Lots of interesting things going on out there on the interwebs:
ChiZine Press is holding an unusual contest, where you enter to win a CZP e-book by reviewing one of their books on Amazon or Goodreads. Note that positive reviews are not required; all they ask for is “an honest assessment” of a book you’ve actually read.
Bitch magazine has irritated a lot of people by first listing and then de-listing three books–Sisters Red by Jackson Pearce, Living Dead Girl by Elizabeth Scott, and Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan–on their list of 100 feminist YA titles. Sarah at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books waxes eloquent on being a longtime Bitch supporter who’s upset by their decision. Authors requesting to have their books removed from the list in solidarity include Scott Westerfeld, Justine Larbalestier, and Maureen Johnson; as of this writing, Bitch has not responded publicly to those requests.
Kirrily “Skud” Robert notes that a big recent discussion about book piracy has been overlooked by mainstream tech and book bloggers–perhaps because it’s mostly happening on the LiveJournal and Dreamwidth online journaling services, which are often considered “not real blogs”; perhaps because the discussion has a strong social justice slant; and perhaps because most of the participants are women. Her post includes data, a lovely graph, and links to the highlights of the discussion, all of which are very much worth your time.
“perhaps because it’s mostly happening on the LiveJournal and Dreamwidth online journaling services, which are often considered “not real blogs”, perhaps because the discussion has a strong social justice slant, and perhaps because most of the participants are women.”
Or perhaps because LJ and DW don’t appear in Google searches, are less likely to be accessible from an office, and are–generally correctly–viewed as individual discussions without the aggregation/everyone-descend-on-Bitch-and-complain aspect (note the uptick in comments at Bitch since Sarah and SM, TB took up the discussion both at the blog and on Twitter; compare with the usual X-over-there-said-so-I’m-posting-here-and-Z-will-respond-at-hisser-site of LJ/DW which forces you to reference only the aggregator, not the flow itself).
LJ and DW do sometimes appear in Google searches; it depends on the user’s individual settings.
I rather like the conversational aspect of journaling services, and I think it’s perhaps erroneous to think that threaded comments and lots of people generally knowing each other means that the discussions aren’t of interest to people outside that particular social circle.
Or perhaps because LJ and DW don’t appear in Google searches
You mean, may not, depending on the privacy settings of the individual user.
As someone who doesn’t know LJ well (never heard of Dreamwidth), but who occasionally likes to dip in to see what people are talking about there, I have to agree with Ken. I have no idea if this particular discussion isn’t getting out there due to the impenetrability of the platform, but the platform *is* pretty impenetrable to the casual reader.
I don’t doubt that the LJ format can be comfortable once you’re well ensconced in it and know what’s going on, and that’s a good thing. But I suspect that the very apparatus that makes for that comfort makes it hard for someone from outside the circle to follow the conversation. Maybe it doesn’t have to be a zero-sum situation, but in my long experience of the Internet, things do tend to work out that way; the more insular, the less open. I don’t have any problem with social justice content or women writers, and I have spent a LOT of time on LJ in total bewilderment when I’ve been actively trying to get to the bottom of a story.
Also, LJ is insanely ugly and hard to read, which does count for something.
Dreamwidth is an LJ-alternative, with the same code base but some significant differences; there’s a lot of overlap of use.
This is perhaps beyond the scope of this particular discussion, but I’m curious: What do you find confusing about reading LJ discussions? To me, the threaded comments and unique usernames generally make conversations very easy to follow. Do you have the same problems with Disqus conversations?
Every LJ has its own style; you might as well say that all WordPress blogs are ugly and hard to read. If you want to strip styles, append ?format=light (or &format=light if there’s already a ?) to any LJ URL and it’ll show up in a very plain format.
It could just be a lack of familiarity with the format. I’ll have to rely on memories that are a few months old, but in general, if I arrive (via link) into an ongoing conversation, it’s very hard to trace back to the starting point and figure out what’s going on. I’ve barely used Disqus, so I can’t compare.
Some of this is probably also “house style.” The format of the blog — main post, comments, links back to foundational/related posts in the main post — is premised on the idea that blogging is more like publishing than journal-keeping, and that strangers could be coming in at any point and will need to be oriented. It’s like when someone new joins a conversation at a party and the participants will pause to catch them up.
LJ is more like eavesdropping, and the participants mostly address themselves to their particular community. There’s nothing wrong with that, as I said, but that community feeling can be a zero sum game w/r/t being inclusive of newbies. There’s no reason that LJ members should have to frame what they do so that it can be understood by people who can’t/don’t want to invest time in learning the community (such as journalists), but it will have the effect that outsiders will pay less attention.
I didn’t realize that all LJ’s have their own style. No doubt whenever I see something that looks like this: http://cleolinda.livejournal.com/
I go, “Agh! LiveJournal!” I LOVE Cleolinda, but I can never find what I want on her site.
I’ve avoided switching over to WordPress because I really *like* the LJ conversation style, and find it much easier to utilize than comments in other css’es. It may be one of those cases of preference: mailing list vs. forum, that sort of thing.
I featured some favourite selections from the 100 feminist YA titles on my blog over the weekend, and while I made reference to the controversy, I didn’t get into it in depth.
The way I see it, take any reading list, and there are always going to be books that we’d personally like to see recognized. Discussing that is part of the fun of such lists. With that in mind, I see no problem adding to the list, or even creating a second ‘readers’ list comprised of commented books. As for the original list, though, I say let it stand as it was created and let it be a basis for discussion, not a target of it.