I see the light!
Jan. 8th, 2019 04:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
potofsoupAfter a bunch of convos with various people in the comment threads of the Reblogs, redux and explaining tumblr reblogs post, I've realized 2 really big things:
1) When I say "reblog", I'm referring to the motivation behind hitting the reblog button on tumblr, which is "sharing other people's content that you're excited about", which on DW, usually results in a link and a blurb. To reblog is to share and to hype. BUT, when everyone else reads the word "reblog", they think "oh, that thing where the entirety of my post is replicated on someone else's blog" and then they squint and say "isn't that reposting? my words are mine, dammit!"
2) Apparently DW commenting norms are very different from what I thought! I'm used to either having a one-on-one conversation with a creator on AO3, or having a conversation with mutuals on my personal DW, where I know everyone. But apparently: For public posts, you can jump into existing comment threads between strangers the way you can reblog and add onto someone else's stuff.
For me, reblogging is the equivalent of going to my friends and saying "hey, check out this cool thing I found!", whereas jumping onto strangers' comment thread is the equivalent of butting into a group's conversation at a party, but APPARENTLY THAT'S OKAY?!! Whereas if I'm like "hey, check out this cool thing I found" and I include a bit of the actual thing, I might have the creator of the cool thing body-slamming me to the ground???
WOWZERS, THAT'S DIFFERENT.
On tumblr, it's totally okay to reblog and add onto some stranger's stuff and share it with your followers as long as you have proper linkage and attribution.
On DW, it's totally okay to jump into a conversation with a bunch of strangers and then link your followers to that conversation, as long as everything has the right privacy settings.
:O!!!!
1) When I say "reblog", I'm referring to the motivation behind hitting the reblog button on tumblr, which is "sharing other people's content that you're excited about", which on DW, usually results in a link and a blurb. To reblog is to share and to hype. BUT, when everyone else reads the word "reblog", they think "oh, that thing where the entirety of my post is replicated on someone else's blog" and then they squint and say "isn't that reposting? my words are mine, dammit!"
2) Apparently DW commenting norms are very different from what I thought! I'm used to either having a one-on-one conversation with a creator on AO3, or having a conversation with mutuals on my personal DW, where I know everyone. But apparently: For public posts, you can jump into existing comment threads between strangers the way you can reblog and add onto someone else's stuff.
For me, reblogging is the equivalent of going to my friends and saying "hey, check out this cool thing I found!", whereas jumping onto strangers' comment thread is the equivalent of butting into a group's conversation at a party, but APPARENTLY THAT'S OKAY?!! Whereas if I'm like "hey, check out this cool thing I found" and I include a bit of the actual thing, I might have the creator of the cool thing body-slamming me to the ground???
WOWZERS, THAT'S DIFFERENT.
On tumblr, it's totally okay to reblog and add onto some stranger's stuff and share it with your followers as long as you have proper linkage and attribution.
On DW, it's totally okay to jump into a conversation with a bunch of strangers and then link your followers to that conversation, as long as everything has the right privacy settings.
:O!!!!
This got long--I hope you don't mind!
Date: 2019-01-09 04:10 am (UTC)1) To be clear, I really like and appreciate all of the work you've been doing in writing about DW to help new(er) users get comfortable. It's truly awesome. ^_^
2) Speaking as someone whose Tumblr has essentially always been nothing but reblogging (I enjoy a lot of stuff about Tumblr, but have never liked it for actually saying anything), and who shares a lot of links here on Dreamwidth, which is my online home, I have to echo what some other people have been saying: to me, and to a lot of people who're very familiar with DW and Tumblr (and other sites), the actual term "reblog" is functionally just a Tumblr(/Pillowfort?) thing. Dreamwidth--and I mean the site, not just the culture, although the culture grew out of the functionality--doesn't work that way. I really think the word that will most accurately convey what you want it to here is just "link".
(My own approach when linking to other Dreamwidth posts is generally, is this person talking about meta or social issues or geeky/fannish stuff or [other not-terribly-personal thing]? Then linking is probably fine, if they don't have a note in a sticky post or their bio saying not to. If they're talking about/touching on their personal life, even if the post isn't locked, I ask first.)
3) And yes, insofar as there's a commenting "norm" here, it's that it's fine to join a conversation! ^_^ It won't always turn into its own subthread or anything, but sometimes it does, and it's also how a lot of people meet each other.
Obviously mileage varies somewhat, but I honestly can't think of ever seeing anyone grumble or get upset about having a stranger comment (other than if it was actively rude/hostile, or a situation where someone's talking about their love/enjoyment of something and somebody else barrels in to tell them/talk about what's bad about that thing). Other than with stuff like that, the worst that's likely to happen if someone comments on a stranger's post/discussion is that the person they're commenting to won't have time to engage or have anything to say and it won't go anywhere.
(In case this is helpful to know: one thing that does vary a LOT here is that some people actively try to reply to every comment and others don't/can't, and both [or anything in between] are well within the norm. So a lack of response doesn't automatically indicate annoyance or whatever.)
(Sorry for how wordy this got, or if it feels like I'm over-explaining at you--I'm not always good at being concise, especially when exhausted. >.<)
Re: This got long--I hope you don't mind!
Date: 2019-01-09 04:24 am (UTC)Thanks for the super helpful comment!
Yeah, I think the meaning of "reblog" is what is at stake here. I've always treated reblogging as an action that I take, as in "do I want to share this post with all of my followers?" Fwiw, I've gotten a number of "I reblogged your post here" comments over the past week, and all of them have just been links, so there is at least a contingent of people who use "reblog" the way I do.