Dreamwidth Q&A Session

[denise]

I realized this morning that it has been quite some time, so I figured it would be a good time for another Dreamwidth Q&A session!

Got a question on how the business end of DW works? Curious about the progress on a particular feature? (Although I can probably answer that for you by saying: we're working on paying down our technical debt so that we can move forward on a lot of the planned features; it got to the point where we couldn't progress further without making some aggressive modernization of the existing codebase.) Wondering what an average day in the life of a DW employee is? Got that one question that you've been vaguely wondering about for ages, but never felt like it was "important" enough to make a support request to get the answer on? Want to know if it really is that cool being able to work from home without wearing any pants? (Answer: yes, especially when it's 85 degrees F in my office and the air conditioners won't be delivered and installed for at least another day or two.)

Comment here, and we will answer!

(Just a reminder: you may receive comments or replies from people who know the answer to your question, but aren't officially DW staff. If the person who answers you doesn't have the official "staff" userhead -- -- they are not DW staff. They may be correct -- if they aren't, I will be sure to answer and clear up any misconceptions -- but they are not speaking ex cathedra Dreamwidth, so to speak!)

No question too big, no question too small. There's also previous Q&A sessions and the Business FAQs to browse through!

(Answers may be a bit slow depending on computer woes and additional stuff going on, but we will answer!)

Comments

[yvi]

What is an average day in the life of a DW employee like?

*looks at both denise and fu*

[denise]

Hee! Well, my days are pretty variable -- not much is average -- but let's see....

As many, many people know, I have the worst case of Non-24-Hour Sleep/Wake Disorder (irregular pattern) that my doctors have ever seen in a human being who doesn't lack external light cues. This means that my average "day" is anywhere between about 26 and 40 hours, so all of this is done on a fairly irregular basis, time-wise. (Which makes interfacing with the business, 9-to-5 world difficult, but does make it much easier to be fu's boss, since she's on a 12-hour offset from my time zone! I'm pretty much guaranteed to be in her time zone for at least a little while, at least two or three times a week.)

So, usually I wake up, stumble into the office, wake up my computer, and read my email and my reading list while I'm caffeinating. That usually takes me about an hour (both the reading and the caffeinating), all the while opening tabs for things I need to respond/deal with/solve/categorize/etc. I'll eat breakfast at the keyboard (trying to avoid too much in the way of laptop crumbs, although I did manage to spill queso into the speakers of my brand-new laptop last week.)

From there, I'll do the usual daily routine, which includes:

* checking in on payment processing volume from the day before (if I wasn't awake at the time the nightly email got sent) and checking for any issues

* responding to any payment-related issues or support requests in private, employee-only categories

* replying to any emails that need my attention

* checking in on Bugzilla to triage things, etc (which I'm soooo behind on, ack)

* handling the Suggestions queue (ideally once a week, in practice it winds up being every few weeks)

* making/returning business phone calls if it's within business hours; making note of them for later if it isn't (I try to push my sleep schedule around so I can make business calls roughly 4 out of 5 weekdays if I have to)

* checking in with people who need my help/attention/questions answered/etc (or sometimes just need a listening ear!)

* coding! Ideally I really, really try to spend one day a week coding; in practice, I haven't been able to get anywhere near that. (The business stuff started eating up my time in mid-March for tax prep and really hasn't stopped since. It's calming down a bit now, at least, thank goodness; I hope to be able to get back to it fairly soon.)

And I'm sure I'm forgetting a bunch of the stuff I do regularly, too! It's all so routine by now that I just don't think about it.

sarah comes home from work between 5:30 and 6:30PM most weeknights, and when she does, I put the computer away and spend time with her -- dinner, movie watching, TV watching, jewelry making, knitting, household chores or home repair projects, or even just sprawling on each other and reading. Unless there's something major going on, though, the time from about 7PM to about 10PM every night is for relationship time. (Thankfully, she also thinks the definition of an ideal night is sitting in front of our computers faffing around on the internet.) We also have a once-a-week TV night with a friend, which is useful for making me actually put the computer down and go do something else. On weekends, it's pretty much the same thing, except sarah will be working on around-the-house projects; half the time I'll be helping her out, half the time I'll be working through.

I have recently started trying to take more time for not-in-front-of-the-computer, since part of what lead to my epic burnout circa 2006-2007 from LiveJournal was the fact that I was literally always working -- if I was home, I was in front of the computer, and about 80% of the time I was working on something for work. (The other 20% of the time I was writing.) You can see a day in the life from early '07 -- that pace was brutal, and was a good part of what led to me quitting. I still haven't retrained myself -- only working 40-45 hours a week on DW stuff feels like I'm doing nothing, and am an immense and epic slacker -- but I'm getting soooo much better.

[pne]

Is Dreamwidth generating enough income to pay Mark and Denise some money? (It wasn't as of the last Q&A session.) Edit: wow, that was a year and a half ago. (Has DW really been around for over two years?!) So I'm assuming the answer is "yes", at least for Denise (since IIRC, Mark is gainfully employed elsewhere?).

I believe it's paying Fu's salary? Anyone else?

[denise]

We are indeed paying fu's salary, with considerable help from favorable exchange rates. (We honestly couldn't have her full-time if it weren't for that.) We also pay modest monthly retainers to the backup on-call sysadmin (to make sure we have coverage; mark is still our primary sysadmin, with fu learning what she needs to know to help out) and one of our Terms of Service people (it helps, legally, to have certain ToS stuff handled by someone who's employed by the site, even on a contractor basis).

We then pay me a very minimal salary, if the month's income supports it -- which, thankfully, it does most months, although April was pretty bad what with taxes and we couldn't pay me until after the seed account sale. And by 'very minimal', I mean, a thousand dollars a month. Obviously I really really wish we could pay both me and mark a living wage! But fortunately sarah has a stable government job and can support us on her income alone, with mine being used for supplemental stuff and the home repair fund. :)

[zvi]

Status updates requested:

Virtual gifts?
Multimedia hosting?
Update page/drafts?

Is the percentage of paid users on track for sustainability?

[denise]

Vgifts -- most of the backend code is written, and the frontend and admin stuff is about half there, I think? The coder who's working on it has had an explosion of Life lately, but she hopes to get back to it soon, from what I've heard.

Hosting -- mark had a barebones version (for "email in the picture from your phone or from an email post"); the backend is done, it just needs a frontend and user-facing admin stuff (managing photos, deleting photos, etc). fu has the code, and will be working on it. We just have to be careful because implementing it will have to mean watching our bandwidth and disk space carefully.

Update page -- a lot of the JQuery stuff we've been doing (available by turning on beta testing for your account, etc) is to allow that project to be completed. I think fu has the update page nearly entirely coded now, but can't deploy it until a bunch of backend stuff gets finished.

I have been very, very, very pleased with the paid user percentage over the past year or so. If it hadn't been for the three months of no-payments, we would've finished 2010 in the black. We're going to finish 2011 in the black, due to the seed account sale, but obviously that's not something to count on; I'm not sure what the percentages are going to look like in another six months (what with the seed accounts no longer bringing in annual revenue, etc) but I'm honestly not concerned, since our usage and paid account percentage has been so good. I'm really pleased.

Invite codes

[valtraid]

What is the whole "process" after someone manually requests for additional invite codes?

I ask because I got 3 codes, but it was only 12 days after I originally requested for them.


*EDIT: Also, I just realized it's not in response to my request.. so I'm even more confused now!

Re: Invite codes

[denise]

*g* Yeah, I always forget to check the list of people requesting codes -- I try to do that at least once a month, but it's really easy for me to forget.

The email you just got was from our automated code distribution process. Every month or two -- or whenever the people who take care of dw_codesharing tell me that there aren't any "codes available" posts left -- I check the current paid users vs free users ratio, our traffic levels, our server load, etc, etc, and decide if we can support more users. If we're looking good, I'll go and run an automated invite code generation. We can generate more invite codes and distribute them by a bunch of methods:

* basic paid users
* premium paid users
* seed accounts
* active-in-last-30-days accounts
* accounts with no unused invites
* accounts with no unused invites and at least one paid/premium paid invitee

This time around, I wanted to encourage the growth we've been seeing lately, so I sent out a bunch, using a bunch of the different criteria -- so some people are likely going to get multiple emails!

[jae]

Are there any plans to build either a Dreamwidth-specific offsite client for composing posts offline that we can upload later? (I use iJournal, but I can't make filtered posts that way, and I can't upload posts I don't want to crosspost that way.)

Are there any plans to build a dreamwidth iPhone app so that we smartphone types can read and post to dreamwidth easily without having to deal with silly Safari nonsense (and teeny tiny type)?

Thank you!

-J

[denise]

We had someone working on an iPhone client, but he disappeared -- fu is thinking of doing one (in her copious spare time, heh). exor674 is working on an Android version, too, but she doesn't actually have an Android phone; she's just working with the emulator. So, yeah, mobile stuff is on its way! (And dreamatdrew is working on a redesign of the mobile interface in general, although he's gotten distracted by other projects.)

Nobody's really shown any interest in adopting a desktop client project, but we would eagerly welcome one if someone wanted to! (The GSOC student who was going to be working on it last summer disappeared.) We have had a few nibbles, but on the whole our people's talent base is in web programming, not desktop application programming. If anybody wanted to take up the project and run with it, though, we'd welcome it with open arms.

[heather_dev]

I'm working on an open-source Windows desktop DW client, but life keeps getting in the way and progress has been slow going.

The dreamword community was created for the project, subscribe/join to be notified of future development news. :)

[desh]

How much interaction do y'all have with the open source world at large? I know you've gone to occasional conferences, but I mean digitally. In fact, I'm not 100% sure I know what I mean. Is there a CPAN for application-level stuff rather than library-level stuff, and if so, do random non-DW people pitch in on DW code periodically? Do many DW coders pitch into CPAN projects? If so, do they do it specifically for DW, or just for fun?

[denise]

We don't have a whole lot of interaction with the wider open source world -- not because we don't want to, but because our cultures are just so drastically different! We do contribute major security fix patches to LJ (and of course all of our stuff is available for them to take into their tree, although they don't do a lot of it), and I know fu has been doing some work on Mercurial, since we use Mercurial as our source management software. I've been thinking of coding a little for Bugzilla, since there are some things about it that annoy me, too.

On the whole, if we find a bug in one of the modules/etc we use, of course we'd send patches upstream! But -- speaking only for myself here -- I find the prevailing culture in a lot of OSS projects to be utterly toxic, and not at all the way I'd like to spend my time. I can't speak for everyone, but I think I'm not the only one.

I know we've had a bunch of people from the wider FLOSS world hear about us and decide to come hack with us! We do our best to make it fun.

[grammarwoman]

I love, love, love the cut expander/retractor function, especially when I'm on my reading list. The fact that there's one on the top AND bottom is such a great example of inclusively simple DW thinking. Bravo!

Do you think the possibility exists that something similar could be applied to comments, such that you could expand comments when you're looking at your reading list?

[adalger]

Expanding comments already exists. It's a paid account feature. :)

[forestgreen]

Are you still planning to offer the feature that will allow to read LJ friends' page without having to leave DW?

You've spoiled me rotten, and nowadays is such a drag to read on LJ. There are so many features (like expand tags) that I miss, but there are still some communities there that I want to check :(

[zvi]

Sad Project News

One of the things we've been trying to accomplish since the open beta launch is the ability to read your offsite friends page/reading lists from other LJ-based sites directly on Dreamwidth itself, along with things like locked posts (assuming you have the credentials to read them, of course). It's been a while since we've given you an update on that one, and there's a reason for that -- the project has had a bunch of setbacks. mark actually had working code, and could have committed it at any point in the past, oh, nine months ... except for some factors that meant the near-certainty that the minute we turned it on, LiveJournal will block our access to their servers.

We have been looking for a way to work around that problem -- rate-limiting our queries, further limiting who got access to the feature, even throwing out all the code Mark had written and starting again from scratch, but nothing we did could get around the fact that if we went ahead with the implementation, we'd be almost guaranteed to be blocked from accessing LJ entirely. That would mean not only no more cross-site reading list, but also no importing, no crossposting, and no syndicated feeds from LiveJournal. The past nine months or so have been full of a lot of behind-the-scenes brainstorming on how we could make things work, since we know how much people have been looking forward to the prospect, but nothing has worked and we've hit the bottom of the barrel on other things we can try.

It is with utmost reluctance that I have to announce that unless something changes drastically in the future, we aren't going to be able to offer the cross-site reading list feature after all. We'd rather keep importing, crossposting, and syndicated feeds (and not offer cross-site reading) than not be able to offer any interaction with LJ at all. We are all incredibly sorry about this -- we genuinely thought we'd be able to do it, but some factors changed after we first announced the project and no matter what we try, we can't work around them.

For those who are looking for something that will let you read offsite content that requires you to identify yourself in order to see locked data, our best suggestion is to download a desktop RSS feedreader that supports HTTP authentication. (I don't know of any online feedreader that will do it, but many desktop ones will.)

We are absolutely going to keep this problem in mind, and if the factors that are keeping us from being able to release this feature ever change, or if LJ implements a better way for their users to access their data through the LJ protocol, we will go back to it in a heartbeat.

12/24/2010 Weekly Update

[chris]

I think you (both singular and plural) are generally pretty awesome, and occasions like this, when you follow up on your commitment to radical transparency, show you at your most awesome.

Is there anything in the Business FAQs that has dramatically changed since when you wrote it? By "dramatically" I refer to deliberate changes in direction of policy, rather than as a result of changes imposed on you against your will by matter of practicalities.

Specifically, now you've been running for two years, is your answer to What if you get tired of running the company? the same now as it was then, and how close are you to the goal that you identified when answering What steps are you taking to ensure continuity of administration?

[denise]

This is a placeholder comment for when I wake up, since this is not the kind of question one should answer at the tail end of a 24-hour day whilst one is taking the sort of drugs one really should not operate heavy machinery under the influence of!

[watervole]

Nearly a year ago you were talking about a facility to allow several draft messages to be saved. This was a feature I was really looking forward to. What happened to it?

[jumpuphigh]

I know someone will jump in with a more complete answer but it is still in development. A few versions have been released in the Not-So-Weekly Updates for playing and comments by all users and then fu and whoever else is working on it (sorry person whose name I can't remember!) goes back for tweaking.

[kitters]

Any word on a way for last.fm to autofill the music on DW entries? I heard you guys had problems with this in the past, so I was wondering if there were plans for any alternate method.

[rho]

If memory serves, that was got rid of for legal reasons rather than technical ones. Basically, in order to have the LastFM music detection on, you had to plaster the page in question with "Powered by LastFM!" or something like that, and it was decided that was ugly and annoying and that it ultimately wasn't worth it.

[silveradept]

How many entry points are there for the volunteer sphere for Dreamwidth?

F'rex, while we hear regular updates about the code backend (and many thanks for the posting on technical debt and the need to get one's house in order before moving forward with further additions), for someone who doesn't code (and has it ever been explicitly mentioned what kind of coding one would need to help there?), that's not an avenue with which to volunteer.

For someone who, say, works a full-time job and may have additional time commitments on top of that, like family, is there a way that person can volunteer or contribute their limited amount of time to the project doing things that have significance?

I know there's a vibrant community of stylists, coders, testers, and others, but when volunteering projects come up in things like regular newsletters, it always seems like an appeal to someone who has both coding skills and time on their hands. I'm sure there are other avenues, but I don't know if I've seen them promoted all that much.

This may not need an official-DW-hat response, unless there's someone with an official-DW-hat that handles such things, but it would be nice to know if/where something is that says, "If you have just an hour to spare, you can volunteer like this. If you have a day to spare, this will take you about a day's worth of time, etc, etc."

I suspect there's an untapped volume of volunteers out there saying "I'd love to, but I just don't have X." How can they be brought into the fold?

[jumpuphigh]

There are a ton of things that can be done. Head on over to dw_volunteers, say, "I'm interested in volunteering" and I guarantee a response. :D

I do support and that is something that can be done sporadically by anyone. Anybody can answer a question and have it approved. Here's the link for the queue: http://www.dreamwidth.org/support/help

[tyger]

Is there a list of the suggestions from dw_suggestions hanging around somewhere? I've occasionally thought about maybe suggesting something, but I don't follow the comm - though maybe I should do that - and I can't find a list, so I just. Kind of. Don't do anything. ^^;

[jumpuphigh]

Not that I know of but if you look at the tags in that comm (http://dw-suggestions.dreamwidth.org/tag/), you can browse what's been suggested before.

[meretia]

I saw a fair few people on my reading list and on "latest things" talking about DW developing a "like" button on posts similar to what Facebook has. Is this actually an idea under discussion/development, or is it just one of those rumors that goes around?

[jumpuphigh]

The discussion is happening here: http://dw-suggestions.dreamwidth.org/532315.html

[beatrice_otter]

This isn't about business, but I'm too lazy to look up the right place for it, so here goes: why, in the Rich Text posting interface, is the graphic you click to insert a user the LJ userhead instead of the DW userhead? To the uninitiated, that seems like it would be a quick fix.

[kareila]

The Rich Text Editor is one of those areas of the code where the devs throw up their hands and make ritual warding gestures, but you're right that an image substitution sounds fairly simple. Would you mind submitting that to DW_suggestions?

[elfling_eryn]

Will it in the future be possible to pay for points and the like with Paypal?

[liv]

No, unfortunately. Paypal won't work with Dreamwidth unless Dreamwidth agrees to delete content that Paypal consider objectionable. Dreamwidth isn't willing to delete perfectly legal content just because some people are offended, so you have a stalemate. There was loads of discussion when this issue arose early in 2010, but you can get the gist of the argument here: http://dw-news.dreamwidth.org/16590.html

[beatrice_otter]

I have a bug open in support and since it looks like several other people have similar problems, I thought I'd ask here what's going on.

I am not getting all of my DW notifications. I am getting some of them by e-mail, and some in my inbox, but most of the ones I get by e-mail don't show up in my inbox and vice versa, and I can see no pattern to it. And there are some comments on DW that I'm not getting notification of at all, so I just have that page open in a tab so I can be sure to see all comments to it (it's a fic post, and I want to see what people say!) DW is on the whitelist of my e-mail provider, so I know it's not that problem.

I think there are gremlins somewhere in the system.

[denise]

That's something support will have to troubleshoot, yeah. I will note that a) replies to your comments in communities or other journals (not your own) won't hit the inbox, because of a long and tedious explanation that would take a long time to explain, which is probably why you're noticing that not every comment reply goes to your inbox, and b) it is very, very, very hard to troubleshoot this kind of thing, because email is an unreliable medium, and once things leave our servers properly (which they are, for everything but Yahoo, but Yahoo is notorious for spam-blocking email at the drop of a hat) it is nearly impossible for us to troubleshoot.

So, basically, if you use Yahoo, or your domain hosting is provided by Yahoo or goes through Yahoo, you're not going to get email from us right now, because Yahoo is refusing all connections from us. (We've tried contacting them multiple times about this, and follow all their recommendations, and they always go back to blocking us in the end.) If you use another email service, I don't know what to tell you, because our logs don't show any other failures to send email. Check with your email provider and see if they're doing spam filtering that they're not telling you about.

[ninetydegrees]

It seems to me account purges are run very irregularly if ever. Am I imagining things? If I'm not, why is that?

[denise]

The purging script causes disk fragmentation, which can lead to slowdowns in accessing information, and puts a lot of load on the database while it's running. We do it irregularly becasue of that. It has been a while, though; I'll see if we can support the load of running it again.