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piranhai think the journal/blog paradigm is fine for daily life reportage, but it stinks for carrying on conversations. it feels mostly like i am alone, speaking to the winds. and while that's fine for part of how i am, it's completely useless for interacting with other people. i don't actually need to speak to the winds; i am happy doing it in my own head. writing here has always been for others -- though not as a performance, but just to keep in touch.
a blog's paradigm is primarily insular. other people might come across you, but aside from those who already know you it's all very random, and most don't stay. you might get a drive-by comment, but they're hard to keep track of for the visitors, and conversations rarely persist past a couple days. on LJ you can at least keep track of some of your comments, if only a small percentage, and the subscription mechanism is better than nothing, but messy.
now, one can make a blog into something more like a community, but it takes either a very energetic person, or a small team, and it helps if you are famous in your circles (cf. making light). and still, the time-driven content presentation results in "out of sight, out of mind". also, most blogs have flat commenting. don't even get me started. LJ's thread handling is cumbersome, but at least it exists. i hate flat comments with a passion. also, no killfiles in blogs.
i just got an email in response to a post i made on usenet in 1998. somebody searched google groups for a specific subject. LJ's search capabilities suck. and ljseek only covers unrestricted public posts. i used to grump at dejanews, now i think google groups is a mint because of its easy search across a long-term archive. i could always search usenet on my own server. search is good.
usenet. so much fun in large part because the spaces it creates are open. everyone can come in and write. without "community membership" hurdles to pass first (for unmoderated groups, which most of my faves have been). decentralized; you can pull down what you want and only what you want, anywhere, anytime, and read it in your favourite newsreader. or you can read it through the web. no central server that can go down and deprive you of your communications medium. but the topic space has always restrained me, and there is no way to officially create a no-topic space on usenet. i am not much for staying on topic (the peanut gallery guffaws). i am interested in so many things. and while i can subscribe to groups on all those things on usenet, i never keep up with them because it's too cumbersome. and i don't develop community with groups where i rarely post. and usenet is still a text-only medium -- which is great when i want to yadda on, but these days i also like to look at pictures. cat macros, you know? :) but usenet is also ephemeral, if not as much as LJ (and much less so since deja). which is possibly good for some free-wheeling conversation; i remember long arguments when deja came around about how it would affect people posting what they really thought.
web forums. all the problems of usenet with fewer positives, and little extra to make up for it. centralized -- if the site goes down, there goes your forum. too much clicky-clicky to see any actual text; with sup-par sequencing abilities. but easier presentation of graphics, and these days graphics matter to me. a bit more static than blogs, but still time-driven. decent search capabilities, though it depends on the software.
email lists have uses for announcements and short-term coordination of people. i am subscribed to a couple of yahoo groups (which i use solely through email) for announcements, but beyond that i don't want any truck with lists anymore.
no subject
on 2007-08-23 16:23 (UTC)comments in the sniggler group
on 2007-08-23 18:22 (UTC)no subject
on 2007-08-23 16:26 (UTC)Unfortunately, tons of the people I like reading (*doesn't name names or anything*) have all but left Usenet. I will tolerate non-LJ blogs, but they're going to be essentially like bookmarked websites in my brainspace until they evolve to handle comment notification and threading. Without that, they're useless for conversation, for me, anyway.
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on 2007-08-23 19:55 (UTC)i really wish i could go back to usenet. i've tried several times. i don't know what it would take.
no subject
on 2007-08-24 08:30 (UTC)(I must add that if I went somewhere new (*looks at pleonastic*) that it would have to have threading built in. Which is pretty much my only 'this isn't happening without that' issue.)
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on 2007-08-23 16:28 (UTC)I still post to exactly two Usenet groups, and in one of them I've managed to be present enough, consistently enough, that it does feel like community/conversation, but if I let it slide for as much as a week, I begin to lose that feeling.
The bottom line, for me, is that no on-line forum comes close to matching the community I feel with people I interact with every day. The 'Net is good for many things - better, for some of them, than face-to-face interaction - but I still need meatspace for building an ongoing sense of community and commonality.
Re: problems with the existing paradigms, unsorted
on 2007-08-23 18:07 (UTC)i don't need meatspace and i actively don't want most of it -- because it a) limits interaction to locals, and most of the people i care about aren't and won't ever be local and b) doesn't work well with my weird sleep schedule and energy bursts. which is why i am looking for an online component that matches what other people might get from meatspace.
no subject
on 2007-08-23 16:47 (UTC)I'd like an intersection, but I can't figure out what it would look like.
One thing LJ does for me, which may or may not be as much of an advantage as I think it is, is keep me from discussing so many "dangerous" things in rasfc. Notice I no longer subscribe to any of the newsgroups where people consider those things to be anywhere near on-topic. And in rasfc, I've carefully killfiled the people who are dangerous for me to talk to, including at least one person who might be an interesting conversationalist if he wasn't obsessive about redbaiting me. Yes, I'm a coward, but really, if I'm going to be redbaited, I want it to be because I did something worthwhile, and not just because I let an unguarded comment go by in a conversation.
Anyway, I love usenet, and I agree with you about its virtues, in spite of the annoying presence of people who like to accuse me of complicity in mass murder whenever I express an opinion about traffic management or water policy (I am not kidding, and I am not exaggerating).
Re: problems with the existing paradigms, unsorted
on 2007-08-23 18:15 (UTC)and again, topic space -- you write sff seriously; i just dabble, and it's not what i write most. and while i love talking about process, that's really not all i want to do. so i feel a little like a fraud in rasfc. but it generally has a lot of the right kind of people. despite the presence of some who're just idiots (and i know you're neither kidding nor exaggerating, *sigh*.) the unfetteredness of usenet combined with the unwillingness of geeks to cast anyone out allows some really kooky people to set up permanent residence.
no subject
on 2007-08-23 16:48 (UTC)If I'm making improvements, though? Yes please Usenet-style threading with new posts marked and jumpable-to! It boggles my mind that people manage to (1) keep up with Making Light at all and (2) have conversations despite the total lack of threading there. Web forums too. Is it really that hard to code some kind of threading?
Re: problems with the existing paradigms, unsorted
on 2007-08-23 18:22 (UTC)no, threading and sequencing is not that hard to code; the first online system i was on already had the basics of that 25+ years ago, better than blogs today. it just seems that all too many people are perfectly happy without it, which boggles my mind.
and when will effing LJ learn to insert a subject automatically? never. they just don't think it's necessary. but it's ever so helpful when reading comments through email notifications.
Re: problems with the existing paradigms, unsorted
on 2007-08-23 19:10 (UTC)From your mouth to some programmer's ears.
Re: problems with the existing paradigms, unsorted
on 2007-08-23 19:47 (UTC)deaf ears. or maybe i just don't communicate efficiently enough. or have sex with the right people. or whatever it would take.
no subject
on 2007-08-23 19:33 (UTC)Yes, I think the open-ness to new people is a key advantage to USENET. Having moved almost all of my narrative about my life and thoughts to filtered LJ for another reason, I miss meeting new people.
You haven't mentioned Facebook [ducks, runs.] I'd love to read your analysis of those social phenomena.
FACEBOOK! MYSPACE! LOLZ!
on 2007-08-23 19:50 (UTC)*heh*, facebook. *hits you with a wet noodle*.
no subject
on 2007-08-24 02:37 (UTC)It needs a sequencer. Or a sequencor. Stupid brain.
on 2007-08-24 18:27 (UTC)more on threading
on 2007-08-25 02:31 (UTC)usenet and a good newsreader (such as gnus) are several steps beyond LJ's mechanism, and way faster as well (there's always too much clicky-clicky for me with web-based apps, and they never let me configure anything different, like "unfold all comments @ 100 comments to a page"). i know i can't get the access speed of a newsreader on the web (because the content isn't local), but i would just like the functionality. heck, just SOME of the essential functionality.
it's really a crying shame that apps written 25+ years ago are STILL more powerful than anything new. they're not even reinventing the bloody wheel, they've made square wheels instead.
fuck. i wish i were still capable of programming something complex.
Re: more on threading
on 2007-08-25 15:09 (UTC)Driveby comment
on 2007-08-31 21:13 (UTC)Re: Driveby comment
on 2007-09-03 15:25 (UTC)