Dreamwidth?

[norwich36]

So I've been playing around with the idea of buying a seed account at Dreamwidth when they go up for sale on April 30, since apparently this is the only time ever they will be selling permanent accounts, but the fact that only a few people on my f-list seem to even know about the project makes me question whether it's worth shelling out that much money. So: a poll.


[Poll #1375329]

For those of you who checked the last radio button, here are some good resources to read about the project:
Links to a bunch of posts explaining why this project was undertaken--see especially this one , in which synechdochic explains why she undertook this project; Dreamwidth's wiki page; a post explaining how Dreamwidth is different than other fan-run journaling sites ; a post by cathexys about why dreamwidth is right for her ; and a post by zvi_likes_tv about getting started on Dreamwidth , for those lucky enough to have closed beta accounts.

Comments

[norwich36.livejournal.com]

Don't worry--I do that kind of thing all the time.

Unfortunately I have found that a lot of folks who migrated to IJ from HP and RPS fandoms did in fact delete their LJ content, so yeah, I think that might happen, especially because a lot of the folks most motivated to move are doing so because they hate LJ. (And I have over 1000 delicious bookmarks now, most of them linking to LJ entries, so...ouch.)

[shopfront.livejournal.com]

I suppose because I think the flaw behind the move to IJ etc. was that it was motivated by push factors and not enough pull factors, so I see the people that moved to IJ properly and deleted their content here to be the more... I guess the extreme end of the bell curve, in some ways. A lot of fandom didn't go anywhere because we needed push and pull factors to make the effort worth our time, whereas the people who made a successful move to IJ were motivated despite the lack of pull factors. So, when, for instance, the appeal of IJ was that it wasn't LJ, deleting content here makes sense. It's a backlash from the people who were upset enough to go on push factors (mostly or) alone.

If the move to DW is successful, I expect it'll be a slow move that's motivated by pull factors (which is why I'm hopeful about DW in the first place, because I think the site sounds appealing now independent of LJ, not just because LJ stuffed up and we want to get away.) I think a lot of fandom on LJ still has some element of push factor motivating our interest in what DW could end up being, but for most of us it just wasn't enough. So I think pull factors (mostly how much of the fan community goes there, the appeal of the owners there as far as our feeling of home and safety goes, and the appeal of the feature tweaks) are really going to be the deciding factor, and when the deciding factor isn't actually totally or even majorly about LJ, I would expect far less in the way of content deletion.

So, I wouldn't say content deletion won't happen, but I (personally) can't imagine it'll happen on a totally devastating scale. I think a lot of the people who are more invested in depriving LJ of content than they are in maintaining our sense of history and connection, even if they're only interested in maintaining it for long enough for people to start redirecting and rebuilding their connections to the content in new places, are very push motivation. And any devastation will be a slow process that there'll be time to fix, because a lot of those people already left for IJ and deleted their content, and I expect the remaining people will need time to be confident that the pull factors will still be enticing and stable three or six months down the road, let along years later.