you talkin' to me?
Jun. 2nd, 2011 05:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ilanaramaI started out writing this post in chronological, logical, first A then B order, but I don't want you guys to get bored and miss the points, so, in an effort not to bury the lede, as it were:
1) If you read this journal, don't have a Dreamwidth account, but would like one (either for commenting here or elsewhere, or for using it as, you know, a journal/blog/feed aggregator/social networky thing), I have a metric crapton of invite codes! Choose one, go to the account creation page, and make your account. (Then comment here and tell me you did it, so I can cross off the code you used.)
55EP2ZZXWMH6QAAAPGFD
A7NSES2BFHJYKAAAPGFE
FDXP7VDGRXRHWAAAPGFF
CFA3GGBNXC5QNAAAPGFG
SFHBV5NSQPNZKAAAQFDE
WDP6SXXXRYN26AAAQFDF
DQ8D6XHJ27K3SAAAQFDG
HAEVFRZVZB6ZJAAAQFDH
38424T92WSTJBAAAQFDJ
H4YPYTY4X999NAAAPSPV
XK9QYRKZG5DFBAAAPSPW
5PYC5DZPBGP76AAAPSPX
HMCV4CFSXDW7TAAAPSPY
If these run out, I have more - comment with an email address and I'll send you one!
2) If you don't have and don't want an account, I encourage those of you with logins on other blogging/social networking sites to set up your OpenID on Dreamwidth and comment with it. If you have a login on Wordpress, Blogger, LJ, Google, Flickr, Yahoo, or a bunch of other places, you can use that login here with OpenID. The advantages of doing this, as opposed to leaving anonymous comments, are that a) you can have replies to your comment automagically emailed to you, and b) I can give your OpenID "access" (as I do with nearly all regular DW accounts which subscribe to me) so that if you are logged in, you can read my locked posts (not that I make many, but I can imagine making posts I don't want visible to J. Random Passerby). ETA: And c), which I forgot to mention, you don't need to answer a CAPTCHA "prove you are a human" test, which I have enabled for anonymous commenters because I get occasional commentspam.
I know some people have had trouble logging in with OpenID, so here is a quick primer:
OpenID is a method of using your credentials at one site (say, Blogger) to identify you to another site (say, Dreamwidth). You have to be logged in already to your other site in order to use its credentials. Then, when you log in to Dreamwidth using OpenID, you enter your URL at that site - for example, my friend Jim from RWOL comments here every once in a while (Hi, Jim!), and enters 'http://justrunjim.blogspot.com', which turns him into![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png)
justrunjim.blogspot.com - which links to his Blogger site. Here is a short list of some common services which allow you to use their credentials as an OpenID.
The first time you log in using OpenID, you'll be asked to enter and verify an email address, which I believe is optional, but will allow replies to your comment to be emailed to you. You will need to be logged into your other site to log in via OpenID, and if I have locked entries, you won't see them unless you are also logged into Dreamwidth on your OpenID.
You can also use your OpenID account on Dreamwidth as a feed aggregator (by adding "subscriptions" to your "circle") which is probably most useful if you read a lot of journals at Dreamwidth. However, I have syndicated quite a few journals at other sites to Dreamwidth feeds, mostly running blogs, and to be honest that's the bulk of what I am subscribed to. (See below on the feed aggregator aspect. You can view my "reading list" here.)
3) Of course, you don't need an account to comment here. You are always welcome to comment anonymously, although I'd prefer you leave your name so I know who you are.
One of the reasons I shifted from Livejournal to Dreamwidth is that this journal is no longer primarily a vehicle for interaction with my LJ friends and DW circle, but also a blog with a relatively large outside readership (and by relatively large I mean relative to the number of DW readers; and by outside, I mean, people without DW accounts). The ads at LJ irritated me (yay no ads on Dreamwidth!), and the perfectly reciprocal structure of the friendslist (granting access implies you read their entries) made things a bit more complicated for me, as quite a few people read both my personal and my fannish journal, and I didn't want to read their entries twice. So I switched entirely over to DW, although I sometimes read my LJ flist.
As I moved away from interacting on LJ, and began to interact more via Facebook and the RWOL (Runner's World) forums, I started using this journal more and more as a feed aggregator to read the Wordpress and Blogger blogs of the people I knew from the other sites. In fact, I subscribe to more feeds than I do to Dreamwidth journals (with this account).
It's been interesting doing this, though, because Dreamwidth (and Livejournal, which came first but lost its way) are neither entirely blogging platforms, nor social networks, but something between the two. The concept of friendslists - an amorphous cloud of "people I interact with by commenting on their posts and by them commenting on mine" is similar to the Facebook feed/wall, but the threadedness makes it easier to direct replies to individuals, and unless people regularly lock their posts, you can wander around and see if the person who made the thoughtful comment on someone else's post is a worthwhile person to follow in their own right (unlike the default lockdown on Facebook, which, I know it's an OMG PRIVACY RISK! but I like to let my words out into the amorphous cloud, in general, and be able to lock individual posts if not). But posting an entry is (can be) a lot more like writing a blog entry than a Facebook or Twitter soundbite.
To me, it works pretty seamlessly. I appreciate that I can read these variously-formatted blogs in the color and typeface scheme of my choosing; I'm not a fan of the super-narrow Blogspot columns, or tiny type, or white text on black background. I can log in via OpenID (using my Dreamwidth URL) and leave comments on people's posts, although I have to click through to the original post to do so. Yay interoperability! Yay OpenID and Atom feeds!
I suppose eventually we will all have a single credential and be able to use it in multiple places. Fewer passwords to memorize, bigger disaster if you get hacked, I guess. In the meantime, OpenID works pretty well.
1) If you read this journal, don't have a Dreamwidth account, but would like one (either for commenting here or elsewhere, or for using it as, you know, a journal/blog/feed aggregator/social networky thing), I have a metric crapton of invite codes! Choose one, go to the account creation page, and make your account. (Then comment here and tell me you did it, so I can cross off the code you used.)
55EP2ZZXWMH6QAAAPGFD
A7NSES2BFHJYKAAAPGFE
FDXP7VDGRXRHWAAAPGFF
CFA3GGBNXC5QNAAAPGFG
SFHBV5NSQPNZKAAAQFDE
WDP6SXXXRYN26AAAQFDF
DQ8D6XHJ27K3SAAAQFDG
38424T92WSTJBAAAQFDJ
H4YPYTY4X999NAAAPSPV
XK9QYRKZG5DFBAAAPSPW
5PYC5DZPBGP76AAAPSPX
HMCV4CFSXDW7TAAAPSPY
If these run out, I have more - comment with an email address and I'll send you one!
2) If you don't have and don't want an account, I encourage those of you with logins on other blogging/social networking sites to set up your OpenID on Dreamwidth and comment with it. If you have a login on Wordpress, Blogger, LJ, Google, Flickr, Yahoo, or a bunch of other places, you can use that login here with OpenID. The advantages of doing this, as opposed to leaving anonymous comments, are that a) you can have replies to your comment automagically emailed to you, and b) I can give your OpenID "access" (as I do with nearly all regular DW accounts which subscribe to me) so that if you are logged in, you can read my locked posts (not that I make many, but I can imagine making posts I don't want visible to J. Random Passerby). ETA: And c), which I forgot to mention, you don't need to answer a CAPTCHA "prove you are a human" test, which I have enabled for anonymous commenters because I get occasional commentspam.
I know some people have had trouble logging in with OpenID, so here is a quick primer:
OpenID is a method of using your credentials at one site (say, Blogger) to identify you to another site (say, Dreamwidth). You have to be logged in already to your other site in order to use its credentials. Then, when you log in to Dreamwidth using OpenID, you enter your URL at that site - for example, my friend Jim from RWOL comments here every once in a while (Hi, Jim!), and enters 'http://justrunjim.blogspot.com', which turns him into
justrunjim.blogspot.com - which links to his Blogger site. Here is a short list of some common services which allow you to use their credentials as an OpenID.The first time you log in using OpenID, you'll be asked to enter and verify an email address, which I believe is optional, but will allow replies to your comment to be emailed to you. You will need to be logged into your other site to log in via OpenID, and if I have locked entries, you won't see them unless you are also logged into Dreamwidth on your OpenID.
You can also use your OpenID account on Dreamwidth as a feed aggregator (by adding "subscriptions" to your "circle") which is probably most useful if you read a lot of journals at Dreamwidth. However, I have syndicated quite a few journals at other sites to Dreamwidth feeds, mostly running blogs, and to be honest that's the bulk of what I am subscribed to. (See below on the feed aggregator aspect. You can view my "reading list" here.)
3) Of course, you don't need an account to comment here. You are always welcome to comment anonymously, although I'd prefer you leave your name so I know who you are.
One of the reasons I shifted from Livejournal to Dreamwidth is that this journal is no longer primarily a vehicle for interaction with my LJ friends and DW circle, but also a blog with a relatively large outside readership (and by relatively large I mean relative to the number of DW readers; and by outside, I mean, people without DW accounts). The ads at LJ irritated me (yay no ads on Dreamwidth!), and the perfectly reciprocal structure of the friendslist (granting access implies you read their entries) made things a bit more complicated for me, as quite a few people read both my personal and my fannish journal, and I didn't want to read their entries twice. So I switched entirely over to DW, although I sometimes read my LJ flist.
As I moved away from interacting on LJ, and began to interact more via Facebook and the RWOL (Runner's World) forums, I started using this journal more and more as a feed aggregator to read the Wordpress and Blogger blogs of the people I knew from the other sites. In fact, I subscribe to more feeds than I do to Dreamwidth journals (with this account).
It's been interesting doing this, though, because Dreamwidth (and Livejournal, which came first but lost its way) are neither entirely blogging platforms, nor social networks, but something between the two. The concept of friendslists - an amorphous cloud of "people I interact with by commenting on their posts and by them commenting on mine" is similar to the Facebook feed/wall, but the threadedness makes it easier to direct replies to individuals, and unless people regularly lock their posts, you can wander around and see if the person who made the thoughtful comment on someone else's post is a worthwhile person to follow in their own right (unlike the default lockdown on Facebook, which, I know it's an OMG PRIVACY RISK! but I like to let my words out into the amorphous cloud, in general, and be able to lock individual posts if not). But posting an entry is (can be) a lot more like writing a blog entry than a Facebook or Twitter soundbite.
To me, it works pretty seamlessly. I appreciate that I can read these variously-formatted blogs in the color and typeface scheme of my choosing; I'm not a fan of the super-narrow Blogspot columns, or tiny type, or white text on black background. I can log in via OpenID (using my Dreamwidth URL) and leave comments on people's posts, although I have to click through to the original post to do so. Yay interoperability! Yay OpenID and Atom feeds!
I suppose eventually we will all have a single credential and be able to use it in multiple places. Fewer passwords to memorize, bigger disaster if you get hacked, I guess. In the meantime, OpenID works pretty well.