The facts of LJ
Jan. 7th, 2006 03:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zdashamberI've recently pointed some people at my LJ who may not have that much experience with the whole thing, so I figured I'd lay it all out in case it wasn't clear.
The important thing to mention first is that on Livejournal, you build a list of other LJers you read (LJ calls them "friends"), and LJ collects all their posts as they write them on a single, easy-to-read page called your "friendslist." You can click on the link on the left of my page that says "Friends" to see what my friends are saying.
Likewise, there are many people who have my LJ listed among their friends, and this post will show up on their friendslist. It may bore some of them, but more importantly, it will be long, and so for politeness's sake it's expected that I put in a "cut tag". It's rude to take up many screens worth of the page for all of their friends with my own ramblings, so they have to scroll past my boring stuff to get to the posts of their friends who may be writing more juicy things. I generally put cut tags in anything longer than a screen.
A cut tag will just take you to the entry on its own page. Sometimes people put in multiple cut tags so you can jump to different parts of the narrative, for a sort of "table of contents" effect. The most basic cut tag just says "Read more", but usually people change the text to add more information. The text in the cut tag only appears on your main LJ page or your friend's FL pages, so it's unwise to put crucial things there. People who got to the entry via links, or who are reading through your archives one by one, will never see that text.
Ok, so, back to where I was going to start this entry before I recognized that it would get all long and boring! Livejournal is a blogging program. "Blog" is short for "web log". There are about 6 blogging programs in use: LJ, typepad, blogger, moveable type, blogware, and blogspot. (I've linked to blogs of those types that I read.) The non-LJ programs generally produce blogs with lots of links in their sidebars, perhaps because unlike LJ they have static areas on their basic blog page where good links can stay for months or years. The only static page on most LJs is the user info page, which I'll speak more of below.
Many non-LJ programs have the ability to tell when someone has linked to one of their posts--this is called "trackback", and you can follow those links to see what someone has written about your article. Non-LJ blogs are infested by spammers collecting addresses of commentors and posting spam in the comments... For some reason, I've never seen spam on LJ, or heard of anyone who's had trouble with it.
Livejournal has a reputation as being less serious, for drama-riddled teenagers. I think this is because it's extremely simple to set up and use, and also in the beginning it was like gmail, by invitation only, and there must have been a founder effect from enthusiastic teenagers. Also, LJ is built more like social software than other blog software: it has the friends list built in, and it has a user info thing built in. It has an option to fill in your mood for each post, with little icon sets you can adapt yourself. It has the option to fill in what song you're listening to for each post.
And I suppose the user picture was meant for people to actually see who they're talking to. Heh. Instead, the user picture is often used to provide more info on the mood of the person posting. People with free accounts can have up to 6 pictures to choose from; many people have paid to have many more icons. Some people use a single icon almost all the time for branding purposes, some people rotate every post, so you have to attend to username when you're figuring out who said what. Some people are silly and have no userpicture at all. :P Anyway, the pictures may have something to do with the less serious reputation of LJ.
That reputation means that on LJ you'll find more of the fun silly "memes", like the "guess what movie this image is from" stuff and the results of internet quizzes. However, I think LJ is becoming more and more "acceptable" as spam takes out more and more of the "serious" blogging options, and as more serious people decide that simplicity is nice. For example, a lot of authors now have LJ as their blog, and 4 of the 15 most-linked posts of 2005 were on LJ, including this one of the two best on the Katrina aftermath.
For the authors I mentioned above, I linked to their user info pages. The user info page is linked from a person's main LJ page, but the easiest way to get there is to click the little head icon that appears next to a person's LJ name when it's written using the special LJ user tag, a la![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
zdashamber. These pages are a good source on people, because even if the people don't fill in any bio or interests, you can see who's on their friendslist, and (if they allow), who reads them. By clicking on the user picture shown on the top right of their info page, you can see all of the icons they have uploaded. By clicking on the "Memories" link you can see LJ posts they've found important enough to bookmark. By clicking on the "more details" link at the bottom, you can see when they created their account and when they last updated it.
The "last updated" leads to another quirk of LJ: you won't necessarily see every post a person writes on their LJ. You can set your posts so that only people on a specific list you make can read them. People use this to bitch about bosses, or friends (which would be the last reason LJ is known for drama), or in some cases due to bad past experiences a person will post everything friends-locked. Also, some bits of information on the user info page can be friendslocked: in my case, only people I call friends can see my AIM and ICQ chat IDs.
The easiest way to read back through a person's past posts is to click on the little green arow keys on the top of the message when you have it open on its own page. Most people, you'll run into a friendslocked post you don't have access to pretty quick, though. The best way to search for a specific post you remember is to go to the main page of their journal, and then to the "History" link (though people can get fancy and rename all of their links, it oughtta be there somewhere). This pops up a calendar, and at the bottom of each month is a link that says "View Subjects." From this link you can page through the subjects of all the months.
Just as people sometimes rename their 4 basic links (Friends, History, Info, and My Website), they sometimes rename their 2 comments links, "X Comments" and "Comment on this". It's all pretty easy to figure out by location, though. Comments in LJ are threaded. The most common mistake is for people to click "Post a new comment" and thus reply to the post when they meant instead to reply to a specific comment... You reply to a specific comment by clicking "Reply to this" directly below the comment in question. Comment threads that get long than about 50 posts have some of the far-end comments collapsed down to their titles.
Most people have their settings such that any comments made in their journal are mailed to them. Untitled comments are sent with a title "Reply to your post..." or "Reply to your comment..." variously. Titled comments are sent with the title the person writes. Most people don't bother with titles for their comments, so titled comments are easier to miss in an inbox.
Because every comment you make generates an email, it's generally better to not edit your comments for piddly stuff (which you can only do by deleting them and reposting them). The owner of the LJ can't edit your comments either... Like you, they can only delete them. They can edit the original post as much as they like, though, even changing the timestamp if they like.
Some people don't allow anonymous comments, so only other LJ users can comment on their posts. For those who do allow anonymous comments, it's only polite to put some sort of name on your comment so the owner of the LJ can think of you as a specific person. Posts or journals can also be set "only friends can comment" or "comments will be screened by the owner and only released into the wild if they choose" or "no comments allowed."
It's also possible to have a LJ in which many people can post; this is called a "community" and has a different little icon next to its name. One that I'm in is![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
snarky_haiku. And the combination of (1. a blog with a RSS feed) and (2. a paid LJ user who's willing to set a feed up) can result in a "feed" anyone can subscribe to, so you can read the blog of a non-LJ-user as a part of your friendslist. It's not, alas, an ideal situation, since these feeds don't have cut tags in them, so there's the chance that you'll have a lot of scrolling to get past them to check older posts in your friendslist. Also, you can't see the comments made on the original website.
I think that's about all that needs explaining. Whaddya think, all? Did I miss anything? Any questions?
The important thing to mention first is that on Livejournal, you build a list of other LJers you read (LJ calls them "friends"), and LJ collects all their posts as they write them on a single, easy-to-read page called your "friendslist." You can click on the link on the left of my page that says "Friends" to see what my friends are saying.
Likewise, there are many people who have my LJ listed among their friends, and this post will show up on their friendslist. It may bore some of them, but more importantly, it will be long, and so for politeness's sake it's expected that I put in a "cut tag". It's rude to take up many screens worth of the page for all of their friends with my own ramblings, so they have to scroll past my boring stuff to get to the posts of their friends who may be writing more juicy things. I generally put cut tags in anything longer than a screen.
A cut tag will just take you to the entry on its own page. Sometimes people put in multiple cut tags so you can jump to different parts of the narrative, for a sort of "table of contents" effect. The most basic cut tag just says "Read more", but usually people change the text to add more information. The text in the cut tag only appears on your main LJ page or your friend's FL pages, so it's unwise to put crucial things there. People who got to the entry via links, or who are reading through your archives one by one, will never see that text.
Ok, so, back to where I was going to start this entry before I recognized that it would get all long and boring! Livejournal is a blogging program. "Blog" is short for "web log". There are about 6 blogging programs in use: LJ, typepad, blogger, moveable type, blogware, and blogspot. (I've linked to blogs of those types that I read.) The non-LJ programs generally produce blogs with lots of links in their sidebars, perhaps because unlike LJ they have static areas on their basic blog page where good links can stay for months or years. The only static page on most LJs is the user info page, which I'll speak more of below.
Many non-LJ programs have the ability to tell when someone has linked to one of their posts--this is called "trackback", and you can follow those links to see what someone has written about your article. Non-LJ blogs are infested by spammers collecting addresses of commentors and posting spam in the comments... For some reason, I've never seen spam on LJ, or heard of anyone who's had trouble with it.
Livejournal has a reputation as being less serious, for drama-riddled teenagers. I think this is because it's extremely simple to set up and use, and also in the beginning it was like gmail, by invitation only, and there must have been a founder effect from enthusiastic teenagers. Also, LJ is built more like social software than other blog software: it has the friends list built in, and it has a user info thing built in. It has an option to fill in your mood for each post, with little icon sets you can adapt yourself. It has the option to fill in what song you're listening to for each post.
And I suppose the user picture was meant for people to actually see who they're talking to. Heh. Instead, the user picture is often used to provide more info on the mood of the person posting. People with free accounts can have up to 6 pictures to choose from; many people have paid to have many more icons. Some people use a single icon almost all the time for branding purposes, some people rotate every post, so you have to attend to username when you're figuring out who said what. Some people are silly and have no userpicture at all. :P Anyway, the pictures may have something to do with the less serious reputation of LJ.
That reputation means that on LJ you'll find more of the fun silly "memes", like the "guess what movie this image is from" stuff and the results of internet quizzes. However, I think LJ is becoming more and more "acceptable" as spam takes out more and more of the "serious" blogging options, and as more serious people decide that simplicity is nice. For example, a lot of authors now have LJ as their blog, and 4 of the 15 most-linked posts of 2005 were on LJ, including this one of the two best on the Katrina aftermath.
For the authors I mentioned above, I linked to their user info pages. The user info page is linked from a person's main LJ page, but the easiest way to get there is to click the little head icon that appears next to a person's LJ name when it's written using the special LJ user tag, a la
zdashamber. These pages are a good source on people, because even if the people don't fill in any bio or interests, you can see who's on their friendslist, and (if they allow), who reads them. By clicking on the user picture shown on the top right of their info page, you can see all of the icons they have uploaded. By clicking on the "Memories" link you can see LJ posts they've found important enough to bookmark. By clicking on the "more details" link at the bottom, you can see when they created their account and when they last updated it. The "last updated" leads to another quirk of LJ: you won't necessarily see every post a person writes on their LJ. You can set your posts so that only people on a specific list you make can read them. People use this to bitch about bosses, or friends (which would be the last reason LJ is known for drama), or in some cases due to bad past experiences a person will post everything friends-locked. Also, some bits of information on the user info page can be friendslocked: in my case, only people I call friends can see my AIM and ICQ chat IDs.
The easiest way to read back through a person's past posts is to click on the little green arow keys on the top of the message when you have it open on its own page. Most people, you'll run into a friendslocked post you don't have access to pretty quick, though. The best way to search for a specific post you remember is to go to the main page of their journal, and then to the "History" link (though people can get fancy and rename all of their links, it oughtta be there somewhere). This pops up a calendar, and at the bottom of each month is a link that says "View Subjects." From this link you can page through the subjects of all the months.
Just as people sometimes rename their 4 basic links (Friends, History, Info, and My Website), they sometimes rename their 2 comments links, "X Comments" and "Comment on this". It's all pretty easy to figure out by location, though. Comments in LJ are threaded. The most common mistake is for people to click "Post a new comment" and thus reply to the post when they meant instead to reply to a specific comment... You reply to a specific comment by clicking "Reply to this" directly below the comment in question. Comment threads that get long than about 50 posts have some of the far-end comments collapsed down to their titles.
Most people have their settings such that any comments made in their journal are mailed to them. Untitled comments are sent with a title "Reply to your post..." or "Reply to your comment..." variously. Titled comments are sent with the title the person writes. Most people don't bother with titles for their comments, so titled comments are easier to miss in an inbox.
Because every comment you make generates an email, it's generally better to not edit your comments for piddly stuff (which you can only do by deleting them and reposting them). The owner of the LJ can't edit your comments either... Like you, they can only delete them. They can edit the original post as much as they like, though, even changing the timestamp if they like.
Some people don't allow anonymous comments, so only other LJ users can comment on their posts. For those who do allow anonymous comments, it's only polite to put some sort of name on your comment so the owner of the LJ can think of you as a specific person. Posts or journals can also be set "only friends can comment" or "comments will be screened by the owner and only released into the wild if they choose" or "no comments allowed."
It's also possible to have a LJ in which many people can post; this is called a "community" and has a different little icon next to its name. One that I'm in is
snarky_haiku. And the combination of (1. a blog with a RSS feed) and (2. a paid LJ user who's willing to set a feed up) can result in a "feed" anyone can subscribe to, so you can read the blog of a non-LJ-user as a part of your friendslist. It's not, alas, an ideal situation, since these feeds don't have cut tags in them, so there's the chance that you'll have a lot of scrolling to get past them to check older posts in your friendslist. Also, you can't see the comments made on the original website.I think that's about all that needs explaining. Whaddya think, all? Did I miss anything? Any questions?