Open call to anyone still listening - archiving old LJ comms

[tenlittlebullets]

If you modded LiveJournal communities back in the day, please consider archiving them to Dreamwidth NOW. So much 2000s internet history lives there, and if LJ falls off the internet (as it very well might, depending on how things go in Russia in the near future), links will break and vast amounts of it will be lost. Wayback Machine only captures public posts; a Dreamwidth import can pull in locked posts and comments, and allow people to view them by joining the comm.

If you don't want to go to the hassle yourself, I will happily do it for you - just DM tenlittlebullets on DW and temporarily add 10littlebullets on LJ as a community mod. I can do it under this account, a catchall archivist account, or a specific one created just for the comm. If you want the Dreamwidth version to be co-maintained or transferred to your DW account, I can also do that.

If Dreamwidth's importer locks up, as it might if there's an archiving stampede, this Tumblr post (+reblogged mirror just in case) has instructions for exporting comments in XML format. LJ still has a built-in page that lets you do the same for posts. Dreamwidth won't let you import from these XML files, but they're still human-readable and can probably be imported to Wordpress if you want to host an archive later.

(Pre-emptive permission: Feel free to link, copy, repost, and spread this post wherever you want. Also feel free to translate it into any language you want. I would be both gratified and extremely relieved if any Russian speakers want to spread it around to people who were active on ЖЖ back in the day and are in a position to safely back up their old content; the offer to help with importing is still open, even if we have to communicate through Google Translate!)

Comments

[desdemonaspace]

Hello! I am a mod at the LJ community Spiketara, and I have NO IDEA how to copy it to DW. Could you be so kind as to assist? Or advise me how to go about doing it? I would be so grateful!

[pauamma]

Does https://www.dreamwidth.org/support/faqbrowse?faqid=230 help?

[desdemonaspace]

Hi. Thanks, but no it doesn't. Where it says, "To import a community, you must be a maintainer or owner (not a moderator) of the community on the other site" is where I am stuck. I'm only a moderator. I've LJ-messaged the comm owner but haven't heard back from her.

Thanks, though. I appreciate it.

[pauamma]

*nod* (I think I missed that, and many use that to refer to anyone having some extra power on a community, not just moderation in the narrow, technical sense.)

[desdemonaspace]

She hasn't responded to me, the owner, I mean. She may no longer be using that email address that LJ has for her, or may not even be alive. (Hello, pandemic?) I am copy-pasting my chapters - all 53 of them, to documents.

Is there any way a mod can copy a community to DW? There is so much lovely fic in Spiketara, and I never could read it when I was writing my own. I will miss not being able to read all that Spara goodness.

[pauamma]

I don't know of any. It may come to the way the LiveJournal client interface the importer uses works now. Since LiveJournal stopped being open-source sometime in 2014, I've lost all visibility of that.

[desdemonaspace]

Oh, well. I'm nearly done with my own fic, but all those other writers' fic will be GAWN.

I suppose I can post and ask my remaining f-list to point me to where their fic is archived...

[melannen]

You can use ljarchive to back up all the entries of any community where you're a member. Unfortunately it no longer works on comments, but reports are it will still get the entries themselves, so it should at least save the fic.

(if you need help getting ljarchive to work, someone in these comments can probably help!)

[desdemonaspace]

It's the comments I'm mostly interested in. (It was my first big fic.) I've put in a request at LJ Support asking them to treat the community as though it's been abandoned, which I think it is. Asked them to make me owner. Sure hope they do. They've probably got a ton of support requests right now...

[melannen]

Yeah, they've probably got a ton of support requests. They are also probably way more panicked than we are about what's going to happen to the Russian internet/tech economy in coming days and also dealing with like, censorship requests from the FSB about literally everyone on the Russian-language site and whether they're all going to Siberia just for owning LJ and/or getting their yachts confiscated, so I really don't blame them if Anglo fandom panicking yet again isn't their top concern rn.

[desdemonaspace]

I just can't feel too sorry about their going to Siberia or getting their yachts confiscated. Russia is the reason we're all in this pickle.

[melannen]

I mean I am certainly not feeling a great deal of pain for the oligarch owners of Ramblr Media Group, but the individual staffers who have managed to keep Russian LJ alive for average Russians after all this time and its reputation as an independent social media site for troublemakers have my sympathy. Even if they haven't generally been able to do a great job of it.

(I think maybe a lot of people have forgotten/don't know the beginning of this story? LJ is owned by Russians in the first place because it has a huge Russian userbase and in the early 2000s was home to a lot of the loudest anti-Putin voices in Russia. More of that than you'd think is still up if you know how to navigate Russian LJ. LJ's owners are not worried about the English fan fiction, they care about the Russian dissident bloggers. And in some cases, the Russian dissident fan fiction. I also care about the Russian dissident bloggers and the Russian dissident fans. Russian fandom is going through some shit right now as you'd guess.)

[desdemonaspace]

I think maybe a lot of people have forgotten/don't know the beginning of this story?

That would be me. I've been around since 2003(?) but didn't really know much. Of course I support the anti-Putin Russians. This is such a mess. I mostly blame Putin, may he rot.