LiveJournal as is my wont, but to a Dreamdwidth account with the same username. I am doing this because of suspicions that the Russian-owned LiveJournal may no longer be able to trusted with the security of one's information, and Dreamwidth offers the easiest way to port one's blog archive to another, more secure platform which has the convenience of basically the same interface.
Even though it's seeming increasingly like the wiser move to do so, I have not deleted my LiveJournal. The idea of no longer having it is a weirdly emotional one for me. Even though ultimately just keeping my entries is the important part, which Dreamwidth fortunately allows me to do with relative ease, I find myself surprisingly sad at the idea of getting rid of my old blog. Journaling and having a platform to express my thoughts where interested parties can read it has been important to me. Again, I guess I can do that from anywhere, but looking now I see that I've had that LiveJournal since 2001. And I used it pretty damn consistently from 2007 on-- a whole decade now. There's a lot of hopes, dreams, memories, experiences, and thoughts poured into it in that time.
And I liked the service, damn it. Yeah, Dreamwidth is not that different. But I don't like any of the themes and my journal looks so ugly now. The whole thing feels like it's an older, less maintained version of LJ. All my internal links in the entries just go back to it, so if I wanted to direct them here instead, I'd have to fix them all manually. And even though most people I know didn't bother with their LJs anymore, I liked that I was already linked up with all my friends and I'd see their posts if they made them. I know that this is not the end of the world and I'll get over it-- I should just be grateful I'm not losing all my content --but this whole business makes me sad in a way I can't quite articulate.
So, yeah. Here I am now, I guess. If you're on Dreamwidth, please give me your username so I can attempt to rebuild my network of follows. But I won't be deleting my LJ today, or even tomorrow. I think I need some time to mourn before I actually get rid of it. Making this my primary posting platform is a tough enough step for now.
Even though it's seeming increasingly like the wiser move to do so, I have not deleted my LiveJournal. The idea of no longer having it is a weirdly emotional one for me. Even though ultimately just keeping my entries is the important part, which Dreamwidth fortunately allows me to do with relative ease, I find myself surprisingly sad at the idea of getting rid of my old blog. Journaling and having a platform to express my thoughts where interested parties can read it has been important to me. Again, I guess I can do that from anywhere, but looking now I see that I've had that LiveJournal since 2001. And I used it pretty damn consistently from 2007 on-- a whole decade now. There's a lot of hopes, dreams, memories, experiences, and thoughts poured into it in that time.
And I liked the service, damn it. Yeah, Dreamwidth is not that different. But I don't like any of the themes and my journal looks so ugly now. The whole thing feels like it's an older, less maintained version of LJ. All my internal links in the entries just go back to it, so if I wanted to direct them here instead, I'd have to fix them all manually. And even though most people I know didn't bother with their LJs anymore, I liked that I was already linked up with all my friends and I'd see their posts if they made them. I know that this is not the end of the world and I'll get over it-- I should just be grateful I'm not losing all my content --but this whole business makes me sad in a way I can't quite articulate.
So, yeah. Here I am now, I guess. If you're on Dreamwidth, please give me your username so I can attempt to rebuild my network of follows. But I won't be deleting my LJ today, or even tomorrow. I think I need some time to mourn before I actually get rid of it. Making this my primary posting platform is a tough enough step for now.
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no subject
Date: 2017-04-08 01:57 am (UTC)On the plus side, I think you'll find that, while DW lacks some things that LJ has, it's made other improvements in different areas. Most importantly, everything I've seen says that the folks running DW *care* about their users, and listen to them, a lot more than the current owners of LJ. The *spirit* of the place is more like the old LJ.
So on balance, I've concluded that it's the better platform (even not counting the politics). But there are definitely pros and cons...