Uhhhh

[vivien]

Have you guys heard about the redesigns of LJ comment pages?

Apparently subject lines within posts are going away? So... for lake parties, birthdays, etc they may be invisible unless tinkering happens?

There's a good explanation here, and wow, am I glad I saved a lot of the large party threads from past years to hard drive already.

I do not know enough about code and function to help, but there is some information on customization?

Uh, I have plenty of DW codes. Just sayin'.

Comments

[captain_fucking_magic]

Ugh. The loss of the drop-down menu for icons is going to suck. My main account, which I hardly use anymore anyway because LJ keeps fucking stuff up, has nearly 300 icons. But I'll lose those anyway, because I am NOT giving any more money to LJ, ever.


I also have DW codes. Lots of them. I've been happily situated over there for a while, now.

[ashen_key]

The loss of the drop-down menu for icons is going to suck

...Wait, the DROP-DOWN MENU is going?

The everlasting fuck?

[captain_fucking_magic]

Yeah, IKR? All those lovingly created keywords to help me find my icons in about two seconds? Well, that was apparently a massive waste of time that I spent developing my keyword system. :|

[ashen_key]

Yeah, and....I don't WANT all of my icons to load in a scrolling thing - I have very small, very expensive internet.

-_-

[captain_fucking_magic]

Apparently LJ doesn't realise that the internet is rationed in Australia and NZ. And probably other places as well.

I also don't think they understand how bandwidth works, because they're pretty much making it to where no matter which style you use, you've got to load a bunch of extra images and crap.

[ashen_key]

And I'm worse than normal, as I have mobile broadband - hi, only a couple of gigs worth of data. I'm VERY careful about what I load. Just.

*fumes*

[captain_fucking_magic]

Ew. I guess you'd better make sure your default icon is a good one, then. :|

[sleightofhand]

You could give mobile view a try. It's pretty ugly since it's designed for tiny mobile screens but it's incredibly lightweight.

[ashen_key]

...that really is an excellent idea, thank you.

[silveraspen]

Clearly it's a good use of computer resources to render between 3 and 300 images in a load menu for every single comment-or-post-or-other based query for a userbase of this size.

Oh, wait.

*acid dryness*

ETA: That said, I wonder if I can force a mobile rendering on the main site. Surely they wouldn't be short-sighted enough to not support a mobile userbase, given the market. Surely.

[captain_fucking_magic]

They push those extra icon sales so much, too. I really don't think they have the first clue about what they're doing.

Oh well. I've stopped giving money to LJ long ago, and have been set up on DW with all my hundreds of icons for a while now. I only come back here for fandom things anymore.



But my biggest issue with all of this is the accessibility factor. Hell, I know we have at least one member here in the game who uses a screen reader. I can't begin to imagine how these changes are going to fuck up the site for visually-impaired users.

[sleightofhand]

You can, the url is slightly different. For example the back room is: http://m.livejournal.com/read/user/ways-back-room.

[leeshajoy.livejournal.com]

Unless you have enough DW codes to move every journal that has ever posted to Milliways, that doesn't help matters very much.

[captain_fucking_magic]

Actually, I just heard a rumour, and it appears to be true.

DW is in open-registration right now.

[sdelmonte]

I don't think it would be feasible to move the entire game in any case. (Does anyone use DW for RP yet?)

[vivien]

I do. Not in a game, but for sandbox stuff, yeah. I know there are RP comms there. DW is way more stable and a lot less irritating than LJ.

And ha, I wasn't suggesting a massive migration of Milliways. But for personal journals, it's a nice option.

[leeshajoy.livejournal.com]

I barely even use my personal journal. I only have it so I could get into Milliways. Fuck, fuck, fuck, and fuck.

[remindmeofthe.livejournal.com]

I have a ton of DW codes gathering dust, too. I'm happy to pass them on.

[ashen_key]

Also can't hurt to go and flood LJ's contact options with 'hell no' on both subject headers and icon drop-menu. I actually got a response when I sent mine.

[kd7sov]

Ffffffffh

Y'know, most companies, when I ask them why they want to not have my money, I'm being facetious based on their advertising not appealing to me. With LJ, I have no such frivolity.

I ought to look into what it would take to link a Dreamwidth account to get what's in an existing LJ one. I hear this is a service which is available...

[vivien]

It is, and it's easy. Well, except for when there's a mass influx of LJ users migrating over. But seriously, it's like two clicks and your whole journal is backed up there.

[viridian.livejournal.com]

Well, this sucks.

[agoodshinkickin.livejournal.com]

We never did find a way to back up the main comm, did we?

[oxfordtweed]

Backing up comms isn't really possible for copyright reasons, unfortunately. Since each person who posts owns the content of the post, backing up the comm and re-uploadiing it to DW would wind up violating copyright law. =/

[agoodshinkickin.livejournal.com]

Considering the conceit of Milliways already violates copyright law, I'm not too worried.

[vivien]

Right. Besides that, when anyone backs up a journal with fic challenges, drabble tags, etc. - which was a bone of contention in the early days - it happens anyway.

It would be nice if that program that converts journals to PDF could work.

[vivien]

We did not. But I have a DVD of all 1000 of Tom's memoried threads plus lots more cos I am.an insane person.

Wow, the new comments are hateful.

[agoodshinkickin.livejournal.com]

Hate filled comments on my LJ?
It's more common than you think.

[vivien]

Ha, I meant they are hateful to my phone (and I despise the mobile interface - it doesn't work well for me)

SIGH

Bing, this kinda sucks.

[agoodshinkickin.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it really kind of does.
End of an era, really.

I'm trying to channel my inner-Mike and look on the bright side: think of all the money I won't be putting into this site for paid accounts. Perhaps I shall spend it on hookers and blow!

[vivien]

*sporfles*

I mean, you can set up party threads with separate posts, but... yeah.

[agoodshinkickin.livejournal.com]

I'll probably just make each thread in a party have its own bolded subject line at the very beginning.

[river-monk.livejournal.com]

While I completely understand the urge to move over to Dreamwidth due to LJ's massive awfulness, the problem is that we are absolutely huge. We've been around for a long time, we have a gigantic membership, and that membership is always growing. We take up a lot of server room, and that's unlikely to change
To take advantage of Dreamwidth's offering free codes right now, without talking to the maintainers would be the height of bad manners.

While I support the idea of moving the game, I think we should first take it up with the maintainers of Dreamwidth to see how best this could be accomplished without taking up too much of their time and server room.

[sleightofhand]

Moving just the currently-active journals, and leaving the rest intact on LJ as an archive, would not be all that difficult.

If you're talking about importing the whole game and ever post ever—that would be intensive, but also, I think, unnecessary.

[vivien]

I never suggested moving the game. I was just offering codes for anyone who might like them. :)

[weaverandom.livejournal.com]

Looks like it's rolled out. No subject line available. Icon drop-down loads all icons at once.

Well, fuck.

[camwyn]

This is the official LJ feedback form, for whatever good that does.

I would link to the programmer responsible for this, the one who claimed that he figured maybe 1% of users used subject lines so he was just going to remove them, but a) he posts in Russian and b) he apparently has a habit of deciding anyone who posts to his journal in English is clearly just a spammer and can be ignored. (At least, that's what I've been reading from people who have some facility with Russian.)

[oxfordtweed]

That's sort of hilariously ironic, considering most of the spam I got when I posted here was in Russian.

[agoodshinkickin.livejournal.com]

Know what's great about that feedback page?
You can't submit feedback without supplying a subject heading for the post.

[leeshajoy.livejournal.com]

Well, obviously they need a subject header in their email inbox, so they can know what the comment is about before they read it. Because Their Time Is Valuable, And Ours Is Not.

[leeshajoy.livejournal.com]

I am seriously debating whether it would be worthwhile to leave LiveJournal altogether, and all the friends I've made here and the roleplay I love, so that I don't have to feel dirty for making use of a service that shows such blatant contempt for its userbase.

[chanter1944]

... Okay, this /sucketh/ mightily. The hell is this, LJ?

I do have to say, though this absolutely sucks Green Bay bay water through a straw, I do *not* like the idea of moving Milliways anywhere. This goes double for shifting only the active journals and leaving the rest as an archive. Yikes! No thank you.

[leeshajoy.livejournal.com]

Tell me, does the icon-switching interface work for you at *all* right now? I suspect it doesn't play nice with screen-readers.

[chanter1944]

Not at all, which is infuriating. I can only use my default. I've attempted to switch, nothing doing. I said as much in a comment to the latest newspost, and I've sent feedback, but if patterns of behavior hold, nothing will be done.

... Sigh. Damn it, LJ, you're almost as bad as the Walker administration here.

[chanter1944]

Uh, that's LJ as in livejournal, not as in Leeshajoy. Just so I don't accidentally offend. <3 you.