Now With a GreatestJournal Back-Up Blog

[liz_marcs]

Like a couple of of you, I've created a shadow blog on Greatest Journal.

Let me just stress: My main Journal is remaining here on LJ. I am basically backing up my LJ entries to GreatestJournal since I don't trust SixApart as far as I can throw them.

Since GreatestJournal uses the exact same encoding as LJ, and since it is completely, 100% free of charge, it's nothing for me to basically cut-n-paste my entries — as well as memories I want to keep — from here to there.

I know quite a few people are starting to do it. If you have GreatestJournal account, you can clink on the link below to friend me on GreatestJournal:

Scibblings by Lizbeth on Greatest Journal

Comments

[ponders-life.livejournal.com]

OK, this makes me mad. (not you specifically, Liz -- I mean the issue in general, and what I see as people abandoning LJ for other sites such as Greatest Journal).

I paid for a permanent LJ account. I like the fact that my flist includes people ranging in age from 16 to almost 60. I don't want to go anywhere else, and I don't want my friends to go anywhere else. I want LJ to stay the way it is -- a diverse, multicultural, multigenerational community.

I'm seeing the beginnings of a lemming-like exodus, and it worries me. If people start abandoning LJ, what kind of message does that send?

Jumping to Greatest Journal or any other hosting site isn't going to solve the problems of LJ and SixApart; it's just going to dilute the LJ base, which might feed right into LJ/SixApart's plans. And who's to say that Greatest Journal might do the same thing in a year or two that LJ is doing now?

I'd rather see people stay with LJ and fight to keep it the way we like it.

[liz-marcs.livejournal.com]

I'm not jumping ship at all. :-)

Like I said, all I'm doing is mirroring what I have here (if even that much) just in case. I plan on sticking around and fighting for LJ because (and I'll be honest here) GJ strikes me as less stable than LJ since there is no paid option and the whole site is run by volunteers.

I'm only mirror there because it's free and I don't have to pay for it.

I was going to start mirroring on JournalFen (and no, that's not a terrific option either), but the GJ option came up. I figure it's not too likely I'll lose both if something goes wrong with one or the other.

This is strictly a CYA move on my part.

I know I can back up this journal through various programs, but it turns them into PDF files. Great for personal storage, not so great for online storage.

[ponders-life.livejournal.com]

Thank you -- I appreciate the clarification and the reassurance. I'm still a tad uneasy, though -- you're one of 10-12 people on my flist who have opened or announced plans to open a GJ account in the last 2-3 days, and I suddenly started having visions of lemmings.

I've just composed a mini-rant about it... but I'll impose my 24-hour rule on myself before I post it.

[liz-marcs.livejournal.com]

Actually, I don't blame the mini-rant at all.

The issue for me is that every time SixApart goes for "reassurance" they seem to stick their foot deeper in it. All of their publicity seems to stress that LJ is primarily made up of teenagers and people in their early 20s. They finally getting stats showing that the mean age of their actual membership is shifted older than they thought by 5 to 10 years.

Yet...every time they do something on CNN or MSNBC, they're flogging the teenager angle. The CEO of SixApart just did it the other day.

People keep pointing out that there are other problems with LJ that could use tweaking, but we keep getting tweaks to things no one things is a big deal. There had to be an all-out pile-a-thon to get them to change the UserInfo page update.

I think what you're seeing are mostly older LJers who have actually paid for their service getting worried and most of them are just mirroring posts they don't want to take a chance on losing. I don't think we'll be forceably moved over to Vox by any means (I'm not as paranoid as some people on my Flist on that score), but I am getting frustrated with SixApart's attitude with users that seem to be outside of their target market, especially since we're the ones actually paying for LJ.