Update, 1 September 2010

[fu]

Hi Dreamwidth!

I've been stuck with a craving for Lucky Charms (they're grrrreat! And are for kids, silly rabbit), so I've been having that for breakfast this entire week. Also had it for lunch this one time a cat leaped up onto the dining table and ate my lunch for me. Hey, at least the cat didn't get my cereal.

Anyway let me just hand off my cereal bowl and we can start with the update.

A Warm Welcome

We've noticed a lot of new members this week! Welcome to those of you who are coming from LiveJournal -- you might want to check out the Guide to Dreamwidth for LiveJournal Users.

Last Week's Progress

This week's code tour was done by the ever awesome cesy.

That brings us to exactly 2002 bugs which have been resolved fixed, and almost 2300 bugs that have been resolved in some way. This week also brought us another milestone: I filed our 3000th bug!

Since our bug list contains planned features and code cleanup as well as actual bugs, I'm really proud of this milestone.

This Week's Request for Feedback

We have another version of the update Create Entry page up for feedback.

And first of all thank you to everyone who left feedback for the last version! We weren't able to respond to everyone individually, but we read all your comments and tried to take all of them into account while working on this latest version.

The short list of changes is:

• less options on page startup


• ability to customize the page so it fits your posting habits


• full list of tags


• editable individual tags


• fix for the red flash issue


• tweaks for older browsers, including better support for resizing


• various appearance and behavior tweaks

Play around with it a bit :)


We built in drag and drop functionality for mouse users. We are aware that this only works for mouse users, and we'll be working on ways to have something that will work for everyone, not just mouse users.

We'll also start integrating the mockup into the backend soon, which means that the next time we do this, the mockup should respect your site scheme and use your icons/tags/etc (it still won't remember your settings, though, and it won't work to actually post).

Communities that Link to Other Communities that Link to Other Communities

This week's theme for community plugs is communities that link to other communities to get you started on finding and making those communities that you're interested in:

• dw_community_promo - the official community promotion community


• community_promo - an unofficial community promotion community


• create_my_comm - a community for community ideas, in case the community you want doesn't exist yet

And finally, some links that don't fit into the theme, because I've said "community" so much that it doesn't look like a real word anymore:

• getting_started - for any questions you may have about getting started here on Dreamwidth


• interests search, to search for people and comms which share your interests


• site search, to search by keyword for posts about topics you're interested in


• the latest entries page, to see the latest public entries posted to Dreamwidth. Also possible to see the latest public entries with a specific tag
  

Equally Warm Goodbye

And that's it for this week. Rest of this month is denise's as per usual. 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.

See you again next week!

Comments

[daweaver]

It is our belief, and that of our lawyers, that comments to an entry fall under compilation copyright, and thus the compiler (aka the journal owner) has the right to move that compilation to a new location.

I'm sure that Dreamwidth has considered the applicable overseas laws, including the relevant European legislation. The Database Directive (96/9/EC) states that EEA nationals or residents retain database rights, similar to the "compilation copyright" mentioned above. It's entirely fair to argue that an individual's journal can be construed as a database under this meaning, and hence can only be copied with the owner's permission. (It's not guaranteed to win, but the case can be made.)

But I can immediately see a grey area. If an EEA national can reasonably argue that their comments (or contributions to a community) form a searchable collection of independent works, or that their contribution is a significant part of the intellectual creation of the database, they could very resonably argue that they hold a database right sufficient to prevent Dreamwidth from importing their work. It's a high hurdle, but I can see certain circumstances - particularly in communities with only a couple of regular posters - where it would be met.

I'm sure that this won't be met with a finger-in-the-ear response of "Laa laa laa, we've chosen the laws of Maryland, this doesn't affect us", because it does. These rights reside with the European citizen, irrespective of where their database is stored. Enforcement, yes, that's more tricky.

(For the record, my view remains that Dreamwidth is morally wrong to import third-party comments without providing a simple process to ensure they can be removed. Deleting those of the last n comments to be publicly available, by hand, is not sufficient.)