So, it's been nearly a week...

[maleghasty]

Hello again dear reader(s)...

I just wanted to check in with y'all as to whether or not any of you (apart from those that already commented on the original post) are reading either of the syndicated feeds, how you feel about the sanitised version, or if you simply don't care..?

I'm not expecting many (if any) of y'all to be reading my Ficlets, but it would be helpful to know if anyone is, as now it will be a lot harder for you to comment (if I understand how syndicated feeds work), so I might want to poll those that are reading to get some kind of feedback (now that I can't get the 'instant gratification' feedback of LJ Comments).

Having asked around a bit it does occur to me that posting all of the changes on a Sunday evening might well have been a mistake, so in the hope of reaching more people (by posting in the clock-watching hour on a weekday), here is the meat of the original post about the changes on my LJ:

---

I have been doing a lot of thinking about what I get out of being an LJ-user, and what I use it for and so on and I've come to a conclusion - I use LJ to stay up to date with a circle of people that is wide enough that I could spend my entire life on the phone to y'all in order to keep up...

The thing is that I sometimes want to blog about things that are not safe for work, or that might push the boundaries for some people, and the truth is I really don't want to operate my blog in such a way that some of my friends feel as though they cannot 'safely' read it without me using cut-tags more than I would like, so I've decided to change around how I do things, so that anyone can safely have me as their friend (and not leverage the filtering features of LJ) and not worry about what they might scroll past.

So, from __NOW__ there will be no more NSFW posts in the mainstream of my Livejournal. This does not mean that I will not be blogging about NSFW topics nor does it mean that I'm going to stop posting my photography or even other people's photos in the various fields I am moving in... This means that people who really only have time to read blogs at work and do so by using LJ and syndicated blogs on LJ can still read me with minimum effort and we can stay in touch with each others' lives. There will also be no more mainstream LJ posts of my daily fiction project, as a couple of people have pointed out that reading other people's fiction is not why they come here (sic. keeping up with people's lives, not their writing per se).

There are two syndicated feeds that are available on LJ that will offer an un-edited view of my blogging activity. One is a syndication of my Wordpress Blog that I host myself, which will be the 'venue' for NSFW blogging and other blogging that I want to keep off LJ, sometimes for no reason other than variety, but that blog is and will continue to be much more 'editorial' and less about my day to day life / stuff etc. so it makes sense to separate it from LJ anyway, which as I have established above is about keeping up with people, rather than __actual__ blogging (for me). The second is a syndication of the blog that I set up for my 365 Ficlets Project, which is on Blogger. Their addresses are below:

http://syndicated.livejournal.com/maleghast_wp/ - Wordpress Blog (http://www.techno-mage.co.uk/)

http://syndicated.livejournal.com/365ficlets/ - 365 Ficlets Blog (http://365ficlets.blogspot.com/)

Both of them could just as easily be subscribed to via RSS in GoogleReader or a desktop RSS / News Aggregator.

Please feel free to let me know your thoughts, but I am not likely to change my mind - I've given this a lot of thought and this seems to be the solution that both satisfies my requirements for my blogging __and__ makes it possible for the largest number of my LJ friends to keep reading my LJ, which I will still be posting to.

See y'all around teh intarwebs...

.
EOT

---

Thanks for your patience if you've already taken this all in, and for reading if you missed it the first time around. Equally, apologies if you don't care - in the end the changes are about me being happier as much as making anyone else happy, so I do see that they may carry a very real "so what" value...

Thanks,

Oli

Comments

[spangle-kitten.livejournal.com]

Why don't you set up an lj for the ficlets? I'd add it!

You'd get the comments then too.

[maleghast.livejournal.com]

I do see your point, but I already have every single one of the ficlets on a Blogger blog ( http://365ficlets.blogpsot.com ) and since Ficlets.com is being closed down by AOL I have used a tool on Wordpress.com to mirror that blog on Wordpress.com ( http://365ficlets.wrodpress.com/ )... I guess setting up another LJ account was a bridge too far in my head.

I (try to) keep current 1 LJ, 3 Blogger Blogs, a Vox Blog and now a Wordpress.com blog that is a mirror of one of the Blogger Blogs, as well as my __main__ self-hosted blog (that runs on WordPress software but on my own server), and more and more LJ has become about keeping up with friends rather than blogging, in fact these changes have been in part about using LJ less, so I guess I never even thought about creating another, free, LJ account for the Ficlets when syndication is / was possible.

I wonder if anyone has added the syndicated feed and tried to comment, and if so do the comments end up on Blogger, on LJ's syndicated account or both..? Would you mind adding the feed and testing the theory for me? (I quite understand that you may not have the time)

[sister-savage.livejournal.com]

I was thinking the same thing - and, GORGEOUS icon!

[maleghast.livejournal.com]

Thanks (re the icon), Chiara (sans LJ) is also deserving of much credit :-)

[sister-savage.livejournal.com]

Oh dear, this all sounds a bit complicated...

[maleghast.livejournal.com]

It's really not, I promise... Have a look at my answer to lsowersby below - it really is very simple, I promise!

[lefin1.livejournal.com]

I just added the ficlets feed. I missed that the first time around.

[maleghast.livejournal.com]

Ah, thanks mon ami :-) Hope you will let me know your thoughts...

TTFN

[lefin1.livejournal.com]

I'll comment on the first post, just so you know that it is working correctly.

[lsowersby.livejournal.com]

Hiya

Just wanted to say - I probably wont get around to looking at the syndicated blogs - not becuase I'm not interested, cos I am (and I will miss the ficlets) but just cos I have little time and mostly use LJ like you to keep up with what is going on in people's lives.

I can presumably keep up with your photos on flickr (don't want to miss those...)

[maleghast.livejournal.com]

Heya Hun; I think I may not have explained things very well... If you click on the link in the post that reads:

http://syndicated.livejournal.com/365ficlets/

You will be taken to a page where you can add that feed to your friends list view i.e. my Ficlets will appear in your friends page just as they did before. You should not need any more time than you did before, just the 10 seconds required to add the feed to your Friends list... If you want my NSFW content just on your friends page (because you don't care / it doesn't matter) then you can do the same with that feed as well, but I understand that this may not be an option, and if you want to read that content you may never do so because it will no longer be easily available to you. Of course you could subscribe to it with an RSS / News reader program that you only look at when you have time at home, but I do understand that time is a sparse commodity, so no worries either way...

Of course my pictures will still be on Flickr, which reminds me that we must arrange some time to shoot together again in the New Year, if that's still something that you would like to do - fwiw I would like to very much :-)

TTFN

[lsowersby.livejournal.com]

Ah, now, see I did ny usual trick of, instead of just doing the thing that actually takes a few seconds, filing it in my mental 'to do' list, where it gets jumbled up with 500 other things and all becomes 'just too much'. Must try harder!

Yes, I would still like to do a shoot with you, although I am still having confidence issues and still blaming the baby... might help though.

[maleghast.livejournal.com]

Well, we all do that a bit; I have emails I don't reply to right away even though it will take moments, and things like that... Don't worry about it ;-)

As for shooting, shall I leave it with you, or should I tell you the next time I'm coming to Bristol and sorta badger you..?

[lsowersby.livejournal.com]

Let me know when you're next around and we'll see how I feel then. Ta

[velvet-the-cat.livejournal.com]

I read LJ through LJ and that's all. My other addiction is Flickr which I check more often than LJ. My life is eaten with much already so I try to keep it uncomplicated.

This way I get an idea of who is doing what, where and when! :o)

[maleghast.livejournal.com]

Ok, but this is content that was on my LJ, that more than a couple of people (in both cases) have asked me to remove / moderate / not post on LJ because they want to read my LJ and one or both of these sections of my content are for whatever reason not compatible with their LJ-usage. If you add one or both of the feeds you will be receiving no more content than you were last Saturday, but those who have (for whatever reason) asked for my LJ mutterings without this content are able to come back to reading me on their Friends page. So you can have this content and to all intents and purposes nothing will have changed; if you didn't want / enjoy / care about this content, do nothing and you'll never see it again - I am a little surprised that people don't seem to have grasped this... I thought everyone was up to speed with content aggregation and using LJ (in part) as a glorified version of Google Reader... I've been using LJ to read the XKCD Blag, Neil Gaiman's Blog and "Overheard in New York" for years now...

*shrugs*

[velvet-the-cat.livejournal.com]

Please don't think I'm complaining in anyway, it was more to let you know I'm still interested in hearing about you!

You assume my knowledge of such tech is higher than it is though. :o)

I'm vaguely aware of hoopier options, but haven't invested any time in exploring them for fear of making it a beast too big to read properly anymore. (I'm odd like that.)

Main thing is that I hear how you're doing and where you're up to and then get your lovely photos via Flickr when I'm in a place that's safe to view (some of) them.

[maleghast.livejournal.com]

Ok then.

As long as you're happy then I really am happy :-)

And thanks for saying that my photos are lovely *blush*

Works for me

[topmeadow.livejournal.com]

But then I've only just found your blogs.