- Youtube/other embedded video links presented without context, as a “click here.”
Is this something I want to see? Is this something I have already seen? Is this something I really want to click on, thereby bringing my web browsing to a halt and flooding my bandwidth and possibly crashing my browser, or not? No explain, no click. It’s not like images which are basically amusing and load in 5 seconds.
- Use of regular LJ account to simulcast an outside blog.
Why is this on my LJ friend list, if it’s a feed from a blog? If your blog has an RSS feed I can just subscribe to that. When it’s masquerading as an LJ friend, I have to click through to the originating blog and go through the post again, then comment there, possibly after registering or defeating the spam protector on the outside blog.
Please, just don’t. Put a header on the LJ saying that you post at foobar.com now and just use this for reading protected entries and have a nice day and here’s my feed.
- RSS without the full content.
I am not interested in the first ten words of your blog. I am not interested in your photoblog without the pictures. And I am really not interested in an RSS feed of your paid content that turns into a teaser when I fall for it and click through.
If you can’t figure out how to use something like Feedburner to put ads in your feed, then you shouldn’t be trying to make money with your blog anyway. It’s involved. Get a paper route.
If you have a photoblog and an RSS feed, and the whole point of the blog is to gape happily at the photos, no one will use the RSS feed if the photos are not in it. It’s just a tiresome tease. If you can’t afford the bandwidth to serve your photos, why do you have a photoblog anyway? Just have a bake sale.
- People who complain about shit on their blogs. WHATEVER, CAPTAIN RANTS-A-LOT!
in which I annoy others with my own annoyances
Published
Be My Blog 
oooooh #3 burns me up too!
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Addendum: Gigantic fucking images from ghetto servers dropped in without width or length tags, causing epic reflows every time you touch anything
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god.
i just kept looping that sentence at least three times and i was like what the fuck
“I have to click through to the originating blog and go through the post again, then comment masquerading as an LJ friend, I have to click through to the originating blog and go through the post again, then comment” etc.
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But without the context, there’s an automatic mystery about the clip. You gotta at least watch the first 6 or 7 seconds.*
*wish I were being sarcastic
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5. Brain slugs. What’s the deal with them? I don’t get why…
…more people don’t have such a wonderful creature as a pet. Look, it wobbles when I walk! That’s funny. Here, have one of your own.
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Use of regular LJ account to simulcast an outside blog.
For readers, there is no difference between using LJ’s API to syndicate external content here and using RSS to syndicate external content here. For the author, on the other hand, syndicating with LJ’s API lets the author control replication instead of counting on LJ’s RSS reader.
Well, that’s not true. One difference for readers is that LJ users expect friends to use LJ’s friend mechanisms. I want to read my LJ friends’ protected posts, and to do that I need to have a LiveJournal account that they friend. Presumably some of those people will also want to read my posts, so having my posts in the same account that I read their journals with lets me avoid having to tell people that they have to friend both my empty journal and a syndicated account if they want to both read me and allow me to read their protected entries. (Or, more directly: It avoids the problem where they forget to friend me, and then I never see their protected posts without even knowing that I’m missing them.)
A similar problem arises with community memberships.
A related usability problem has to do with usernames: there’s no way to convert an account from regular to syndicated. Because of that, the options then become “Force everyone that reads me to take an action because I want to use different software” and “Make everything continue to work the same without any action on my readers’ part”, the second one is a no-brainer.
(On top of that, since 6A gave me a permanent account in exchange for past volunteering, I felt that leaving LiveJournal outright would be ungrateful.)
LiveJournal’s syndication is designed to let LiveJournal users read things unaffiliated with LiveJournal on their friends pages. As a result it isn’t very good at letting people with content elsewhere participate here. Luckily this problem has a software workaround.
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I’m going to have to agree and restate/add:
1. I believe in the social network angle to LiveJournal as opposed to other blogs, but also like the flexibility and freedom of running my own. With cross-posting (really, no different than a person posting in a journal you subscribe to AND a community you subscribe to), I get the best of both worlds. I don’t want to let go of my permanent account and like being part of a web of friends, yet I also want more than what LJ provides.
2. I know plenty of folks who use LiveJournal. Very few of them have dedicated RSS readers. Alpha-Geeks “get” RSS. The rest of the world vaguely knows it as “that stuff you have to paste into the advanced menu on iTunes to subscribe to a podcast if there isn’t already an iTunes button.”
3. Those same folks wouldn’t always know to add BOTH the LJ syndicated RSS feed account AND my personal “for reading and commenting” account because, really, why does one person need two accounts?
4. I find the cross-posting to be a little more personal than an LJ-RSS feed. It conveys “yes, I am a LiveJournal member and am an active person” a heck of a lot more than an LJ bot account that polls for RSS or an empty blog with a single post saying “go over there to read my stuff.”
5. There is always that friend-groups thing where you can have people on your friend list, yet not in your default reading list. 🙂
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I am dum
I like complaining and I’m good at it. Other than that, I have no idea what you are talking about.
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Tasty sounding!
A foobar sounds like it would go good with a cup of tea!
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Boy, am I with you on number 1.
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Youtube/other embedded video links presented without context, as a “click here.”
Initially I thought you just meant the embedded links themselves, which I’ve been pretty guilty of lately. Lo Siento.
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RE: # 4
But, but, but there was actual shit involved in the shit I was complaining about!
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Re: # 4
My dear Hawthorntree, you complain to your heart’s content. I like listening to it. (Now let me tell you about the idiot who messed up a nice, tidy resolution I’d mediated the day before…)
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Re: #2
Can’t agree with you on this one, chief. Few of the folks likely to read my cross-posted mutterings have a close personal relationship with a feed aggregator of any kind.
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Re: #2
That’s why I make LJ syndications of the feeds myself so people can just friend them. What bugs me isn’t syndicating to LJ, it’s breaking the friends list system by turning my LJ friends into one-way broadcasts where I expect commenting to be available. It’s just an annoyance, not fatal.
To me the simulcast of the blog to the LJ is just a feed, and would do fine as an LJ syndication. When I see a friendslist post and then realize that it’s not really an LJ and I can’t participate in the discussion, I get frowny.
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Re: #2
Why can’t you participate in the discussion, doing it on LJ? That’s what I do. I figure, if they’re feeding to LJ, they must be checking there. But perhaps you mean that your comments won’t be read by the larger readership, which is true, but it never occurred to me to be bothered by it. Especially since none of the folks I know who have a cross post have a fraction of the readership at the originating blog compared to their readership on LJ. Anyway, I like to comment just for the lovely dance of my own words in my head. Debating makes the soles of my feet itch. (scratch scratch scratch)
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Re: #2
The ones I am talking about do not have comments enabled. They’re simulcasts from blogs, not feeds. With the feed ones, the comments usually go unread, but that’s a different problem.
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Re: #2
Yeah, I figured I wasn’t “getting it” on a technical level. I told Dan that at some time in the last few years I turned into Grandma. What d’ya kids mean, “download?” You mean when you’re talking about “facebook” you’re not talking about studying really hard? “Blog” isn’t a word, dear, it’s the sound you make when you vomit. Etc.
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