December points bonus time!

[denise]

Hello, Dreamwidth! It's been a hell of a year on our end, but amidst issues ranging from family to health to family health, all y'all and this place of ours have been a bright spot. As our way of saying thank you for continuing to help us prove it's possible to run a social site without selling your users (or your soul), it's once again time for the December points bonus!

For the month of December, all orders of points and paid time in the shop (https://www.dreamwidth.org/shop), for you or sent as a gift, will get a 10% bonus of points once you complete the order. For instance, if you buy a 12-month paid account (350 points), you'll get another 35 points once the order is complete for you to use on a future order. This bonus only applies to orders of paid time or points -- bonus icons and rename tokens don't receive points bonuses. If you buy paid time or points for a friend, the bonus points will go to you, not to them.

IMPORTANT TO KNOW: When we say "the month of December", that goes by server time, which is in UTC. It's not midnight your local time zone! (For people in Pacific time, for instance, the promotion ends at 4PM on 31 December.) Every year a few people get bitten by this, so if you're planning on buying paid time during December, it's best to do it on 30 December or before.

This is our annual way of saying thank you, because we owe you a lot. Every day it seems like there's another story in the news about a site selling data on its users, manipulating what their users see, or prioritizing page loads and "active users" metrics for their investors over people's actual lives, safety, and security. We built Dreamwidth because we believed there could be a better way, and we are grateful for all of you who believe in that better way enough to come along for the ride.

Here's to a wonderful December holiday season and to a 2018 that does not suck.

(Comment notifications may be delayed for up to an hour or two, due to the high volume of notifications generated after an update is posted to dw-news. This was posted at 12:45 AM EST (Sorry, no link to time zone converter). Please don't worry about delayed notifications until at least two hours after that.)

Comments

Also, an apology

[denise]

I'm not able to type on a non phone keyboard right now & probably won't be able to for another month or so after my (upcoming) next & hopefully last round of incredibly un-fun treatments, so if you're waiting for a response to a support query you've sent, I'm incredibly sorry: I've been doing what I can from my phone, but I don't have to tell y'all how tough it is to do things that way. (And yes, it's a priority!) Jen has been doing a miraculous job covering for me for way too long, but there's occasionally stuff I need to handle. Cross your fingers for me since I can't really right now!

Re: Also, an apology

[peoppenheimer]

Thank you for Dreamwidth and its spirit. May your recovery proceed rapidly; your courage often inspires me.

[kore]

Every day it seems like there's another story in the news about a site selling data on its users, manipulating what their users see, or prioritizing page loads and "active users" metrics for their investors over people's actual lives, safety, and security. We built Dreamwidth because we believed there could be a better way, and we are grateful for all of you who believe in that better way enough to come along for the ride.

Amen! DW is my online home AND the better way, and I love it and am so glad I can support it.

[yourlibrarian]

All of this. I am really glad that Dreamwidth exists and am thankful to be able to use it as my home base online.

[azurelunatic]

Here's to another year of Dreamwidth!

[alexseanchai]

Y'all awesome. Just saying.

Am I supposed to have gotten a duplicate set of notifs for this post?

[denise]

Happens if you have multiple accounts subscribed to notifs, happens more rarely with a single account that's an edge case bug we can't nail down!

[mc776]

Came this close to knocking over my monitor with my wallet.
(this anonymous gift option is a godsend. which god? yes.)

You folks are amazing.

[subsequent]

I hope you get better soon - and thanks for all you do with dw ♥

[moem]

Best wishes for your health, and for Dreamwidth too. You do such important work and you do it so well. It's appreciated and so are you. ❤

[mystical_journey]

A speedy recovery to you and a happy holiday.

Thanks for dreamwidth!

[mekare]

Thank you for all your hard work and providing an online haven! You and your dreamwidth team are awesome! I hope your treatments is effective and will pay off. Have a lovely holiday season and thank you for the nice December offer. 💖 💖 💖

[velshtein]

Thank you so much for all your hard work! :)

End-of-the-year giving

[brainwane]

I appreciate the points bonus and am spreading the word -- thank you!

Is there any chance you'll be doing some end-of-the-year charitable giving this month as well? (For those who are newer to Dreamwidth: Dreamwidth has in the past given end-of-year donations, e.g., in 2011 to a nonprofit focusing on women in open tech and free culture, in 2012 to several organizations, in 2013 as a community tech conference sponsorship, and in 2014 to the nonprofit behind a different community tech conference.) I am helping with fundraising for a few organizations and would be happy to recommend them -- and would happily put that recommendation in a separate recommendation thread here -- but wanted to ask first about DW's plans.

(If this conversation ought to be in dw_biz, or if you simply don't have the bandwidth to have it right now, I totally understand.)

Re: End-of-the-year giving

[denise]

I don't have the cope for it this year, alas! Maybe we'll do a charity drive midyear in '18, though; I feel bad that we've been so irregular about it! Feel free to make your pitch here in the comments for anyone reading, though.

[dewline]

Thank you kindly.

The news arrived on my Reading List perfectly timed for renewal purposes, too.

[lovelyangel]

Thank you again for the December bonus! It’s actually burned in as an annual event on my calendar, and I was pleased to see the banner in the store on the morning of December 1. I waited a half day (because of glitches in the past) then bought my points and verified that the bonus was applied.

This is the first year I’ve stopped to think about what I’ll do with the bonus points; I’ve simply let them accumulate. I’ve decided that this is a Buy 10 Years – Get 1 Year Free! sort of deal – and that I’m halfway to my free year!

[denise]

Ha! We *are* coming up on our 10 year anniversary in about 18 months... (Seriously, where does the time go?)

[atrophymidwife]

So grateful for you and for this space! Thank you for keeping the dream alive. 🙏🏻🖤

[alexia_drake]

I've joined Dreamwidth this year and I love it! This post is perfectly timed, I was considering getting a paid account (because 15 userpics is not enough) but since I'm between jobs I felt it was a bit pricey for me at the moment. This bonus makes it more worth it, so I will hopefully gift myself with a paid account before December 30th, because my priority is buying presents for my family.

Happy Holidays, and I wish you good health for 2018 :)

[primwood]

Hello! So glad to hear from you again. I'm so sorry you've had health/family problems this year. (So have I.) May 2018 bring big blessings to one and all!

[denise]

It's been A Year, hasn't it? I would say there's no way things can go but up, but I said that about 2016 and LOOK WHAT HAPPENED.

Hoping your 2018 is much better, too.

[ilanarama]

Thanks for running this promotion again - I've re-upped my (lapsed) paid account. :-) I also want to +1 the comments about being thankful for an ad-free blog option, and also that I hope you are recovered soon.

[lb_lee]

This site has treated me better as a paid user than Patreon has. As I've grown to learn more about social media as a business, I am all the more thankful for places like Dreamwidth that run the way they do, without addictive design or treating customers like poor substitutions for shareholders or an eventual buy-out.

Thank you for all the work you have done!

[epistasthai]

Thank you so much for giving us a safe haven!

And best wishes for a good outcome to your treatment, Denise!

[20_00]

"Every day it seems like there's another story in the news about a site selling data on its users, manipulating what their users see, or prioritizing page loads and "active users" metrics for their investors over people's actual lives, safety, and security. We built Dreamwidth because we believed there could be a better way, and we are grateful for all of you who believe in that better way enough to come along for the ride." -- For us, users from Russia, this is especially important. Thank you!

I wish you health and successful treatment.

[dewline]

I wish my fellow DW users - particularly those of you in Russia and other places of similar peril - safety, peace of mind and heart, freedom to be your best selves, and much success in your lives.

[rosanticis]

Hey Ms Denise,

thank you for the update. Funny thing is I have multiple notices about this in my Hotmail. Just a heads up..

(though Yahoo appears to be fine)

[denise]

Still trying to figure out what's causing that; it only happens on the site itself, not in testing, so we're having trouble nailing it down. I'm sorry!

[devilbear]

I'm hesitant to post this because I definitely don't want to come across as pushy or anything, but I just wanted to say I hope the devs (dev? team? uncertain how many you guys have) can look into the importer issues soon. It's been a couple months, and comments still can't be imported from insanejournal. ^^; Hopefully it's something that can be easily remedied.

That said, I'm so glad that there's at least one website left out here that still gives a crud about user safety and privacy. I've come to question my membership on quite a few popular websites lately, in light of privacy concerns. Thanks for continuing to care about the userbase! ♥

[denise]

Never feel bad about bringing up problems! We know we're not perfect and we're never gonna get annoyed by someone asking about something. :)

I might be misremembering but I think the problem with imports from IJ is something on their end with the data feed that allows us to import data, not something we can fix on our end, but I'll put it on the list of things I need to look into when I get back to being able to type on an actual keyboard if nobody else can get time to dig into it before then. The importer is kind of bolted together with duct tape and baling wire in a lot of ways since real world data is so messy and it's kind of a workaround to begin with. I'm sorry!

[valo]

Get well soon, Denise. I'm keeping all my fingers and toes crossed for a speedy recovery after the treatments.

And I cannot even begin to thank you for opening this place. It feels safe and friendly here, and from what I can tell, the other people we've been pulling over from IJ and LJ seem to enjoy it, too. Our little RP community has recently crossed 100 active members and keeps growing. I'm definitely going to take advantage of the December points bonus! I hope many others will, too.

[warriorinside]

Get well soon and here's to this being the 100% end of treatments for you!

DW has quickly become my home base, and I wouldn't want to go anywhere else. THANK YOU AND YOUR TEAM for this site.

[adamlambert]

Feel better, Denise! :)

Will there ever be plans to offer permanent accounts? I'd honestly love to take advantage of that, if they're ever offered.

[denise]

We have no plans to sell seed (permanent) account a again -- there's a longer explanation in the pre launch business FAQ here: https://dw-biz.dreamwidth.org/332.html#perm

Original plan was just to sell them at launch, but then we got hit with 4 months of no income when PayPal closed our account for not censoring user content they didn't like. So we ran off the 6 month emergency fund while finding a replacement, and held another seed sale once we could take payments again to restock it. So, a seed account sale would actually mean disaster had happened and we needed to replenish our margin of funds!

We did make sure there's nothing a seed account can do that a premium paid account can't, though, So you aren't missing out on any actual *features*. A seed account is a premium paid account that never expires, basically (and the people who bought them took a gamble on us in the beginning, so we appreciate them a lit, but we appreciate the people who pay regularly just as much; they're both important to our business model in different ways.)