Friday, April 8, 2011
Может, оставим dreamwidth в покое?
С некоторым ужасом наблюдаю намечающееся нашествие русскоязычных ЖЖ-юзеров на тихий и мирный ресурс dreamwidth.org. Народ уже вовсю обсуждает, как легко будет и его положить. Я тут уже неделю тусуюсь в Бонне (и буду до конца месяца) - в первую же ночь (с предыдущей пятницы на субботу) не мог заснуть из-за того, что под окном всю ночь громогласно развлекалась пьяная русскоязычная компания, извергая гнусный поток матерщины. Представил себе, как ЖЖ-ная накипь начнет аналогичным образом буянить на ни в чем неповинном dreamwidth, и стало не по себе. Здорово было бы, если бы туда только приличные люди перебрались, но ведь так не получится ...
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24 comments:
As someone who's been on Dreamwidth more or less since the beginning... I am not sure I understand your objection. I mean, obviously, I wouldn't want Dreamwidth to have to deal with the spambots and DDoS attacks that LJ does, but other than that, if they are real people, I don't think Dreamwidth would object to having more customers, no matter who they are.
I'm not sure the analogy of drunk people partying under your window really applies, in this case. Other than the spambots and the DDoS attacks (which I don't think were what you were talking about), do you really think that having flourishing Russian and American communities existing side by side for so long really hurt LJ that much? (To be honest, my impression from hanging out a lot in a mostly-English-speaking corner of LJ is that people there are barely even aware of the Russian LJ community's existence.) Or do you think it would somehow work differently on Dreamwidth than on LJ?
Obviously, more issues would probably start coming up if more people start moving to Dreamwidth, but that's what happens when a service becomes more popular, isn't it? Nothing good can come from trying to limit membership to only "nice" people.
I'm sorry you have to deal with the rowdy partying under your window, though. :(
Ok, so how do I get a valid invite code? I've tried some random ones from the list at http://dw-codesharing.dreamwidth.org/ but they seemed to be all used already. I don't mind buying a paid account but I find their explanations confusing: can I just make a one-time payment to have an account for an unlimited time? Instead they mention some points valid for some periods of time ...
And actually I was talking of the spambots, DDoS attacks and things of a similar nature.
They don't seem to have permanent accounts (unlike LJ). However, I did not dig deeply.
I have plenty of invite codes! I'll be glad to give you one (or more, if you need them. *g*)!
And I don't really think Dreamwidth can avoid DDoS attacks or an invasion of spambots if they start getting more popular. It seems to be an unfortunate consequences of blogging online, these days.
Cema (and Katya as an expert of course): now I am confused. Does an invite code give you a permanent account, or is it valid only for some time period? Katya, why don't you send me one by email. Many thanks!
Thanks, Katya, I am in (with the same name avzel). Still it would be nice to know if this is a permanent account, or it should be periodically renewed.
@Simon Hawkin: they had a one-time sale of about 200 permanent accounts when they first started two years ago. (I calculated at the time that it would not be worth it for me to get one, but I know a lot of people who did.) They told us then that this would be the only sale of permanent accounts they would ever have, though.
@avzel: "Permanent accounts" both on LJ and on Dreamwidth are a level of paid accounts where you get all the benefits of a paid account, at the highest level, and those benefits will never expire. I have a permanent account on LJ, for example.
With an invite code, you get a free account, which is the most basic one. It's permanent in the sense that you mean - you won't need to renew it, and you will always have it available to you unless you delete it - but you would need to pay extra for any paid features. (Which you probably wouldn't want, in any case.) If you do buy paid features, then they might expire at some point, but your account itself never will.
I've got to be honest, though - if you don't like posting on LJ, then you probably won't like posting on Dreamwidth, either. There are some features I like on Dreamwidth that LJ doesn't have (like being able to expand cut tags without needing to go to the post itself, for example), but the main approach is very similar on both. I mostly like DW because it makes it so easy to crosspost to LJ, and to back up your LJ and comments. (I don't know if you can back up blogspot posts the same way - I think they were planning to implement that at some point, but I don't know if they've done it yet.)
Thanks, Katya, it seems clear now. I don't post at LJ not because I don't like their interface, but for a single reason that I don't like this SUP ownership. And I think the latest developments confirm my view: they manage LJ very poorly, and nobody knows who is actually calling the shots. I am happy with posting here (at the blogger), but I may want to use DW for creating the friends list and for commenting both at DW and at LJ, if it will still be alive.
By the way, how exactly do you comment from your DW account to an LJ posting?
I don't think you can comment on an LJ post with your DW account. The closest thing would probably be to comment through OpenID, where you can specify which other journal site you are posting from. Both DW and LJ allow you to comment using OpenID, I think, and it's relatively easy to sign up for it. That's not the same thing as commenting using your Dreamwidth account, though.
When I said that DW makes it easy to crosspost to LJ, I meant that it's easy to post to both DW and LJ at the same time, which is what I usually do. (In other words, don't expect my DW journal to be different from my LJ. When I post, I always post in both places at once.)
And Dreamwidth was started in large part in response to many of the issues you are talking about. One of the founding members of Dreamwidth was a long-time LJ staff member, who was disturbed at some of the things she saw happening at LJ, and wanted to start a site of her own where the staff members would be more responsive and respectful towards users.
What makes Dreamwidth different from the other LJ-like sites out there, IMO, is that they started the site with a business plan in place. They very carefully kept in mind from the very beginning what it would take to get the site off the ground and keep it going (the sale of permanent accounts was a way for them to get some start-up funds at the beginning, for example, and there is a reason they decided that they would only do it once; and the invite codes are a way for them to try and limit the growth of their site, and also limit the spambots).
Now, I am not sure if this business plan would be robust enough to deal with DDoS attacks on the level that LJ has had to deal with recently, but out of all the LJ-like sites out there, it's the one I think would have the best chance.
Katya, thanks again. Things are much more clear now.
Here is a post about the DDoS attacks against LJ and why people should support the Russian LJ community, by that same founding member of Dreamwidth I was talking about just now: http://synecdochic.dreamwidth.org/459929.html .
I think the post and its comments are pretty interesting, in view of what I said earlier about the English-speaking community on LJ being barely aware that the Russian community even existed.
I think she idealizes Russian LJ a lot.
I don't actually see any formal argument
that will prove that the recent problems with LJ are related to SUP bad management.
The main reason it was attacked is
(probably) the fact that it is very popular in Russia - SUP can do nothing
about it. I am sure that we will never know the actual reason.
Personally, I really don't care who owns
LJ or any other blogging service: from my point of view the only reasonable attitude to blogging is not to take
ANYTHING (contents, ownership...) seriously.
Мда. Написала длинный коммент в духе "Не понимаю, с чего опять все решили бежать из ЖЖ", а Ваш блогспот взял и отказался его постить и просто съел так, что не восстановить (ЖЖ, заметим, тут заведомо ни при чем -- я захожу не оттуда, а с честного гугл-аккаунта). Прекрасная иллюстрация того, что проблемы случаются везде и ЖЖ в этом смысле ничуть не хуже любого другого сервиса.
Еще я изначально написала, что Ваш риторический вопрос в заголовке выглядит немного странно -- неужели Вы именно своих читателей считаете злостными хулиганами, вознамерившимися сломать несчастный dreamwidth, да еще сравнивая их с пьяными боннскими дебоширами?
Я абсолютно согласна с тем, что тем временем написал Саша, и в упор не понимаю, с чего народ куда-то рванул. Ну, полежал ЖЖ два раза по полдня, so what? Меньше времени мы все потратили на всякую ерунду (говорю как ЖЖ-addicted :) А я не видела еще ни одного сайта (в том числе нужного по работе), который периодически бы не лежал. Такое впечатление, что на самом деле у некоторых людей очень сильна тяга к всевозможным переменам и они просто нашли повод, чтобы отправиться играть в новую игрушку. Я же патологический консерватор и ни одному девизу не следую с большим рвением, чем “If it ain't broken, don't fix it”. А ЖЖ, на мой взгляд, пока вовсе не broken.
Саша и Наташа: если у меня с самого начала образовалась аллергия на СУП, от которой я тут же смылся на блоггер, то это исключительно моя личная особенность, и я не собираюсь никого ни в чем убеждать по этому поводу. Разумеется, я не сравниваю своих читателей с пьяными дебоширами и не подозреваю их ни в каких дурных намерениях. Но это факт, что ЖЖ-ная среда вслед за нормальными людьми заполнилась какой-то омерзительной шушерой, из-за которой всё больше нормальных людей переходит в подзамочное состояние. А на dreamwidth в этом пока что нет необходимости, и мне стало его жалко. Но впрочем, меня уже переубедила неотразимая в споре katyaz.
@avzel: You are right, I think she does idealize Russian LJ a bit too much. And I disagree with what she says about the differences between the Russian and English-speaking communities on LJ. (It feels kind of strange to see her talk about Russian LJ as this one homogeneous *thing*, when so many different people are using it in so many different ways.) But I still kind of like it that she rose in Russian LJ's defense like that. :)
And I also agree with all the other people who posted here. I have my own issues with LJ, but these DDoS attacks are not LJ's fault, and I think they've actually handled them quite well. I don't think any other service could have done better - certainly not Dreamwidth with its smaller servers.
There are many good reasons to leave LJ, and I think Dreamwidth is a good alternative for where to go. But I don't think these DDoS attacks are a good reason to leave.
That said, if anybody else wants invite codes, I have about 19 more invite codes available, and I would be happy to give them out to people.
Лично я воспринимаю весь интернет как одно и то же место; т.е. для меня LJ, blogspot, dreamwidth, facebook - это один и тот
же сайт.
Katya: what makes you think that LJ has handled DDoS attacks well?
Саша: много лет назад один прекрасный и ныне здравствующий математик задал мне один из самых странных вопросов в моей жизни - а вот верно ли, что Кнут и Кнутсон это один и тот же человек? Пожалуй, твое утверждение с этим поспорит. :) На этот счет есть одна из моих любимых цитат (из "Фабиана" Эриха Кестнера): "Да здравствует маленькая разница!".
@avzel: LJ was having problems during the DDoS attacks, but it didn't go down completely. There were times, even during the attacks, when it was possible to go through, which indicates to me that someone was working very hard and trying everything they could to keep LJ up. (They would try one thing, it would work for a while then fail, then they would keep trying different things.) A lot of people were able to post and read LJ, apparently at the very height of the attacks. And they were up and completely working again amazingly fast after the attacks. Given how intense these attacks apparently were, I think that is pretty impressive.
LJ also let people know what was going on pretty soon after the attacks. Everybody knew what was going on, and why LJ was having problems.
From what I remember, when Google was under DDoS attacks, it went down for about as long as that, and it was much harder to find information about what was going on. And nobody thought that Google handled those attacks badly at the time. (I don't remember when that was - a few years ago, maybe? I just remember gmail going down for a while because of the attacks.)
By the way, do you know about the site status.livejournal.com? It is a site that gives quick updates on Livejournal's status, when there is a problem with LJ. It's on a different server from the rest of LJ, so it's generally not affected by any problems LJ might be having, and it can be a good way to find out if there is a problem. I found it very useful during the DDoS attacks.
OK, apparently I still haven't mastered doing links on blogger. The site I was talking about is: http://status.livejournal.com/ .
Katya: well, this is all very nice except the LJ is currently down again, while your link cheerfully ignores this fact.
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