So my writing skills have gone to pot, and I figured, some kind of monthly blog would help bring them out of storage and dust them off. But I’m curious about this LJ thing all the young whippersnappers are talking about.
What’s with the posts I used to see that would say “I have an LJ code if someone wants it!”?
How does it work in a “community” sense. I’ve heard people say “Oh, those Dopers are hanging out in LJ.” Wuzzat? Mnementh and LaurAnge explained it a bit at last year’s Montreal SugarDope, but I’ve since forgotten.
Can you edit something once you post it, or are you stuck with your typos like on the board?
What are the pros and cons of the free vs. paid LJ. Which do most people use?
I did a board search on LJ and didn’t find anything all that helpful (I’m positive this has been covered before… if anyone knows of a really comprehensive thread, let me know.)
Livejournal used to have a system where you had to either know someone to get a code or you had to pay outright to get one. They’ve done away with it in the past year though so that’s why you never see such posts anymore.
You can “friend” people and communities on livejournal and have everyone you’ve done so with show up on a page that you can then scroll through and read. The SDMB has a presence there… I’d say about 80 or more of my 111 friends are either current or former Dopers.
You can edit and delete it at any time you want. You can even delete your entire journal if you want to.
A paid journal gives you the ability to make polls, a better customizing agent, and seven more icons. I’ve had both and personally, while I’d like a couple more icons – which I could buy independent of a paid icon – I prefer free. I don’t like paying for things if I don’t have to.
LJ Code: To start a new account you need an LJ code. They started this after I signed on, so I’m not entirely sure how this works. Someone else will be along to explain it better.
Communities: You can join communities, and there are quite a few that many Dopers are a part of. Many Dopers also add other Dopers to their Friends list, so this creates a large community of Dopers. That’s mostly who I have on my Friends list—Dopers and ex-Dopers.
Editing: Yes, you can edit afterwards. You can also delete entire posts.
With paid accounts you can post by phone or e-mail, have more than three pictures (a sort of Avatar of sorts next to your name), and do other odds and ends like post polls. Free acounts you can have only three pictures. I don’t mind the free acounts because I don’t do much with a paid one.
This is basically a rough answer to your question. Like I said, I’m sure others will come along to explain it better.
What’s with the posts I used to see that would say “I have an LJ code if someone wants it!”?
Codes are no longer needed to join. It was a temporary fix to a temporary problem. The site was growing faster than they were able to keep up with.
How does it work in a “community” sense. I’ve heard people say “Oh, those Dopers are hanging out in LJ.” Wuzzat? Mnementh and LaurAnge explained it a bit at last year’s Montreal SugarDope, but I’ve since forgotten.
You can add other LJers as friends. You read their LJ’s, they read yours. There are also several SDMB (related, not affiliated) communities, including a book challenge, crafts, knitting, cooking, and more.
If you look at my profile page , I’m sure you’ll recognize a lot of Dopers listed as my friends.
Can you edit something once you post it, or are you stuck with your typos like on the board?
It’s a journal, you can edit your posts, any posts. I can go back to something I wrote 4 years ago and edit it, delete it, change the security settings (meaning change who has access to read it), etc.
What are the pros and cons of the free vs. paid LJ. Which do most people use?
With a paid account you have more user icons, and you can do things like polls, phone posts, email posts, you have more flexibility with changing the look of your journal, and other features. It’s relatively inexpensive if you go the paid route, but the beauty of it is that it is free.
You can add people to your “friend” list and that will give them sort of a feedback option so they can post kind of like on a message board or guestbook?
Yes. It also allows you to read a ‘friends page’ , all your friends entries on one webpage.
And, no. Depending on how you ‘filter’ your entries, and some LJ settings.
If you post ‘open’ entries, anyone can read them, and anyone can post comments to them. If you lock an entry, only those people that you have designated to view the entry can comment on it, (it could be every person on your friends list, it could be a group of closer friends, or it could be just you and one other person. Or you could write private entries that only you can view.
The comment feature is similar to a message board or a guest book. One friend comments, Another friend may comment to that comment, and so on.
Pretty much. If you were to join livejournal and I were to friend you, I could read and reply to any entry you made that you didn’t specifically block me from reading. If you were to friend me back, you could do the same with me.
While it’s ostensibly a journaling site, most people I know use it more as a social outlet. Think MPSIMS on steroids.
My friends page if you’re curious. You’ll probably recognize a handful of names.
Anyone can leave you feedback, whether they’re your friends or not, whether they have a LJ account themselves or not. So it’s most like a guestbook. You can use it as a personal journal to just write, or use it as a way to stay in touch with a community of friends, or use it to pimp yourself. I do all three.
Since they’re free, I encourage you to set one up and play around. And of course, join The SDMB community.
Although you didn’t ask specifically, I’ve found that the vast majority of LJ users are whiny little teens who bitch about how crappy their life is.
If one were to only read LJ posts , they’d swear that the world was in a despicable state. It seems LJ attracts those who are despressed and desperate for attention.
With that said, there have been a couple LJs I’ve come across that were interesting and weren’t a pity-party, but those are few and far between. I imagine the OPs would fall in this category.
Well, something like LJ certainly does lend itself well to the angst-ridden teen years when your hormones are bouncing around enough to make you cuckoo-for-coacoa-puffs. I probably wrote tormented ramblings when I was about 14. Anyone who had a journal or diary of some kind probably did during the adolescent period I’ve always called “The Deranged Years.”
But why anyone would want to put that on public display is beyond me.
However, for more grown-up purposes, I thought I could make an effort to make a monthly article, armchair critique, film review or whatnot, just to get my writing back up to snuff. I write and/or edit so much promotion-oriented copy that everything I write now sounds like it came out of a sales brochure. :rolleyes:
Just to note, there are alternatives to Live Journal. You can start your own free blog and build and mantain it easily on Tripod. It is very versatile and user friendly. There are great user resources, references, and tools that I find especially nice and accomadating about Lycos/Tripod blogging and web building.
ok, since this is a Live Journal thread, I have a question!
The set up is a lot different than that of a regular message board. Here, if you make a reply to thread, it will push the thread up to the top. It will also put the reply on the bottom of the thread.
Live Journal doesn’t do that. I can understand that it won’t bump the thread to the top (it is a dated thing after all), but it also seems like you can reply anywhere in the thread!
I was once given the link to a friend of a friend’s Live Journal. It was fun but ultimately too confusing to keep up with because I could never make out which replies were new.
How do you guys manage? Is there a secret to it that I couldn’t grasp?
Well, it certainly is different from messageboards’ linear format. It’s more like the old “conversation” style formats on newsgroups and such.
If I make an entry, and then, say, three people make comments on my entry, they’ll appear below in the order they made the comments. If I (or anyone) reply to the first comment, my reply will be indented just under the comment I replied to.
POST ~~~~~~~~~~
First comment (A)
First reply (A1)
Second reply (A2)
First reply (A2i)
Third reply (A3)
First reply (A3i)
First reply (A3ia)
Second reply (A3ii)
First reply (A3iia)
Second comment (B)
First reply (B1)
First reply (B1a)
Second reply (B2)
Third comment (C)
First reply (C1)
So basically, what’s happened is that I’ve made a post and three people have commented on the post itself (comments A, B and C).
Now, three people have replied to the first comment (A1, A2, and A3). No one has replied to A1, one person has replied to A2 (A2i), and two people have replied to A3 (A3i, A3ii). No one has replied to A2i, and one person has replied to A3i and A3ii (A3ia and A3iia, respectively).
B is easier. Two people have replied to comment B, B1 and B2. One person has replied to B1, B1a. No one has replied to B2.
One person has replied to comment C, C1.
The confusing part about this, I think, it that these replies can come in any order, with the obvious exception that a reply to something cannot come before what it is replying to. Therefore A3ia could not come before A3, since it is a reply to a comment made on A3. C1 could come before anything except A, B and C, since it is not related to anything but C (and C wouldn’t be C if A and B didn’t come before it).
It’s sort of a “tree” structure and can get pretty confusing if you have a post with more than about 10 or 20 comments. Fortunately, that rarely happens. There are also timestamps on each entry (though these can sometimes get wonky), if you really need to figure out the order.
To chime in with the people listing alternative sites: There’s just something about Livejournal’s standard format that makes the reader anticipate breathy, badly punctuated, undercapitalized “like”-filled teenage ramblings. There must be a better way!
To go the easy way- LJ has an optional feature you can set that sends comments to your email. So, any comments (or comments to comments, etc.) to a post in my personal journal, I get sent to me in an email.
I *also *get any comments posted to a comment that I make in someone else’s LJ sent to my email.
So, basically, any conversation that might involve me or something I posted directly, I’m notified of. Kind of like the “Subscribe to Thread” here.
And like Garf said, timestamps and the tree structure, when reading an actual friends page, are usually enough to keep things straight.
… So…
Anyone want to give me one?