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Weekly Update: March 1
Good morning afternoon evening $time_of_day, Dreamwidth! After discovering once again that February has 28 days (you'd think we'd remember this by now), and since the Olympics are over (seriously, did you see that hockey game yesterday?) and I need something to do with the time that was devoted to actually watching TV (it's a once-every-two-years activity), Mark has handed over the weekly update to me for my turn at the helm.
One incredibly long sentence later, let's start in on the update.
This week we welcome new contributor![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
noodles with his first patch for us! You can see the list of bugs resolved this week in this week's code tour; it's a small sampling, but it's a nice mix.
For March, we've declared a Suggestions hackathon: implementing things that have come through our Suggestions process. Sinceyvi declared the hackathon on 2/23, we've already gone from 193 unassigned suggestions down to 180 unassigned suggestions, so we're making progress!
If you'd like to join us, check out the![[site community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/comm_staff.png)
dw_dev and dw_dev_training communities. (We are exceedingly friendly to newcomers!) The list of unassigned suggestions can be found here.
Hat tips and huge thanks this week go out to our antispam team, who are still dealing with an incredible uptick in the amount of comment spam we've been getting. They're doing a great job in protecting DW users from spam, whether anonymous or from logged-in or OpenID users.
The antispam team on any site are unsung heroes, since you generally only notice them when they aren't doing their jobs. So, Mark and I would like to publicly thank ours, because they rock. Sing off thanks of your own in the comments!
As part of our perpetual quest to make sure our documentation is as good as it can be, and in order to help me with the "Dreamwidth tour" that I've been meaning to work up for oh, about a year now, a question!
What's your favorite new feature that DW has implemented so far? Name them in comments.
If you haven't checked out our journal styles in a while, you might want to: the All Styles list has been steadily growing over time. This week, we've been working to get preview images made for the ones that don't have them yet; next week,afuna and the styles team plan on working to get entirely new layouts that have been submitted to dreamscapes converted into system layouts that anyone can choose.
If your talents lie in CSS, style creation, S2 theme creation, or even putting together pretty colors,dreamscapes could use you! In particular, there are 12 layouts that need someone to convert them from CSS to a system-choosable S2 layout. We could also use more color themes for the Blanket, Brittle, Drifting, and Refried Tablet themes, so if you've got good color sense (or enjoy spending time on Colour Lovers), check it out.
We've made significant progress this week in finding an alternate payment solution after the last few weeks of trouble, and we very much hope to have it implemented quickly. There are some advantages to all of this hassle -- our new processor will likely also give us the ability to accept electronic checks, so you'll probably be able to pay us through direct bank draft if you aren't able to use your credit card. (We'll likely only be able to accept Visa/MC through them; we've looked for a solution that lets us accept other cards that are more common outside the US, but the field there is more slim.)
Our new processor will also offer the option for recurring billing -- sign up once and have your payment automatically made when your account comes due, unless you cancel it. We'd need to implement the code for it on our end, though, and that's something we don't necessarily want to spend the time doing if there isn't interest in it.
Is that something people are interested in? If it's a feature that would be useful to you guys, we'll add it to the list of things we want to accomplish; I doubt we'd be able to get it in immediately, but if you guys would find it more helpful than pushy, we'll add it to the wish list.
In the meantime, we're still accepting checks and money orders in USD through our shop, and if you have a paid account that's about to expire and you can't use check or money order for any reason, contact us at accounts@dreamwidth.org or by opening a Support request in the Account Payments department.
*
That's it from us for the week! We'll be back next week with more tales from the front, including news about whatafuna will be working on as soon as she's able to devote her full-time attention to Dreamwidth. (Only a month left!) 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 next week for our next update.
One incredibly long sentence later, let's start in on the update.
1. Development
This week we welcome new contributor
noodles with his first patch for us! You can see the list of bugs resolved this week in this week's code tour; it's a small sampling, but it's a nice mix.For March, we've declared a Suggestions hackathon: implementing things that have come through our Suggestions process. Since
yvi declared the hackathon on 2/23, we've already gone from 193 unassigned suggestions down to 180 unassigned suggestions, so we're making progress! If you'd like to join us, check out the
dw_dev and dw_dev_training communities. (We are exceedingly friendly to newcomers!) The list of unassigned suggestions can be found here.2. Antispam
Hat tips and huge thanks this week go out to our antispam team, who are still dealing with an incredible uptick in the amount of comment spam we've been getting. They're doing a great job in protecting DW users from spam, whether anonymous or from logged-in or OpenID users.
The antispam team on any site are unsung heroes, since you generally only notice them when they aren't doing their jobs. So, Mark and I would like to publicly thank ours, because they rock. Sing off thanks of your own in the comments!
3. Hidden Treasures
As part of our perpetual quest to make sure our documentation is as good as it can be, and in order to help me with the "Dreamwidth tour" that I've been meaning to work up for oh, about a year now, a question!
What's your favorite new feature that DW has implemented so far? Name them in comments.
4. Styles
If you haven't checked out our journal styles in a while, you might want to: the All Styles list has been steadily growing over time. This week, we've been working to get preview images made for the ones that don't have them yet; next week,
afuna and the styles team plan on working to get entirely new layouts that have been submitted to dreamscapes converted into system layouts that anyone can choose.If your talents lie in CSS, style creation, S2 theme creation, or even putting together pretty colors,
dreamscapes could use you! In particular, there are 12 layouts that need someone to convert them from CSS to a system-choosable S2 layout. We could also use more color themes for the Blanket, Brittle, Drifting, and Refried Tablet themes, so if you've got good color sense (or enjoy spending time on Colour Lovers), check it out.5. Payments
We've made significant progress this week in finding an alternate payment solution after the last few weeks of trouble, and we very much hope to have it implemented quickly. There are some advantages to all of this hassle -- our new processor will likely also give us the ability to accept electronic checks, so you'll probably be able to pay us through direct bank draft if you aren't able to use your credit card. (We'll likely only be able to accept Visa/MC through them; we've looked for a solution that lets us accept other cards that are more common outside the US, but the field there is more slim.)
Our new processor will also offer the option for recurring billing -- sign up once and have your payment automatically made when your account comes due, unless you cancel it. We'd need to implement the code for it on our end, though, and that's something we don't necessarily want to spend the time doing if there isn't interest in it.
Is that something people are interested in? If it's a feature that would be useful to you guys, we'll add it to the list of things we want to accomplish; I doubt we'd be able to get it in immediately, but if you guys would find it more helpful than pushy, we'll add it to the wish list.
In the meantime, we're still accepting checks and money orders in USD through our shop, and if you have a paid account that's about to expire and you can't use check or money order for any reason, contact us at accounts@dreamwidth.org or by opening a Support request in the Account Payments department.
*
That's it from us for the week! We'll be back next week with more tales from the front, including news about what
afuna will be working on as soon as she's able to devote her full-time attention to Dreamwidth. (Only a month left!) 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 next week for our next update.
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It's kind of hard to say what we want out of the future of our blogging sites. On the one hand, growing bigger means more people to interact with, more ideas for features, styles, etc. and possibly a lower cost because with more people, the price per person theoretically would be cheaper to host everything.
The downside is, the bigger a site gets, the less you feel like your voice is heard, that anything will ever get done, and that it's a "community" versus a "corporation."
I like LJ and I want the very best for DW, but I do hope that DW doesn't turn into LJ, even if it gets bigger and bigger.
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Dreamwidth feels like it's structured to scale better both physically and especially socially. LiveJournal flips back and forth between being the thing built by Brad in his dorm room (personal project, doesn't scale well) to the clumsily-large social media site bought out by a huge mostly-faceless corporation. LiveJournal's assorted departments were mostly formed when Brad dumped them off on other people because it got too big for him to handle, and then they grew according to the people in them and the existing pressures, and then there were the buyouts and outsiders grafted on; Dreamwidth started out knowing that there would be departments, and it was all handled by Mark and Denise at the outset, but it was never intended that they forever be the sole people handling this thing.
I don't know what LiveJournal's development department staffing looks like, because I am not directly in contact with them very often, and most often there are just a few people in direct contact with the Customer Care end of things, and there's the language barrier to worry about (without specific examples, because I'm not that deep in things, and if I were, I still couldn't give them, but: it's hard on the primarily-English-speaking Customer Care folks when important development conversations take place in Russian, and it's hard on the primarily-Russian-speaking developers when important bug and plans-for-the-site conversations take place in English, and there are precious few folks who are not just passably literate but fluent and comfortable in both languages), but I imagine that Dreamwidth by far has the advantage in developer-to-user ratio, just based on the fact that LiveJournal is a small company with a huge, huge, huge userbase. I desperately and fondly hope that Dreamwidth can keep or improve its present ratio without sacrificing growth, for not only Dreamwidth's own good, but the good of all sites using affiliated code. (And regarding language-problems, Dreamwidth is of course not going to turn away volunteer developers who write good code but don't get along well in English, but is not likely to actually hire developers (upon whom they will then depend) who do not have a firm command of English.)
The presence of people who are actively listening, know how to convey that they are actively listening, and are in a position of sufficient power to do things with that which they've picked up from listening, is an enormous thing. I was recently disappointed with a LiveJournal decision to (in October) let go one of their management staff who had proved himself to be actively listening to the things that were most-needed and incredibly responsive to those needs, but I was more recently encouraged by their re-hire of a developer who is all over the Suggestions community (which is my responsibility). (And of course
I know that LiveJournal looks like much less of a faceless monolith to me than to many other people out there, because I am actively involved in LiveJournal volunteerism, and one of the things that comes with that is increased contact with the people who make LiveJournal work. Dreamwidth still has LiveJournal beat on that front. Denise gets the need for clear and open lines of communication like few other people in any line of work do, and she is good about showing that she is listening, even if she's decided against something or other. I do my poor best to learn at her knee. She's ruthlessly efficient in asking what needs to be done, and merciless in appointing minions to help deal with the communications flood.
It's my dream to learn how it all properly works, and quietly and seamlessly replace some of LiveJournal's naturally-grown but inefficient socioinformational processes with more efficient ones designed from experience as seen on Dreamwidth.