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newcomersToday I’m going to take a moment to talk about a major cultural difference between Tumbr and Dreamwidth, and that is Audience. That is to say, the person or people you assume will be reading what you post.
On Tumblr, when you post something and tag it, you post with the assumption that anyone, anywhere can and might stumble across it at any time; you have to be mentally and emotionally prepared for the interactions you will face. Since many of the people who will potentially see your post are people who don’t know you, and who you don’t know, one of the things you have to be prepared for is Bad Faith Interactions: Where a person reads what you have written and comes to the worst possible conclusion about both the writing and about you, and is prepared to take their conclusion directly to the source.
Since Tumblr is a content aggregation site, if something you write takes off, the odds that it will reach people who will misinterpret what you wrote and are willing to fight over it are higher than they are on other blogging platforms. If you only have a few followers on Tumblr, the odds of Bad Faith Interactions are fairly low; however, it is never impossible, and the odds go up with every follower you gain.
On Dreamwidth, you have one primary audience (that is, people who are primarily there for you), and many optional secondary audiences (people who might be there for you, but are just as likely, if not more so, to be there for a more general subject).
When you are posting on your own journal, the majority of people who read what you post are your own followers, rather than any random internet user who happens to also be logged into the site. Sure, someone may stumble across your post on the Latest Things Page, but they’re much less likely to do so than your average Tumblr user browsing through tags, or even their own Dash. Your followers are your primary audience. For the most part, they already have an idea of who you are, and are much more willing to read positively into things you write than your random internet stranger.
Furthermore, because you are more likely to have an established relationship with them, you are more likely to be able to clarify what you wrote without things escalating out of your control. The odds of you getting hate-followers still go up with your general subscriber numbers, which is one reason why some Dreamwidth users have accounts that are completely Access-locked: To reduce or prevent harassment.
(Incidentally, this is why some people, yours truly included, consider it polite to ask before sharing a link to someone else's post: You're sharing outside of their established circle of relationships, and new people won't have the same context to build assumptions of good faith from.)
Finally, due to how Dreamwidth works as a social journaling site, you have more control over the interactions you have on your own space: You can disallow comments on your posts, freeze conversations that are going nowhere or crossing your boundaries, block people from commenting, make your posts private or visible only to selected people, or delete your posts entirely, comments and all. People who saw it may have taken screenshots of your post, but other than that, the odds of coming across a post that you regret, have learned better from, and apologized for years ago are practically nil compared to on Tumblr.
So that’s your primary audience interactions. Secondary audiences are those who follow communities you may post to.
If you've checked out the new "Community" feature on Tumblr, it's pretty similar to what's available on Dreamwidth: An account where more than one person can make a post. If you're not familiar with it, the closest comparison I would have is probably Tumblr accounts whose content is primarily made up of submissions.
The takeaway is that anything you post to a community will likely be exposed to a wider audience, or at least a different audience, than only your personal journal's followers. They are less likely to have only positive associations with you, if only because they are overall less likely to have interactions with you specifically. That said, there are still several differences between Tumblr at large and your average Dreamwidth community.
First, in addition to membership rules and posting guidelines (both of which can be extremely lax or very strict), there are moderators whose job it is to enforce those rules and guidelines. While communities exist with bad or ineffective moderation, they don’t always last long or grow very big, and groups can and do splinter away from them to form their own communities. A moderator can do all of the things you do in your own journal (freezing conversations, locking posts, deleting posts, and banning members temporarily or permanently) with the authority granted to them by the community itself. Moderators are how communities regulate their content, memberships, and interactions.
Second, the poster retains most of the control of anything they post. A moderator can go over their heads if something drastic is happening, or if they judge that a post goes against community guidelines (etc), but by and large, if you post to a community, you can change that post as you please, whenever you want. If you realize that you made a mistake, you can edit the post to own it and add new thoughts, and—this is the important part—that is the version that people will see. Again, they might have access to the old version through screencaps or the Wayback Machine, but whatever the current version is will always include whatever updates you’ve made to it.
Overall, between these two factors, the interactions you’ll have with people on Dreamwidth will likely be of a very different character than those you have on Tumblr.
Is it still possible to have huge flame wars and fandom wankfests on Dreamwidth? Absolutely; they happened with frequency on LiveJournal, which is the structure Dreamwidth was originally based on. But in general, it’s easier to control the types of interaction you have on Dreamwidth than on Tumblr, and that includes fandom content and interactions.
As always, if you think I missed or misrepresented something, want to point something out, or have any questions, please let me know!
On Tumblr, when you post something and tag it, you post with the assumption that anyone, anywhere can and might stumble across it at any time; you have to be mentally and emotionally prepared for the interactions you will face. Since many of the people who will potentially see your post are people who don’t know you, and who you don’t know, one of the things you have to be prepared for is Bad Faith Interactions: Where a person reads what you have written and comes to the worst possible conclusion about both the writing and about you, and is prepared to take their conclusion directly to the source.
Since Tumblr is a content aggregation site, if something you write takes off, the odds that it will reach people who will misinterpret what you wrote and are willing to fight over it are higher than they are on other blogging platforms. If you only have a few followers on Tumblr, the odds of Bad Faith Interactions are fairly low; however, it is never impossible, and the odds go up with every follower you gain.
On Dreamwidth, you have one primary audience (that is, people who are primarily there for you), and many optional secondary audiences (people who might be there for you, but are just as likely, if not more so, to be there for a more general subject).
When you are posting on your own journal, the majority of people who read what you post are your own followers, rather than any random internet user who happens to also be logged into the site. Sure, someone may stumble across your post on the Latest Things Page, but they’re much less likely to do so than your average Tumblr user browsing through tags, or even their own Dash. Your followers are your primary audience. For the most part, they already have an idea of who you are, and are much more willing to read positively into things you write than your random internet stranger.
Furthermore, because you are more likely to have an established relationship with them, you are more likely to be able to clarify what you wrote without things escalating out of your control. The odds of you getting hate-followers still go up with your general subscriber numbers, which is one reason why some Dreamwidth users have accounts that are completely Access-locked: To reduce or prevent harassment.
(Incidentally, this is why some people, yours truly included, consider it polite to ask before sharing a link to someone else's post: You're sharing outside of their established circle of relationships, and new people won't have the same context to build assumptions of good faith from.)
Finally, due to how Dreamwidth works as a social journaling site, you have more control over the interactions you have on your own space: You can disallow comments on your posts, freeze conversations that are going nowhere or crossing your boundaries, block people from commenting, make your posts private or visible only to selected people, or delete your posts entirely, comments and all. People who saw it may have taken screenshots of your post, but other than that, the odds of coming across a post that you regret, have learned better from, and apologized for years ago are practically nil compared to on Tumblr.
So that’s your primary audience interactions. Secondary audiences are those who follow communities you may post to.
If you've checked out the new "Community" feature on Tumblr, it's pretty similar to what's available on Dreamwidth: An account where more than one person can make a post. If you're not familiar with it, the closest comparison I would have is probably Tumblr accounts whose content is primarily made up of submissions.
The takeaway is that anything you post to a community will likely be exposed to a wider audience, or at least a different audience, than only your personal journal's followers. They are less likely to have only positive associations with you, if only because they are overall less likely to have interactions with you specifically. That said, there are still several differences between Tumblr at large and your average Dreamwidth community.
First, in addition to membership rules and posting guidelines (both of which can be extremely lax or very strict), there are moderators whose job it is to enforce those rules and guidelines. While communities exist with bad or ineffective moderation, they don’t always last long or grow very big, and groups can and do splinter away from them to form their own communities. A moderator can do all of the things you do in your own journal (freezing conversations, locking posts, deleting posts, and banning members temporarily or permanently) with the authority granted to them by the community itself. Moderators are how communities regulate their content, memberships, and interactions.
Second, the poster retains most of the control of anything they post. A moderator can go over their heads if something drastic is happening, or if they judge that a post goes against community guidelines (etc), but by and large, if you post to a community, you can change that post as you please, whenever you want. If you realize that you made a mistake, you can edit the post to own it and add new thoughts, and—this is the important part—that is the version that people will see. Again, they might have access to the old version through screencaps or the Wayback Machine, but whatever the current version is will always include whatever updates you’ve made to it.
Overall, between these two factors, the interactions you’ll have with people on Dreamwidth will likely be of a very different character than those you have on Tumblr.
Is it still possible to have huge flame wars and fandom wankfests on Dreamwidth? Absolutely; they happened with frequency on LiveJournal, which is the structure Dreamwidth was originally based on. But in general, it’s easier to control the types of interaction you have on Dreamwidth than on Tumblr, and that includes fandom content and interactions.
As always, if you think I missed or misrepresented something, want to point something out, or have any questions, please let me know!
Thoughts
Date: Apr. 24th, 2025 03:05 am (UTC)This is true if you post mainly in one place, such as your blog or a community. But some people spread their content over a much wider area on DW. That influences audience interaction. While most people post mainly to their own blog, and secondarily to other places, that's not universal.
>>The odds of you getting hate-followers still go up with your general subscriber numbers, which is one reason why some Dreamwidth users have accounts that are completely Access-locked: To reduce or prevent harassment.<<
Also why you can ban someone from your blog.
>>If you realize that you made a mistake, you can edit the post to own it and add new thoughts, and—this is the important part—that is the version that people will see.<<
Note that you cannot edit a comment once someone has replied to it. So if you need to point out an error in a comment, do so in a private message because a reply would lock in the error.
Re: Thoughts
Date: Apr. 25th, 2025 05:27 am (UTC)I've learned that banning is a little bit more complicated on Dreamwidth than it is on Tumblr, in that you can ban someone from commenting on your posts or replying to you, but you can't ban them from, say, getting notifications when you post a new entry, or seeing your content when they're logged in. (This is one of the few things I disagree with Dreamwidth staff on, incidentally.) I still need to read that other post you or someone else linked about how banning works on Dreamwidth to get a better picture of how it works, but ultimately, access-locking does more to prevent people you don't want seeing your content from having access to it than banning them does, IIRC.
Definitely something for me to emphasize if I write a commenting guide!
Re: Thoughts
Date: Apr. 25th, 2025 08:32 am (UTC)I think there should be a way for people to cease to exist for each other on a service, and DW doesn't really have that. You can stop someone from replying to your posts, but not from seeing your posts -- and conversely there's no way to turn off content from someone you don't want to see.
>> access-locking does more to prevent people you don't want seeing your content from having access to it than banning them does <<
True, but then you have to shut out the general public just to avoid one person, which undermines your ability to grow your audience.
Re: Thoughts
Date: Apr. 25th, 2025 06:15 pm (UTC)Fully agreed! I understand the reasoning behind the devs' decision: If you post something publicly on the web, there's pretty much no real way to guarantee the person you don't want to see it will not, with how many workarounds there are these days; container tabs that allow you to be logged in on one tab and logged out on another as one example, VPNs as another. Dreamwidth devs say that they don't want to give any users a false sense of security over this... so the only option they really provide for people who choose to keep their accounts public is blocking certain accounts from replying to them/their posts.
While this is merely annoying for any number of people, I only came by my understanding of Dreamwidth's blocking procedures because some Tumblr users talked about having stalkers/former abusers following them on Dreamwidth, and deciding to switch platforms rather than feeling the loss of control over either being forced to go completely access-only, or knowing that their stalker/abuser would still be able to read their posts and/or be alerted every time they updated.
I do understand the devs' argument about the perception of safety, but at the end of the day, I also know that adding even one more hoop for people to jump through can cut off a significant number of potential jerks. Right now the extra hoop is entirely on the users'/victims' end, which is really not great, to put it lightly. One of the people I talked to mentioned that they'd move back to Dreamwidth in a heartbeat if they knew they could force-unsubscribe someone from their account, even if they had to do it every day, but that's not an option Dreamwidth offers. The closest they have is with a rename token: If you rename your blog, you can clear out your subscribers and access list completely, but it's very much all or nothing, and the fact that you have to pay to do that is... Honestly, even the ability to create an entirely new account and import your old entries and comments there might be better, IMO.
Overall, Dreamwidth is a fantastic site, and I love most things about it, but this is definitely one of the few things I emphatically don't. I'm hoping I can try to make the case for better options once all of the super old foundation code gets replaced, but that's still years away, I'm pretty sure.
Even aside from growing an audience, it undermines your ability to form relationships with other users in general, and being in a place where you feel you have to make that decision just plain sucks.
no subject
Date: Apr. 24th, 2025 05:02 am (UTC)It's far from necessary to the point of this post, but I want to note that you can totally have a community as your main audience, and your journal as a secondary one (if you use it at all). That's the way most of the people in my communities do it, and I thought that was neat to share.
(Also, while communites have a wider audience, you don't have to worry that much about things getting out of hand, especially when there's already an established group of users.)
Something of note: when you've joined a community, your posts will show up on the "Member Posts" page, which for large communities can mean that people you don't know find your posts.
I'd also note that, probably in part because of these finer-grained controls, Dreamwidth as a site is considerably calmer than Tumblr.
no subject
Date: Apr. 25th, 2025 05:19 am (UTC)I completely forgot about "Member Posts"! If/when I get around to doing a community tutorial, I'll have to mention that—and reinforce that being members of the same community does not mean that any random other member will be able to see your access-only posts without you granting them access. Same access is community only, in that case!
It's definitely slower that Tumblr, I'll give it that much! I try to remember that LJ had its own mess of wankfests back in the day, and that Dreamwidth isn't immune to that happening again. But, due to how the sites are structured, Dreamwidth is more about depth and Tumblr is more about breadth, you know? If wank is going to catch on at Dreamwidth, it's going to be a bit more, hm. Rooted, perhaps? Personal, maybe? Q. Random Public Person isn't going to find out about minor wanks nearly as easily as they can on Tumblr, and hopefully also won't care as much. That said, it may also make wank harder to forget than it is on Tumblr, asshole callout posts aside. Ah, speculation...
Thoughts
Date: Apr. 25th, 2025 05:45 am (UTC)Basically, for wank to happen here, people have to want it and permit it. But it's hard for them to fob it off on nonconsenting bystanders.
A lot depends on how you set up your blog and what you expect of your audience. A flame breaks out on mine maybe once a year or so. Usually by the time I've gotten up and seen it, someone else has already dumped a bucket of wet sand and put it out. YMMV.
Re: Thoughts
Date: Apr. 25th, 2025 06:19 pm (UTC)Honestly, a "How to minimize wank on your account/in your community" seems like a good tutorial to have as well, but it's not one I think I have the chops to write 😅
Re: Thoughts
Date: Apr. 26th, 2025 06:56 pm (UTC)(TBH I wouldn't have known about that much of it on LJ either hand fandom_wank not been a thing and referred to so often)
no subject
Date: Apr. 25th, 2025 04:36 pm (UTC)I think the way you phrased it in your next reply to![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ysabetwordsmith is quite helpful. I also think communities are bit closer to the experience of Tumblr? There's less of an expectation that you're involved with people replying to you, at least, and, of course, it often guarantees interaction with more people than just your journal would. (Yeah, your scenario probably won't occur... and if it does, it'd probably be just as well if the activity went over to the person's journal.)
Exactly! That seems like the thing people would worry about (I certainly might have, at the least). The reason I mentioned it is because it's the easiest way relatively random people can stumble on your posts (site search is a thing, but most people won't be motivated to do it).
Yeah, being slower is certainly a plus, and it makes moderation a lot easier!
(nods) I'm quite familiar with the difference, due to having watched Tumblr quite a bit (and even then, that's mostly for the people who post more in-depth to begin with).
For the rootedness, I think you're right with that. After all, someone bothering to get in a fight over here needs to have a higher level of investment than on Tumblr, and because of that, it'll probably rankle longer, too (especially if it happens between people in the same community).
no subject
Date: Apr. 25th, 2025 06:24 pm (UTC)I mentioned it above, but a fair amount of my approach to access and interacting with users one doesn't like was informed by conversations I had with a couple of Tumblr users who left Dreamwidth because of stalkers/abusers that Dreamwidth doesn't give them the tools to completely block. I do understand that there are a lot of workarounds for assholes these days as long as you keep posting publicly, but it still sucks for victims, and I wanted to be very up-front about that.
I've thought (and even possibly mentioned) before that Dreamwidth is more about depth, while Tumblr is more about breadth, and the relative spread and types of wank reflect on that, IMO.
no subject
Date: Apr. 25th, 2025 07:17 pm (UTC)Take your time! I thought it was just a curiosity in any case, after all.
Oh yes, I remember you talking about that over on Tumblr, and that's great of you!
I've thought (and even possibly mentioned) before that Dreamwidth is more about depth, while Tumblr is more about breadth, and the relative spread and types of wank reflect on that, IMO.
...I can't come up with a clearer contrast between "breadth" and "depth", to be honest. Of course, being in-depth makes trouble, luckily, easy to contain (which is another reason I'm happy to use this site).
no subject
Date: Apr. 24th, 2025 07:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Apr. 25th, 2025 05:21 am (UTC)Well ...
Date: Apr. 25th, 2025 05:47 am (UTC)