Now taking tutorial requests

[soc_puppet]

If there's a subject about Dreamwidth in general or how it compares to Tumblr that you'd like me to cover, reply to this post and I'll see if I can get to it! If it's something I'm not prepared to cover myself, I'll say so, and hopefully someone else can pop in with resources.

I've got a hellaciously busy weekend ahead of me (Easter weekend in the food industry, and we do an Easter Sunday buffet special), so I likely won't be getting to any before Monday at the absolute earliest. That said, knowing if people have requests might give me something to mull over while I'm working.

Tutorials I'm already planning on:

Cut tags, Dreamwidth's superior equivalent to Tumblr's "Read More"

The basics of icons, Dreamwidth's userpics/PFPs/avatars/what-have-you

Image hosting and sharing on Dreamwidth

If you have any requests, comment on this post or send me a direct message and I'll see what I can do 👍


Update: Thank you, everyone, for the questions and suggestions! I'm posting a quick list of what I've gotten so far, but feel free to keep asking if you don't see what you want to know listed here already. (I also did my best to provide some quick answers to the questions/topics at the posts where they were asked, so go check the comment section if you want to know some of this ASAP.)

Tutorial requests from newcomers:

How communities work (special request for clearing up 'subscribe' vs 'join')

The Latest Things Page

How to make friends and find things to do (prototype post)

What about reblogs, anyway?

Does Dreamwidth have an equivalent to Asks?

What exactly is a "circle"?

Tutorial requests from the_great_tumblr_purge:

Seriously though, what about reblogs?

General Dreamwith etiquette

How subscribing and granting access works

A general Q&A/quick answers post

Comments

[ysabetwordsmith]

Some I haven't gotten around to:

How Communities Work
The Latest Things Page

[soc_puppet]

Noted! I went into how communities work a little bit on the "how to recreate a side blog" post, but it certainly wouldn't hurt to give communities in general their own post!

I love the Latest Things Page, but I honestly don't know how much I can say about it! I can definitely do a quick run-down. "This is the Latest Things Page. It's fun to surf! It's literally the latest things that have been (publicly) posted on Dreamwidth. If you make a post that is access-locked it will not show up here. At the top are a list of the most commonly used tags on the site. This is similar to browsing tags on Tumblr. If you find a cool post on the Latest Things Page that you want to respond to, I recommend doing so, but maybe start with, 'Hi! I'm here via the Latest Things Page'. If you happen to find spam on this page, here is where you can report it." I'm genuinely not sure what else I might say, though 😅

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> Noted! I went into how communities work a little bit on the "how to recreate a side blog" post, but it certainly wouldn't hurt to give communities in general their own post! <<

People want to understand, not just what communities are and their features, but how to use them for interacting with others -- the netiquette.


>>I love the Latest Things Page, but I honestly don't know how much I can say about it!<<

Again, think of how people could use it to make connections here.

[grayestofghosts]

I think something that would be super useful to tumblr users that I haven't even quite figured out myself is how to find other users with similar interests to follow without reblogging and being able to search posts by tags across the website. It's nearly impossible to find stuff by fandom if there's not an active community by search it feels like and that's a big reason why people are on tumblr and a big reason why I still spend so much time on BlueSky, etc.

Try this ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

Use Interests to search for topics that individuals and communities have listed in their profile.

You can also use the tag cloud in Latest Things to look for things you like that people are currently talking about.

Browse for communities on topics you like in Follow Friday Master Post.

See also How to Find Things You Like on Dreamwidth.

[soc_puppet]

Whoops! I think that's a post that I haven't copied over here just yet 😅 I'll bump that up on my to-do list. I'll have some new things to add to it, but what's there should be a good start!

Probably the quickest way to find people to befriend is, well, a "friending meme"! (Called that because that was the old LJ term for "mutuals".) addme_fandom is probably going to be the best bet for a lot of people looking to make fandom connections; findingfriends also looks good, but might be better for people who are more familiar with Dreamwidth/how they use the site, especially if they want to make their own post.

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

While searching for friending_memes, I found the old tumblrmigration. We could certainly do a new friending meme here if people would like, but we already have the Introduction / Friending Meme.

I also recommend the Add Me communities for making new friends.

[croptoptux]

Seconding what grayestofghosts said. The closest equivalent to reblogs seems to be the memories (heart icon), which appears to be more a private bookmarks list.

Some other things that are currently unclear to me are just interacting with other people in general. I'm still not totally sure how to evaluate "subscribe" vs "join". I will wait for the communities tutorial.

There appears to be no real equivalent of asks.

The feature that's currently puzzling me most is "circles".

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> The closest equivalent to reblogs seems to be the memories (heart icon), which appears to be more a private bookmarks list.<<

That does seem to be a private bookmarks list.

>> Some other things that are currently unclear to me are just interacting with other people in general. <<

We definitely need a post on that.

>> I'm still not totally sure how to evaluate "subscribe" vs "join". I will wait for the communities tutorial.<<

I think "subscribe" means you can read a community or blog and its posts will appear on your reading page. "Join" makes you a member and in some comms that is needed if you want to post there.

>>There appears to be no real equivalent of asks.<<

Not officially, but it's fairly common to see people making "ask me" posts with or without a theme. If I remember right, Cohost had an askbox and its refugees miss that feature.

>> The feature that's currently puzzling me most is "circles". <<

I think that's the set of blogs and communities you are subscribed to. Mine's jammed so I can't double-check that.

[soc_puppet]

So it kinda depends on how you used reblogs on Tumblr. If you used them to keep track of things that interested you, then yeah, the Memories feature is pretty close. It's a site-specific bookmarking feature, and can be public. It predates tagging, and is what a lot of us used for organization back then, like keeping track of our own fics, etc.

If what you reblogged for was to spread the word, you can make a post with a link to what you want to share and include a quick excerpt. There's also technically a workaround, made by astolat (yes, that Astolat), ljwrites, and melannen. I haven't tried it myself, but I've heard that it can also work to reblog some non-Dreamwidth links, such as from AO3.

If what you reblogged for was the lols (such as memes, jokes, etc), I'd recommend metaquotes! It wasn't particularly active last I was looking, but that's something we can change 👍

If what you reblogged for was to share your thoughts on a topic, we usually use comments for that here 😉 If it's something you'd put in the tags of a reblog (that isn't rude), feel free to leave it in a comment! Odds are very good that it would be well received.


I'll make sure to go into detail on the communities post, but for now: "Subscribe" means "I want to read this on my Reading Page (Dash equivalent)"; "Join" means "I want access to the nitty-gritty of this community". A lot of communities only allow posts by people who have joined, so that's one reason to join; a number of communities also have posts that are privacy locked to the community, so you can only see them if you join. But if a community doesn't have members-only posts and you just want to read what people post, only subscribing is fine. Likewise, if you occasionally want to contribute but don't want to read all of the posts from a community, you can join without subscribing. I hope that helps!


Yeah, Asks are one of the things that really don't translate from Tumblr. I've been mulling over how to replicate an Ask Blog over here (such as "Ask Blorbo From Your Shows" or whatever), and... haven't really come up with a solid answer yet! I would say that Private/Direct messaging is probably the closest you're going to get, but there's no way to directly answer those publicly. (I understand that Tumblr didn't allow Asks to be publicly answered back in the day, so it might be similar in that respect?)


I think that "circle" in this case takes its terminology from something like "circle of friends". So the group of people you hang out with in brick space is your circle of friends; the group of blogs you're subscribed to is your reading circle; the blogs you grant access to is your access circle. Something like that? Or maybe you can think of them like the circles in a Venn Diagram. "In this circle are all of the blogs I subscribe to; in this circle are the blogs I grant access to; in this circle are the blogs that grant me access. I am in the middle, where they all overlap." ...Hopefully that didn't just make things more confusing 😅

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>>So it kinda depends on how you used reblogs on Tumblr. <<

You've got most of a post on "How to Replace Reblogs on Dreamwidth."

>> I would say that Private/Direct messaging is probably the closest you're going to get, but there's no way to directly answer those publicly. <<

If someone wishes to participate in Asks, they can put up an "Add Me" post. Comments there will be visible.

[thispatternismine]

This tumblr post has a pretty good primer on how to use DW. And being on tumblr means people can reblog it there (while they can). It's a few years old, but I don't think that much has changed overall.

Finding people

[vriddy]

I went through my Dreamwidth tips tag because I remember linking to tutorials and sharing tips on how I found my Dreamwidth friends in there. Sharing a few here in case there's something helpful in there!

• Finding people on Dreamwidth with links to tutorials + methods I used myself
• Three links on finding friends and communities on Dreamwidth
• Post with a summary + link on tutorial on how to get established on Dreamwidth