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soc_puppetI made a post on Tumblr a little over a month ago about the differences in lurking between there and here, and decided it's finally time I copy it over here properly! The Tumblr version is over here, for anyone who cares to reblog it.
Dreamwidth and Lurking
In (I think) the notes on my "Why is everyone recommending Dreamwidth as a Tumblr alternative?" post, someone asked if it was possible to lurk on Dreamwidth. My first instinct was to automatically reply with "yes", since wasn't lurking just kinda. Hanging out and reading someone's posts and generally not letting them know you're there in any way? But getting the question at all made me stop and think for a minute, because if that's all that lurking is, then why would someone feel the need to ask the question in the first place? Does that mean that lurking means something different on Tumblr than I'm used to?
This lead to my initial question post, and, a few days after that, my All About Lurking Poll, which wrapped up yesterday [November 20th]. I personally found the results fascinating, and while the answer that got the most votes out of the 2808 responses was "You do not interact in any way with the poster(s); you can only read", other answers together made up more than 50% of the responses.
So when it comes to the question of whether it's possible to lurk on Dreamwidth, it depends heavily on what you consider lurking to be! I'll be covering the first four options, which should between them cover at least most of the rest of the poll answers.
Option one: "You do not interact in any way with the poster; you can only read"
Generally possible! I had five different Tumblr accounts each open to their own tabs before I broke down and got my own account to condense them down. Given how many tabs I have open as a result of that decision, for reading or reblogging later, that backfired a bit, but the intent was there!
I did it for at least five LiveJournalers back in the day that I was too intimidated to add to my friends list (basically the equivalent of Following on Tumblr), only that was also before tabs, and I hated having extra windows open, so I would cycle through the links in the search bar.
That said, there are some people who have their journals set to "Access Only"; they have posts that only people with a Dreamwidth account who they have granted the ability to access these "Locked" posts will be able to see. It's a privacy feature that's very beloved at Dreamwidth, and it means that anyone without an account, or without access, can only see posts that are shared publicly.
I want to add that I'm not actually sure how Dreamwidth works on other RSS Readers, which I'm sure would simplify things somewhat, but I do know that you can subscribe to RSS accounts through Dreamwidth! If someone wants to chime in with more details, I would welcome them!
Option two: You can follow the poster, but not interact any farther than that
Yes! I've got any number of "ghosts" following me, who have Dreamwidth accounts and who have subscribed to my account, but who haven't granted me access and who don't comment on my posts. [Note: Hi there! You are very welcome here 😊]
Aside from the above-mentioned RSS Feed idea, the easiest way to do this is to create a Dreamwidth account and, well, subscribe to someone whose updates you want to see! It's basically the same as following on Tumblr, with a few functional differences; and for the purposes of this poll answer, it may as well be exactly the same.
As an important note, you don't actually have to grant anyone access to your locked posts in order to subscribe to them! On LiveJournal, these features were connected (you could only follow an account by adding them to your "Friends List", and this would grant them access to all of your locked posts, IIRC), but Dreamwidth made a point of separating them. This allows greater privacy for everyone involved. Dreamwidth went one step further, and created "Access Filters", so a given journal owner could make a post that only a certain subset of people could see, but that's a post for a different time.
Option Three: You can follow the poster and like their posts, but not reblog
Unfortunately, this is where things fall apart for anyone who likes this answer best: Dreamwidth has no "Like" function. The closest you can come here is to create an actual comment, and only include an emoji in the text. This is probably a little bit more interactive than a lot of people are interested in when it comes to lurking, and understandably so!
If you want to read about why Dreamwidth doesn't have a "Likes" system, site co-owner/co-founder Denise talks about that in a comment on an official news post right over here. (Full disclosure, I'm soc_puppet on Dreamwidth, so that's me replying to her comment there.)
Option Four: You can follow the poster and reblog their posts, but not like them
Almost no one picked this option 😂 I can understand why, since reblogging is a higher-interaction function than liking, and if you're reblogging already, you might as well go for the lower-interaction function as well.
That said, the answer for this is surprisingly: Yes! You can do this form of lurking!
Reblogging is not a native function of Dreamwidth, though, so it takes a bit more work to do it. If you want to reblog things, you need to learn how from this post. I'm still used to the old way of signal boosting from LiveJournal, so it's not something I ever installed myself, or really intend to install. But if you're looking for a way to reblog stuff on Dreamwidth, this is your answer!
Ironically, I'm pretty sure this script makes the Dreamwidth equivalent of reblogging lower-interaction than the Dreamwidth equivalent of liking. I'm reasonably sure that the person you reblogged from with this script doesn't actually get any sort of notification of your reblog, so you can add just about anything in the tags, or even in your own reblog, and it's very unlikely that they'll see any of it.
What about Asks, anonymous or otherwise, and DMs?
Dreamwidth doesn't really have an Ask function. A lot of Dreamwidth users have a pinned introduction post, and some of them doubtlessly use it to welcome questions from the public, but Tumblr's Ask function is pretty unique. There may be communities with an equivalent feature or interaction (such as posting questions to a community, which may or may not have moderated posts), but it's not something you can generally do with individually owned journals. But Asks aren't something that everyone on Tumblr has enabled either, anonymous or otherwise.
Dreamwidth does have a Private Message feature, but as on Tumblr, a journal's owner has control over who can send them a message.
So that's it!
That's all I can think of to tell you about Dreamwidth and lurking, and lurking on Dreamwidth. If you have any questions I didn't already cover, feel free to ask, and I'll do my best to answer them!
So that's that post! Up next I may copy my "Why is everyone recommending Dreamwidth as a Tumblr alternative when they're so different?" post over here.
Dreamwidth and Lurking
In (I think) the notes on my "Why is everyone recommending Dreamwidth as a Tumblr alternative?" post, someone asked if it was possible to lurk on Dreamwidth. My first instinct was to automatically reply with "yes", since wasn't lurking just kinda. Hanging out and reading someone's posts and generally not letting them know you're there in any way? But getting the question at all made me stop and think for a minute, because if that's all that lurking is, then why would someone feel the need to ask the question in the first place? Does that mean that lurking means something different on Tumblr than I'm used to?
This lead to my initial question post, and, a few days after that, my All About Lurking Poll, which wrapped up yesterday [November 20th]. I personally found the results fascinating, and while the answer that got the most votes out of the 2808 responses was "You do not interact in any way with the poster(s); you can only read", other answers together made up more than 50% of the responses.
So when it comes to the question of whether it's possible to lurk on Dreamwidth, it depends heavily on what you consider lurking to be! I'll be covering the first four options, which should between them cover at least most of the rest of the poll answers.
Option one: "You do not interact in any way with the poster; you can only read"
Generally possible! I had five different Tumblr accounts each open to their own tabs before I broke down and got my own account to condense them down. Given how many tabs I have open as a result of that decision, for reading or reblogging later, that backfired a bit, but the intent was there!
I did it for at least five LiveJournalers back in the day that I was too intimidated to add to my friends list (basically the equivalent of Following on Tumblr), only that was also before tabs, and I hated having extra windows open, so I would cycle through the links in the search bar.
That said, there are some people who have their journals set to "Access Only"; they have posts that only people with a Dreamwidth account who they have granted the ability to access these "Locked" posts will be able to see. It's a privacy feature that's very beloved at Dreamwidth, and it means that anyone without an account, or without access, can only see posts that are shared publicly.
I want to add that I'm not actually sure how Dreamwidth works on other RSS Readers, which I'm sure would simplify things somewhat, but I do know that you can subscribe to RSS accounts through Dreamwidth! If someone wants to chime in with more details, I would welcome them!
Option two: You can follow the poster, but not interact any farther than that
Yes! I've got any number of "ghosts" following me, who have Dreamwidth accounts and who have subscribed to my account, but who haven't granted me access and who don't comment on my posts. [Note: Hi there! You are very welcome here 😊]
Aside from the above-mentioned RSS Feed idea, the easiest way to do this is to create a Dreamwidth account and, well, subscribe to someone whose updates you want to see! It's basically the same as following on Tumblr, with a few functional differences; and for the purposes of this poll answer, it may as well be exactly the same.
As an important note, you don't actually have to grant anyone access to your locked posts in order to subscribe to them! On LiveJournal, these features were connected (you could only follow an account by adding them to your "Friends List", and this would grant them access to all of your locked posts, IIRC), but Dreamwidth made a point of separating them. This allows greater privacy for everyone involved. Dreamwidth went one step further, and created "Access Filters", so a given journal owner could make a post that only a certain subset of people could see, but that's a post for a different time.
Option Three: You can follow the poster and like their posts, but not reblog
Unfortunately, this is where things fall apart for anyone who likes this answer best: Dreamwidth has no "Like" function. The closest you can come here is to create an actual comment, and only include an emoji in the text. This is probably a little bit more interactive than a lot of people are interested in when it comes to lurking, and understandably so!
If you want to read about why Dreamwidth doesn't have a "Likes" system, site co-owner/co-founder Denise talks about that in a comment on an official news post right over here. (Full disclosure, I'm soc_puppet on Dreamwidth, so that's me replying to her comment there.)
Option Four: You can follow the poster and reblog their posts, but not like them
Almost no one picked this option 😂 I can understand why, since reblogging is a higher-interaction function than liking, and if you're reblogging already, you might as well go for the lower-interaction function as well.
That said, the answer for this is surprisingly: Yes! You can do this form of lurking!
Reblogging is not a native function of Dreamwidth, though, so it takes a bit more work to do it. If you want to reblog things, you need to learn how from this post. I'm still used to the old way of signal boosting from LiveJournal, so it's not something I ever installed myself, or really intend to install. But if you're looking for a way to reblog stuff on Dreamwidth, this is your answer!
Ironically, I'm pretty sure this script makes the Dreamwidth equivalent of reblogging lower-interaction than the Dreamwidth equivalent of liking. I'm reasonably sure that the person you reblogged from with this script doesn't actually get any sort of notification of your reblog, so you can add just about anything in the tags, or even in your own reblog, and it's very unlikely that they'll see any of it.
What about Asks, anonymous or otherwise, and DMs?
Dreamwidth doesn't really have an Ask function. A lot of Dreamwidth users have a pinned introduction post, and some of them doubtlessly use it to welcome questions from the public, but Tumblr's Ask function is pretty unique. There may be communities with an equivalent feature or interaction (such as posting questions to a community, which may or may not have moderated posts), but it's not something you can generally do with individually owned journals. But Asks aren't something that everyone on Tumblr has enabled either, anonymous or otherwise.
Dreamwidth does have a Private Message feature, but as on Tumblr, a journal's owner has control over who can send them a message.
So that's it!
That's all I can think of to tell you about Dreamwidth and lurking, and lurking on Dreamwidth. If you have any questions I didn't already cover, feel free to ask, and I'll do my best to answer them!
So that's that post! Up next I may copy my "Why is everyone recommending Dreamwidth as a Tumblr alternative when they're so different?" post over here.
no subject
Date: 2024-01-01 07:37 am (UTC)Informative, thank you!
About RSS, Dreamwidth provides RSS feeds both for journals and the reading page which should work with any RSS readers! They're regular RSS feeds.
I'm not sure "reblogging" in terms of copying the entire content of someone else's post into your own journal really is the culture here (encouraging linking + maybe a short snippet would be more like it imo). I would be kind of horrified to find many of my posts copied as is on someone else's public journal even though on Tumblr that might have a more positive meaning... but I don't use bookmarklets so quite probably I don't fully understand what this one does either!! :D
no subject
Date: 2024-01-02 04:46 am (UTC)Thank you! That'll be useful info for later.
I honestly haven't seen very many reblogs with that system; even shortly after it was put together, I saw a short spate for a month or two, and then it trickled to just about nothing. I think I maybe saw one Dreamwidth "reblog" in the past year or so? I'll have to remember to look them up, so I can report on what they look like 😂
That said, I'm honestly glad that there are so many steps required to "reblog" anything on Dreamwidth, and I'm personally not going to make it easier outside of linking to that post. The ability to reblog in and of itself won't change Dreamwidth from a content creation site to a content aggregation site, as long as it stays strictly a third-party option, but enough people using that feature might, and I'm pretty sure that Mark and Denise have vested interested in preventing Dreamwidth from going that way. I strongly prefer Dreamwidth as a content creation site, myself.