In Defense of the Pillowfort Reblog System

[Note: this post was originally made to Pillowfort on Dec 19, 2018. It could probably use some edits, but this version is current as of 8 months ago.]

A post on why I think the separation of comments and reblogs is a good thing, with communal, social benefits that exceed the importance of its drawbacks, and why I think Pillowfort's current reblog system should stay that way. This post is separated into six parts: some rules of engagement, lit review, definitions of terms, my stance, some context, and my reasons.

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What is a Hitching Post?

[Note: this post was originally made to Pillowfort on Dec 13, 2018.]

This is just a quick reference post to explain what a "hitching post" means on pillowfort, why we have them, and how they got started.

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Link Culture

[Note: this post was originally made to Pillowfort on March 19, 2019.]

While putting together a massive compilation of links recently, one of the things I got to thinking about, as you might expect, was about how some sites were easier to collect examples from and follow the conversation on than others. The forums were, of course, the best. The most customizeable search function, plus the threaded nature of, you know, threads, made it really easy to find what I was looking to find. As for the Tumblr posts, I mostly either had to have those handed to me directly or else only found them because I knew exactly whose blogs and tags to look through -- and each individual post or reblog chain seemed to stand as an island, with nothing to directly connect it to any others. So because we've also talked about site dialect and culture, now I'm also wondering: What about a culture of links? ( Read more... )

Issues with Discord

[Note: this post was originally made to Pillowfort on Nov 1, 2020.] 

How does anyone ever survive big discord servers. Overwhelming. Too much going on. Five billion channels and I have all but three of them muted and I'm still getting notifications throwing a new message onto my screen every two seconds. Multiple conversations in the same channel happening at once making it all hard to follow. Everyone seems like they're already friends and I'm this clueless interloper who doesn't belong there. Three people who've been memorably unkind to me are always online and I live on edge never knowing when they're about to jump in.

The worst of it though is the agony of timing. Something interesting or objectionable came up four hours ago but there's a different conversation going now and do I bring it up here? Now? Interrupting people? You're going to make me interrupt people in order to talk? Horrifying. Or what, am I supposed to just wait indefinitely for that rare moment when everyone goes quiet? Why can't there just be a way to append something directly, regardless of what else is also going on at the moment? Why does everything have to hinge so much on the question of the precise moment? How does anyone live like this?

How Using Tumblr is Undermining Your Community

[Note: this post was originally made to Pillowfort on Nov 23, 2019.]

Are you a member of a small, marginalized identity-based community of Tumblr bloggers, looking to advocate for yourselves, support each other, have meaningful discussions, build, and grow? Then Tumblr itself is standing in your way.  ( Read more... )

Tumblr Asks Are My Personal Hell

[Note: this post was originally made to Pillowfort on Nov 6, 2020.]

Okay, CT suggested I write the darn post, so I'm going to write the darn post. Who knows if this'll become relevant to anything again, but in case it does, I'll have this on hand to link.

Let's say somebody says or does something objectionable and I'm motivated to respond to it, but that person has no public contact info available -- save for their tumblr askbox. Supposing I take on the challenge of going this route (and I usually don't), here is an attempt to spell out some of the difficulties involved. ( Read more... )