Code push

[denise]

Two quick notes:

* We're planning a code push for tomorrow night: at or around Tuesday, 9PM PDT / midnight EDT / Wednesday 4AM GMT. We'll update the status Twitter account when we're ready to start, and post here afterwards.

* The import queue has finally cleared out from delays caused by LJ's DDoS, so if you've been holding off on importing, you can go ahead and start an import now. (If a bunch of people queue imports all at once, the queue might build back up again, but it shouldn't be anywhere near as bad as it was last week!)

Comments

[yukinoomoni]

Can I just say, I am so impressed with the speed of the imports? I started mine I think a week ago just to get it in the queue, and just a few days ago I was pleasantly surprised to see that it was a success. Thank you so much for such speedy service and awesomeness in general.

[cellio]

Is there any way to do two-stage import -- export from LJ to file, import that file to DW? (It's the password thing...)

[denise]

There isn't, no -- it wouldn't be a problem for entries, but it *would* be a problem for comments, since people would be able to edit the text of the comments that others had left (which would then be displayed as being 'from' the original person, via OpenID) before uploading the file. We might allow import of just entries that way in the future, but we haven't yet.

However! Might I suggest changing your LJ password to something stupid and throwaway, doing the import, and then changing it immediately back? obviously this doesn't totally eliminate the "auuugh password" thing, but it at least minimizes the risk. (I mean, I can promise you up and down and sideways that we don't use the passwords for anything but imports, and that we don't do evil, but obviously, anyone would say that!)

[cellio]

Ah, good point about comments. I suppose the best you could do in that case is to record imported comments as "attributed to" instead of "from" whomever.

If I could set an LJ password that gave access only to my own journal, then I would be making the decision about whether I trust you (and would do the temporary-password thing to import). Unfortunately, since that's not how LJ works, giving you my password (even a temporary one) means that I am telling everybody who gives me access to locked LJ content that they have to trust you, and I can't make that decision for them. Sigh.

[denise]

Ahhhh, yeah, got it.

*ponders solutions* Post announcing your intentions and ask everyone who's bothered by it to defriend you for 48 hours? I was going to say, remove everyone from your FL, run the import, then refriend, but duh, of course it's not whom you friend, it's who friends you...

[cellio]

That works better if you have ~20 friends than if you have ~200. Somebody would drop out along the way, I'm sure -- not through malice but through forgetfulness.

*ponders* Is there anything that can be done with OpenID and imports? That is, instead of giving one site the password to the other, use OpenID to authenticate to one site and tell it to trust the other? I don't know much about OpenID and nothing at all about LJ's APIs, so sorry if that's a crazy idea.

[denise]

We do have bugs open for adding OAuth support (OpenID is not what you'd want there, it's OAuth) but that would only work with other sites running the DW code (or willing to adapt our patch to LJ code). Basically, anything that doesn't require you giving us your password would also require code changes on LJ's end, and they've been fairly uninterested in making improvements to any of their APIs at anyone's request for at least the last few years. We're sort of stuck working with what we have :(

(We had a bunch of conversations about this back when we first were coding the importer and the crossposter, and a lot of smart people who know the code really well banged on the problem, and we eventually just had to go :( at it a lot.)