Tumblr for DW folks, part 1: Reblogs
Jan. 8th, 2019 01:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
potofsoup[Jan 25, 2019 Note: I realized the following day that I was writing about reblogs on the wrong register -- I wanted to express what reblogs mean to me, personally, and it came out as something too universal. This is what I should have written here, so I prefer that you read that instead. But I'm keeping this here and unlocking comments for archival purposes.]
muccamukk linked me to a post they made in response to my recent post about reblogs, which made me realize that ... I don't think the DW folks who aren't on tumblr quite understand the way reblogs work on Tumblr. At least, not the social function of it. There was a lot of "why can't these new tumblr people just post a link and a blurb?" and "the way to do it is curated link lists" and "I don't get why they call link sharing reblogs" and "I don't want my content to be reposted!!" in the comments.
To the last point: very fair concern! Especially private or locked posts, or posts otherwise not designed for public consumption! <-- tumblrites: heed this. Not everyone wants their posts quoted, especially ones intended for a private audience. Don't Repost.
But for the other stuff, hey, let's talk about tumblr reblogs for a sec, 'kay?
0) We don't like reposts, either. Reposting removes the work from its original poster and context, or mutates it beyond recognition, and there's a lot of social stigma on tumblr around reposting. Reblogging, however, keeps that context and can be a way to redirect people to the OP's post. That said,duskpeterson makes the point in comments here that when people sign up on tumblr, they are signing up for a public blog and reblogging. When people sign up on DW, they did not sign up for reblogging or reposting. But for the DW folks: tumblr reblogs are not reposts. Oftentimes, they're tumblr's way of sharing links and directing people's attention to worthwhile content. So if you read the word "reblog" and think "people better not be reposting my stuff", I'm actually trying to capture the idea of "sharing links" and "continuing the conversation in a more public space", which are things that people on DW do ALL THE TIME.
1) We all know tumblr reblogs is a horrible way to have a conversation. That's why we tumblr expats are really excited to use the comment features on DW! Seriously, NO ONE liked scrolling past 10 different copies of the same conversation, each subsequent one with slightly less of the convo. Like, THANK GOD DW HAS COMMENT THREADING.
2) "reblogging" is sharing a *discrete* chunk of "thing". Here I'm talking about reblogging as an action of sharing with your followers. And the fact that what you share is a discrete thing is what makes reblogs different from lists of links, in my opinion. On tumblr, if I see a cool image, or an interesting link, or a cool conversation between a historian, a botanist, and an artist about a picture of a plant in a medieval manuscript ... I hit "reblog" to share that chunk of "thing." I show my enthusiasm for the thing by "slamming the reblog button." So when I say "reblog", I mean "share that thing." I know it's weird to DW folk that I call it reblog, but I see it as a slightly different idea. This is why, in most cases, a quick link + blurb serves the same function as a reblog on DW. (One thing that frustrates me about some of the link lists that get shared on DW, is that sometimes they're links to a bunch of *different* discrete things. How am I supposed to isolate the 1 rec of the 5 listed, either to share with others, or to save to my memories in a way that future-me would understand?)
3) However, reblogging can also make new things. When you reblog something and add to the conversation while simultaneously widening the audience for the thing, magic sometimes happens. Other people add to it and suddenly you're not just sharing the original post, you're sharing the interaction between the original post and the subsequent reblog additions/remixes. A new "thing" is created through the reblog process. (And since reblogs spread, the niftiest version of the thing ends up rising to the top). My tumblr got deleted so I can no longer link you to my "tumblr perfection" tag that had all of these moments where tumblr magic happens, but here's at least an example where I reblogged an image, added a ficlet to it, and it became a thing that is more than the sum of its parts. Which is to say -- while I think 80% of the time, I just want to do a quick link share, and 15% of the time, I want to comment on the post, there *is* that 5% of the time where I want to do something *more*. And that something more is to add on to your thing in a way that create a new thing.
Edited to add: I'm beginning to realize that part of the confusion here is that there is a DW social norm that anyone can comment on and jump into any other comment thread in public posts??? Like, I tend to treat comment threads here like I do on AO3, where they tend to be one-on-one conversations between me and the creator. But apparently that's not the case??? I'd love to see an example of that "in the wild", as it were. It feels so *wrong* to me to just go reading other people's comments of posts, which is probably that same wrong feeling DW people have when I use the word "reblog".
4) There are tumblr conventions around reblogging, we're not heathens. Which is my way of saying "trust us to not muck things up."
- People don't usually reblog personal things. I recently read a really thought-provoking post on DW that talked about race and gentrification, but I knew it wasn't written to be shared widely, because the framing of the discussion was just so personal. When I was on tumblr, I would not reblog those sorts of posts either.
- People don't usually add on to the reblog chain unless they feel like they can add substantively to the conversation. There's a convention of keeping the reblog "clean", which is why everyone yells in the tags instead. So if I see a cool post, I'd hit reblog, and put my thoughts about that post in the tags. This means that my followers can see the tags, and the original poster can see my tags, but when my followers then reblogs that post, my tags don't muck up the original post. (That's why there's also the convention where people might "elevate" someone's tags into the reblog chain if they think it's particularly brilliant.)
- Also, back in the days when tumblr allowed editing of reblog chains, what people mostly did was to snip the conversation down to the specific snippet that they were commenting on. I did it all the time with my own posts. Once again, I don't have a proper example due to tumblr shenanigans, but here's a post of mine that got reblogged and had a lot of stuff added to it, which I wish I could snip a bit and then reblog: https://asgardian-goddess-of-writing.tumblr.com/post/177405007687/meleedamage-fasole-dulce-potofsoup . If I could edit reblogs, I would probably cut out some of the middle bits (while keeping the attribution) in order to focus on the whole "Bucky stealing Nat's guns" thing, and then add a follow-up comic of Bucky telling T'Challa "fine! I'll get my own guns!" or something.
So yeah, there are definitely HORRIBLE aspects of reblogging that I PRAY TO DEITIES that we don't do here, like making private conversations public, or editing other people's stuff in a way that disrepects the original post, or just all that repetitive scrolling. And yeah, there are IMPORTANT aspects of DW culture that we need to be mindful of, such as respecting the privacy and integrity of content , and using accessibility-friendly HTML, but also sometimes I want to see a non-sequitor of yours and make a doodle to accompany it and post those together with an "oops my hand slipped", with proper attribution and link-back. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
[Edited on Jan 8 2019 at 10am to add point #0]
[Edit on Jan 8 2019 at 10pm: Thanks for everyone's comments -- I'm definitely coming out of it with a better understanding of DW conventions. I'm turning off comments for a while so that I can focus on RL.]
[Edit on Jan 25 2019: all right, RL is done, so unlocking comments here.]
muccamukk linked me to a post they made in response to my recent post about reblogs, which made me realize that ... I don't think the DW folks who aren't on tumblr quite understand the way reblogs work on Tumblr. At least, not the social function of it. There was a lot of "why can't these new tumblr people just post a link and a blurb?" and "the way to do it is curated link lists" and "I don't get why they call link sharing reblogs" and "I don't want my content to be reposted!!" in the comments.To the last point: very fair concern! Especially private or locked posts, or posts otherwise not designed for public consumption! <-- tumblrites: heed this. Not everyone wants their posts quoted, especially ones intended for a private audience. Don't Repost.
But for the other stuff, hey, let's talk about tumblr reblogs for a sec, 'kay?
0) We don't like reposts, either. Reposting removes the work from its original poster and context, or mutates it beyond recognition, and there's a lot of social stigma on tumblr around reposting. Reblogging, however, keeps that context and can be a way to redirect people to the OP's post. That said,
duskpeterson makes the point in comments here that when people sign up on tumblr, they are signing up for a public blog and reblogging. When people sign up on DW, they did not sign up for reblogging or reposting. But for the DW folks: tumblr reblogs are not reposts. Oftentimes, they're tumblr's way of sharing links and directing people's attention to worthwhile content. So if you read the word "reblog" and think "people better not be reposting my stuff", I'm actually trying to capture the idea of "sharing links" and "continuing the conversation in a more public space", which are things that people on DW do ALL THE TIME.1) We all know tumblr reblogs is a horrible way to have a conversation. That's why we tumblr expats are really excited to use the comment features on DW! Seriously, NO ONE liked scrolling past 10 different copies of the same conversation, each subsequent one with slightly less of the convo. Like, THANK GOD DW HAS COMMENT THREADING.
2) "reblogging" is sharing a *discrete* chunk of "thing". Here I'm talking about reblogging as an action of sharing with your followers. And the fact that what you share is a discrete thing is what makes reblogs different from lists of links, in my opinion. On tumblr, if I see a cool image, or an interesting link, or a cool conversation between a historian, a botanist, and an artist about a picture of a plant in a medieval manuscript ... I hit "reblog" to share that chunk of "thing." I show my enthusiasm for the thing by "slamming the reblog button." So when I say "reblog", I mean "share that thing." I know it's weird to DW folk that I call it reblog, but I see it as a slightly different idea. This is why, in most cases, a quick link + blurb serves the same function as a reblog on DW. (One thing that frustrates me about some of the link lists that get shared on DW, is that sometimes they're links to a bunch of *different* discrete things. How am I supposed to isolate the 1 rec of the 5 listed, either to share with others, or to save to my memories in a way that future-me would understand?)
3) However, reblogging can also make new things. When you reblog something and add to the conversation while simultaneously widening the audience for the thing, magic sometimes happens. Other people add to it and suddenly you're not just sharing the original post, you're sharing the interaction between the original post and the subsequent reblog additions/remixes. A new "thing" is created through the reblog process. (And since reblogs spread, the niftiest version of the thing ends up rising to the top). My tumblr got deleted so I can no longer link you to my "tumblr perfection" tag that had all of these moments where tumblr magic happens, but here's at least an example where I reblogged an image, added a ficlet to it, and it became a thing that is more than the sum of its parts. Which is to say -- while I think 80% of the time, I just want to do a quick link share, and 15% of the time, I want to comment on the post, there *is* that 5% of the time where I want to do something *more*. And that something more is to add on to your thing in a way that create a new thing.
Edited to add: I'm beginning to realize that part of the confusion here is that there is a DW social norm that anyone can comment on and jump into any other comment thread in public posts??? Like, I tend to treat comment threads here like I do on AO3, where they tend to be one-on-one conversations between me and the creator. But apparently that's not the case??? I'd love to see an example of that "in the wild", as it were. It feels so *wrong* to me to just go reading other people's comments of posts, which is probably that same wrong feeling DW people have when I use the word "reblog".
4) There are tumblr conventions around reblogging, we're not heathens. Which is my way of saying "trust us to not muck things up."
- People don't usually reblog personal things. I recently read a really thought-provoking post on DW that talked about race and gentrification, but I knew it wasn't written to be shared widely, because the framing of the discussion was just so personal. When I was on tumblr, I would not reblog those sorts of posts either.
- People don't usually add on to the reblog chain unless they feel like they can add substantively to the conversation. There's a convention of keeping the reblog "clean", which is why everyone yells in the tags instead. So if I see a cool post, I'd hit reblog, and put my thoughts about that post in the tags. This means that my followers can see the tags, and the original poster can see my tags, but when my followers then reblogs that post, my tags don't muck up the original post. (That's why there's also the convention where people might "elevate" someone's tags into the reblog chain if they think it's particularly brilliant.)
- Also, back in the days when tumblr allowed editing of reblog chains, what people mostly did was to snip the conversation down to the specific snippet that they were commenting on. I did it all the time with my own posts. Once again, I don't have a proper example due to tumblr shenanigans, but here's a post of mine that got reblogged and had a lot of stuff added to it, which I wish I could snip a bit and then reblog: https://asgardian-goddess-of-writing.tumblr.com/post/177405007687/meleedamage-fasole-dulce-potofsoup . If I could edit reblogs, I would probably cut out some of the middle bits (while keeping the attribution) in order to focus on the whole "Bucky stealing Nat's guns" thing, and then add a follow-up comic of Bucky telling T'Challa "fine! I'll get my own guns!" or something.
So yeah, there are definitely HORRIBLE aspects of reblogging that I PRAY TO DEITIES that we don't do here, like making private conversations public, or editing other people's stuff in a way that disrepects the original post, or just all that repetitive scrolling. And yeah, there are IMPORTANT aspects of DW culture that we need to be mindful of, such as respecting the privacy and integrity of content , and using accessibility-friendly HTML, but also sometimes I want to see a non-sequitor of yours and make a doodle to accompany it and post those together with an "oops my hand slipped", with proper attribution and link-back. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
[Edited on Jan 8 2019 at 10am to add point #0]
[Edit on Jan 8 2019 at 10pm: Thanks for everyone's comments -- I'm definitely coming out of it with a better understanding of DW conventions. I'm turning off comments for a while so that I can focus on RL.]
[Edit on Jan 25 2019: all right, RL is done, so unlocking comments here.]
no subject
Date: 2019-01-08 12:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-08 01:56 pm (UTC)I would put this more strongly: unless you know that someone allows their entire blog to be reposted, don't do it. You'll be violating copyright law.
Tumblrites gave permission for reblogging by joining Tumblr. Dreamwidth folks didn't give permission for most or all of their post to be reposted by joining Dreamwidth, a network that has no reblogging function. Copyright law permits fair use, of course, and in most cases that's all you need: a snippet of the original post, preferably with a link back to the original post.
Your discussion of the benefits of reblogging is fascinating; I don't want to retract from that. I just wanted to point out the serious legal issues that folks coming from a reblogging culture might not be aware of. Copying an entire post isn't legally the same as reblogging, unless the original poster has given permission for the repost.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-08 05:09 pm (UTC)Thank you for the point you brought up about fair use -- I think that's a good way to think of it. Most use cases are for snippets anyway, and tumblr and DW are both anti-reposts. I'll make some adjustments to the post about reblogs that is written for tumblrites, and also try to clarify the reblog vs repost difference above.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-08 07:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-08 08:47 pm (UTC)I'm glad you found it helpful! I haven't spent a lot of time at Tumblr, but I've done my fair share of retweeting. :)
no subject
Date: 2019-01-08 04:16 pm (UTC)However, I think you're not understanding... probably three things.
1. Most of the people flipping the heck out in my comments section have used tumblr and understand how tumblr works. Myself included. That's why they're flipping the heck out.
2. The term "Reblog" has a meaning. People are associating that meaning with what it is on other sites. What you're trying to do on DW by using "reblog" to mean "link" is causing confusion and upset with users who have seen how reblogging works on tumblr and don't like it.
3. Privacy controls are the most important part of this site for a lot of people. I get that's not how you personally use the site, but even hinting at the suggestion of "breaking flock"/reposting locked content is actually shocking to people who are interested in those privacy controls. It's the equivalent of saying, "Hey, you know what's cool? Getting invited over for dinner, and then stealing the host's silverware!" I very, very much think you don't mean it that way, but that's how it's coming off. Reposting large chunks of text without permission is going to net you a similar reaction.
4. (I said three! Sorry!) the tumblr magic of zany reblog chains? Happens in comments here. I post a picture of a mushroom that looks like a dick, someone in comments makes a dick joke, someone else writes a poem to the dick, a couple people link around to the dick mushroom convo and stuff they've added to it. Someone later may repost the poem they wrote with a link back to my mushroom picture. They may ask if they can repost the mushroom picture, and I may or may not say yes.
5. (OH NO! YOU SAY, SHE SAID SHE WAS GOING AWAY AFTER THREE!) I am sorry things got so heated last night. I had a knee jerk negative reaction, and posted publicly about it, and a lot of other people had the same. I really do not want to set up new users v. old as balls users, and I did that. And it sucked.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-08 04:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-08 06:26 pm (UTC)Reposting any of it (or even talking about it outside of f-lock!) is not only unwelcome, it goes explicitly against what the author of the post obviously intended -- if they did not want it to be only visible to the users on their access list they would have made it a public post.
(Again, to second Mucca, I welcome your effort in general, OP. I just think this is an important privacy kink to iron out. Especially with GDPR and all that privacy legislation, there's actual legal points at play here.)
no subject
Date: 2019-01-08 08:14 pm (UTC)Thanks for pointing those points (and for sharing and conversing about this in genera)! I've made some edits to the reblog post that hopefully clarify things.
Some responses to your points:
> 1. Most of the people flipping the heck out in my comments section have used tumblr and understand how tumblr works. Myself included. That's why they're flipping the heck out.
True. I think I was mostly responding to someone who was like "I don't get why you would want to tell OP that you reblogged their post", and I was like ".... because that's why people reblog on tumblr."
But yeah, I can totally see how "just copy bits of the post and put it in your reblog" would make folks think "wait, even my private posts?!?"
> 2. The term "Reblog" has a meaning. People are associating that meaning with what it is on other sites. What you're trying to do on DW by using "reblog" to mean "link" is causing confusion and upset with users who have seen how reblogging works on tumblr and don't like it.
I guess what trying to do is to capture the *intent* behind "reblog" as an action on tumblr, which roughly means "share", but is a rather overloaded word. Whereas I think a lot of people are reading it as either "reblog" as the reblogged post that has all of the original content replicated, or as "repost", which is a different thing on tumblr, but less so on DW.
> 3. Privacy controls are the most important part of this site for a lot of people. I get that's not how you personally use the site, but even hinting at the suggestion of "breaking flock"/reposting locked content is actually shocking to people who are interested in those privacy controls. [...] I very, very much think you don't mean it that way, but that's how it's coming off. Reposting large chunks of text without permission is going to net you a similar reaction.
Mmm, I see now that part of my problem is that I'm writing this specifically with public posts in mind, because private posts are private and it didn't even cross my mind that people would want to reblog private posts. Whereas that's the first thing readers of my decontextualized post jumped to. (And yes, you're right that I just don't do privacy. Even though I've been on DW/LJ since 2001, all but probably 5 of my posts have been public.
> 4. The tumblr magic of zany reblog chains? Happens in comments here.
But... how do you share that with followers? Do you just link to the comment thread directly? Can random people then jump onto the comment thread and add their own things? And does the OP then have to deal with all the comment notifs?! One of the things I enjoy about reblogging on tumblr is that I can choose when to check my Activity feed or my post notes, and choose to ignore people whose reblog add-on I don't particularly care for.
(Relatedly, I think reblogs mean very different things on tumblr depending on whether you're producing, consuming, or curating the content, and I don't think that nuance carries over when sharing a link on DW.)
5. I am sorry things got so heated last night. I had a knee jerk negative reaction, and posted publicly about it, and a lot of other people had the same. I really do not want to set up new users v. old as balls users, and I did that. And it sucked.
SAME. <3 <3 <3 I'm sorry about the intensity, especially since much of it was due to terminology differences. I really just want a friendly place where comments flourish, privacy is respected, and a reading page of fun stuff.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-08 08:54 pm (UTC)3. Yeah, I jumped to a conclusion there. In that you're making a guide for ppl who haven't been on the site as long as we have, I think making it very, very clear about privacy settings (which tumblr influx people aren't used to) would probably be good.
4. Do you just link to the comment thread directly? Can random people then jump onto the comment thread and add their own things? Yes! You absolutely do that. I mean, probably not on a post about someone's puppy having cancer, but my random dick mushroom post example? If it's public, I assume it'll get linked around. I can always turn off comment notifs on that post if I get sick of them. But I think of comment notifs as like being your activity page on tumblr, more = better. Unless everyone's yelling at you, then not so much. Or link to the original, and repost your response from comments, as you like.
But I'm finding the subthread in this convo that people don't want interaction happening in their comments section frankly baffling. We live and breath for that kind of thing. Or so I thought anyway.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-08 11:47 pm (UTC)And really, I just want to say "slammed the reblog button" to someone's post as a way to show appreciation. "shared a link here" doesn't quite have the same ring to it. It's frustrating that repost and reblog is so conflated here, but hey, this may just happen to be a hill I choose to die on. XD;;;; (or I give in in a week, who knows?)
4. So you're telling me that there is a DW social norm that anyone can comment on and jump into any other comment thread in public posts??? Like, I tend to treat comment threads here like I do on AO3, where they tend to be one-on-one conversations between me and the creator. It feels so wrong to me to just go reading other people's comments of posts. It feels super intrusive, like eavesdropping on other people's conversations. But apparently that's not the case??? I'd love to see an example of that "in the wild", as it were.
My activity page on tumblr was actually pretty much unusable, because the same posts get reblogged and added to. ::shrug:: My most popular post as 80k notes and I made it 3 years ago, so basically activity on that post trumps anything else that I've made. And I've definitely made posts on tumblr that people have done additions to that I'm not so pleased about. So if that were to happen in the comments of my post, I'd feel obligated to respond, somehow? Unless the social norm is that I *don't* need to respond to comments in my own post????
no subject
Date: 2019-01-09 12:16 am (UTC)Buddy, right now I've got two people I don't subscribe to writing comment fic about Clint and Bucky in the ball pit in the comments of the post you linked to. People back and forthing happens all the time. People who do big posts that hit three-digit comments will often say they won't reply, or will only reply to top level comments, and then everyone else just sort of... carries on. I've seen a fic notif post end up with an argument about what the right latin word for blowjobs is, random asides about the origins of tumblr memes, and all kinds of stuff.
Comments sections are wild!
no subject
Date: 2019-01-09 03:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-09 03:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-08 11:38 pm (UTC)re: But... how do you share that with followers?
It depends where you want to hold the discussion!
If you want to expound at length on a point in response to something made in comments, you can make your own post, hold the discussion in your space.
If you don't want to make your own post, or you want the discussion to continue within the context of the existing discussion, you can make a post with a link to the comments (if the post is public) saying "user abc and I are having a really interesting discussion over here!"
This depends on the journal owner's policies, of course. The thing is: if an explicit policy isn't in their profile, then you can message them to ask if you're being punctilious. Otherwise, the general... expectation is that if a post is public, it's ok. The user has control: they can freeze threads, they can turn off commenting, they can make the post private, they can turn off notifications or even just request that other users quit it.
Most people absolutely love others jumping into their comments and talking! That's what the site is about! If they don't love it, they'll control access in the first place, or have a policy saying "please don't link me" (which would be weird. I've seen people have "please don't link me to major communities" because they can't deal with the comment volume but never "Don't link me at all." It would be unusual.) They can even just block that one person who's being a jerk, and disable anon comments.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-08 11:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-09 12:29 am (UTC)It's--if something is gonna be HELLA long and unrelated to the original post topic, you make it a separate post. If you're on topic or even going on a short tangent, go for your life!
As I am Very ADHD, my entire life is so tangential I'm basically a walking herringbone pattern, so I don't care if people end up discussing goldfish at length on my post about drywall, but I understand other people can get a bit annoyed about lengthy tangents. Pretty much nobody would get annoyed at a short tangential comment and then a reply of "I had lengthy thoughts about this over here" with a link.
I don't think people get annoyed at all with people dropping by and continuing the discussion on-topic from a link, or if they do they realise that it's on them for not setting the privacy level correctly and make sure they control it a bit more in future.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-09 01:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-09 01:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-09 03:05 am (UTC)But this happened all the time on Tumblr when posts from someone who wasn't on my dash were reblogged by someone who was on my dash, and I reblogged or liked them or added a comment. I understand you feel it's very very strange to "go over to" someone else's DW and comment, but it's not considered gatecrashing or invasive here. If a post is public, unless the comments are turned off or screened or otherwise moderated, it's pretty much taken for granted everyone can comment. Which atually is not that different from how Tumblr works. I think you're struggling much more with your own perceptions of how DW works, than how things actually are here.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-09 03:46 am (UTC)But as you said, I need to be more understanding of DW comment norms, and it seems like I just need to not see it as "my space". Or I guess I can just lock everything and close comments. Or delete comments? What are the DW norms for deleting comments that make me cry?
no subject
Date: 2019-01-09 03:00 am (UTC)There is a lot of confusion re terminology here. People are using "reblogging" and "reposting" very differently, sometimes in the same comments. From what I can tell, reblogging is blogging the ENTIRE post, no edits. Reposting is just taking the content in a post and reposting it as your own -- which drives a lot of artists on Tumblr absolutely nuts, because their art gets passed around without any credit and ripped off.
But, unfortunately, the way "reblogging" was defined here, it seemed a lot more like "reposting" on Tumblr.
Typo spotting
Date: 2019-01-08 04:37 pm (UTC)Re: Typo spotting
Date: 2019-01-08 04:56 pm (UTC)Ack, thank you! It was 2am and I was like "something feels wrong about this" but couldn't pinpoint it. <3 <3 <3
no subject
Date: 2019-01-08 06:17 pm (UTC)I have had my LJ/DW friends-locked (only available to the select people on my access list) since the time I had the account, and the idea of someone on my access list taking something I posted (without permission) and reposting it somewhere makes me go EEEK!
(So that's your point #0. To which I'd like to add that while there's a "social convention" not to reblog personal stuff on Tumblr, it's a convention easily bypassed when You Just Really Want To Reblog It Okay! (tm) versus on DW where that kind of behaviour is completely unacceptable to the community. But anyway.)
I applaud you for trying to make DW more welcoming to people migrating from Tumblr :) It took me a while to adjust to the Tumblr "public posts for everyone" system, and there's definitely good and bad to be had there (the social aspect of lurking on Tumblr is not to be underestimated!)
no subject
Date: 2019-01-08 08:20 pm (UTC)Thanks for the point about how sometimes your words on tumblr, while intended for a smaller audience, gets reblogged anyway. I guess that's how memes start, for better or for worse. It really haunts peoples' Activity pages, too, when a one-liner shitpost hits Tumblr Escape Velocity (tm). (Basically my activity pages on tumblr were unusable).
And I miss lurking and liking things inobtrusively! But I also missed the conversation aspects of DW, so I guess overall, I'm glad to be back.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-08 08:42 pm (UTC)On the other hand, I have a personal theory that stepping out of that comfort zone and engaging with people would be a good thing, but on the yet another hand I can see what a barrier to entry it is.
Anyway, I'm glad this conversation is happening. Thank you for getting the ball rolling on this, regardless of how tumultuous it gets at times <3
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Date: 2019-01-08 09:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-08 11:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-09 12:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-08 09:14 pm (UTC)(the way you would with a blog post anywhere else? The social aspect is still retained, isn't it? (And actually, as many if not more new people might see your comment that way. The social aspect would still work the way it often worked (works?) on tumblr, which was that if someone likes what you say they may check out and decide to
followsubscribe to you.On the other hand, I can accept that people who are new to DW might be more comfortable using it in a way that's alien to me, and that's okay. The end point is for people to be civil to each other while they have fun talking about the things they enjoy.
Honestly, I think what throws me here is the use of the word "reblogging," when — if I'm following you — what you describe in point #3 is what I'd call "quoting a section of something in order to start a new discussion." That's easily done, and done a lot.
BUT, as you know, because tumblr doesn't really have the access control that DW has, there can be a situation on DW when material from a friends-only post gets "reposted/reblogged" without the OP knowing. That original poster might have had reasons for not making what they said public: by reblogging/reposting/quoting it publicly, you'd be making an end-run around those reasons.
Bottom line: Just make it clear that the polite thing to do, if you want to quote a "discrete chunk" in your own space, is to ask the OP first, and (for the convenience of your readers) provide a link to the original post.
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Date: 2019-01-08 11:31 pm (UTC)Honestly, given the way "reblogging" is used on tumblr, I think 80% of the time it's to share a link, 15% is to comment on a thing, and there are existing DW conventions for that, which I'm sure the tumblr expats would use. But there's the other 5% of the time, when reblogging feels different from a comment+link. That's what I'm trying to capture.
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Date: 2019-01-09 03:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-08 11:56 pm (UTC)Yeah, that's a valid concern. I guess that's why I wish there were automatic reblog notifs, so that if I delete a post, I can reach out to those people and say "hey, can you remove that chunk of text?" Maybe we need a social convention where, if you include snippets of the post, not only should the post obviously be intended for public consumption, but you should definitely comment with a link to your share?
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Date: 2019-01-09 03:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-09 03:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-09 03:57 am (UTC)I've been tracking the conversations since last night, thinking about my own reactions. It's the 'reblog' terminology that I'm (and it seems like, most people are) really slamming up against. Links and signal boosts are just fine to me, short quotes or a handful of lines, just fine. It's the wholesale carrying over of an entire post that is a whole "put that thing back or so help me" feel.
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Date: 2019-01-09 04:17 am (UTC)Yeah. It ultimately comes down to what people understand as "reblogs", and I think the people who prefer to use the term "reblog" are people who use it to mean "share" or "link". And the people who see "reblog" as an unwanted thing are people who use it to mean "when you copy-paste my entire post without say-so". And in the end, we all like the former and dislike the latter.
Whenever people have left comments on my posts with "reblogged here", it's always been just a link, sometimes a blurb. And it's intended (and received) as a way of showing appreciation for my post.
I'm currently not willing to give up my use of the term "reblog" to mean "share excitedly with my followers", and a lot of other people have made it clear that they want "reblog" to mean a specific type of repost. At this point, I'm willing to wait and see how the language shift plays out over the next few months.
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Date: 2019-01-09 02:57 am (UTC)You know, a good way to deal with this is not to insult the people you think are on DW and afraid of change. I have a Tumblr. I've had it since 2010. I am very familiar with how reblogs work.
There are tumblr conventions around reblogging, we're not heathens. Which is my way of saying "trust us to not muck things up."
I have seen a lot of what happens on Tumblr that makes me really wary of what some people emigrating from there might think it's okay to do here. That's why a lot of people might seem suspicious. It's not that oh we don't understand your newfangled ways. We don't want Tumblr style wank happening here.
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Date: 2019-01-09 04:01 am (UTC)It ultimately comes down to what people understand as "reblogs", and I think the people who prefer to use the term "reblog" are people who use it to mean "share" or "link". And the people who see "reblog" as an unwanted thing are people who use it to mean "when you copy-paste my entire post without say-so". And in the end, we all like the former and dislike the latter.
That difference is why when you said in another comment that "I'm kind of genuinely baffled as to why you would want to leave a reblog comment at someone's DW," I saw that and thought, "but how else would I know if someone shared my stuff and/or had comments on it?"
I'm currently not willing to give up my use of the term "reblog" to mean "share with my followers", and a lot of other people have made it clear that they want "reblog" to mean a specific type of repost, so once again, that's the confusing hill I'm choosing to die on. (Or rather, see how the language shift plays out over the next few months.)
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Date: 2019-01-09 05:02 am (UTC)There are tumblr conventions around reblogging, we're not heathens. Which is my way of saying "trust us to not muck things up."
I mean. Uh. If I had 50p for every time someone on tumblr reblogged a personal post of mine that I had literally tagged with some variant on 'don't reblog', I could probably get myself five years of paid DW time. Maybe it was fandom/circle dependent, but there is really, really nothing remotely approaching privacy norms on tumblr (there is hardly privacy etiquette). 'Reblog' is going to have to mean something entirely different here — something with attention to privacy norms baked in — and at that point what is ... the point of using it?