Dreamwidth Update: 16 December

[denise]

Hello, Dreamwidth! This news post is full of a lot of exciting things, so I will dive straight in.

Behind the cut:

* Development news
* New Create Entries beta
* New themes and styles
* Also new in the last code push
* Open account creation
* Reminder: holiday promotion
* Possible import/crosspost problems
* Deleted accounts purged
* The Ada Initiative
* Version 2.0

Development news

Code tours for the bugs that have been resolved since the last update:

21 Oct - 31 Oct
1 Nov - 11 Nov
11 Nov - 21 Nov
21 Nov - 3 Dec
3 Dec - 7 Dec

All of those above changes are now live on the site and available for use, so if you see something interesting, you won't have to wait for it.

Welcome-back this week to kaisa, laitaine, and yvi, who return to us after a break from DW development!

I'll get into some more of the awesome changes included in this last code push in a minute, but first I wanted to talk about the ...

New Create Entries beta

It's been a long, hard road -- you would not believe what we had to do on the backend in order to make this work! -- but the first draft of our new Create Entries workflow is now in beta testing. If you're interested in participating in the beta test, visit the Beta Features page, and the second of the two beta testing opportunities is for the new Create Entries page. (The first is for the new-style Javascript behavior -- we've been working on modernizing all the JS across the site to run faster, better, cleaner, and more adaptably.)

Not everything is finished yet -- among the things not yet available are the "don't autoformat entry" option, the rich text editor, editing existing entries in the new workflow, and the saving of draft posts of any type -- but this beta is an opportunity to spot not only bugs but workflow, usability, and accessibility problems.

I personally turned on the new version the second it was live and I've been loving it -- fu and hope did an amazing job taking my original crappy pencil sketches with lots of handwaving and turning them, with your feedback, into something that Just Works. It's also amazingly customizable: if you hit the image, the page will enter "settings mode" and let you collapse, move, and remove any pane you don't use regularly (or put back something you got rid of and now you miss).

There are still some bugs we're uncovering -- no matter how well you test, having tens of thousands of people using something will always turn up something you don't find in testing -- so if you spot something weird, report it on the bug reporting post in dw_beta. We especially want to hear from anybody who has accessibility problems with the new workflow.

Massive, massive thanks go to everybody who's offered feedback on the changes so far. This whole process may have been relatively painful on the technical end, but it's been a delight to go through on the user-facing end, and y'all and your smart, productive, constructive feedback are a major, major reason why.

New themes

The last two code pushes included a massive number of new themes for customizing your journal -- 160 in total, spread out over 17 different styles. If you've been looking for a new look for your journal, why not try browsing through the featured styles and see if any of them strike your fancy?

There are also three relatively-new styles: Crisped, Dusty Foot, and Five AM. Check them out!

Also new in the last code push

Since our last code push, we've had a collection of interesting bugs resolved. A large number were to fix problems with the Create Entries beta (or the new-JS-on-journals beta), or backend things you wouldn't notice (go on, ask kareila about moving around all of our perl modules; I think she'll still be twitching about it in another six months), but there's still a whole host of things that you should find interesting. The full details are in the code tours, but if you're curious, some of the big ones:

Bugfixes

* Polls with more than 90 checkboxes in a single poll question weren't recording votes properly. This is now fixed.

* The display settings for when to show image placeholders for images of unknown size were accidentally switched around, so that never meant always and always meant never. This is now fixed.

* If you had a lot (like, thousands) of multilevel tags (of the "category: specific" form), the display of those tags was timing out in some cases when viewing your journal or your tags page. We've optimized the code to display the tags so they won't time out anymore.

* If an entry had over 10 pages of comments, the box that displays the number of pages was behaving weirdly in some browsers, which has been driving me nuts for like, two years now and which I never got around to filing a bug for. Fortunately someone else (namely ninetydegrees) noticed and patched it :)

* When you created a new community, it was accidentally being left out of your Default reading filter if you'd created one. This is now fixed!


Enhancements

* You will no longer receive a success notice for every crosspost you make by default; you'll only be notified in your Inbox if an attempt fails. You can still go to the notifications setting page and choose to receive success notices if you want, though!

* On the interests search page, you can now specify up to three interests to search for at a time. This is an AND search, not an OR search -- if you want to find people who are interested in knitting, cats, and textual deconstruction of Japanese RPGs, you can do it now. (And then introduce me to them, because I think we'd probably get along.)

* A massive new update to the external sites you can use in the <user name=foo site=bar> tag: now you can also refer to people on Blogspot (blogspot.com), Delicious (delicious.com), DeviantArt (deviantart.com), LastFM (last.fm), Ravelry (ravelry.com), Wordpress (wordpress.com), and Plurk (plurk.com) and have the tag pull the correct userhead icon.

* The option for setting who could send you a private message was on the Manage Profile page, which only made sense if you thought of it as a contact method and not as a privacy-related setting. Since it was clear that most people thought of it as a privacy setting, it's now on the Privacy tab of the Manage Settings page.

* Poll enhancement: you can now not only view how everyone answered an individual poll question, but also view how each individual person answered all of the questions in the poll. Hopefully this will make things easier for people using DW to conduct surveys!

* Another poll enhancement: if you use the scale question type in a poll, you can now add labels to the high end and low end of the scale, so people don't have to stare at the question and think "okay, does 1 mean I agree completely or I disagree completely?"


Honorable Mention

In the "things you will hopefully never notice but oh my god, so much work" department, we totally have to say a thank you to kareila for all her work on reorganizing the backend code so things are where you'd expect them to be (instead of where they got put randomly over the years) and to ninetydegrees for not only patching a ton of new themes, but also going through and optimizing over six hundred preview images to make them load faster and display with more reliable color information. Both of y'all deserve cookies, seriously.

Open account creation

Earlier this year, we decided to try out a "no invite codes needed" week to see whether we could do it semi-regularly and still keep the same level of service (and of spam protection) that the invite codes let us stick with. The results were pretty good, so we've decided to try it again, and for a little longer this time!

For the rest of the year, creating a Dreamwidth account will not require an invite code: just visit the Create an Account page.

We do reserve the right to switch invite codes back on if open account creation is causing problems -- invite codes let us carefully balance the site's resources and keep spammers from overrunning the site -- but with luck, that shouldn't be a problem.

Reminder: holiday promotion

Just a reminder: for the remainder of 2011, all orders made in the Dreamwidth Shop will receive a 10% points bonus for future use. For instance, if you buy yourself a 12 month paid account (350 points), we'll give you 35 points to spend later once you complete your order.

This is one way of saying "Thank you!" to everyone who helps to support Dreamwidth -- it's your support that keeps us on the air. We're completely user-supported: we take no venture capital, have no outside investors, and are completely advertising-and-sponsorship-free. Your support is what allows us to keep making Dreamwidth better, and we are super grateful for everyone who's given that support.

Possible import/crosspost problems

Things have mostly calmed down now, but if you've been watching dw_maintenance (and you should be!) you'll have noticed that over the past few weeks there have been some issues with importing from and crossposting to LiveJournal. This is because LiveJournal has been having problems with Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks intermittently for the past few weeks, and their DDoS mitigation attempts can make it very hard for Dreamwidth to contact the site.

In general, if you receive errors in your inbox telling you that the job can't connect to LiveJournal, you're running into that problem. Until you receive the error in your inbox, the job is still running. For imports, wait a little while after you get the failure message and then schedule a new import. For crossposts, wait a little while, then edit the entry and check the crosspost box, then save the entry. (You don't have to make any actual edits to the entry.)

LJ's people have been absolutely great about keeping us in the loop about what's going on, and we'd like to thank them for the information and wish them luck in their mitigation efforts.

Deleted accounts purged

A few months ago, we mentioned that we don't regularly run the script that permanently removes deleted accounts from the site, because of the load it can place on the servers and the databases. We realized that we never did run that script after all -- oops! We've fixed that now.

Because we've been so irregular about running it, we changed the time an account has been deleted to make it eligible for complete removal from 30 days to 90 days to give a little more wiggle room. The script has finished running, so if there's a username you've had your eye on for renaming, check to see if it's available now.

We'll try to be a little more regular about purging deleted accounts in the upcoming year. Also, remember: this does not affect inactive accounts, only accounts that the owner has chosen to set to 'deleted' status. Once you register a personal DW account, that username is yours until you choose to delete it.

The Ada Initiative

One of the things Dreamwidth has received a lot of press about is the gender balance of our contributors -- while most open source projects struggle to have just a few contributors who identify as female, our volunteer base is well over half female-identified. We're just one small fish in a very big pond, though, and there's been a lot of discussion in the open source world about how to address the gender imbalance problem: while women make up slightly over 20% of the IT world as a whole, statistics show that they make up about 2% of open source contributors.

I've been volunteering on the board of directors for the Ada Initiative, an organization dedicated to concrete, active efforts to improve women's participation in open technology and culture communities and projects. The experience of being a board member has been awesome (and exhausting!) and although the heavy lifting is being done by the two employees of the Initiative, it's been great to have an opportunity to pitch in and contribute.

Diversity, opportunity, and equality of all kinds are incredibly important to me and mark, and in the spirit of furthering that goal, we'd like to invite you all to consider contributing to the Ada Initiative fundraising drive. Meanwhile, in the spirit of putting our money where our mouths are, we'll be donating 10% of our gross revenues for the month of December (with a minimum donation of $1000) to the organization ourselves.

Version 2.0

No, not Dreamwidth version 2.0. We're pleased to announce the arrival of mark and aposiopetic's version 2.0, Oliver Graham Smith.

Oliver has already mastered serious face and is a champion sleeper. Mom, Dad, and baby (and older brother!) are doing wonderfully, and we're looking forward to getting Oliver's first Dreamwidth patch in another 13 years or so. :)

Congratulations to Mark and Ari, and welcome to Oliver!

*

That's it for us for another update! As always, if you're having problems with Dreamwidth, Support can help you; for notices of site problems and downtime, check the Twitter status page; if you've got an idea to make the site better, you can make a suggestion. We'll see you in a few weeks for our next update.

Comments

[denise]

We have no plans to adapt LJ's redesign (and actually, we couldn't, not without a lot of work: our code has diverged so far that we can't apply LJ's patches to our codebase anymore without lots and lots of manual intervention, and it's often easier to rewrite it from scratch ourselves). I won't promise we'll never redesign things at all, and in fact will promise that we will change things -- the new Create Entries page being an example -- but I can pretty safely say that the direction LJ is taking their redesign in is not the direction we are taking DW in. :)

Seriously, I think the major source of the problem here is that LJ is going in a very specific direction and use case with this redesign, whereas previously it was very wide-open. People got used to the wide open and resent it going away. If people came upon a site that looked like the LJ redesign with no history of what it used to look like there wouldn't be a problem: the new comments redesign looks like it was aimed to be as simple and visual as possible, which is probably done to make things easy for new users. (Oh, God, I don't know what LJ's current dropoff and task abandonment rate is, but it was bad when I was there.) If it were a completely new website, nobody would say one word about the design. (Or, okay, they might gripe a bit about it, there are legitimately things I think should be changed, but I don't think the design itself deserves this level of vitriol -- then again, I very rarely think anybody deserves this level of vitriol.) But longtime users are only seeing the loss of functionality, not the actual design, and they're scared the direction the design shows the site is going in is not a direction they're interested in at all.

[rainne]

Having just glanced at the new Create Entries page, I actually kind of like how it looks. I don't know how to explain it. Mind, I like the old one too, just because it's familiar and comfortable, but I can see myself getting used to the new.

You're right about the less amount of complaining if it was a new website... of course, the problem is that it isn't a new website and everyone wants the functionality they're used to. I think if it was just a form change to the new look without the loss of certain functions (like the subject line), people would be more okay with it than they are. As it is, though... I know for myself as the owner of a permanent LJ account, I want to crawl into their server and start whaling on it with an axe.

I'm not sure what you mean by LJ going in a specific direction and use case, unless you mean that it's starting to feel too much like Facebook or something. I would agree with that, I think. And I don't go to LJ or Dreamwidth to post a Facebook-style update, or vice versa.

But I am VERY glad to hear that DW won't be making those sorts of changes.

[denise]

Amusingly enough, when I was still working for LJ, it was always "LJ is trying to be MySpace!" *G*

I don't think LJ is trying to be "like Facebook" at all. (At most, they're looking at Tumblr.) The thing is, long-style updates are very far over on the chart of "how much user engagement it takes to involve them" -- I can't find the chart I'm thinking of to show you, but basically, the more effort it takes from someone to start participating on the site, the less likely they are to come back. (The Forrester engagement ladder is not what I am thinking of, but it is close.) LJ (and other blogging platforms) are very high on the "how much effort and engagement it takes", and that's why blogging-only platforms are generally stagnant in growth but platforms that enable more micro-updates (Twitter, Tumblr, Plurk, Google+, and yes, even Facebook) are more successful: they make it easier for people to participate.

(It's called the Law of Participation Inequality and it's something that every site frets about.)

So, since it's long since been shown that one of the major, if not the major, draws and unique features of LJ (in terms of one of the major attractors of both users and readers to the site) is communities, and one of the major things to do with communities is to comment in them, I'm about 85% sure that this update was intended to simplify the commenting process in order to make it more alluring for people who are in that 90% in the Law of Participation Inequality, the people for whom "make a journal update" or "make a community post" is way, way too far over on the engagement chart, but "make a comment" wouldn't be.

People see "oh my God, Facebook!", but it's really nothing like Facebook at all. Facebook is just the leader of the low-engagement social media services right now, so anything that improves low-engagement interaction is going to read to the audience as Facebooky. It really, really, really isn't, though! The changes LJ is making are quite definitely on the track to enable and streamline low-engagement interaction, but they're nothing like Facebook.

...Sorry, you probably didn't want an impromptu lecture on social media theory! But it annoys me whenever people immediately jump to accusing a site of wanting to be like another site whenever they make a change, because the changes are often nothing like that other site, it's just that both sites (and, pretty much, every web 2.0 site out there) are using the same social media theory underpinnings to guide their product development.

(PS: if you want a demonstration of how offering low-engagement options makes it easier for people to participate, look at dw_suggestions. Dozens more people vote in the polls than comment. If we didn't have the polls, we might get one or two additional comments, but probably not. Commenting is a more high-engagement activity than poll answering.)

[rainne]

That's actually really interesting - I don't really know much about social media except how to use various bits of it, so that impromptu lecture was all new and good info for me.

It makes sense, though - it's why it's hard to get away from LJ, even with all the fuckery, because it's so difficult going through the friend-making process on a new site when you have 300+ friends on LJ, many of whom haven't switched/won't switch/won't switch until everyone else switches/etc. Also, I don't think they were intending to try and be like Facebook, just that it had a Facebooky sort of feel to it - which again makes sense, considering what you said about the social media underpinnings.

What I don't understand, though, is if they are trying to make the commenting function better, why would they do away with subject lines - those are important! - and mess with the way the threading works? Those were two of the things that were best about the old way of doing comments!

[isweedan]

I didn't *know* I wanted impromptu lectures on social media theory, but I so did. ::chinhands::

[ocelotish]

That's a really interesting discussion. I know I use lj primarily as an art blog long with looking at my friends' 'blogs' with communities on the side, but I couldn't imagine using it as a RP forum. While most of the changes don't effect my usage of it (besides the indisputably bad ones), if that's something you were using, you're screwed.

I think the flexibility is what make lj such a strong site. Most people can find a way to use it, so you get a lot of variety in the communities (in the general sense). You have personal blogs, RP communities, newsfeeds, etc. so while you may use lj as a newsfeed, you can still be friends with the people who use it for RP accounts and never really know how they use it for that.

It seems like the best move would be to have a basic and advance mode. That would remove the barrier to entry, but give experienced users the additional features they have always used to customize their experience. Another option would just being more transparent with their reasons (like they seemed to be in the past). While users may not like the changes, there's a rhyme and reason to it, and it gives them a way to have a meaningful dialogue.

[radiantsoul]

Like.

[denise]

Two months later, I finally remembered the thing I meant in my comment talking about high engagement and low engagement involvement in a website: Ross Mayfield's Power Law of Participation.

Mind like a, you know, the metal thing with lots of holes in it, wossname.

(frozen comment)

[archangelbeth]

I suspect the high level of vitriol that they get for springing this sort of thing is directly... Well, they kinda asked for it. See, when y'all got critiques of the new Post Entry page, you considered the thing, you explained the issues, you listened to great ideas, and you implemented them! No one had to scream and shout and stomp their feet to get noticed. And you came up with something that allows people to customize for their posting flow, and it's awesome. It's not 100% What Beth Would've Done, but it's 90%, and it lets everyone else implement their 90% of What OtherPoster Would've Done.

LJ? They've kinda been training everyone to go nuclear over everything in the (vain) hope they'll be heard and their issues recognized, from what I can see. It feels, over there, like the only thing LJ recognizes is torches and pitchforks.

So most of the individuals there don't deserve the torches and pitchforks, but... I think it's been the only response perceived as having a chance of working, for many years now. O:(

Whereas y'all are training the users to be polite, and trust y'all's judgment, and speak up with interesting ideas, with your responsiveness and innovation.

(frozen comment)

[majesdane]

+1!

(frozen comment)

[redrover]

Just adding my two cents here, but I think LJ invites (poor word choice BUT) the torches and pitchforks because there's no sense of community with the maintainers of the site. What people see is a big wall of silence from LJ Staff. There's no reason to treat them like human beings because they don't respond. They certainly don't post pictures of their infant children on their news updates.

It's the same sort of reaction people have to the automated recordings when they call hospitals or credit card companies. You become more aggravated because a non-human entity can't empathise with your frustrations.

If people feel like there's actually someone listening, they're more likely to stay calm. LJ hasn't cultivated this atmosphere recently - and as with the latest wankstorm, the more people who comment without response, the more people will become upset.

This isn't me casting aspersions on LJ because I'm quite sure they have their reasons for not responding to the flood of complaints - in all honesty, now I've had time to cool down, I can't really hold it against LJ that they've gone in this direction and am able to accept that it's not a bad one, but one that doesn't work for me. Rather, I'm just musing in general.

Teal deer: People have no reason to treat what has been perceived as an inhuman entity as anything other than the source of frustration and focal point of abuse. They're more likely to be civil and calm when the people in charge have been humanised. Somewhat personalised replies to complaints. Pictures of infants.

(frozen comment)

[phenylalanine]

Yes, I think that's definitely part of it. Also, for a long time the only individuated person from LJ I'd seen comment on the situation was... igrick. So when you're complaining to (what seems to be) a) a faceless corporation and b) an asshole, it doesn't really feel like there's any need to restrain your vitriol. You were rude to me, so I'm free to be an asshole right back, that kind of thing.

(frozen comment)

[archangelbeth]

*nod* Yes, exactly. Feeling listened-to is really good, and I can't remember if LJ has cultivated that atmosphere anytime in the last several years. (Also, I would have faith that even if DW thought they needed to do something similar to the faux-twitterbookspace quick-comment thing? They'd provide an opt-in version for existing users, and/or they'd have a "pretty much the same functionality" (or exactly!) version available, and they'd definitely be soliciting opinions on whether the thing was eye-searingly ugly or migraine-inducing.

And it wouldn't be in Flash.)

...And I have that faith because DW's management doesn't have an apparent policy of "don't let anyone say anything to the mob; just close the door and lock it and let them eat cake."

I do feel sorry for the people who don't deserve to face the mob... But it can be hard to tell, from the outside, what's up, and who's a Management Sympathizer Goon and who's not. *sigh*

[lethe1]

I can pretty safely say that the direction LJ is taking their redesign in is not the direction we are taking DW in.

I am so very glad to hear this, since I plan on staying here forever.

(frozen comment)

[theobviouschild]

Actually people would have problems if it was a brand new site because it gives certain people migraines and headaches.

Sorry, I'm just really tired of that being glossed over and ignored.

Thank you for taking the time to try and explain it and actually giving a damn about your userbase and doing so for years. I want to give you digital cookies.

(frozen comment)

[denise]

No, I absolutely don't mean to minimize that, but at the same time, photosensitive people who were bothered by a site they weren't already invested in would just not return to the site. Technically, yes, that would be "having a problem", in that they would have a physical reaction, but they wouldn't care about the site and they'd just not come back.

Not that it's smart of a designer to not account for photosensitivity (there's a reason we have site skins with three different background colors and the default skin is a very light grey and not white), but if a new site didn't account for photosensitivity, photosensitives would just go away and not return. (Well, maybe a few would send scathing feedback, I know I do whenever a site is inaccessible, but most of us disabled people don't bother anymore because we've learned that nobody cares. Sigh.)

[icarus_suraki]

I just wanted to jump in here and say that this entire thread has been fascinating--thank you for illustrating and illuminating some of the things that may have gone into LJ's latest decision. Totally fascinating. So thank you!

+1

[whitelighter]

Seconding this! It's been quite nice to read and very informative.

+3!

[talibusorabat]

And now I kind of want to pick up a book on social media theory. Derp.

[jae]

I really like the new Create Entries page, and was using it for a while, but I switched back because I couldn't find a way to easily tick a box that says "don't crosspost this entry" for one single post, as you can do for the old Create Entries page. Are any plans to add one before setting the new Create Entries page up as the default?

-J

[denise]

Hit the gear icon (in the upper right) to enter settings mode, check the 'crosspost' box. Many people are having trouble figuring that out, so we're thinking of better ways to call attention to it.

[jae]

Aha! Thank you. It's probably just a matter of getting accustomed to it, and spreading the word that you didn't take a feature away.

-J

[dragovianknight]

If you click the settings "cog" next to create poll, you'll get a screen that will give you the option to display crossposting settings.

[jae]

Thank you!

-J