What's the etiquette for wanting a post to be in two separate places on Dreamwidth?

[gibbles]

For example, if I am in a fandom community, and I write a fanfiction that I want to post, but I want the fic to both be in my personal journal, so people can find all my stuff, and in the fandom community so the fandom people can find it. Is it expected that I just fully cross-post the entire post so people don't have to go somewhere else to see it, or link back to one or the other?

Comments

[milo_r]

both are fine. i remember back when journal sites were the Main Thing some comms had rules that you needed to put the full text in the community post, but i can't remember the last time i saw that as a requirement in a dreamwidth community.

[soc_puppet]

Oh, that's interesting! I never posted to any communities that had a rule like that. I can kind of see how it got started, but if it's gone by the wayside anyway, I'm just as glad 😂

[milo_r]

Tbf I mostly hung out in Italian speaking communities back in the day so there might have been some "cultural differences" with overall LJ norms

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

The main reasons for posting fic directly to a community are:

* to make sure everyone can actually see it, so it's not in a friends-locked blog or on a separate site that DW users may not belong to

* to have content on the community, especially if it tends to be low in traffic.

[gibbles]

Okay, cool :) I guess if a community doesn't care enough to specify it, it's not that big a deal lol

Yes ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

Prevailingly true. Some don't bother listing rules at all. Most have a few basic rules. Some have an exhaustive list, and those are the people most likely to scream at you if you get one detail wrong after looking at the rules for 20 minutes -- and then not tell you what you got wrong. So the more elaborate the rules list, the more likely I am to avoid the comm.

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

I've seen communities that do expect people to post the content there. An advantage of this is that everyone can actually see it. This is the better version and the one I encourage.

Others expect people to post only a thumbnail description and link, usually based on a template provided by the community. The disadvantage to this, especially in today's increasingly scattered blogosphere, is that many people won't be able to follow the link. Some folks will link things forgetting that their blog is friends only or their fic has a filter list; more and more platforms are locking content to members only. It's really frustrating to see a description but not be able to read the fic. :(

Check for a community's posting rules on its profile, in a sticky post, or in a separate post that may be on the Links List.

Re: Thoughts

[milo_r]

That's true, on the other hand for fics especially it's convenient to have a single place to push edits to, should that ever be needed. Although unfortunately I suppose with mostly everyone linking to AO3 now the whole "posting fic to the comm vs to your own journal" has become a somewhat outdated thing to consider...

Re: Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

AO3 recently locked the site to current members only, and made everyone sign the new user agreement to get access. I quit using it. Without that, nobody can see in, so it is no longer suitable as an archive that everyone can see. That makes a lot of DW fan communities useless if you're not on AO3.

Think about how often sites close or change their parameters. Posting in multiple places is a bit of extra work, but it makes your work A) much more accessible to wider audiences and B) much more resistant to loss.

It's also a good idea to archive your fic. Wayback and Archive.Today will both save DW pages but Ghost won't.

Re: Thoughts

[arcanetrivia]

wdym "locked the site to current members only"? I'm able to access things while not logged in, and leave kudos and comments (assuming the author of a given fic has arranged the settings such that guests can see the fic and leave comments).

Re: Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

Huh. When I try to access any AO3 page, it appears for a second but then switches to a screen that demands signing the current user agreement. This happens even on archived pages that are supposed to be immutable.

Then again, computers routinely do bizarre things around me, so who knows.

Re: Thoughts

[arcanetrivia]

Oh, well, yes, you have to accept the terms of service once. That's not new by any means; you're just served that page if there isn't already a cookie stored in the browser that you've done it. So if you're in the habit of clearing cookies, you'll see it repeatedly if you're not logged into an account. Is it that you have a conceptual objection to their terms?

Re: Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

Yes. I don't like the new terms. Over time, terms have gotten much worse.

And it wrecks the point of having an archive for people who want to show their work to as many viewers as possible.

Most of all, I'm upset at having somehow corrupted formerly usable saved copies on archive sites.

[soc_puppet]

As milo_r said, either way should work fine for most communities! You might want to check the community's rules, just in case, but people on Dreamwidth tend to be pretty chill, IMO. You might personally want to link the two posts together, so if you get comments on both you can find and constantly re-read ahem, reply to them more easily, but that's up to you.

I also remember "fake LJ cuts" being a thing back in the day, where people would format a link to look like a cut so they'd have all of their comments/interaction in one place, but I think that'd be a little harder to do on Dreamwidth, since we've got that open-the-cut side-arrow thing.

[teres]

How's this for a fake DW cut?

( Read more... )

And here's the source code:

<img style="border: 0; max-width: 100%; width: 1.0em; padding: 0.2em; box-sizing: content-box; vertical-align: text-bottom;" src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/collapse.svg" alt="Expand" title="Expand"><b>( <a href="https://example.org">Read more...</a> )</b>

[soc_puppet]

*round of applause*

Also I am bookmarking example.org; it seems like a useful domain for many reasons...

[teres]

Why, thank you!

Well ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

It varies somewhat.

For your own blog, you set the rules about crossposting.

Communities often but don't always state rules about crossposting. Some want whole fic, others just a thumbnail description and links. Most allow crossposting, but some discourage or ban it. The lower traffic, the more likely crossposting is welcome; the higher traffic, the less likely. For the most part, posting to your blog and one other topical community is fine.

There's a whole entry about crossposting here.

[teres]

Well, I'm not in fandom spaces, but in my experience, too, both are fine! It's only that crossposting to all communities you want to have attention on might get you more engagement (but more scattered, of course).

[soc_puppet]

From the past week (and also crossposting my fics to AO3), I'd say my biggest headache with crossposting is having to make corrections in multiple locations 😂 Hopefully no one here runs into that problem too often!

[teres]

Well, I link each of my posts to the previous and last ones (and I've recently carried through a name change for one of my readers), so I dare say I'm quite familiar with it! Still, it's worth the trouble, I find.

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

I'm too nonsequential for that, but someone else made a code tool that will create back/next links.

What I do in series posts is include a menu with links so there's Part 1, Part 2, etc.

Re: Thoughts

[teres]

That's probably what I'll end up doing, too; I'm good enough at coding for it, and I'd like a custom solution.

Yes ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

That happens to me a lot.

I always make my Birdfeeding posts in my blog and on birdfeeding so that's a daily double-update, multiple times.

With yard pictures, I often put them in both of those places, sometimes also common_nature and/or gardening depending on content.

If I need to make more than one correction at a time, I usually do that on my blog, then copy-paste to replace the whole old entry with the whole new one in other places.

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

Crossposting to multiple communities is where you need to be careful and read guidelines. For some things, like announcing events, it makes sense, but even there people get tired of seeing the same thing repeatedly. Some still do it though.

It is usually safe to post anything to your blog and one topical community. It is often safe to post do different communities whose themes don't overlap much. Posting to multiple similar communities may get people complaining, but again, check the guidelines.

As a general concept, the higher traffic a comm, the more picky they are about content, whereas lower-traffic comms usually welcome any on-topic content they can get.

Re: Thoughts

[teres]

Yep, those are some good thoughts!

In my case... the communities indeed don't have themes that overlap very much, and there's enough of a "read the comments" culture that the posts kind of become "their own thing" due to that. (I've been doing this for some years, and never had much trouble, so it didn't exactly occur to me that it might be a problem.)

Re: Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

If the communities don't overlap much, then crossposting to several is probably fine.

Re: Thoughts

[teres]

They're also rather informal, so that helps, too.

[yourlibrarian]

I think with something relatively long like a fic it's entirely fine to post just the header and link to your own account, but as has been said above, some communities might have other rules about it. Some also require posts to have certain headers and formats as well.

Yes ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

Lots of communities have a template, or several templates for different things.

One reason is because it's easier to read stuff when things in a given category are presented in a consistent way. When people just post whatever, it can be hard to find information you want, like if you ship a certain pairing and that's all you want to read in a fandom.

Another is because it lets people know what is okay to do, so they don't have to guess. Many people feel anxious about posting in a community because they aren't sure what to say. A template tells them. Some comms also have a post for "things you can talk about here."

A third is that templates lend themselves well to scheduled activities, which is a good way to keep a community active. Many communities have gone dormant or dead over the years. The ones with scheduled activities seem to have had a higher survival rate.

When thinking about how to post things in your own blog, or communities without firm guidelines, you can look at several examples of templates to see what is commonly included. That'll be the information that most people want to know.