journals and web-logs

[egypturnash]

The points in favor of Livejournal over web-logs:

• Access control features. Friends-only, friends groups, wholly private entries.
  
• Centralized. Click through that insightful comment to see if the person's journal is just as interesting, without any extra steps for them to own the comment.
  
• I feel like an idiot every time I say 'blog'. I'm sorry. It's a word Don Martin would've used for a sound effect. You might as well call them a 'gashlooka' for all the dignity involved in referring to them. 'Journal', by contrast, is a noble-sounding word.
  
• Pre-made. You don't have to install a single damn thing to make one. No fiddling is involved.
  

The points in favor of web-logs over LJ:

• Decentralized. No single website to get hammered as the evening rolls across North America; no central point to DDOS.
  
• Control. You can tweak everything about your blog. All the fiddling you like is possible.
  
• Geek cred. Since blogs are much more tweakable, they attract the programmer mindset. For instance, right now I'm looking at the webpage of an interesting-sounding e-mail archiver that has hooks for watching and posting to a couple of types of web-logs.
  
• Different community: less entries of the form of 'gonna go do laundry. Oh, and I'm Cindy according to the Which B-52's Member Are You? test.' Or maybe it's just that nobody ever spreads links to that kind of blog, while that sort of LJ is usually only as far away as the 'Find Users/Random' link in the site's sidebar?
  

Having decided over the years that I am (mostly) not a programmer, I much prefer the total idiot-proofness of LJ. I got a code, I put it in, I have a journal. Now that I paid them a few bucks, I have more codes; I sent some to a few friends (hi ultraken and doctorpinkerton!) who I wanted to be able to see locked entries. I don't have to wrestle with Perl or PHP or Python or whatever the scripting-language-that-probably-starts-with-P-du-jour is. It'd be nice to be able to search the entire contents of my journal, and keep a local copy (comments and all) in case of Bad Things, but it's not crucial.

I have no deep thoughts on this, really. I just wanted to solidify some thoughts on different approaches to writing about one's life.

Comments

[perlandria.livejournal.com]

Lemme know if you need more code LJ-sharing (infecting) goodness.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Oh, no, I'm fine, thanks! I paid up for a year so I have far more codes than I have friends who need Livejournals.

[abigail-always.livejournal.com]

Shhhh....you can't say that out-loud....

[electricgecko.livejournal.com]

FWIW, I recall once seeing a link or an option that allows you to download the entire contents of your journal (not sure if this is with or without comments, though) to your hard drive for archiving or whatever. This is something I should probably do sometime myself, but being on dialup, it may or may not happen any time soon.

[electricgecko.livejournal.com]

Ah, here it is:

http://www.livejournal.com/export.bml

I'm still not positive whether or not it nabs comments. Maybe it counts them as part of the entry (as they appear with entries on individual entry pages)?

[markpasc.livejournal.com]

I think comments were supposed to be the other "Export entries" option besides "Journal entries," but they never got around to doing that. It doesn't export comments normally.

[markpasc.livejournal.com]

Click through that insightful comment to see if the person's journal is just as interesting, without any extra steps for them to own the comment.

Most places let you give an URL when you comment, so I wouldn't say that particularly is something LJ has over weblogland--but comment-owning (both authentication and being able to delete) is.

I feel like an idiot every time I say 'blog'.

It does, so I say all of weblog nowadays. Blogosphere is the only derivative word I can stand (I guess because it's so much closer to logosphere than blog) but I usually say weblogland anyway.

Pre-made. You don't have to install a single damn thing to make one. No fiddling is involved. ... Or maybe it's just that nobody ever spreads links to that kind of blog, while that sort of LJ is usually only as far away as the 'Find Users/Random' link in the site's sidebar?

It's getting easier (Movable Type is basically upload and begin, and Blosxom has an OS X installer (http://www.raelity.org/apps/blosxom/download.shtml) that uses OS X's web server), but it'll never be 100% unless you use one of the services like BlogSpot... which is where you see the LJ-like entries. The teenybopper contingent not mounting the technical bar is what makes the community different, mainly.

RSS tools give weblogland at large a friends list, but there's no general distributed commenting technology yet. I might try to make something like that with Movable Type's TrackBack, since it's pretty popular. I would call it Authenticated Comment Poster Having TrackBack Technology (ACPHTBT).

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Comment-owning and tracking-back is 100% transparant on LJ - no typing URLs, no nothing. Plus the little user icons; when you have several, you can choose one that somehow relates to the comment.

While I've seen some interesting stuff on weblogs, I still tend to think of my first impression of them: link to something cool, with brief comment. Repeat. This was how weblogs were first described, and, I think, the original role of the things - just a more personal version of the '<Adjective> Link Of The <Time Period>' thing that's been around since about a week after the WWW was being used for frivolous purposes. First impressions linger.

[dour.livejournal.com]

Regarding the geek aspect, and customizability... it's important to note that LiveJournal is an open-source project, and as such, anyone may (A) submit their own features and/or (B) install it locally like any other blogware.

[prickvixen.livejournal.com]

I'd be happy to call it a 'gashlooka,' actually... it even sounds like Nadsat. 'My droogs and I govoreeted about a small malenky matter in my gashlooka.'

[mutleyjames.livejournal.com]

Agreed.
It's a mighty scrobish Galooshka I've bescried you weebing.