"Reblogs"

[alchemistdoctor]

Something a lot of the ex-Tumblr community misses is the ability to reblog: I.E. show your users a topic and/or add on to a topic. There's a great discussion/summary of sharing/discussing content in similar ways here on potofsoup 's blog.  

I'm still not thrilled with the <dt>/<dd> tags, just because they're not very accessible to say, screen-readers for the blind. But the discussion is a great way to start coming up with ways to make dreamwidth more shareable; while I like being able to control my content, I do miss feeling like I could see glimpses of what others are interested in on blogs outside my sphere. 

Comments

[fjbryan]

One of the biggest reasons DW was built the way it was, was so that creators of content could continue to control what they posted. Reblogging, as you know, separates the conversation and posting from the OP, such that the OP can delete the original and the reblog has a life of its own. I've read a lot of commentary about this, and use of the

tags, and the answers in discussion forums I've seen have boiled down to this: if reblogging is a make or break tool for you, you are better off on Pillowfort where it is a feature, not a work-around and was deliberately not part of the original build for a reason.

[alchemistdoctor]

I'm actually not looking for a reblog feature, which is the reason I put it in quotes. There are times, however, where a 'linked post' isn't necessarily appropriate because I'm only referencing, say, a paragraph or portion of the original. In which case having formatting to comment on a portion is helpful.

Comments are great but in the case of commenting on someone else's post, I don't have a way to automatically boost that comment to my followers. I can link to it, but once again, that requires formatting.

As I said, I'm missing seeing the 'sphere' of what others are following, and I think that's the main thing ex-tumblr users are missing. It's very hard to find people to follow on DW right now; the tag system is a bit of a mess due to new users not understanding how it works, and same with the interest system. I can search all DW posts for a word, but in that case I'm going to get all posts with it, both those fanning and those bashing, or just mentioning it offhand. Communities were a great starting point but a lot of them are barely active still.

But if someone is linking/commenting on a post they link to on their own blog, I can then look at whoever they quoted/linked/commented on. It allows for me to organically grow my circle, see what others are commenting on, and join the conversation. That's the sort of interaction I'm looking for.

[fjbryan]

You can quote short items using the **< q >** and **< / q >** markers, so you go

I am quoting X who said I'm missing seeing the 'sphere' of what others are following.

[and I hope those show up correctly, but it is the "Q" in place of b or i or u that use to alter a post's appearance. It should indent and print in a slightly different font]

I get that you want to see what other friends are reading and seeing. It was something that LJ had (you could go to the profile page of a person, look at their "Friends" and then click on "Friends of Friend" to see the public posts. Or something like that.)

[alchemistdoctor]

I think one of the issues is that the q and /q tags aren't working great on a lot of blogs. For example, right now I'm DW's normal theme, no alterations, and it's only italicising your quote. If it's only italicising, it's mostly just a quote tag for the sake of screen-readers which use tags for accessibility purposes, and it's less helpful for those formatting a post to be human-readable (for lack of a better term). Thus the workarounds.

In the end, I think most people will settle for some combination of a link + formatting to clearly quote + commenting on the original post with a link to the new post.

[kore]

I do miss feeling like I could see glimpses of what others are interested in on blogs outside my sphere.

Yeah, and actually a lot of long-time Dreamwidth users are frustrated with that too, because comm activity dropped off pretty sharply. There was a long discussion of it in Mucca's DW a couple posts back if you're interested -- I mean it's like 200 comments! But intriguing. https://muccamukk.dreamwidth.org/1178261.html

Someone made the point that In Ye Olden Dayz, it was more like people would find established comms and join up and find friends that way, and how it is now, it's more individual users trying to find each other in a much more fragmented landscape. It takes a lot of time and effort and energy to just keep a comm going, and not get frustrated or burn out, and that's something nobody's really solved yet.

[alchemistdoctor]

I've had a similar issue. Started a comm with about five users saying they had interest, but now it's mostly just me. I'm going to keep posting in hopes other people see the activity and join in, but it's a bit disheartening. (ficletfriday if anyone has interest.)

I'm gonna go check out that conversation, looks interesting.

[shy_magpie]

The conversation finally got to people who knew what they were talking about. It turns out I should have been using <blockquote>.

[alchemistdoctor]

Quick HTML test cause I wanna see how it works. :D

The conversation finally got to people who knew what they were talking about. It turns out I should have been using blockquote.

Okay so at least in DW's regular format, it's only showing as a new paragraph, I don't see a difference in formatting at all.
Edit: oh, it does indent a bit. Nifty.