Poll: Blogs, Entries, Posts, Comments, or Replies

[jesse_the_k]

When I prepare to publish something here, I think "I'm writing a post." When my gentle readers respond to what I've written, I think "they're making comments." Yet the official Dreamwidth vocabulary is not so straightforward. These are the things that keep me up at night!

To publish the current item, I tapped the "Post" link on the navigation bar. The next screen is called "Create Entries," yet the final action button is called "Post a $securitylevel Entry." With each entry I control who responds with "Comment" settings, yet the relevant FAQ talks about "replies."

One of Dreamwidth's quirkier features is how you can customize much of the user interaction texts https://www.dreamwidth.org/customize/options?group=text My favorite example is sovay, who titles the Comment/Reply function "Performable Epic."

Poll #20999 What Do YOU Call It?

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 44

View Respondents

When you visit this platform, what are you reading?

View Answers

A blog
6 (14.0%)

A journal
22 (51.2%)

A Dreamwidth
6 (14.0%)

A diary
1 (2.3%)

@jesse_the_k's stuff
2 (4.7%)

Will explain in comments
6 (14.0%)

The basic unit of communication on Dreamwidth is

View Answers

a post
32 (72.7%)

an entry
11 (25.0%)

a squee
0 (0.0%)

a topic
0 (0.0%)

a moan
0 (0.0%)

Will explain in comments
1 (2.3%)

When you're moved to respond after you're done reading whatever the previous item is called, are you making a

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comment
42 (97.7%)

reply
0 (0.0%)

response
0 (0.0%)

big deal about nothing
0 (0.0%)

Will explain in comments
1 (2.3%)

How does this poll strike you?

View Answers

irrelevant
2 (4.8%)

fanciful
16 (38.1%)

ticky box
34 (81.0%)

Comments

[untonuggan]

I had not thought about this before but it is quite interesting!

[jesse_the_k]

<3

[jmtorres]

I find some of the terms interchangeable, so I'm commenting rather than answering via radio buttons.

Journal is what I would typically call it, I've heard ppl in meatspace refer to someone's "deewee," that is to say, dreamwidth, acronymed to DW, and then... pronounced? I guess? I don't find that natural although I usually understand what is meant.

posts and entries are synonymous to me, so are comments and replies. Well, actually, replies are typically threaded comments, so, for instance, this comment is a reply to your entry but not a reply to untonuggan's comment above me, since I am not threading to them. In that sense, all comments on this platform are replies... to specific things? Does that make any sense?

[jmtorres]

oh, and on the "what terminology does the site itself use" front, when I was originally writing the above, I did so by clicking "post a comment" on your entry, but this one, threaded to my previous comment, I clicked on "reply to this" to thread it. The button to actually publish it says "post comment" not "post reply" though!

[jesse_the_k]

Yes! This confused me for a good six months when I first crawled on to LiveJournal.

[sovay]

I've heard ppl in meatspace refer to someone's "deewee," that is to say, dreamwidth, acronymed to DW, and then... pronounced? I guess?

Oh, wow, I understand how that happened in parallel with "LJ," but I would find it completely incomprehensible if heard out loud.

[jesse_the_k]

Sounds like babytalk to me.

[sonia]

I'm reading my reading list, or jesse-the-k's journal, but I don't think of the platform as a journal. I still internally say friends-list-I-mean-reading-list because I started out reading on livejournal.

Interestingly, I don't think of my own dreamwidth account as a blog (those are usually standalone in my mind, not on a shared platform like this), or a journal (that's the bound blank book sitting over on my shelf). I stumble around trying to describe it if I'm ever trying to tell someone about writing here.

I think of responses as comments, but I look around for a Reply button, and grumble to myself when I fail to distinguish between the one that replies to the whole post and the one that replies to the comment I'm currently reading.

Thanks for the food for thought! And for the tips and tricks!

[sonia]

Huh, random previous cat icon, probably because I'm reaching around my current cat asleep on my lap to type, and his fur is overlapping the laptop touchpad.

[jesse_the_k]

I like that a) there's an icon ready for b) the cat to deploy.

[julian]

I also think of blogs as standalone. (But not necessarily more link-filled. That was another era.)

[jesse_the_k]

I get around that "which comment" ambiguity by turning on the "Explicit Comment Heirarchy Indicators" -- a nifty feature with a terrible name, which I added to Dreamwidth:

https://www.dreamwidth.org/manage/settings/?cat=display

This provides outline numbering/lettering to every comment, so I can always know where I am in the heirarchy.

[sonia]

You added that to dreamwidth? How cool!

If you're set up for dreamwidth development, any chance I could talk you into adding a separate option for greying out/enabling "Everyone" vs. defaulting to "Access only" for a new post??? Pretty please? Happy to do whatever official bug reporting would be needed. As I said, I brought this up years ago and got brushed off, but it's the single most irritating anti-feature I encounter while using dreamwidth.

I like your barcode icon too!

Ah, I misspoke

[jesse_the_k]

I didn't ADD it, I suggested it, and whined about its implementation.

If I could do perl development, I would be all over this stuff. The only programming I ever did was Excel macros, in the 20th century.

So--go to dw-suggestions and make the case for it! I'll back you up.

Re: Ah, I misspoke

[sonia]

Perl? Ohgod, I thought it was php... Anyways, I looked into the dw-suggestions, and I'll let you know when I've posted a suggestion.

PS: Congrats on making a cogent accessibility suggestion and getting it implemented. I need to think about how to advocate for a change I think should be obvious...

[azurelunatic]

I post an entry; I reply with a comment. Nouns and verbs!

[jesse_the_k]

Good thing English doesn't encourage verbing nouns :,)

[sovay]

My favorite example is sovay, who titles the Comment/Reply function "Performable Epic."

Yay!

I am glad you approve.

I'd love to collect

[jesse_the_k]

...all the amusing variants I encounter, but they go in one eye and out the other ear.

How did you come to chose "performable epic"? Is it frozen language from rhetoric?

Just now, your post from 2010 shows as the second Google result

https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q="performable%20epic"

Re: I'd love to collect

[sovay]

How did you come to chose "performable epic"? Is it frozen language from rhetoric?

It is probably because I got my livejournal while I was at grad school for Classics and I was brought up in the Milman Parry/Albert Lord school of Homeric epic as oral tradition, not composed text, and I talked and thought a lot about epic in performance, not on the page.

[isis]

When I visit this platform, I am on Dreamwidth, and I see my feed of others' journals.

My user-specified text is "[#] tentacles" for viewing the [#] number of comments, and "squirt some ink" for leaving a comment.

[jesse_the_k]

Which is highly excellent!

[redbird]

What I'm doing now is either commenting, replying, or posting a comment. And that goes back to print fanzine and apa fandom, with mailing comments and letters of comment.

I used to talk about "my livejournal," but now it's "my dreamwidth journal," not "my dreamwidth."

Ah, it's important to remember

[jesse_the_k]

...our printed heritage. Comments abound.

[sasha_feather]

My quibble is that I'm reading Dreamwidth, not "a dreamwidth", but otoh i haven't really thought about it.

To me, replies are replies to comments (so, 2nd tier comments) i suppose.

[raino]

ooo that's exactly it in regards to comments and replies!

Yes! Unfortunately,

[jesse_the_k]

the UI text customization doesn't extend quite that far.

A nice distinction, though.

[julian]

Since I came over from LJ, where I referred to individual people's journals as "X person's LJ," I do that with DW, too. So I'm reading your DW. (But it's also a journal.)

I do default to referring to a response as commenting, but I sometimes use reply, too. I use it more when I'm posting a reply to some one else's comment. Probably.

[green_knight]

I am reading my reading list; and visiting so-and-so's DW, though 'blog' will do as well. I reply or comment interchangeably. I usually favour 'post' over 'entry' but both will do.

Your flexibility

[jesse_the_k]

...will serve you well.

[raino]

I used to call Livejournal journals Livejournals, but can't bring myself to call Dreamwidth journals Dreamwidths.

Yeah, "widths" is just not a thing in English

[jesse_the_k]

Widenings? Widdershins? /back to bed.

[sovay]

I used to call Livejournal journals Livejournals, but can't bring myself to call Dreamwidth journals Dreamwidths.

It really sounds existentially wrong.

[jeshyr]

I clicked "comment” but I actually parse "comment” and "reply” basically as equal and would be happy with either set of terminology. I think reply might be easier grammatically because it makes it trivial to distinguish between "reply to post” and "reply to this reply” whereas "comment on this post/comment” is slightly less idiomatic to my ear at least.

[jesse_the_k]

Thanks for weighing in!

[mdlbear]

I normally refer to the individual items I read here as "posts", and make "comments" on them. However, I'm comfortable with "entry" and "comment". I usually refer to my DW journal as a blog, but I refer to my reading page as my "friends list" as often as not.

My posting software is weird; it starts with what the Makefile calls an "entry" -- you can either "make entry" or "make draft" -- which gets "posted" with "make post".

Unfortunately my software doesn't do comments; "make comment" would be a perfect addition at some point.

[jesse_the_k]

Fortunately for us, however, your wetware does make comments.

[monanotlisa]

FANCIFUL! <3

But, you raise very good points. I am usually quite for coherency, but its lack hasn't bothered me much in the case of Dreamwidth for some reason.

[jesse_the_k]

rainbow (below) provides historical context for why it's at least consistent usage.

[rainbow]

i was involved in writing faqs for consistent style long ago when dw was new, and i remember there was discussion about posts vs entries.

the result was "on dw we post entries" with post being the verb and entry being the noun. (the discussion wasn't about "the only right way to talk about it" but "we are doing it this way for consistency across the site")

similarly you post comments, which show up as nested replies to entries rather than their own posts.

i vaguely remember something about plans to be able to create an entry and save it to post later. i don't know if that has happened or not.

Hooray! I was hoping you

[jesse_the_k]

...or someone else involved in FAQ-creation would weigh in.

Thanks for providing historical context. I can breathe an editorial sigh of relief.

Re: Hooray! I was hoping you

[rainbow]

♥ most welcome!

i just realised i meant to common on the journal/blog/etc thing.

if i'm referring to your account here, i'd say/write "jesse-the-k's dw", similar to what i do (did) in referring to [person's] lj.

if pressed i would use the word "journal" -- but only because of the livejournal history of calling the accounts journals, not because they are like actual journals to me (which, ime, are private things. ditto diaries in general).

a blog is more standalone to me. if i go to something like a wordpress blog, it doesn't seem as interactive as lj/dw. i don't know if there is a way to make a feed that shows you friends/folks you follow in a tidy calendar order, since blogs in general are confusing for me. they seem more like separate sites, too, not one big can be interactive or not site.