Hey, I've been crossposting from Dreamwidth for over a week. That totally qualifies me for a compare n' contrast post, right?

My thoughts:

On the Dreamwidth side:

1. This is the most minor thing, but I love the "choose random icon" button. I use it all the time now. And then I giggle when it chooses a completely inappropriate icon with which to reply to someone. "Oh! I was replying with squee to this person, but it chose an angsty!Willow icon. Hee!"

I dig it.

2. Some of the DW-only poll features are very nifty. Especially the ability to create completely anonymous polls. I don't have immediate plans for it, but it may have come in handy in the past.

3. It's up when LJ is down. They're also good at providing service updates whereas LJ sucks at that.

4. Less SPAM. I'm able to actually allow anon comments on the DW side. I had to turn them off on LJ over the summer cause I kept getting SPAM while I was in the hospital and it made me angry with a morphine rage. So I turned that shit off.

On the Livejournal side:

1. As another minor thing, I so miss the tag chooser thingy and also the autofill for my music from LastFM. I have a shit memory, so being able to use the pop-up with my tags is very useful for me. And if the Music entry doesn't autofill whatever I'm playing, I'm tempted to lie if I'm listening to some crap music. LJ KEEPS ME HONEST.

2. I stopped reading my DW reading circle or whatever it's called. Cause...well...there's not much DW-only stuff. DW gives me DW. LJ gives me DW+LJ. So I get everything covered by reading my LJ flist. I tried joining some DW comms but 1) I'm not a big comm person; 2) There aren't many really active ones on DW.

3. I understand the purpose of the "subscribe" and "access" distinction on DW, but it really just makes things a bit too muddled for me. On LJ, I friend back most everybody who friends me. I do use filters to trim down my default flist and some personal entries, but mostly, anybody who friends me has access to the flocked post. I don't mind this. My journal's more public than private, so I don't really need the distinct categories.

On DW, though, since those distinctions exist, I feel awkward granting access to people, because it seems to come with a social expectation that they do the same back. But what if they don't want me to have access? What if they just want to subscribe to me for the meta? But then I give them access, so they feel awkward if they don't reciprocate?

I've mainly just reciprocated whatever people do to me first on DW so far, but most people have gone ahead and subscribed and granted access. So it's effectively like the LJ flist anyway, just with some redundancy. I'd prefer the flist concept, personally.

Um...okay, that's it. I know Dreamwidth is supposed to be ~MAGICAL~, but I've only picked up on minor differences between the two services. Or at least, minor differences to my process of doing things. And DW's openness ultimately hurts it. By allowing crossposting and such, it keeps people on the LJ side.

Heads up that some people discuss Dreamwidth with the implication that the "goal" is to get everybody to move over. I have no such goal. I'm gonna use whichever service works best for me and the peeps who follow me. I'm not married to Dreamwidth, so I don't particularly care if people gravitate over to it or not. LJ has the advantage for my needs right now, but since I can crosspost from Dreamwidth, I don't have any problem doing so to accommodate the DW-only folks. Though I'm gonna tentatively predict that the episode polls will move back over to LJ.

This entry was originally posted at http://gabrielleabelle.dreamwidth.org/353390.html. There are comments on the DW side. Comment over there or over here. Roger! Over and out!