And what was she wearing and what did he say

[venta]

For a number of years now - despite all my posts being public - you lot have been assiduously not crossposting them to Twitter, Facebook and similar sites.

I assume that this is because you don't want to and/or you think it's inappropriate, not that you've been confounded until now by the lack of an appropriate tickybox.

Comments

[ylla.livejournal.com]

Thank you for
a) making me laugh
b) saying very well what I've been wanting to say
(although I do occasionally make locked posts, usually because I'm talking about work and it seems polite)

[venta.livejournal.com]

Thanks :)

I do think it's a stupid feature (and frankly, even if it's public stuff which people are happy to have propagated, who wants to read lots of orphan comments cluttering up Twitter even more?)

I was just amused by the sudden onrush of feeling that you had to explicitly remind all your friends not to be twats.

[ylla.livejournal.com]

I do understand people wanting to make the same post in two places.

And occasionally I've said something in a comment and then almost exactly the same thing in a post - if something exciting has just happened, maybe - but I still think a new post is a better way to go, so I don't really understand the stray comment thing.
And I rarely say anything on facebook anyway :)

The tickybox doesn't appear on other people's comments, does it? It doesn't for me - only when I post my own.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Yes, it only allows you to crosspost your own comments.

The trouble (as I understand it, under all the frothing) is that the Facebook/Twitter post will also include a link back to the original LJ post.

If it's a public post, this might propagate to an audience beyond that which was intended.

If it's not a public post, any unintended readers will bounce off the blocked link, but it might alert me (say) to the fact that you'd done a locked post which I wasn't supposed to know about the existence of.

[ylla.livejournal.com]

The 'intended audience' of a public post is a hazy thing - although there is an undeniable difference between 'the set of people who read livejournal' and 'the set of people who use facebook'.

I think if I had something so secret to say that even knowing I'd made a post at all would be dangerous (and I think 'last updated' would still give me away, and the calendar view used to), I might not say it!

I wonder if this is part of the difference between me and the people getting upset. I don't really assume that even locked posts are absolutely private - people forget where they heard something, or get careless, or malicious, or talk too much in the pub, and again that seems more a danger of life than of technology.

[mejoff.livejournal.com]

As I understood it the issue appears to be that it can send up to 500 words of the post itself, even if it is flocked.

[ylla.livejournal.com]

It didn't include any of the post when I tested it - only the contents of the comment and a link back to the comment thread.

It was the pingback bot, I thought, which sent 'snippets' of the post.

That it behaved for me is not proof that it always behaves, of course.

[shrydar.livejournal.com]

Yes, the notification of existence of locked posts is quite an annoying one. I was quite happy when LJ fixed the security hole whereby clicking on the 'next post' link used to not skip past posts the reader didn't have access to.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Plus, of course, my comment on your (hypothetical) locked post might include sections quoted from your original post. Which would then be readable via Twitter, or whatever, by anyone.

Really, this just boils down to "ability to cut-and-paste private stuff and post it elsehwere" which everyone could do anyway, but it might lead to it being done more accidentally.

[ylla.livejournal.com]

But that goes back to sharing your own words if you want and leaving mine alone - I see it as more of a courtesy issue than a technology one.

Comments on locked post can't be crossposted automatically, I think - you have to specifically choose to do it - which should hopefully help.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I am a master of the unticked tickybox.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I aspire one day to be able to remove the dot from a set of radio buttons with a single glance.

[mrlloyd.livejournal.com]

That would be awesome.

Neo doing that should have been the last scene from the Matrix. Would have beaten the hell out of that whole superman in a big coat schtick.

[brrm.livejournal.com]

<Emperor-voice> You want this, don't you? <Emperor-voice>

[venta.livejournal.com]

Of course, I intially read that comment as a text-only mail notification, which rather spoiled it :)

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

Aaaaargh!

[ebee.livejournal.com]

'kobold' the author of SomPos wrote a GREAT post on it..

[venta.livejournal.com]

Nice!

[beckyl.livejournal.com]

Don't you know everyone anyway? So they'll all see it when they check your journal, as they regularly do, of course! Such is all the justification I feel I need for continuing with my sheer laziness in popularising the Wisdom of Venta to the world...

[d-floorlandmine.livejournal.com]

It's New Model Army. But I'm listening to the limited edition extended release of Invaders Must Die, so I'm somewhat unable to think right now, and therefore can't remember the sodding track title. Even though I can hear that blasted line in my head ... it's an early-to-middling one, though, I think. Bah. That's going to bug me all day.

Oh, hang on ... it's Better Than Them - just came to me as my mental player managed to jump the skip in the track and keep going to where the title's mentioned.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Actually, it took me quite a while to work out the song, as well :) I got stuck in Smalltown England for a while :)

[d-floorlandmine.livejournal.com]

[grin]

[venta.livejournal.com]

It was posted in reply to me so you may not have seen this (http://venta.livejournal.com/355228.html?thread=5259164#t5259164), but you really should :)

[venta.livejournal.com]

I am suspended exactly part way between admiration and uncontrollable groaning!

[d-floorlandmine.livejournal.com]

Heh. Nice one!

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

Ah, I kept thinking it was New York Telephone Conversation by Lou Reed, but it wasn't.


Did you see what she did to him
did you hear what they said
Just a New York conversation
rattling in my head

Oh, oh, my, and what shall we wear
Oh, oh, my, and who really cares

[d-floorlandmine.livejournal.com]

What was she wearing, and what did he say
And who goes with who, and what did they do
Yeah, we tell ourselves over and over again
We're better than them, we're better than them

[emarkienna.livejournal.com]

Yes, I guess I agree that (a) it's a stupid feature and (b) I've felt no need to tell people not to use it on their comments on my LJ.

Though I think it's still conceivable that, had there not been people posting their dislike of this feature, people might take advantage of a new feature that makes crossposting easier, when before it was too much hassle (I've noticed a general trend in increase of crossposting between LJ-clones, Twitter, Facebook that comes as a result of clients, when people hadn't been doing this manually before) - without thinking of the implications, or feeling that they have "ownership" over their comments without realising why this feature might cause problems for others. I could have seen a situation where it happens, and someone pleads "But I was only using LJ's feature, I didn't realise it would be a problem", so I guess people are just explicitly saying upfront that they don't like it.

There's also a risk of doing so accidentally, due to the bad UI decision of changing the alt-tab order, and enabling it simply as a ticky box before the Post button.

The other side of this (which I haven't seen people mention so much) is that on Facebook, I have no desire to see my news feed flooded with out of context comment spam on discussions I have no interest in or can't take part in. If I want to follow comments, we can do that with Notification.

I'm waiting for Facebook to retaliate with a "crosspost to LJ" feature, then we'll wake up and see our friends pages 90% full of Farmville updates...

[motodraconis.livejournal.com]

Well put!

I'm waiting for Facebook to retaliate with a "crosspost to LJ" feature, then we'll wake up and see our friends pages 90% full of Farmville updates...

Oh god, oh god NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

[shrydar.livejournal.com]

I want a "likes this" button for your comment.

[d-floorlandmine.livejournal.com]

Given that LJ's Russian owners have a sizeable stake in FB and are also moving on Twitter, and given that they've been advertising the fact that FB users can comment on LJ and join communities with their FB login, I suspect that the next step will be monetising LJ as a blogging tool for FB ...

[motodraconis.livejournal.com]

Well I've not been telling bods not to use it, merely reassuring that I won't be using it.

However, it must be said that my friends page is regularly spammed with twitter crossposting; uncalled for, out of context, half conversations of about as much use and interest as dropping random comments from LJ into Facebook would be. People do this for no other reason (it seems) than that the option is there and it's easy. So I can't entirely be trusting that people I otherwise like wouldn't think this new feature equally appealing - thus I am grateful for the wave of bile against it.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's fair - I'm always a bit bewildered about the crossposting of Twitter comments to LJ, and even on my own Twitter thingy[*] I see lots of "ha ha yes @personyouveneverheardof I quite agree" which make no sense in isolation. So I don't understand why you'd want to post orphan LJ comments to Facebook, but then I also don't understand why you'd send Twitter posts to LJ and plenty of people do that.

[*] Timeline? I've never really learned the Twitter jargon properly.

[motodraconis.livejournal.com]

You see if you complain about twitter crossposting people get all defensive and start talking about their divine right to cross-post garbage.

And yet complaining about this new feature gets you labelled as paranoid. I have no idea why anyone would want to use either - and yet twitter crossposting is popular enough to get you labled as a spoilsport for complaining about it, a slip of fate could easily make this new feature as popular. God knows why!

[venta.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'll happily defend your right to post what you damn well want in your journal. I just reserve my own right not necessarily to read it :)

[motodraconis.livejournal.com]

I can't trust people not to use this feature, twitter crossposting proves that in theory it could be popular, but where bods are getting upset is how it makes leaking private information into the semi-public domain of facebook, for example...

"sorry to hear your husband is beating you up - why don't you just leave him!"

...is possibly not something you'd want all and sundry reading about on facebook. People can and do post whatever they want, but one equally has the right to point out where such things could get out of control and cause harm. Complaining about this feature is, I think, pretty legitimate.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Oh, I do think complaining about it is legit - I didn't mean to imply that I thought it was useful feature! I think it's silly and ill-thought-out, and should be (at the least) limited to public posts, or possibly removed.

I do think most of the people I interact with on LJ would see a distinct difference between spamming your LJ friendslist with irritating twittertwaddle, and posting information about someone else publicly on Facebook. Maybe I'm wrong - but I assume not, since most people seem to be reasonably good about keeping others' secrets as far as I'm aware.