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

[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.

[ein_myria]

Aw, that's too bad. I was wondering about this feature too, thanks for the answer!

[kitters]

That sucks. D8 Guess I'll have to just keep filling the field in manually (which isn't a big deal, really). Thanks for the answer!

[zvi]

The problem with last.fm was not technical so much as it was philosophical. There was a provision in their TOS re: how they had to be linked to/credited that M&D felt was contrary to DW's biz practices. Unless last has changed their TOS, I don't think that will change. (Sorry for /ot linking. I'm on my phone.)

[rho]

Have just been looking into this further, and found LastFM's ToS for using their data. It's pretty restrictive, and generally not in tune with DW's philosophy of openness.

[kitters]

Ouch. I can see why DW didn't like it.

[pauamma]

rho is correct. See http://bugs.dwscoalition.org/show_bug.cgi?id=539.

[kitters]

Thanks for the link!

[denise]

Just confirming that yeah, the reason we removed the feature was that last.fm requires you to sign up for an account with them in order to use their API, and we took one look at their terms and conditions and went "urk". We really didn't like either their ToS or their privacy policy, so we took the feature out.

[kitters]

I see, I see. XD Thanks!