New Livejournal terms of service

[gruene.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure if you all have seen the new Live Journal terms of service, but in my mind, they seriously compromise the ability of this site to serve as a forum for our community: http://www.livejournal.com/legal/tos-en.bml

In short, Livejournal users are now governed by Russian law, and risk having posts removed or accounts deleted if they don't comply with it. Among other things, "Political solicitation" is now banned, meaning no more talking about Aldermanic or state legislative races. Any discussion of LGBT rights will require the "adult content" label to avoid running afoul of the "Gay Propaganda" laws of the Russian Federation.

While moving will certainly be disruptive, in the long run, I think it is essential if this is going to remain a home of free discussion of issues pertinent to Davis Square. I welcome your thoughts on this.

Comments

[zdenka]

I would support a move to Dreamwidth (as many individuals and LJ communities have been doing recently). It's possible to import all the current entries from DSLJ to a DW comm, if that's what the community decides to do.

[leafshimmer.livejournal.com]

I have a DreamWidth account and still need to update some entries over there via import, but a friend said she read somewhere that the Russian owners don't pay any attention unless an individual entry gets more than 30,000 hits. I would presume that to be extremely unlikely with this community.

Not to minimize the concerns, though. Another theory is that the new ToS is aimed mainly at political bloggers writing in Russian and other Eastern European languages. So, who knows.

[cos]

This hit while I'm travelling, but I did find time to move my personal account to dreamwidth this week. Well, did the import last week, but only figured out the crossposting and footer and added more people and started using it this week. I know we have a davis_square community on dreamwidth, from a while back, created for this eventuality, but I haven't had time to look at its settings or think about it. I wanna catch up w/ron_newman about how to do a move to there, when I get home next week.

P.S. I would favor getting everyone to post there rather than here, and having it crosspost to here, but I don't know if crossposting is supported for communities, so that may not be possible.

Come to Dreamwidth. We have pie.

[jadelennox (from livejournal.com)]

We could. We could have a dreamwidth DS pie party.

Anyway, Dreamwidth is awesome. The site is accessible, unlike LJ. Comments load without Javascript so they load much faster. Comment length limits are longer. The site owners are great people, and have stated there will never be ads and they will never sell user's personal information. Support is responsive and friendly. You can import livejournal communities. They comply with US law, but they make take-down claimants go through all necessary hoops, instead of proactively assuming all takedowns are valid, making it much harder to harass DW users. The community is warm and welcoming. The diversity statement is a work of art and they live by it.

[secretlyironic.livejournal.com]

I suppose someone ought to mention /r/somerville (https://www.reddit.com/r/Somerville/) as an alternative as well. I know Reddit is also problematic in its own way of course.

[squirrelitude]

I would very much support this. I'm no longer particularly comfortable using a journaling site that doesn't support HTTPS, so I've burned all my old posts; DW is where most of my friends are now as well.

[sovay]

I would happily transfer. I am in the process of moving myself.

formal moderator note

[ron_newman]

Yes, we should move to https://davis_square.dreamwidth.org . I have made two backups ("imports") of this community to that one, first in December and again early this month. I apologize for not keeping the community abreast of these plans, which all of the four moderators have now agreed to. I'll try to make a new post later tonight or tomorrow.

There is unfortunately no way to cause automatic cross-posting (of either top posts or comments) from Dreamwidth to LiveJournal for a community, like one might do for a personal journal. The best we can do is enqueue another import or two, until people stop posting here and start posting exclusively over there.

I do not plan to remove any content that has already been posted here on LiveJournal, and I urge other members of this community to also leave their contributions intact if you leave here.

formal moderator note #2

[prunesnprisms.livejournal.com]

To echo what has previously been said, yes, so glad this has finally been raised within the community. I'm all for a move to Dreamwidth for all the reasons stated including the lack of HTTPS here on ye olde Livejournale.

RSS

[curiositykt.livejournal.com]

I ask that what ever is picked is still RSS friendly as that's how I get these updates.

Tech challenged

[smk0307.livejournal.com]

I will trust you who know way more than I about these things that we should move to Dreamwidth. What does that mean? What do I need to do? I have no idea what you are talking about and don't want to be left behind when things move.

Thanks!

[vlayne.livejournal.com]

I'm wildly in favor.

[elramsay.livejournal.com]

Seems like it's time to move...

I do wish the Dreamwidth site wasn't so awful looking, however.

[smammy]

if you're going to do this—which, i mean, sounds excessive but ok—please do it quick and make the legacy comm readonly as soon as possible

[ron_newman]

We have made an official announcement here.

[jducoeur]

Strongly in favor -- I've already moved to primarily using Dreamwidth, and this is one of the few things I'm still following at all on LJ. (My analysis of the situation here on LJ can be found in my post on the subject here, with more details at my earlier post on DW.)