Administrative duties

[melannen]

I did some long-overdue gardening on my DW circles today. I tend to put it off for months and months because I imprinted on just how soul-destroying it was to do it in LJ, and then I finally get around to it in DW and it is so easy it is like floating through a field of dandelions. <3

So anyway I basically just went down the circle list of people who have subscribed/accessed me since the last time I did this, and subscribed/accessed some of them - quite a lot, actually, I hope I didn't become giddy with how easy it was, and regret this later! If I didn't add you back, please don't feel bad about it - I seriously can't keep up with all of it these days, and yes, this does make me feel weirdly BNF-y. O_o (also weirdly BNF-y: going down the list of people who have subscribed to me and finding multiple names where my knee-jerk reaction is "But I can't subscribe to them, they're too popular! they'll never notice me!" I must be faking it pretty good lately or something. Or else I've just been hanging around these parts too long.)

I added people based on a quick skim of your recent entries and a complicated set of algorithms and momentary impulses (the most quantifiable of which are a) you have made at least one post I can see in the past month and b) I have some sort of vague memory of having interacted with you at some point.) If I have confused you greatly by doing so, I apologize, I promise you I confused myself as well in the process.

***

Next step in the "cleaning up DW" categories are a) clear out the comment notifications in my inbox and b) fix my severely broken layout already! The issue with a) is ANSWERING COMMENTS IS HARD. The issue with b) is that the one thing I want in a layout is the ability to make the "custom colors" be a large block that extends the entire vertical length of every entry on my reading page; this does not appear to be something that CSS is willing to do, so every time I've tried to fix it, I have ended up retreating back to my current broken style that does that one thing that makes reading so much easier for me. But maybe in the past six months someone has made a DW style that does it for me! And maybe DW has made it less painful than LJ to preview styles in a way that shows the friendspage! Into the breach.

***

In other news: I got a Diaspora account. I was avoiding all the G+ stuff up on my ivory tower; at the time I was thinking smugly to myself that I am uninterested in being a beta tester, but then I thought about DW. and LT. and AO3. And, heck, all the way back to Keenspot. And realized it was more that I'm not interested in doing free beta testing work for a large corporation that could buy my entire town if they wanted to. So I am on Diaspora; I will probably not do much with it; I mostly got it so that I have somewhere to point people who cannot comprehend the fact that I am entirely ignorant of Facebook and like it that way, and may get a professional-face account there at some point if I decide I can stand it.

A discussion on LT has recently made me conceptualize better why I have been so uninterested in Facebook and Myspace and the like: those sort of social networks seem to be mostly about maintaining relationships that primarily exist in other spheres. Whereas on the kind of social networks I'm interested in - like DW - the relationships are performed on the service itself. And I like making new friends and acquaintances and socializing with strangers, too. But I also prefer keeping my relationships uncomplicated enough that I don't need a computer program in order to maintain them. Maybe I am missing out on great opportunities for joy, and being a bad friend to my existing people, by thinking this way. On the other hand, I have known for quite some time that I am much more the sort of person who spends three hours every morning working on my correspondence than the sort of person who goes around in a carriage every Wednesday dropping off calling cards, so I think I'll live.

Anyway. Diaspora account. I am melannen there too. I hope that link actually goes to my "homepage" there; I believe I mentioned that I am completely ignorant of all facebook-like things, and I have not learned my way around Diaspora and its purposes yet. Also I can't for the life of me figure out why it won't let me upload an avatar.

Comments

*laugh*

[ysabetwordsmith]

I'm glad you added me.

But it would never occur to me to consider someone else's perceived popularity. I friend folks based on whether I want to read their posts and recommend them to my audience. My commonest reason for friending people is that I see them commenting in a community or on a friend's blog, and I add them.

It's interesting to see how differently some people approach blogging.

[melannen]

*g* Let's just say I got into LJ in the middle of a time and fandom that is still legendary for screwed up social dynamics, and it's marked me.

[copracat]

Yes, the link worked.

I can't upload images using Firefox but I can using Safari.

[melannen]

Huh, that's weird - I was going to go to Firefox as my back-up browser, since people usually design for it these days. I wonder if IE will work?

[beatrice_otter]

Your argument in favor of DW and LT type social networking instead of FB works if you've been mostly physically stable so that your in-person established social networks stay relatively constant. If you, like me, have lived in three regions of the continent over the last ten years, sometimes moving every year, and have made many friends during that time who are also moving around the country ... that makes keeping track of everyone a lot more difficult. I want to stay connected to my friends. If I didn't have FB, I wouldn't be able to. I don't like it, but there it is.

[beatrice_otter]

Wow. The use of the "random icon" button made that post a whole lot more argumentative and judge-y. Heh. And what randomly came up in this comment is oddly appropriate, too!

[beatrice_otter]

Let's go for a third try, see what comes up: aww.

[melannen]

Yeah, this goes back to "maybe I'm a bad friend", but I am the sort of person who really doesn't do long-distance relationships in that way. The sort of things that are involved in that just drain my limited social energy too much without giving me anything to keep me recharged; I get too drained to do things with the people who are here in person, and I need to save it for the in-person interaction, because I need that to keep me functional.

I am more the "letter once a year with address updates and phone call if you're in town" type. If only because it means that when you do see each other in person finally, you still have things to talk about. (If the person has an active online life in its own right - like most of my DW friends - it doesn't function like a long-distance relationship, because we're both *here*.)

It's possible that people who are active on FB actually do more of the kind of things that make my friendships work on DW, but since 90% of FB is completely invisible to non-users, I wouldn't know! (Which is one of the things I dislike most about facebook - if it's supposed to be about letting scattered people keep in touch, it should be easier to make stuff actually public if you want to. But it looks like Diaspora's going the same route, which, arg.)

[beatrice_otter]

Actually, the problem with Facebook is that they keep making it harder to keep stuff private. I am an introvert, and connecting with people takes a lot of mental and emotional energy; Facebook is actually the easiest, least-draining way to interact with people I've found.

... huh. my "let this be a lesson" icon came up on the random icon button again. Oh, well, have some Sarah Connor instead.

[melannen]

See, I get that that's a problem for Facebook users, but for non-members (and you may know this, but I've talked to a lot of FB users who don't actually realize) the site is basically a blank wall: afaict there's no way to see any part of a profile except a person's name, so a non-member who gets a link to FB bascially sees a blank page and the message "If you want to see more, sign in!" Which I have to tell you is not very enticing to me.

Everything in the profile is by default hidden, there's no way to do the equivalent of a public sticky-post to let people know who you are, if there's a way to make calendar/schedule stuff public, I've never seen anyone use it (which is really annoying when RL groups decide to do all their scheduling that way); there is apparently a way to make photos public, but the people I've talked into using it found it very annoying and half the time it didn't let me in anyway... so for me as a non-member, it's pretty much a blank wall.

The issue seems to be FB wants to make too much public to other members, but nothing at all public for non-members. And they think that's security.

[smw]

If I have confused you greatly by doing so, I apologize, I promise you I confused myself as well in the process.
I'm mildly confused (see: your apparent BNF-y status) but also pleased. Can I apologize now for my more frivolous posts?


But I also prefer keeping my relationships uncomplicated enough that I don't need a computer program in order to maintain them.
A million times yes. I find Facebook hugely off-putting for assuming that my relationships are a tangled morass when really the two categories are "people I interact with on a professional basis" and "people I like".

[melannen]

For the record: I have no BNF-y status whatsoever. And I enjoy frivolous posts.

I have a few more categories? I have "people who would help me move bodies" (but I don't need facebook to keep up with them) and "people I like but who don't know where the bodies are buried" (which is where it can get a little complicated, but adding another way of interacting with them is just stress on top of stress) and "people I am acquainted with by necessity rather than liking" (and I don't want any more interaction with them than I have to)... so I don't really see the point for me.

[smw]

Then I redact my apology. *g*

Ah, yes, I did forget the category of "people who would help me move bodies". That is an important distinction from the ones I like. Be that as it may, thanks for linking to a FB-like social site that is not utterly hideous; if I ever feel the need to network in that manner, I suppose it will be useful.

[melannen]

Yeah, I don't even necessarily "like" all the moving-bodies people, at least in the conventional way, but those are the kind of relationships that you keep no matter what! (I really should finish that Sherlock Holmes with where Holmes helps Mary move a body.)