Well krrrrrrrap. What to do.....

[ceagle]

As many who will never read this know (they'll never read this because they already left LJ) .... LiveJournal went through a long dis-the-members process years ago, changing things left and right and rapidly, WITHOUT listening to the cries of the dying masses. Many left...

Then things went quiet for a little while, as the dust settled. Then suddenly, and few LJ staffers actually DID start listening again, so the few of us left did have some advocates... and so a much MUCH smaller community remained, but at least we had Functionality and Advocacy again.

And now....
Wow. Now (for a few months at least, maybe about as long as you can easily see they no longer allow comments in the new NEWS threads), LJ has hardened up again, and in the last week or so it seems they have been rolling out View-and-Functionality-Breaking-Code under the auspice of getting it to "look better" on mobile devices.

Well Well, isn't that what they all say.

Whatever happened to coding so that it recognizes your browser and serves a page-set that works accordingly??
I was even able to convince some businesses to do this simple task by showing them how horrible their site looked from browser to browser.

The look itself of Feed vs Friends isn't so bad, but the functionality just so-very-greatly SUCKS. Buttons missing, new useless icons, big playschool circusclown (as others described) links, text stomping on other text, so much Wrong Wrongness.

It's disgusting.
So, what to do...?

What to do -_-

Well, there's DreamWidth... which seemed like a great idea, but they have a hard policy of not letting their Friends Page aggregator reach back further than two weeks. This would not be a problem most of the time, admittedly. But what about those times you are nostalgic and want to read further back?
Oh well.. it's one choice.

Then I see there's another one called InsaneJournal. Great choice with the name, goofballs. Maybe we should all go be Deviant artists too, ah? Srsly... the site looks ok, and a permanent account appears to be only a reasonable $30.

But then the Big Picture...
Any move made, well... would anyone else be there?

Most who I know that have left LJ went to Facebook and/or Tumblr. And Tumblr isn't really very interactive the way most people use it. I've seen some write true journal entries and take comments, but most just post linkoffs (which admittedly are often interesting), and most of the time Tumblr is LJ without Cut Tags. Remember when everyone would get pissed when you didn't use an LJ cut tag and you had more than two images in your posting?

When all is said and done, what really CAN I do? ... I've got a permanent account here, so at the very least I can still peek in and try to scrape some functionality out of it. And maybe LJ will actually fix things. Maybe. :|

I guess I'll keep trying the old peek in and see. At most LJ takes about 5 to 15 minutes anymore, what with the mega-exodus that never really recovered..

And/Or I suppose I can *gulp* force myself to wince and cringe and endure Facebook. We'll see. Gyah it's so horrible. gyah.

*sigh* -_-

====================

EDIT: P.S. I must say I am really thrilled with the vigorous response to this posting. Thanks Everyone!

Comments

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

I refuse to even consider FaceBook due to the history of ignoring privacy settings until caught at it, and the originator once claiming that privacy is an outmoded concept (except for himself - buying surrounding properties top avoid the potential of nosy neighbors, complaining about NSA... making him live in his own world.)

I do have a G+ account, but seldom use it - it's not as user-friendly as LJ/IJ and it took far too long to let me use my identity rather than my given name. Great going for an "Identity Service" as it tried to claim to be.

InsaneJournal is a terrible name, but squeaky (the guy who runs it) is insane in the bast of ways: actually listening to his users/customers. I've been simulcasting LJ/IJ for some time and copied over things from before that.

DreamWidth seems like a good idea, except for the silly time-limit. Sometimes I want to go back further in time - there's good stuff in history! Also, there is the issue of either dealing with minimal function (admittedly, mainly number of icons) or paying by subscription. It makes business sense for them, but I went for the permanent account here & IJ for *my* convenience - pay once, done, have whatever I think I might need. At least until LJ decides they know what I should have better than I know.

What I really want/need is an LJ that works the way *I* want. And I don't use it on mobile because mobile is a pain for so much anyway. Twitter & Plurk are better - they work with short entries - not long posts, which LJ/IJ/DW excel at (or LJ did, once upon a time).

I suppose the best bet is a multiple-system approach where you write once, a client applies/uploads to multiple sites of your choosing, and can edit those simultaneously (or close enough) so one need not fix the same typo multiple times. That would be the ideal journal client. And if one journaling site failed (DeadJournal, GreatestJournal, LiveJournal as it seem to be going) it already has built-in backup(s).

Hootsuite

[titanic.livejournal.com]

Its used by a lot of Public Affairs people for that very reason

Re: Hootsuite

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

Ah, but does Hootsuite handle LiveJournal/InsaneJournal/Dreamwidth? And is it available in a form I can run on Linux - without handing login details to some website in hopes that that will not be compromised?

I do use Hootsuite (on Android, phone) for Twitter.. and, it feels so very 'almost' to me.

[c-eagle.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the comments and thoughts! ^v^
As some others have mentioned re FBook, I do have it, but yeah.. just for family stuff mainly and I detest the interface so much that I truly only go there maybe once every few months, catch up with some family stuff, then jam out of it as fast as I can! ... I admit I am curious how the anthro community interaction is there, since I do hear about it now and then.

I heard too many people peeved with G+ to get deeply involved with it. Google did severely take away privileges on YouTube when not going to G+ though, and I resisted that for a few years, but finally relented just so I could make comments and have my vids seen again. It's kind of a half-G+ status they give ya, but enough to get by without totally drinking the kool-aid...

It's good to know I.J. seems to be run well :} Yeah, I don't like the name (or D.A. much), but I do peek in once in a while.. am I really reading it right that a perm acct is just $30 ?

Good to hear you agree about the goofy time limit on DreamWidth... though someone in the comments below said that may now even be a limitation here.. but I will check it out soon to see if it affects my account too.. I don't notice here because I read almost every day.

The Hootsuite sounds interesting... but I probably won't use it.. I am limiting phone apps since on my 1st phone I put several apps and it was way-crashy ;P

Funny you should mention DeadJournal and GreatestJournal also... another one was DiaryLand and it was a friend there who introduced me to LJ .. :}

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

Yes, when squeaky does the permanent account sale (seems to happen at least a few times a year - often around a holiday - it's been astonishingly low cost. I am a bit amazed that he can continue since that's a single-event revenue generator (unless one gets multiple accounts) rather than a more continuous one.

Plurk is sort of Twitter but with threading and a bit more featureful. I've heard it described as "The bastard child of Twitter and FaceBook" but without the FB privacy issues. http://www.plurk.com It's nice in that you can filter to communitees some, but it's meant for shorter posts. Though some do multiple-post to their own thread to make an LJ-like post.. but there's no nice archive. The past recedes quickly.

[c-eagle.livejournal.com]

Plurk? :D

[the-gneech.livejournal.com]

For whatever it's worth, I'm still here and not planning to go anywhere unless I have to.

-TG

George RR Martin said that too

[titanic.livejournal.com]

In fact a lot of Game of Thrones fans got on Livejournal precisely because GRRM refused to move to Facebook.

[c-eagle.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the comments and info n stuff... it's good to hear from ya!

[c-eagle.livejournal.com]

Thanks man... sure enjoying staying in touch and hearing how things are goin! ^v^

[bunny-plush.livejournal.com]

I noticed there was no 'comment' option on the New LJ changes, and wondered if they assumed the worst (people don't really embrace change well). I would have asked for a take-me-back button because I don't really like the new mobile platform ;o)

Facebook just changed again, too, on my browser. Options moved from top to bottom, side to side. Is that the LJ model or is this the FB model? I began posting a few things there again because it is so devastatingly quiet here, but it's not much better.

I have DreamWidth but as you know I'm a visual poster and don't like the time it takes to upload/link pics that I can just pull off the phone or iPad. Maybe I could try a fresh start there, though...

My tiny friends list here has become very quiet. Some left for FB, others I'm not sure where.

On the other paw, perhaps a lot of people who were once heavy posters have just moved offline? I've been off and on the social media for many years, and maybe the 'others,' unlike me, have just outgrown it. My son doesn't interact with posts in the same manner as I do, preferring to cruise through tumblr or other sites for quick fixes: from him I learned what tl;dr referred to.

*sigh* thanks for the listen :o)

[c-eagle.livejournal.com]

Indeed, I wonder where some have gone... most though I have found elsewhere, but sheeesh it's much harder to keep up!

Yeah, F.B will probably keep changing willy nilly.. and all those ADS.. egads!!

It's been a fairly smooth last 3 years here.. as my last big foray into DreamWidth was about 3 years ago.. LOL.. :D
This other fellow Vakko has InsaneJournal and actually the default skin of that I like quite a bit more, visually and interactively, than DreamWidth..

Over the years (and I've written about this before), other methods arose to stay in touch... but not mucks nor i.m.s nor email nor other things seemed to really exemplify the reality factor of getting to know and interact with people online as well as L.J., so I do hate to see it fade, and as you noted.. it's hard to know quite where the chips will fall.. :/

I might suddenly have a lot of free time again :D ....seriously though, I'd lean toward being able to stay connected unless L.J. really steps on an irreversible mine.

[bunny-plush.livejournal.com]

I might suddenly have a lot of free time again :D ....seriously though, I'd lean toward being able to stay connected unless L.J. really steps on an irreversible mine.

I read that wrong, initially- yep, the free time factor. I became disenchanted with lj and became active in a plushie forum (no, not that one *shudder*) but it wasn't the same. I spent way too much time trying to interact there but finally ditched over personality issues, something that I rarely experienced here. That freed up a lot of my morning coffee/online time :D

I'm on the edge, here. My sixth lj anniversary (mondhasen) was yesterday, but I'm thinking I may not make seven.

[rustyfox.livejournal.com]

I'm glad somebody else noticed! Sometimes LJ feels like being the last guy on Earth.

I don't know what's happened to my friends page now. A week or two ago, I noticed the friends page didn't scale on my mobile. Surprise surprise, the feed page did, but that's god awful (and I detest web pages that load content via javascript, almost as much as I hate infinite scroll!)

Then over the weekend, /friends started redirecting to /feed on all devices. Great. They broke /friends, then took it away completely.

But then I did something in settings, I can't remember what, but the forced-feed page now has a fixed width, and all the floaty nonsense has gone away. It's not exactly pretty, but it works. I can't figure out how though, I'm sure there were two tick boxes where now there's just one, and that has no effect.

Not that, at this point, it really matters anymore :( You and one or two other people are the only reason I keep this thing around! I refuse to join the self-publicising machine that is twitter, and ditto + more ill feelings towards Facebook / Google etc.

Honestly, there's only like one person I talk to on Skype anymore and even he feels more distant these days. "Social media" has turned me almost into a e-social pariah, but I actually prefer that to the idea of constantly having to make myself heard above all the noise. That isn't friends, no matter how hard Facebook advertise it to me on TV. It's honestly shocking how many local-ish folk I thought I were friends with in some sense of the word, utterly forget you exist once you fall off the net radar du jour.

No-one does email anymore either.

[c-eagle.livejournal.com]

Hello fellow.. thanks for peekin' in! ^v^
You described EXACTLY what I was seeing with the LJ bummers... :/ ... a week or two of broken Friends Page Layout, then maybe a couple days when it seemed fixed, and then NO way to get back... ;P
*hugs*
I did try checking that one remaining box that said "view in my own style on mobile" hoping it would change something here, but it didn't. I'm not trying anything else if I can help it, because I've seen the never-can-go-back effects it can have before.... *shudder*

I know a few other folks who also detest Twitter, and I'm no big fan of the Interface or the Lack of Substantive Content, but there are a few things there that are posted nowhere else, so I try to peek in .. it's infinite scroll and ads and strange awful effects when you click the wrong part of the screen though... you have to hold yourself back from wanting to punch a whole in the screen! :D
I still do email o course but it can take days to get back to it.

As for Skype, it did have a resurgence when MSoft bought it, so everyone was like "come to Skype! come to Skype!" ... but it really is basically the everyone's-idle-thing same as i.m.s, so I hardly ever go there.. AND, in the last few months I guess it's been pissing people off enough that the new happening thing seems to be "Telegram"

I blew it when I first tried it cuz it asked for my phone #, so it went crazy with spam when I first connected... ;P If I try it again, I will not be using my phone # if possible...

But all this is alongside the point.. that yeah, I sure which L.J. would follow the old adage "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" .. :/

[auryanne.livejournal.com]

It's sad I miss LJ. Neither Tumblr or Facebook are very good for interaction, I don't think. I like Tumblr for posting silly pictures and whatnot but there are no privacy settings like LJ... it's either public or yourself only. Facebook has my relatives so I'm kind of limited in what I can say, haha.

[c-eagle.livejournal.com]

It's good to see you posting regularly on LJ ^v^
Yep, it was nicer when the interaction was so much more, but hopefully you've got quite a few that still do with you as well... I think I've got about 30 or so that read fairly regularly on my end, based on the ones I read and also the comments received.. :}
Now if only the interface doesn't go up in smoke... eeesh...

[makovette.livejournal.com]

Easy to fix:

Change your theme http://www.livejournal.com/customize/ to:

Art Deco Teal

Mixit by Tiffany Chow

CYa!
Mako

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

Sounds nice, but I far prefer the Punquin Elegant I've used for ages, but that seems to be an option no longer allowed to be selected, which is, at best, a damn dirty shame. It really is (was) elegant. Everything else is just only... almost.

[c-eagle.livejournal.com]

Hi guy! ... I wonder if the "S1" users can partake of that suggestion? :> ... Tell ya what, maybe you can show me how it looks on your machine when I see ya, and I might just take the plunge... ;}

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I just got hit with this today. /friends had been working just fine this morning and now it's gone.

[c-eagle.livejournal.com]

eeesh.. Sorry to hear Coatis are not immune to this meddling mischief ;P

[expandranon.livejournal.com]

"but they have a hard policy of not letting their Friends Page aggregator reach back further than two weeks"

LJ's been like this for me for ages. I hate it.

[c-eagle.livejournal.com]

You are absolutely right, my friend.... ;P ... Somewhere sometime they snuck THAT dastardly limit in here as well.. ARRRGH!! ;P

Well, now DreamWidth is NO different in function... if only we could take a huge Ice Cream Scoop and gather up everyone to move over there in population! ... That means the friends page would be nicer again, but *puzzles*... I wonder if it's "enough" better, with the same 2 week /or/ 200 entry aggregating limit.... :|

[atkelar.livejournal.com]

There is an option in the profile settings called "Use my journal's style when viewed on mobile device" and ta-da! it brought back the friends page on my mobile just fine. I don't know if anything else is broken, but so far I'm also annoyed by changing that default. At least there was an announcement with a link to the profile settings...

[c-eagle.livejournal.com]

Ah! Maybe that's the answer then.... they've focused exclusively on that, so mobile options are working. Guess we'll have to be patient and hope they get around to fixing the good ole fashioned computer viewing option soon... :/

[mortonfox.livejournal.com]

I actually have no idea what everyone is talking about with regards to breakage. Other than the header at the top, my friends page remained exactly the same.

I suspect the reason is years ago, I made a customized version of the punquin style. I'm still using that and whatever Livejournal changed seems to have not interfered with the old custom styles.

[c-eagle.livejournal.com]

That's sounds like a really keen plan :} .. I think tried messing with the stuff years ago... but I'd really prefer watching someone demonstrate it these days, since there are so many "can't go back" scenarios... I wouldn't want to fall into one of those....

[porsupah.livejournal.com]

I'm left wondering.. what is everyone else seeing? My LJ view hasn't really changed much in ten years, so when the alarm goes up that things are becoming terrible, I don't know what to think, as I'm honestly not seeing it.

Can we get some screencaps here to illustrate the points being made?

[c-eagle.livejournal.com]

Ah! .. From reading the comments, it seems like it points to those of us using "S1" losing our old favorite view ability... S1 hasn't been officially supported for a while, and now they found a way to make the break really matter, by just not caring about whether anything they do works with it anymore .. ;P

[scruff-e-coyote.livejournal.com]

It seems to me that many of my furiends use the Journal feature on Fur Affinity. And there are some who are posting as often as many of our furiends used to here on LJ!

[c-eagle.livejournal.com]

Hey Hey Hi!
Yep, F.A. is fine for journalling, but a) it doesn't offer embedded images or b) privacy. Most of the time we all don't need that, but sometimes we all want postings just for friends or with images ^v^

[tacet.livejournal.com]

I refuse to use FB. Too many ways it can get you fired. And I do discuss job rants, but not publicly. I don't trust FB to have the filters I like here.

I'm not going anywhere unless the site becomes unuseable. Problem is a lot of my friends are on FB, and haven't posted here in 5 years...

As for the comments disabled for news posts, try reading back a few years in news. Every post that wasn't al'a carte user pics was mass commenting for it. "Great you added these features, but where is the promised a'la carte user pics!?" Over and over and over.

[hastka.livejournal.com]

Well, I guess we found the 30 or so people who won't use Facebook, because I feel that same way. I set up an account once just because a good friend moved there and refused to use anything else. It took a long time to "opt out" of all the crap it tries to do, to say nothing of the phishing-esque "give us your email account password, so we can troll your contacts improve your experience" nonsense.

I like LJ and haven't found anything else to come along, but yeah.. I guess its utility dwindles, now that I've only got about 10 friends who ever write anything any more (and I only check it about weekly).

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

(local band to me, I know exactly where she's crossing the street)