veek | I've updated my blog.

I've updated my blog.

This one.

Anything worthy of posting, I'll be posting there from now on. Posts here will appear but rarely. I realize this will be inconvenient for some (all?) of my LJ-hound friends, but as I've mentioned before, I am not particularly enamored of the social dynamic potentially (!) created by LiveJournal. I don't like that friends-lists cannot be hidden, and that it's potentially hurtful to someone if I don't list them as "friend". I don't like worrying over whether to lock my posts, and wanting to create a different custom group for every locked post I do make. If there's private info I want to share, I'll share it individually. I like hosting my blog on my own (host's) server space. Et cetera.

I know there's a way to cross-post private bloggage to LJ, but don't really have time to figure it out. I think there's a way to make it an RSS feed, but again won't bother with that. If you'd like to read what I post on there, please bookmark it. If not, I promise to not be offended.

(Note: this is not an "I hate LiveJournal" post. I actually quite like it. I just want to have my own thing. And possibly cut down on feeling obligated to read my "friends" page.)

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I've always found it off-putting that people might have hurt feelings from being removed from my "friends" list, too. Good for you!

Or not being added yet ;)

I've recently been thinking about doing the same thing.

You're using MT, so an XML feed (http://www.wordsend.org/log/index.xml) is created by default. It's easy to make an lj RSS feed account for that feed, if you're interested. (This is more or less what I'd end up doing, if I were to do an off-lj blog.)

I find that "friending" communities is helpful. I get the journals of people who have similar interests delivered to me in one place, without having to "friend" specific people. I usually scan past those entries that are not of interest to me. I also bookmark LJ journals of people who I want to look in on from time to time, but not see everyday.

This works especially well with people with whom I have a bad history, or exes, or exes of exes etc...

Hey, I like it and don't have a problem with your leaving LiveJournal. It's not for everyone. And I'm not sure I was ever hurt you never added me to your friends list, if you were wondering. :)
But regarding the new blog, it doesn't seem like wide displays very much. I know nothing about Movable Type, but is that common? Or is there a way to make the text wrap to the window? If you're going for something specific, that's fine, but I thought I'd mention it in case you hand't noticed it.

What about the hyperlit blog?

That's a blog that I was obligated to create for a course. It will go away at the end of this semester... or stay online as Evidence, but not be continued.

I found this part of your explanation a bit confusing:

I don't like that friends-lists cannot be hidden, and that it's potentially hurtful to someone if I don't list them as "friend". I don't like worrying over whether to lock my posts, and wanting to create a different custom group for every locked post I do make. If there's private info I want to share, I'll share it individually.

Nothing about LJ obliges you to try to lock posts to various friends groups. You can just as easily make all-public posts to LJ as all-public posts to your own blog (which is what you appear to be saying you'll do).

I don't like that friends-lists cannot be hidden, and that it's potentially hurtful to someone if I don't list them as "friend".

I'm not sure how moving your journal off LJ and "cutting down feeling obligated to read my 'friends' page" is going to solve this problem at all, if the psychodrama is about people wanting to be on your friends list for the sake of you reading them. (If the psychodrama is them wanting to be on your list because of locked posts, then you just tell them "I don't have any locked posts".)

I'm only down on this because, invariably, I don't bother reading people's off-LJ journals. Not that bookmarking and reading a journal separately is that hard; but 20 of them is that hard, and I'm already reading around 95 in LJ.

An experiment: come back in two or four weeks and tell us how you've been going about reading the LJ journals that you did want to read--are you reading them via your friends page after all, or are you reading them one at a time, manually, with bookmarks? (The latter being what you're asking us to do.)

Nothing about LJ obliges you to try to lock posts to various friends groups.

Nope, it's when I do lock a post for whatever reason - that's when I have to re-evaluate who on my friends list can see them.

I'm not sure how moving your journal off LJ...

I am not moving anything off LJ. I am no longer treating LJ as my primary, or even an important, Web log. That is all.

One more thing: I am not asking you to do anything. I'm informing you that my posts are now to be found elsewhere. Because I like it. I believe I specified in the original post that (a) I am aware that this will be seen by some as an inconvenience, and (b) if you choose not to read Words' End, I will certainly not be offended.

This isn't really up for discussion, sorry. Look at it as a PSA. I find myself reading things on my LJ friends page that I am not really very interested in reading. On the other hand, I *do* read individual, non-LJ journals, and find that to be time better spent. If that offends you somehow, I apologize, but please don't be jumpy about "having to" add another bookmark. If you don't want to, don't.

it's when I do lock a post for whatever reason - that's when I have to re-evaluate who on my friends list can see them

"Doctor, it hurts when I do this." "Stop doing it. Also, stop doing it somewhere else."

My point is that the first change is all that's necessary.

This isn't something that offends me; I just wanted to point out that this doesn't universalize well (i.e. if everybody decided to do it); moreover, you're not the first person whose LJ I read who's moved their primary journalling off of LJ, so my "20 people" comment was not entirely idle. (Henceforth I will refer to "moving one's primary journalling off of LJ" as "moving one's journal off LJ", as I did in my previous post.)

Obviously, it's up to you to do what you will, but I think you overestimate the willingness of most people to read lots of isolated journals. (Then again, maybe I underestimate it. I don't know whether your example of journals you read and bookmark are personal, social journals, or you're just talking about the big, high-publicity blogs. As the various bloggers pointed out in the power curve discussion, readership for the average journal is better on LJ because of the communal, social effect.)

This comment is an oversimplification:

please don't be jumpy about "having to" add another bookmark. If you don't want to, don't.

The reality here is that I want to read what you have to write. But I know (from experience) that the mechanism you propose for me reading what you write is inconvenient. Now, you can say, "well, if you don't want to read what I write if it's just a tiny bit inconvenient, then you obviously don't really want to read what I write", but my point is that that "little bit of inconvenience" adds up hideously when a lot of people do it. It's no longer a "little bit of inconvenience", but a massive inconvenience.

If your goal is to raise the bar necessary to read your journal, so that fewer people will do so, then fine, since that seems to me to be the main actual consequence of moving your journal off LJ. But that's not a motivation you've ever listed. ("I like hosting my blog on my own server space" is certainly another real, significant consequence, but you seemed to have tossed that on as a minor thing.)

Anyway, since I have no clue what actual/potential psychodrama you may or may not have confronted or being facing confronting--nor do I expect you to explain--you can have the last word and I will drop the subject.

Sigh. If I don't respond to you, I'll be ignoring you. If I do, I'm having the last word and am stubborn and inflexible.

Oh wait, I'm stubborn and inflexible anyway!

You seem to be departing from a crucial, and incorrect, premise: that I have cared who actually, actively, has been reading my journal, in the first place.

Yeah, I'm making it inconvenient for you. If you still read what I say, great. If you don't, fine. Really. If you want to be reading what I write, then you will, and you won't whine about it. If you get sufficiently annoyed with this exchange or with the inconvenience or both, you won't read it, and that is fine too.

I knew I should've disabled comments on this. This is Not About You. It's about me, and what's most convenient for me.

If I find an easy way to make an RSS feed into this, great. If not, tough cookies. With a prelim not a month and a half away, I'm prioritizing this Low.

I don't consider you stubborn and inflexible, and I'm sorry if you took my offer to give you the last word the wrong way--my intent was to avoid things like "I can't believe this is still going on" or "I should've disabled comments on this" by making clear that it ended here.

Then you don't know her very well. Stubbornness and inflexibility are Veek hallmarks. ;) (Well maybe not inflexibility in all things, but she's very stubborn and she celebrates it.) :) I don't understand why you felt the need to comment so vociferously just because she is moving her blog. I mean everything you said is fine, but is it really that big of a deal?)

A.J. (who has already set the bookmark)

I have nothing to add other than, very far after the fact, it is now I who have the last word in this thread! MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Hrm. This may finally motivate me to install one of those RSS aggregator thingies.

I initially stumbled onto your journal in reference to a thread in

_sunyata's journal with regard to your culinary expertise. After poking around a little, read your review of Espen Aarseth's Cybertext (which it inspired me to order). I concluded a) that you were an intelligent, skilled writer, and b) that aside from having interesting friends, we share a mutual interest in computing, linguistics and cognition, among other things. So I thought I'd add both you and your RSS feed, and introduce myself. Don't feel obligated to add me back if you don't care to, just wanted to say hello. :-) Nice meeting you.

-Brian

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I've updated my blog.

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In my case...

Comment on your new blog.

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Hello!