Wow, that sucks. Let's make sure PPC LJs are backed up.

Subject: Wow, that sucks. Let's make sure PPC LJs are backed up.
Author: Neshomeh
Posted on: 2017-01-03 05:50:00 UTC

There's a really easy way that anyone can help. If you have a few minutes, take a look at the Complete List of PPC Fiction and scan over a section for LiveJournal links. You can also look here (I think, assuming anyone can use the external links search) for more obscure links. Then go to Archive.is and check to see whether its PPC content is saved (lower text bar). If so, great! If not, enter a post's URL in the upper text bar to back it up.

When checking for saved posts, make sure to put an asterisk at the end of the URL (e.g. http://firebird766.livejournal.com* ) to make sure the archive looks for all URLs starting with that prefix, and not that specific URL only. Otherwise you'll miss things.

A note: It's probably a good idea to only back up PPC stuff. People put personal stuff on their journals, too, and that's no business of ours. Be considerate, and don't just blanket-save the whole journal, even if it means putting in a bit more time looking for PPC tags and whatnot.

A lot of this has actually been done already, which is awesome, but it doesn't hurt to check again. {= )

The PPC Archivists' Society thanks you for your contribution!

~Neshomeh

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News about LiveJournal by CRB on 2017-01-03 05:14:00 UTC Reply

I just went to the Das Sporking site and this was posted -

http://das-sporking.livejournal.com/1334667.html

I have to admit I'm surprised LJ still exists. (nm) by Ekyl on 2017-01-04 22:24:00 UTC Reply

Yeah. by VixenMage on 2017-01-08 18:15:00 UTC Reply

I kind of had the same reaction, which I think has less to do with LJ itself, and more to do with my heavily associating it with teenagerhood. It makes more sense that it would've stuck around, considering it was a pretty heavily-used platform when many of us drifted away.

I saw this last night. :/ Thanks for posting it here. by DawnFire on 2017-01-03 15:18:00 UTC Reply

(Also, fellow Das Sporking reader! Hi!)

Since a nice chunk of my PPC stuff, as well as what's up of the Deleterius material I'd been archiving, is on LJ because I was feeling nostalgic when I chose my posting method 4-ish years ago, I'm now in the process of moving to Dreamwidth. Their most recent news post actually addresses the LJ thing, the site seems pretty easy to use so far, and I read through their mission statement, etc and Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, and while I could certainly be missing something, all of it places them in a pretty good light. Also? It uses very similar code to LJ and apparently has no ads or something like that. I know some people here have been using it for a lot longer than an hour or two, so I'll leave it to them to provide more about their experience if they want to.

The move over, I can tell you, is extremely easy, because you can import pretty much everything. Including comments, tags, and profile data. The only downside is that your request gets placed in a queue, so moving some things (entries and the attached comments for me) can take hours or, apparently, up to a day. I haven't checked this morning whether it's done yet, but I can say that everything else I imported came over very smoothly. So that, and the somewhat cleaner UI, are already points in Dreamwidth's favor.

Anyway. That's my two cents: it looks good, and moving over from LJ (oh, you can also move a community if you want to, and it works the same way) is pretty easy, if potentially time consuming. I'll be updating my links once I've got everything set up.

~DF

Hm, could we move the PPC LJ comm? by Neshomeh on 2017-01-03 16:08:00 UTC Reply

I know hS is a moderator... I wonder if that's a high enough access level. It would be nice to know all that data is somewhere safe and also still useable, if we wanted to use it.

~Neshomeh

Import is ongoing. (nm) by Huinesoron on 2017-01-04 09:24:00 UTC Reply

And import is complete. by Huinesoron on 2017-01-04 16:55:00 UTC Reply

So we now have both PPC communities up and running on DW: theppc for Boarders, and ppchq for the agents (and RPing as them).

In the old days theppc was fairly quiet; as its profile says, it exists mainly to collect PPCers' personal LJs. We would then friend the people we liked, and read their posts on our friends' pages. I'm not sure quite how that carries over to DW - anyone?

ppchq sort of split the difference between that and a community for posting in. It had its share of posts, but it was also a hub for RPing journals (like Dafydd's).

I... would really like to see all that reappear. I think slow-motion pointless RPs in ppchq are worth having; I think in-character journals are even more so, because they're a window on the agents without having to be formal stories or time-consuming RPs; and I would really, really like to see personal journals over on the_ppc make a comeback. The PPC-on-LJ was an amazing community, and having that back would be amazing.

I also want people's opinions on mirroring the personal side between DW and LJ. If you're a DW user, you can set up a basic LJ account and have your posts automatically mirror, without giving the Russians anything except server strain. The reason I'd like this is that I still have friends on LJ - even after all these years! - and would like to think we can hold a community intact across two journals. I'll be cross-posting everything in my journals regardless of what everyone else does.

hS

Thanks for the heads-up. by Cyba Zero on 2017-01-07 13:09:00 UTC Reply

However I'm not sure quite what to do with my missions still on there. I haven't written any for quite some time and it is likely I will not write any more soon - if ever - and I do not use my LJ account for anything else. However, people may want to read the adventures of Cyba and Eagrus and it would be a shame to lose records of their escapades - particularly as they are in a less common department and have entered some less common continua. Most notably I believe the continuum they encountered during the Blackout remains unique in PPC history.

I would prefer to delete my LJ but perhaps the missions could be moved to the PPC archive or some such?

Curious: why do you want to delete your LJ? by Huinesoron on 2017-01-07 16:52:00 UTC Reply

The only change they've carried out is to move their servers. By all means remove any personal information on there, but other than that...

The easiest way to archive your LJ is to import it wholesale to Dreamwidth. Simply set up a Dreamwidth account, then on the 'Organise' menu go to 'Import Content'. Feed it your LJ username and password, and it will cheerfully import everything for you. Then join the_ppc community (for ease of finding), and forgot all about it.

hS

Streamlining, because I don't really use it. by Cyba Zero on 2017-01-07 22:58:00 UTC Reply

Also I have other things to concentrate on now. All I have on there are the PPC missions and, I believe, my permission piece.

Maybe I'll check out Dreamwidth. Thanks for the info all!

OK, all set up on Dreamwidth. by Cyba Zero on 2017-01-08 11:40:00 UTC Reply

I've joined the PPC community there too; I'll decide what I want to do with my LJ later.

The easiest thing to do... by Neshomeh on 2017-01-07 15:32:00 UTC Reply

Would be to back up your journal (or at least the PPC posts) on Archive.is, as described above.

Frankly, my ability to keep up with the Lost Tales archive was completely overwhelmed a while ago, thanks mostly to Webs' behavior of deleting everything that isn't active enough. There's way too much work, and I have no time to do it anymore, so if it's safely archived somewhere else, even if it's not ideal, that's gonna have to be good enough. {= /

~Neshomeh

And Kaitlyn's the owner. by Huinesoron on 2017-01-03 16:23:00 UTC Reply

Nathonea passed the community over to her when she left (hence the whole El-Jheycom Underground thing over Plortwards). We'll look into it.

Speaking of which... are there enough people with an interest in LJ+Dreamwidth that we could actually revitalise the community? At least as a list of people's journals. On Dreamwidth, I'm assuming, though DW makes it easy to cross-post back to LJ. Anyone?

hS

That would be great! by doctorlit on 2017-01-04 03:47:00 UTC Reply

I know I don't post actual stories very frequently, but some RP like I've seen in the olden days on LJ would be super cool.

—doctorlit

Well... by Huinesoron on 2017-01-11 15:00:00 UTC Reply

... the best way to see it happen is to take part yourself. Selene has a Dreamwidth journal now, and she or someone else in RC 7219 will respond to anything she sees. So cobble together a journal for Doc and Vania, and send them in to say hi! She won't bite... probably...!

hS

I'm fine with being on such a list. by DawnFire on 2017-01-03 17:14:00 UTC Reply

Also, this is great. Yay archiving!

Speaking of which, I'm going to try making a separate journal for the Deleterius stuff. I'd been thinking about it before, and now seems like a good time. I'm just wondering whether I'd need to do another import or if I can move them directly from my personal Dreamwidth journal... It might be less frustrating to just copy and paste, if it comes down to that.

I'm also very open to getting some help with putting up the material I was sent. It's been slow going, since, uh, full-time student who was doing two degrees until this summer. If anyone's interested in helping let me know; it'll probably be another few years until everything's even close to being up, otherwise.

~DF
I'm up for it. by Neshomeh on 2017-01-03 16:32:00 UTC Reply

I already have a couple of character journals over there, from when July tried to get us RPing at PPCHQ. I'd like to use them more; it's just real low on the priorities list with so few people over there to notice if I do. {= ) And, as noted below, I'm moving my own journal, just cuz.

~Neshomeh

I'm pretty sure... by DawnFire on 2017-01-03 16:17:00 UTC Reply

...that all you need is ~~love~~ the username and password. I don't have a comm to try moving, but the FAQ said it works the same way as moving a journal. If hS has the password, it should be doable. Might take a bit of time for everything to transfer once you've requested it--my posts aren't there yet and it's been maybe eight hours or so--but it does move pretty much everything, and you don't have to babysit it or do more than choose what you want imported and click okay at the beginning. It also shows you the queue; for reference, I'm moving 20 posts and 7 comments, and when I requested it the queue was at 118 posts and 2 comments. Everything else was at 0, and so my tags and so on transferred in about two seconds. It's fast once it gets to you.

Anyway. It's easy, and sounds worth it, as well as doable, if hS has the password.

~DF

I've begun importing my journal. by Neshomeh on 2017-01-03 16:26:00 UTC Reply

And yeah, it's pretty easy—once you realize you first have to create a Dreamwidth account to import content to. That took me a few minutes of futzing around.

The queue stands at 5 comments, 254 entries.

I imagine many people are going to be doing this in the near future.

~Neshomeh

From the news post, it's already been going on for a bit. by DawnFire on 2017-01-03 16:37:00 UTC Reply

Increased traffic and so on.

An interesting thing to do is to search 'PPC' under 'interest'. There are... I'm going to estimate about eight results, from what I remember. No clue how many of them are currently in use--I didn't look too closely at the names except to notice that Kippur is the first result and Lily Winterwood is on there--but it's cool to be reminded that there are other Boarders on there already.

And why yes, yes you do rather need a Dreamwidth account to import content to :) It tends to help.

~DF

Wow, that sucks. Let's make sure PPC LJs are backed up. by Neshomeh on 2017-01-03 05:50:00 UTC Reply

There's a really easy way that anyone can help. If you have a few minutes, take a look at the Complete List of PPC Fiction and scan over a section for LiveJournal links. You can also look here (I think, assuming anyone can use the external links search) for more obscure links. Then go to Archive.is and check to see whether its PPC content is saved (lower text bar). If so, great! If not, enter a post's URL in the upper text bar to back it up.

When checking for saved posts, make sure to put an asterisk at the end of the URL (e.g. http://firebird766.livejournal.com* ) to make sure the archive looks for all URLs starting with that prefix, and not that specific URL only. Otherwise you'll miss things.

A note: It's probably a good idea to only back up PPC stuff. People put personal stuff on their journals, too, and that's no business of ours. Be considerate, and don't just blanket-save the whole journal, even if it means putting in a bit more time looking for PPC tags and whatnot.

A lot of this has actually been done already, which is awesome, but it doesn't hurt to check again. {= )

The PPC Archivists' Society thanks you for your contribution!

~Neshomeh