LJ etiquette 101

[cellio]

My friend grouchyoldcoot is a relatively new user of LJ (but has been around the net for a long time), so he asked me about the etiquette norms. LJ itself doesn't seem to have any beyond the guidelines for indecent material, so I thought I'd start a discussion here. Related topics often come up in blog_sociology too.

(Let me get this out of the way early: the word "friends" is very wrong in this context. Personally, I think of it more like a "subscriber" model. But I will use the word "friend" here, because that's the LJ lingo.)

LJ is big. Really really big. Over 5 million users, half active, or there-abouts. The vast majority of them are teenagers, and their norms probably differ from those of my circle of friends. I haven't been a teenager for a very long time, and to the best of my knowledge none of my LJ friends are teenagers. These are my opinions; YMMV, especially if your demographic varies.

Adding friends: Some people like to be asked before you add them; others don't care. The user info might contain a hint. I generally do not ask; I figure that if they put it out there for the public to read, there's no difference between reading discreetly and subscribing explicitly. If I see that the person has a very small friends list, I am more likely to post a comment fairly promptly upon subscribing.

Introductory comments: Some people like new subscribers to pop in and say hi explicitly; others don't care. I personally do not leave comments that consist entirely of "hi, I added you"; that sounds kind of high-schoolish to me. The first time I post something of substance, though, I'll often add something like "by the way, I found you via so-and-so".

Recipricocity: Some people expect you to add them back if they add you; others don't care. My advice is to not get into the game of keeping score; add the people you want to read and/or the people you want to give access to your restricted posts. While I don't automatically reciprocate, and it might be for reasons ranging from general content to grammar/format/spelling to the number of posts per day to a high concentration of quizzes to, in one past case, not speaking the language the journal is written in, I do periodically pop into the journals of the people I didn't add back. Journals and posters change over time, after all, and I may subscribe later. Or I may just pop in once every couple weeks, catch up, and maybe leave some comments. Usually it's just about managing my reading list and is not at all personal; there are only so many hours in a day. :-)

Quizzes: Mistakingly called "memes", these are the entries along the lines of "what LotR character are you" or "what color eggplant are you" or whatever. They usually have a graphic (sometimes large) and boilerplate text, with no original content. There are gazillions of them out there. Personally, I dislike them and appreciate it when my friends put them behind lj-cut tags, especially if they're doing a bunch in one fell swoop.

Other "memes": there are lots of things called memes floating around. My recent interview entries are part of one of them. There are also surveys floating around, and some others. I personally like the ones that involve original content, that tell me something about the person posting them. I really like the interview meme because not only does it tell us something about you but it encourages interaction. I think that's kind of neat. Yeah, it's a journal and not a bulletin board, but if you didn't want some level of interaction with your readers you'd just keep a private journal on your home computer, right?

Long posts: there is a convention that long posts should be partially or entirely behind an lj-cut tag so that people don't face excessive scrolling when reading their friends' pages. The definition of "long" varies. You'll get a feel for the local definition among your own friends just by hanging around. There's also a convention of putting large pictures, which consume a lot of bandwidth, behind a cut, particularly if you're posting more than one.

Ok, what basic ("101") topics have I missed, and what do the rest of you think about these?

Comments

[siderea]

The most important norm I've found is a meta-norm:

Norms are defined locally.

That is to say, there are not many "LJ" norms, but there are norms to (fuzzily bounded) groups of people. So it's much more important to pay attention to the norms of the people you actually flist than of "LJ" in general. (Edifying stories on request.)

This is a natural consequence of the "your journal, your space" norm, which several have already mentioned. YJYS cannot be stressed enough. The metaphor I use is, my public posts are me hanging out on the front porch of my place; you're welcome to come up on the porch and chat, but you are my guest in my space, so Role-Play Accordingly (as the saying goes.) Locked posts are invitation-only discussions in my living room; RPA.

This seems to be one of those few universal LJ norms, though it is sometimes applied in different ways. If you conduct yourself like a guest in someone's home, and it will help.

Of course, different people coming from different cultures have different ideas as to how you should behave in someone else' home.

Also, since, as Miss Manners points out, it's rude to talk with someone about a gathering to which they were not invited, it's not OK to talk about others' locked posts, except to those people who post in the comments of them (they were at the party, too), and then only in private (where you can't be overheard by people who might not have been invited).

Some people put guidelines and rules on their info page. Always read them. For some reason, some people get their nose out of joint over such disclaimers and instructions. I'm grateful, myself, when someone troubles to explicate their social assumptions so I don't have to guess.

A couple of other random additions:

An LJ meme is a parlor game. That's how they function.

This is not an ettiquette issue, but advice from another hoary old net oldtimer: the optimal way to use LJ so that you experience it as is typical (and not marginalize yourself) is to:

* flist liberally, and if necessary use filters to manage the number of journals on your flist. (Remember, filters not only are used for access control, but for display control.)

* Check your friends page(s) daily. LJ may look Usenetish, but because it's personal, it works better considered Emailish. It's like checking an email account -- if you don't do it, you marginalize yourself. It's better to skim daily, and not read thoroughly, than to read thoroughly but intermittantly.

I know people who don't use their friends page to follow LJs, they try to go to the home page of each of the journals of their friends. IMHO, it works poorly -- most of them don't keep up because it's too much trouble to visit many journals. Talk about self defeating.

Finally, I recommend the discipline of posting something, anything, daily. This is like the old days of BBSs -- someone who only downloads is of less social status than someone who contributes.

[cellio]

The journal-as-home model makes a lot of sense to me.

An LJ meme is a parlor game. That's how they function.

Yes. And I think what I like about the ones I like is that they stimulate (or can stimulate) conversation, which gets back to the whole social aspect of LJ. The other ones ("which 1980s fad are you" et al) serve as games but not as social activities. Some people take the quizzes (because that's the game part) but don't post the results.

I agree with your usage advice, though I try not to add anyone to my friends list who I expect to never read because I don't want to give that person a false impression. (I'm not saying you do; I wouldn't know.) LJ provides a way to easily filter people out of your default friends list, but I never use that. I do have several reading filters that I apply in different contexts, including a rough and ever-changing sort of my subscriptions into several priority-based buckets. If I'm in a hurry I may only read bucket #1 right now, but I'll come back and pick up bucket #2 later in the day. That sort of thing.

[katydidagain.livejournal.com]

If I post the results of a quiz, it either because:

1. The results actually reveal something truthful about me that the silly part of me thinks my friends might be interested in. (Someone who knows me well might say "Yep, that's her!")

2. I want to post some commentary about "HTF did it come up with that???"

I often forget to put the results of quizzes behind a cut. And I do have a disclaimer on my info page "My Journal, My Space".

I'd never heard of RPA but I approve and if you don't mind I'm going to quote that on my info page.

[cahwyguy.livejournal.com]

I agree with the daily posting and daily reading. It is certainly something that I strive to do, and I do work hard to keep my posts interesting (don't believe me: read my journal!)

I also think this is a great collection of advice on LiveJournal!

[gregbo.livejournal.com]

I try to read daily, but rarely post daily. I'm too busy, and even when I'm not, I don't always have much to say (or what I have to say would take too long to type).