Social media platform review: Living the Dreamwidth

[ljwrites]

The third post in my social media platform review series is about my experience of Dreamwidth(DW), the platform I am writing this post on. Again, since this post is mainly about my experiences with the platform and evaluation of that experience, I suggest readers turn to other resources if they want fuller background about DW including history, status in fandom, and FAQ/howto.

Current and future posts in this series are:

• Mastodon and its instances
• Tumblr trouble
• Living the Dreamwidth
• Snoozing on Pillowfort

Summary of platform: Primarily text-based blogging platform with robust privacy controls, community functions, and threaded comments
Platform usage: Repository of original content (primarily essays), links to my own and others' off-site content, discussions on communities and posts

Remember how I said in my Tumblr review that I would never have gone over to Tumblr if Dreamwidth weren't so dead? Well, as they say: It's alive! It's aliiive!

With DW traffic soaring by a factor of ten in the wake of Tumblr's adult content ban, I watched as people made new accounts or became more active on existing ones. Users wrote a bunch of guides about migrating from Tumblr to Dreamwidth, such as my buddy lb_lee's Dreamwidth 101 and aniamra's A Tumblr User's Guide to Dreamwidth, star-anise's Basic Dreamwidth Guide for Tumblr Users and so on. I actually read and learned from some of them despite being a longtime DW user. I got a bunch of subscriptions from Tumblr and Mastodon friends and subscribed back, resulting in a lively reading page.

Heck, I started getting comments on my posts! Sometimes more than I could respond to! This was exactly the kind of interaction I had craved online, the thoughtful discussions and appreciative comments, when I decamped for Tumblr.

To be honest, despite moving to Tumblr because I wanted more fannish interactions and conversations, I had not gotten enough of it on Tumblr, either. A post could get hundreds of notes and still get very few comments. While those reblogs and likes were good for a thrill of validation, thoughtful discussions were comparatively rare though they did happen, generally with known and trusted friends much as on DW. In addition, it wouldn't be Tumblr without randos coming onto a post to start a fight and anons sending nasty comments.

The flip side of the quality engagement on DW is the effort involved. By default DW is geared toward original content, unless it's a link to existing content. You know, because it's a normal blogging platform that doesn't have reblogs. Not every post has to be a masterpiece of craftsmanship, but it does at least require that some words be strung together or that you have an image you have authorization to upload. This is in contrast to Tumblr, where it's perfectly possible to populate a blog purely with reblogs, without even typing anything if you don't bother to tag (which many do not, to my pearl-clutching horror).

Although I created quite a few of my own posts on Tumblr, most of the posts on my blog there are still queued and reblogged content. As one Tumblr post went, "Follow me for more great posts that other people made!" I can't do that with Dreamwidth; my blog is only as active as the content I myself create, even if it's just a link with commentary. Also, whereas I could use comments via reblog to populate my Tumblr blog, with DW my comments on other people's posts stayed on their blog and only my own posts "counted" in how active my blog was. You can make link posts more easily with astolat's signal boost bookmarklet.

I've also been making effort to improve on my DW experiences from last time so I can find more people and content, especially now that DW is more active than it has been in years. I've joined communities and created one myself (i_made_a_choice dedicated to--who else?--Finn), and these comms have enriched my reading list and connected me to so many interesting posts and people. I'm having more in-depth fandom discussions than I can keep up with and it's a great feeling!

One of the strength of DW as a platforms is its organization, and I've cleaned house by organizing my tags¹ and changing my URL to something I've been using across platforms. I had fun bringing back my old mood theme and writing a mood themes guide, too.

A final change is that I've gotten used to hand-coding again because the WYSIWYG editor is temperamental at best and the beta text editor, which you can enable here and which I much prefer, only supports handcoding at the moment (see sylvaine's guide on using HTML in DW and the beta editor). I'm not sure I'd go back rich-text formatting even if the editor added it.

DW has its problems, of course. Limited image hosting is one of them, and personally I haven't even touched my hosting allotment yet. I use PostImage, which is free although I won't say it's the most reliable service--it changed all my image URLs without forwarding at one point, resulting in a rash of broken images--and you should read their terms of use to see if it's right for your needs.

Switching back to spending more time on DW has necessitated some adjustments, including new mindsets, new organization, and refreshment of old skills, but it has been more than worth it for me. It took some effort to customize the blog for my needs, but I like that sense of mastery and improvement. And now I have the added engagement and activity to show for my efforts, too. I'm so happy to be spending more time here and I hope it lasts.

Notes
1. You need to adjust your settings as well if you want a multilevel view

Comments

[lb_lee]

I still use DA for my art hosting because I am an embarrassment. (But at least I can easily FIND everything again.) DW, however, HAS proved super-helpful as an adjunct image-hosting, because the privacy options still apply and alt-texting is easy! So if I want to draw beefcake'n'dicks, I can post it on my DW image hosting and not have any fear that a rando could find it. (I mean, a jerk could masquerade as my friend, get access, download the image and spread it, but there's really no help for that.)

And I admit, since I'm way more interested in conversation and non-reblogged content, it's nice to have a platform like DW where I don't have to wade through trying to figure out what is the user's opinion, and what's the opinion of the person/s they reblogged.

[ljwrites]

Yeah, in the age of Nu Social Media(TM) DW is a welcome respite of calm. There's no technical solution to social engineering and just people being jerks, but DW at least gives people the tools to protect themselves as far as web technology can. Perhaps more importantly, it doesn't subtly (or not so subtly) encourage harassment for the sake of the bottom line.

[burendasan4]

Wow...so much useful information. Thanks for sharing! I migrated over to Dreamwith from LiveJournal about a year ago, but I'm trying to engage with it more now. We've gotten so used to the easy, mindless interactions that we basically have to relearn to put in the effort to create meaningful interactions (at least I do!). It seems like your efforts are paying off!

[ljwrites]

I considered organizing the links and putting them above the cut, but then the pre-cut parts would have been too long XD I agree, DW represents a different paradigm of online interaction than what Facebook, Twitter et al. offer and I find that it's better for my well-being in general. I hope you get settled in comfortably here, too!

[burendasan4]

Thanks! I hope so too!

[jesse_the_k]

Another excellent essay, and so well-written! Those years in school pay off XD

[ljwrites]

Thank you so much! XD

Hi!

[fleurviolette]

I’ve set up my dw a while back but now I’m using it more for blogging and fandom related things. In the long run, it suits me because of the comments and text posts.

Tumblr was great for the gifs and images but the convos weren’t engaging.

I do miss some of my former mutuals tho. I hope that feeling will pass.