del.icio.usness, poll, and 500th post

[norwich36]

So a week ago Monday was my 4th LJversary, and I had this big plan to make it coincide with my 500th post, but then I felt like I should say something deep and significant in my 500th post, and the pressure was too much, and work got crazy, so I never posted. And in the meantime I had a lot of little silly posts I wanted to make, but once again I was weighted down by the need for significance. Sigh.

So instead of posting, I added to my del.icio.us recs . I have a love-hate relationship with del.icio.us. I've had a del.icio.us account for probably two years or so now, but prior to this year I was much more likely to save things through LJ tags (my own essays and recs) or memories (other people fic and essays). This was partly due to a combination of paranoia and laziness; I didn't want to stay logged in to del.icio.us at work, making the del.icio.us shortcut there pretty useless, and I always was always forgetting that password yet never getting around to changing it. Plus, I already had so many memories and tags that the thought of transferring them over to a new system just fed my inertia.

But then when I got heavily into SPN fic at the end of last summer, after I had exhausted all the recs lists I knew about, I started using the delicious search feature to find stories, and liked that a lot better than just googling around. I also just found it really interesting to see what kind of stories people had saved in their own delicious accounts, and what sort of tagging systems they used. So I started saving more of the stories I read there. But of course, now that I spend so much time digging around other people's pages, I get self-conscious about my own, and what it might be saying about me to anyone else poking around the site. Like, a couple weeks ago I was appalled to realize I had three times as many Sam/Dean stories tagged as I had Clark/Lex stories tagged--mainly because I hadn't transferred most of my SV recs from LJ to delicious--so I spent most of a Friday evening entering old SV recs. (Argh. I barely made a dent. That's a project for another time). Another day I looked and thought, wow, considering that about half the SPN stories I read are het, it's surprising how few Sam/Jess stories I have tagged--so I spent the day rereading Sam/Jess stories and tagging them this time. I've done that for...I don't even want to admit how many of the tags I have.

But in addition to the tags I want to be visible to represent me (and my excellent reading taste) to the world at large, there's also the tags I'm not sure I want to cop to. I'm not positive, but I think that even if you privatize a particular bookmark, your tags are still visible to the world? (I could be wrong about this) I had this whole quandary about whether I wanted a Dean/John tag that was visible to the world. (HILARIOUS considering I once compiled an entire list of Luthorcest recs--but delicious is used by more than fans, and it is definitely more searchable than LJ, so I definitely feel more exposed). And then there's the "what lists of my favorite sexual kinks do I really want hanging out for the whole world to see"? Pegging, ok, genderswap, ok, feminization, maybe not so much. Et cetera. And how many stories have to have a certain theme before I actually tag them that way?

And then there's the "network" function. I had had a couple people add me to their network long, long ago and never given it another thought until kristiinthedark made a throway comment a while back that made me realize "holy god, some people actually look at that and realize precisely how often I read threesome bondage bodyswap and-then-they-grew-wings" stories," and the blush pretty much covered my entire body. But I also started actually looking at networks and using them to find more fic. Though sometimes the full body blush is out of embarassment for random-person-I-discovered-surfing-someone's-network, because I guess I really didn't need to know how much they loved [insert kink of choice that squicks you] stories.

I actually do want to add more people to my network, but I wonder if that's considered creepy if you don't actually know the person? (More or less creepy than random friending on LJ? What is the netiquette?) And is it more or less insulting to take someone off of your network? I don't know enough people actually using delicious to know these things. And really, what I mainly want right now is people saving SPN and J2 stories. And possibly Buffy. Other weeks I may want SV or HP or whatever my mood is.

The other netiquette thing I was wondering about was describing stories in the "summary" section. I actually remember once reading an author complaining about an insulting delicious summary. I'm not personally too worried about that; if I want to give a mixed review for my own reference later, I just privatize it; for the most part I only bookmark stories I like anyway. But sometimes I bookmark stories I haven't actually left feedback for, for whatever reason--it already has eight pages of comments, or I know the author has moved on from the fandom, or whatever, and I do feel a little guilty about that. Like: if I'm taking time to write a description so I can reread it later, I really should be dropping the author a comment. It's not overwhelming guilt, or anything--and I know people do vanity searches on their own name, and reading the comments is, um, kind of like feedback, right?

SO: now a POLL on your own practices in saving things, using delicious, etc. Cut to spare the non-interested:


[Poll #1172426]

Comments

[pepperjackcandy.livejournal.com]

I have one category that I have to explain to anyone who sees it. It's called "guano," and it's for examples of batshit insanity. 8-)

I use yahoo!bookmarks a lot. I currently have 498 pages marked. I also download a copy of all of these pages to yahoo!'s cache, just in case.

I use what I guess is an old version. It uses a directory tree structure rather than tags. I like being able to have subdivisions within my divisions, and I've never been able to figure out how to do that neatly with tags.

[norwich36.livejournal.com]

LOL at that category!

I've never used yahoo bookmarks, but the tree function sounds very handy. Though now that I'm semi-committed to delicious I doubt I'll move, if only because of the inertia factor at the idea of transferring bookmarks.

[skuf.livejournal.com]

So do you have a system to keep track of interesting things online? I have a far superior system I will tell you about in comments
Recs lists on my website.

[norwich36.livejournal.com]

I can see why having your own website that you're in control of is superior to having your memories somewhere they could vanish. But can you sort by tags? That's one of my favorite delicious features.

[skuf.livejournal.com]

Eh, I didn't mean exactly that it was superior, just that the way I keep track of interesting things online is by bookmarking them in my browser, and keeping recs lists - and the latter had no option, so I chose the option with commenting :o)

[mskatej.livejournal.com]

I signed up with delicious out of boredom a few weeks ago but there was really no point. I spent one Friday evening watching music videos on youtube and drunkenly saved all the links (*eyeroll*) and I saved a couple of other sites that I like but I can't actually imagine myself using it much. I've practically completely given up reading fic and that seems to be the main reason people in fandom use it, so. I guess people that find me will work out pretty quickly that I like commercial hip hop and r&b and otherwise will be completely in the dark about my kinks. WIN!

[norwich36.livejournal.com]

I saw that other post where you said you'd given up reading fic, and *boggles boggles boggles* I hear the words coming out of your mouth keyboard, but the meaning does not compute.

Of course, your standards were always a lot higher than mine. And I don't think you reread stuff as much as me? That, more than anything, has made me a little compulsive about tagging stuff--so I don't have to be asking the daft questions on a storyfinders community when I absolutely MUST read that story about the time Homer Simpson turned into a mutant nuclear goldfish and had an affair with Mr. Burns koi, or whatever. No, that is not a real story. I earnestly hope, anyway .

Of course, I would actually find your youtube music links helpful, because --let's say, theoretically--I was on a job site where LJ was blocked but I had a lot of time to kill and wanted to watch music on youtube, I could go check that out. Since delicious is not usually a blocked site--some people actually use it for work!

The other thing people seem to use delicious a lot for, oddly enough, is recipes.

[bop-radar.livejournal.com]

Hello hello! *waves*

You know this post just makes me feel deeply inferior for having no real system at all. I just kind of ... drift around. It's very poor of me and I have sometimes contemplated using something like delicious or even just improving my memories section on LJ but the set-up work daunts me so much and I end up vidding instead... ;)

Your description of delicious makes me really nervous though! I don't think I'd like being that exposed either.

Currently I don't think I have any embarrassing tags or memories and what I do have is completely public. But I also don't think I've been to delicious for months... weird, huh?

[bop-radar.livejournal.com]

Helloooooo! It's been so looong! :D

It hit your embarrassment squick?! Wow, really? Too emotional?

I personally think your meager online time is much better spent vidding than organizing. *Nod nod nod*
*giggles* Thanks hon! I appreciate the encouragement. And you're spot on re. my fannish habits. I am organised for sv_ledger... and that's about it. I guess that's why I love good reccers so much. ;) Thank GOD for them doing the work for me! ;)

Screening my replies for BSG spoilers

[norwich36.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure if that will automatically screen the whole thread or not--hopefully not.

Re: Screening my replies for BSG spoilers

[bop-radar.livejournal.com]

Hmm, good thing to know. I guess we'll see. I don't think it will.

[norwich36.livejournal.com]

I had to log out to check that the screening worked--yayity.

But I forgot to comment on the second part of your comment: you do so much work for the Ledger you shouldn't have to organize other things. Compared to that, reccing is a lot easier and requires far less discipline!

And now goodnight.

[bop-radar.livejournal.com]

Good night! :) We should catch up more soon.

[kristiinthedark.livejournal.com]

I am STILL so sorry that I made you feel embarrassed about what you tagged. I didn't mean to! Honestly!

As for me, I generally keep only the things that I've written marked in the LJ memories. And then I use delicious for every one else's. The only time I really privatize is when I've tagged something that's nonfandom and personal, like for bill payments. Basically I use delicious for everything, I think! And I don't really worry about tagging my kinks, I just let them hang out there. I figure I'm not going onto other people's pages to check out their tags and saying "ewwww, they like THAT?" so it's hard for me to imagine that's someone might do that to me. (Except even if they did, I wouldn't care.)

Weirdly, I don't really use my network to see what I might want to read (although sometimes it comes in handy), but rather as a way to check out what my friends are into. It's a cool way to keep track! So I rarely ever take anyone off my list, and I usually only add people I know, though there are exceptions. What I do use is the subscriptions feature. It's awesome! You can put in whatever you want, like I have a few different ways to say RayK/Fraser, in case someone has an odd way of tagging, and then every time someone tags RayK/Fraser, it shows up on my subscription page. I end up getting recs without even hardly trying!

[norwich36.livejournal.com]

Hee! I am not embarassed about you knowing things I tagged--it just made me realize "OMG, other people know what I am bookmarking" in a way I hadn't thought about before.

I keep thinking I'm going to use the subscription feature and still haven't gotten around to it. And I don't want to give the impression that I'm bopping around to other people's tags all the time going "eww"--I am bopping around to other people's sites looking for stories, and so I'm looking through their tags to find stuff I might like. It's just occasionally I've been surprised!

I never actually used to look at my network page until someone I completely don't know added me, and I went to look at them, and they were uploading tons of the kind of stories I like pretty much every day, so then I started actually looking at the network page again. (And getting sucked into SGA stories, damn you! Ok, cesperanza, I'd read every phone book she ever wrote, but still!!)

[allzugern.livejournal.com]

Congratulations on your 500th post and 4 years of LJ!

I keep most of the fic I read private, mostly because I figure no one else would give a shit :-)

I am going to check out all your SPN recs though!

[norwich36.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

I currently have tons and tons of SPN links, though lots of them are het, so I don't know if they will be to your taste or not. But enjoy!

[attolia.livejournal.com]

I use delicious so that I can have the same bookmarks on different machines.

[norwich36.livejournal.com]

Yes, that is definitely my favorite delicious feature.

[blisstasteful.livejournal.com]

I'm constantly forgetting to bookmark things on delicious. I do like to take a peep at my network from time to time, esp if I don't have much of a to - read list lined up, and because I trust the judgement of the few people on my network.

It took a long time for me to use delicious for anything other than fic links, at first I wanted to keep it pure. lol. A reading library. Now I'm including other stuff I may need a complete tagging overhaul. *sigh* work.

[norwich36.livejournal.com]

I know, it's a lot of work keeping track of all this stuff. (It's like filing, really--when I'm doing my taxes I'm glad I finally broke down and organized everything into file folders, but when I actually have to file things I completely hate it.)

And with stories--I think it's good that I started tagging SPN stories, just 'cause there are so many of them and no centralized archive, unlike SV--but when I think of the hundreds of recs and links from SV I really should transfer sometime to delicious, it just makes me want to cry.

[ender24]

nowadays, nearly 100% of things, not just fannish things, that I read, are saved in my gmail account.
with its search function, I can find everything among my 36,000 stores files :D

[norwich36.livejournal.com]

That's a good system for personal stuff, but it's not as good as delicious (or even LJ tags) if you want something public and shareable.

something public and shareable

[ender24]

well, everything that I want to be publicly shareable as recs, is either at my theme_recs, or in the comments of sv_ledger or sv_inquiry, or at sv_renaissance under the rec tag ;D