Oh, Dreamwidth. I am so disappointed in you.
Tuesday, January 20th, 2015 03:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lizvogelI sat down to do some story-submitting today, with a brief detour into reading Dreamwidth. (Bad habit, I know, but there it is.) One of the first things on my reading list was the latest news post. Now, I'll admit, I braced a little (conditioned response from many other sites, where every "improvement" is an annoyance at best), but the truth is, with Dreamwidth's changes I usually click through and go, "Well, that can be worked with." Sometimes I'm even pleasantly surprised.
So I look at the new stuff, and what do I get? Outright broken functionality, and an aesthetic road accident. (Two, in fact.) Senior staff, who are usually reasonably responsive to complaints and try to make things work for everyone as best as possible, are giving a general gist of "Well, people wanted it like that, and you just don't like change," along with occasionally blaming the user's browser settings. Users are pleading for a custom CSS option and suggesting script tricks to turn some of the new stuff off; some of it, there's just no way around it.
Which all sounds unpleasantly familiar. It sounds like LiveJournal, and the reason why I abandoned LiveJournal as my primary platform (and rarely make it over there at all any more, unless I have a comment). As a fellow ex-pat put it, we were spending all our time finding ways around the latest "upgrades" instead of enjoying the content, and that's not supposed to be the point of the exercise.
And here I am: I've lost two hours to writing feedback comments and bug reports, and I'm shaking with unchanneled adrenaline. This is not what I come to Dreamwidth for, folks! I come here for relaxing reading and the occasional stimulating conversation, not to flush my afternoon testing broken things and protesting ghastly design decisions, and having those protests fall on largely deaf ears.
I really hope this is a temporary aberration, and not a sign of things to come. C'mon, Dreamwidth. You're better than this.
So I look at the new stuff, and what do I get? Outright broken functionality, and an aesthetic road accident. (Two, in fact.) Senior staff, who are usually reasonably responsive to complaints and try to make things work for everyone as best as possible, are giving a general gist of "Well, people wanted it like that, and you just don't like change," along with occasionally blaming the user's browser settings. Users are pleading for a custom CSS option and suggesting script tricks to turn some of the new stuff off; some of it, there's just no way around it.
Which all sounds unpleasantly familiar. It sounds like LiveJournal, and the reason why I abandoned LiveJournal as my primary platform (and rarely make it over there at all any more, unless I have a comment). As a fellow ex-pat put it, we were spending all our time finding ways around the latest "upgrades" instead of enjoying the content, and that's not supposed to be the point of the exercise.
And here I am: I've lost two hours to writing feedback comments and bug reports, and I'm shaking with unchanneled adrenaline. This is not what I come to Dreamwidth for, folks! I come here for relaxing reading and the occasional stimulating conversation, not to flush my afternoon testing broken things and protesting ghastly design decisions, and having those protests fall on largely deaf ears.
I really hope this is a temporary aberration, and not a sign of things to come. C'mon, Dreamwidth. You're better than this.
