Your friendship means the most to me

[crypto]

I've been crossposting to LiveJournal and Dreamwidth for a few months now, and haven't figured out what, if anything, to do with the comments.

Dreamwidth now allows you to insert a link in the LJ post to its DW version, complete with number of comments posted on DW, but unfortunately it's not reciprocal. Alternately I could disable comments on one site and steer them to the other, to centralize discussion.

This isn't an issue with most of my posts, so I've put off doing anything about it, but occasionally I'll post something where a discussion emerges on one or both sites. I've found myself in replies referring people to a comment thread on the other site a few times recently.

Looking through my last few months of posts, and counting only those which have at least 10 comments on at least one site (though usually about half of them would be my replies), comments on Dreamwidth version edged out comments on LiveJournal by about a 5 to 4 margin (454 to 369). Though I'd guess that if I went through those same posts and tallied up number of commenters (anyone who's commented at least once), LiveJournal would come out ahead.

So should I do anything differently?

Poll #1274 Comment preferences

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 22

View Respondents

Should I centralize comments on DW and disable them on LJ?

View Answers

Sure, works for me
15 (68.2%)

No, please don't - I prefer to comment on LJ
1 (4.5%)

But why? Two discussions are better than one!
2 (9.1%)

Text - such a primitive interface! I do my commenting via telepathy.
0 (0.0%)

I care more about convenient links to the crossposted entry -- can you get on that?
4 (18.2%)

If you're crossposting, what's your experience been with comments?

View Answers

I centralize on one site, and have no regrets
9 (47.4%)

I centralize on one site, and I'm paying the price in less discussions
0 (0.0%)

I cross-link the DW post in the LJ entry, and it's been a positive experience
1 (5.3%)

I cross-link, but mainly for my own convenience - I'm not sure anyone else cares
4 (21.1%)

I don't cross-link or centralize. I do however recycle and watch my cholesterol.
5 (26.3%)

Comments

[sara]

I'm even getting to a point where I'm considering not crossposting any more -- I think there are maybe two people I know who're reading mostly on LJ, and everyone else is here. My account there expired last week and I don't see myself renewing it, when I'm only checking the LJ list a couple of times a week.

[crypto]

I'd guess that I have maybe 75-80% overlap right now. I never had a paid account on LJ, so that's less of a consideration. But as more people's accounts expire, and whenever DW implements "read your LJ flist, including flocked/filtered entries, over here", I'd expect that DW would become more of the central hub, at least for my network.

[anatsuno]

I checked 'convenient links to the crossposted entry' but I realize it's a pain to keep up, and I personally won't do it, so. I guess the mostest honest answer for me would be 'centralize on Dw, works for me', even though I think you'd lose on quality discussion which I'm happy to go see on LJ when it happens, like I did recently.

I crosspost with comments on both sites, and for autobiographic content I'll keep at it for a while because a few of my RL friends are on LJ and won't move. I also still have an active flist on LJ, and many communities I belong to who don't exist here, so. My free account over there is still getting some usage.

[crypto]

Yeah, I'm not sure that centralizing on DW is an overall net gain for discussion. At this point, everyone I know in either place has an LJ account, but not everyone has (or uses) a DW account. And there's something about posting via OpenID on DW which feels a bit "second-class commenting citizen", even though it's great that the option's there and relatively easy to use.

[princessofgeeks]

do you have anonymous comments enabled on DW, because if you do, then they don't even have to get an open id to comment.

[crypto]

I do! And thankfully the comment spam has mostly died down.

[princessofgeeks]

all righty then.

and thank you for your message.

[cofax7]

My response would be to consolidate comments for posts where you think it's important to have the discussion in one place, and otherwise leave it split. Well, that's been my decision, anyway.

[crypto]

I wish I could predict which posts will generate discussions! It's often not the ones I expect.

[dkompare]

Send 'em over here. Life's too short to bounce back and forth around too many sites.

[crypto]

Didn't I see you on Twitter recently? :)

[dkompare]

Yes, and that confirms my point! We already use distinct sites and interact with distinct people. To use both LJ and DW seems redundant, since you're posting the same content in both places. I also have a similar issue with folks who duplicate their status updates in Twitter and FB.

[crypto]

Yeah, it's definitely inefficient. I'm hoping the cross-posting is a temporary transitional phase over all, but there's a case to be made about the inherent risks of a community centralizing on any single platform, vs. maintaining some redundancy through dispersal and duplication.

[sixbeforelunch]

I've got everything centralized on DW. I will say that I've seen a drop in comments since I moved over to DW, but there are other factors that might have affected it. (I can think of three off of the top of my head: I've been mostly neglecting LJ and people aren't as likely to comment on the journal of someone who doesn't comment in theirs; I've switched to a relatively small fandom; I've been posting less about my RL and RL posts tend to get more comments for me.) That said, I have no regrets. It's much much easier to keep everything in one place.

[crypto]

I, for one, have been enjoying your posts about your new fandom, but I don't think I've ever commented to say that because, well, I'm a bad commenter and sometimes I wish I could just respond with a gold star or smiley face instead of having to come up with words.

It's easier for me to keep everything in one place, but I worry that it's less convenient for people who aren't inclined to visit that place, so: poll.

[princessofgeeks]

i couldn't check a bubble on your second question, because here's what i'm doing: i am crossposting everything and leaving comments enabled both places. i am content.

[crypto]

I have to admit, closing off comments on one site feels a bit inhospitable, even if there's an easy way to comment on the other site. From what I've seen, most people on my LJ flist who cross-post are doing what you're doing.

[princessofgeeks]

I'm watching developments with interest.

as it happens, most of my primary fandom has moved to dreamwidth, because of synecdochic, but there are plenty of other friends who have stayed on LJ. and there are a few SG-1 notables who have said DW is a Do Not Want.

So i feel i should be both places.

at first there was a bit of opposition to having to post comments on the dw side of a crosspost, so i left comments enabled both places.

but i'm interested to see if there is an eventual migration of my part of fandom to DW, or not.

For the moment, i am content.

[torachan]

I have closed comments on LJ a few times when I wanted comments consolidated, but for the most part I leave them open on both sites with no link. I like when people make a link on LJ to DW and a link on DW to LJ so that it's easy to just click over and read comments, rather than loading up their journal on LJ (which is what I do otherwise if it seems like there might be interesting discussion on a post), but that's a pain, so I won't be doing it myself.

[crypto]

I'm thinking that I might start manually putting in links to the other site only when there's a discussion in the comments. I avoid going back to edit my posts as much as possible, because I always seem to break something in the HTML code. :(

[thistleingrey]

The only reason I close comments on lj is that I cross-post manually to DW from a standalone blog, and people on lj have learned to go through and comment to that blog when they feel like it. (I didn't choose an option for q.2.)

[crypto]

I do appreciate that you link to your original blog post, because I have clicked through to read comments there. Someday, perhaps before personal jetpacks, we'll have a cross-site "comment anywhere" function that generates a single comment stream no matter how many places you're cross-posting to.

[thistleingrey]

Glad the link is useful! I want sometime to modify the WordPress "LJ Crossposter" plugin to talk to DW so that it'll send over the WordPress post's ID automatically....

I do think that continuing to have comments split, and having LJ as the locus for neither set, has caused commenting to decrease somewhat. OTOH, the few readers who have never liked or understood LJ are happier now that there's a blog-shaped place to comment. *throws up hands*

[wembley]

I don't have a preference -- do whatever you're comfortable with. :)

[crypto]

Hey, polls are all about adding a veneer of input and consultation to autocratic decisions! :)

[thirdblindmouse]

I think "two discussions" are less than one. If someone introduces an interesting point in a comment thread on one site, commenters on the other site may never encounter it, &c. I much prefer consolidated comments on both my entries and on the entries I read. In my experience, leaving an OpenID comment on DWth is a nearly identical experience to leaving a comment on native LJ. Add to that the ability to crosspost "leave a comment/X comments so far" footers, and I see no good reason not to consolidate comments.

It bugs me when people don't at the very least include a link to the other version of the post -- but, as you point out, that is awkward to do in reverse (you have to manually add the LJ link to the DWth post), so it's not a great solution.

[crypto]

I'm not sure if or how this applies to online discussions, but in my experience in doing trainings and facilitating workshops, sometimes breaking people up into small groups for discussion can be more productive than having a single large discussion. But the value of small groups vs. everybody depends on the topic and the goals of the discussion.

I'm much less likely to comment on a post if I've seen that someone already brought up my point (or something close enough to my point), even if I might have expressed it differently and any resulting discussion if I had commented might have spun off in a different direction. So I could imagine that under some circumstances, consolidated comments might actually reduce the overall number of participants and diversity of perspectives. It's hard to assess, but I wouldn't be surprised if I was actually getting more participation in comments for at least certain kinds of posts, now that I'm cross-posting than before when I only had an LJ. But of course there are the tradeoffs that you mention.

[thirdblindmouse]

I'm much less likely to comment on a post if I've seen that someone already brought up my point (or something close enough to my point), even if I might have expressed it differently and any resulting discussion if I had commented might have spun off in a different direction.

If everyone's reading the same post, then if you had spoken up, any interested parties would have heard you, just as the first commenter was heard. If post is split up, there's no guarantee that you'd be on a different site than the first commenter, and there's no guarantee that anyone who spoke up would be heard by any of the potentially interested parties reading the post.