Anyway, I’ll probably translate the next novel of Saiunkoku when it comes out (which I suppose might be over a year? who knows?), so don’t worry about that, and definitely, please do not write me emails or comments pestering me about when I will be done with (fill in the blank here).

I’m thinking for what I translate, I might try a mostly futile ‘back-translation’ of the Japanese version of Ravages of Time (which should be interesting to compare to the Chinese->English version) or translate some shounen military manga. Either that, or really stretch and translate some Japanese Sengoku-era historical novels, although that will truly be challenging.

Since OpenID is allowed, you can also comment using your Livejournal account.

To comment using your LJ account, in the space for the OpenID URL type in: http://YOURUSERNAME.livejournal.com

Also, while I have no problem with people asking questions, often the answer is in earlier summaries or translations. Please try to read the earlier summaries or translations to see if the answer to your question might be there before asking.

Another thing: please try to make your comments somewhat on-topic to the post.

And, no requesting translations.

Do not ask “when” I will translate something either. I realize that many of you come from other countries, but within the English fandom, these kinds of questions are considered rude, and besides, why does the exact date matter? If it matters to you that much, you could try paying me market rates. XD Basically, I’m doing something time-consuming for free, and it happens when it happens.

Was talking to a friend about Dreamwidth and new potential features which would make Dreamwidth more useful to people. She mentioned two.

The first was metadata. Say someone is publishing an online literary journal. On LJ, they would have to tag the post as something like “author: charmian” a it to include the name of the author and the illustrator. But then this would make the list of tags unwieldy, if you have a lot of authors. So what would be better, she suggests if there were a field, like the music or mood field, where you could enter in the name of the author. This would be separate from tags.

The second was a thorough revamping of the tags feature to merge it with the memories feature and allow for post discovery. The memories system as it currently exists, sucks. The tags system isn’t much better. With the memories system, you can categorize posts and save them in your memories.

The potential new system would be like delicious: You can memory posts with multiple tags. What is more, if you should choose to publicize them, others may see them. Well, now they can see your memories, but what I mean is, if they look at the post, they can click a link or something, and see who else has memoried it, and using which tags. Then, they can click on that tag in order to see either which posts the user has also memoried using that tag, or which posts all users have memoried using that tag. (I’m not sure which the default would be).

So, if I have a post about pumpkin pie, other users could label it as “pie” or “pumpkin pie” or “thanksgiving food.” They could use this to search for all tags across the site which are tagged as “pie” or “pumpkin pie.”

The only problem I can foresee is that users may be offended by others labeling posts like “this sucks” or “grade: D.”

Anyway, the people doing the project are really, really busy, so I don’t think this is the best time to suggest the thing. I may write it up later in a post to the ML, or if it is appropriate, post it to the wiki.

I was against this idea because a) it creates a false sense of security (people are continually using LJ features to solve problems they were not intended to solve, people are definitely not going to think things through and use it as a security measure), and b) DW is going to be an invite-code system, which IMHO means they should err on the side of friendliness to non-DW users, and c) if OpenID users can see the posts anyway, what is the point anyhow?

Since potentially people who want to join DW may NOT be able to join, because of invite code availability issues, this isn’t fair to them.

Also, the problem that some people describe ‘I want my relatives to be able to see my posts on innocuous topics but keep other topics secret’ is one which IMHO, it is extremely risky to solve in this manner. All mom and dad need to do is be all like ‘oooh, if we register we can leave comments easily’ (or your cousin is all like ‘hey, auntie, you can comment more easily if you join the service, let me help you with that’…), and then whoops, big embarrassing situation. I can’t help but think that this is a form of privacy/security, and I agree with what someone said that if something is sold as a ‘privacy/security’ measure, then it really needs to be private.

However, as a robust method of preventing indexing by unscrupulous bots, it does seem to be effective.

I suppose some of the related problems of wanting to restrict access to a post, yet not wanting to, or being unable to grant the other person access could be solved by implementing a ‘password this post’ feature, similar to WordPress’s.

Thing is, the “push” factor (LJ’s various missteps) has obviously not been strong enough. Similarly, there is a lack of a “pull factor,” something to convince people to leave LJ. In other words, it’s the “all my friends are on LJ and so there is no reason for me to leave.” Basically then, until LJ falls down, or someone invents something that is an improvement, technically, based on the existing needs and wants of the LJ users then LJ users have a compelling reason to switch. WP is much more powerful as a blogging software, but much less powerful as a social networking software.

I think that Dreamwidth may be one such alternative, because it is a fork of LJ, which is attempting to preserve the benefits of LJ, and build on them, while fixing LJ’s defects. I’m on the discussion ML for the project, and they seem to be full of ideas of how to better improve the features and interface, both in terms of blogging and social networking.

I actually agree with many of the points, and I did respond in comments. However, I wanted to get in my two cents here instead.

Point one is that you get more bang for the buck by making a blog. Agreed, if you have a paid LJ. However, most LJ users DO NOT have a paid LJ. Therefore, they cannot save any money by making a blog. I should also note that with LJ, a paid user has extra features. With WP, for a self-hosted installation, you need to have money in the first place to even have the basic features. Of course, with WP.com and other WP free sites, you can have a free WP blog, BUT then of course you can’t install your own plugins.

Point 2 is correct, but on LJ you can also choose not to have ads, currently. Also, while many fandom blogs do not have ads, there are also quite a few that do. In any event, neither LJ or the blogosphere is an ad-free place.

Point 3 is correct, although I should not it’s not like most people were willing to leave LJ over these issues anyhow.

Point 4: The author overestimates how much skill the average LJ user has. Many people don’t know FTP from a whole in the ground. Editing a few lines of a script is scary.

Plus, while I love WP, it honestly takes TIME to maintain an up to date WP install if you use plugins and like changing your theme. It can be super easy to maintain WP, IF you do not want to run it like an LJ and use certain features.

Also, while there is documentation, that means you have to do it yourself, vs. LJ, where maintenance matters are handled by the staff.

Point 5: Granted, but this does not address the issue of how to make friends-locked posts and use filters. While there are plugins out there that do handle this, the fact is that this is not an out of the box feature supported by WP core.

Point 6: LJ’s interoperability does suck ass, but I think for a lot of LJ users, this is not a huge concern anyway.

People keep using LJ because of the lock-in feature, and because there are certain features there which are difficult to find in other places. I’m hoping nowadays that Dreamwidth does have some effect on LJ fanfic fandom, and that some of the big communities and more influential users do move there.

I’ve also updated the FAQ on Saiunkoku (not really a very informative FAQ, though. Most of it consists on what we don’t know.)

Anyway, one of the negative points about WordPress is that you do need to change themes or edit your theme if you want to take advantage of new features when they update. But on the other hand, it is very, very customizable, and you can have it your way, as opposed to Livejournal, where editing your theme is a paid feature, and you can only have a limited number of themes. Personally, I much prefer the WP user experience. The interface is a lot more usable, and there are many appealing features. I am still frustrated by how LJ shows no interest in either creating a stats function with referrer, or in allowing us to use an external service, such as Google Analytics. Now that they’ve laid off the US staff, I wonder what’s going to happen with the development situation there?

a) the US DVD anime industry and release schedule
b) the US manga industry, release schedule, and related gossip
c) conventions

All of which, while worthy topics, are not really of much interest to me personally.

I’m more interested in hearing about

a) the Japanese manga (or anime) industry
b) untranslated manga