(no subject)

[denise]

As part of the current geopolitical crisis caused by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, rumors are circulating that the Russian government intends to withdraw from the internet so that sites hosted inside Russia won't be accessible from outside Russia. We don't have any information about the credibility of these rumors, and I personally believe it's 50/50 odds at best that it's true, but the rumor has prompted many people from LJ to back up their journals and communities to Dreamwidth, using our content importer, in the interests of preserving access to their data if the rumors are true. Because LiveJournal is hosted inside Russia, if the rumors do turn out to be true, no one outside Russia will be able to reach it, so people are highly motivated to import their stuff right now!

As we've noted in the last few posts, LiveJournal is intermittently blocking our access to their servers, so there's a chance any import attempt might fail. Many imports are successfully finishing today, though, and we're doing everything we can to keep that success percentage high. If yours fails, you'll get a message in your Dreamwidth inbox. If you get any failure message at all, wait 30 minutes and try the import again, starting from the step it failed on.

In order to increase the chance the importer stays unlocked for as long as possible, crossposting is still shut off (there's a whole tl;dr here about why imports are more likely to succeed than crossposting, but I'm typing on my phone so you will be spared my usual earnest explanation). Please also help us reduce the risk of tripping LJ's "automated" blocks by making absolutely 100% certain the LJ password you're entering when you set up the import is the correct password for the LJ account you're importing. All of the import jobs appear to LJ like they come from Dreamwidth, not your computer, and the fewer failed logins LJ sees from us, the less often they block us.

We've temporarily increased the server resources assigned to the importer in hopes of working through the queue more quickly during periods we aren't blocked. For the next several days (or as long as we can) this may cause the site to feel a bit sluggish at times of higher usage: pages may take a tiny bit longer to load and emails may take a few extra minutes to arrive, especially during the US evening hours. (So, from about 8PM in EDT, GMT -5, to about 10PM in PDT, GMT -8.)

We will be carefully monitoring the server load, and we'll throw some more temporary resources at the problem if we need to. Please bear with us for a few days as we try our absolute best to help as many people as possible back up their data just in case!

(Welcome to all our new friends! We're glad you're here. It is usually much, much more chill than this.)

Comments

[denise]

Okay, that's a vile lie, I am never chill. Anyway! If people have good "welcome to DW, here's how it's different from LJ" tips for our new friends, drop 'em here!

[pumpkinlumpin]

I haven't been on Livejournal in years, so unfortunately I can't speak too much on what might be different between it and Dreamwidth. But in case anyone moving over missed it: there's been a friending meme going on, consider giving it a look! Similarly, there's also the addme, addme_fandom, and dw_community_promo communities for finding like-minded folks.

[peaceflower]

I'm so glad I came here from LJ and wish I did sooner. Looking forward to supporting DW for many years to come.

[denise]

Welcome home! We're so thrilled you made it. There's coffee and tea over on the counter, help yourself.

[chuckro]

Thank you for being awesome people and maintaining this site.

[denise]

We are too stubborn to ever give up on running this place, like, ever.

[ride_4ever]

Thank you, Dreamwidth! <3 you so much!

And welcome to any new DW friends who are just now joining and just now reading comments here.

[yuuago]

Thanks for the update & for temporarily adjusting resources. I’m sure most people don’t mind a slightly slower loading time while all the imports are happening. <3

[yourlibrarian]

Agreed. I think a lot of people long at DW are just as concerned about losing content once hosted at LJ as the people moving over from LJ. There are a ton of works and discussions there that were never posted anywhere else.

[matrixmann]

Already noticed yesterday that the queue of the importer is quite full...
But, at the same time, if there's noticeably something in it, then you know: Currently it works.

Personally, I have no idea where on Twitter or what other platform people take this rumor. I keep my eyes and ears open to maybe find out about the origin, but currently it seems a bit like "someone put a thought out in a public post, and 5 other people read it - who turned that thought into whatever story in their rush of thoughts".

[juniperberry]

Thank you so much for those odds! I really hope it turns out to be a rumor, but...*gestures to everything*

Thank you all so much for being here and being well-grounded. I imported my stuff ages ago but all my fandoms are old and have years' worth of content still on LJ, and I am not a mod or owner so I can't import anything, just archive things via the wayback.

[lync]

Hi! Thanks for having me! :) I have been visiting some communities without an account for a while so it's nice to have my own little place to call home now.

[denise]

We are very glad to have you! Welcome home, get comfy, stay for as long as you'd like.

[vlad_m]

Thanks a lot!
You're one of the few who understands the difference between the regime and tons of people who are hostages of that regime.

[denise]

I've been vaguely following Russian politics since like 2004 since we had such a huge Russian-speaking population on LJ and seriously, what you've all gone through since then is horrible. I wish more people understood that the Russian people are also Putin's victims! I am hoping that this horrible war has one small good thing come out of it and you all get a government that will actually protect your rights and take care of all the Russian people, as well as respecting international law.

(Also, fuck Rozkom. If I could make them disappear tomorrow I would!)

[asriza]

The rumor proved to be true. I've just tried access LJ, and it can no longer be accessed from Indonesia, starting today; Friday, March 11, 2022.

[pseudomonas]

I think that must be a blip; it's still visible to me (from Belgium, as of Thu 10 Mar 22:05 UTC 2022)

[dutchtulips]

Thanks for all you're doing! I'm new and happy to be here!

[denise]

Welcome home! We're thrilled to have you.

[ex_flameandsong751]

Hi/welcome to new DW people, or people returning!

Thanks Denise [and all DW staff] for keeping this site running so well.

[bluedreaming]

Thank you!

Sorry about the duplicate thanks (but also, double the thanks!) as I got an error and didn’t realize the comment had gone through.

[pumpkinlumpin]

As always, thank you so much for your hard work. I've definitely had better luck with the import feature this morning compared to yesterday. Even if nothing ultimately happens to LJ, this was all still a good reminder to generally back up things in the event something does happen, haha.

[denise]

Yeah, basically, if there are fewer people trying to import at a given time, it means less traffic from us to LJ and that lowers the risk we'll trip whatever things we're tripping and they're blocking us for (and then denying it's happening). The queue is long enough right now that probably won't help tomorrow morning, but hopefully we'll be able to chew through a lot more of the pending jobs overnight.

[cactus_rs]

Thank you so much for all the hard work you do. Do you need any bump in finances to support this surge in resource consumption?

[denise]

We will absolutely never say no to people paying us money if they are so moved and they can afford to without it being a hardship! Right now, we're still well within our "budget padding to account for variable usage" margin, and after that we keep ~5-6 months of operating expenses on hand at all times (it fluctuates a little based on current usage, current paid account rates, and how long it's been since we last had to contribute our fair share to funding the collective common good which we are HAPPY to DO because we understand that taxation to fund necessary services is a fundamental part of living in a society -- ahem, sorry, I've been up way too long, somebody turned off my filter, I mean "how long it's been since the last tax check was due to the IRS").

Basically: we are in good shape right now! If you can, and it wouldn't cause you hardship, we'd love for you to toss a coin to your DW, because we are very adamant we will never take a penny from someone who isn't one of our users paying us for providing them a service and every paid account helps us keep it that way. But we built the site and priced the services based on some very solid projections of likely paid account rates vs cost to provide the service to everyone, and those projections have proven pretty solid long-term: dropping costs for server power and rising costs for inflation have more or less balanced each other out so far, knock wood, and everyone's generous support of our mission here is what has let us have the cushion necessary to temporarily absorb the added costs.

[kaishin108]

Thank you so much for all your hard work! I hope more of my LJ friends can make it over with their journals imported.

You and your team are Awesome! <3

[earthspirits]

Thanks for your and all of the DW staff for your hard work and for providing this safe and pleasant sanctuary. And welcome to the new folks who've just arrived here from LJ!

[crea_diem]

[denise]

❤️

[bluedreaming]

Thank you for the update and for the server resources!

[miniglik]

Thank you for the help.

Even if ONTD/LJ doesn’t die I think I’ll stick around and journal. I miss it!

[denise]

I've been hearing this from so many people! And a huge part of why we're so stubborn about continuing to run this place is that we want people to be able to do that without having to worry about, like, advertisers gathering interest data on you based on what you're writing about, etc. I really do think the reason a lot of people got out of the habit was because of worrying about how their entries would be used. You can be confidant that's not going to happen here, both because we have no advertising and also because we're too old and tired to spend the effort to do anything nefarious, that is absolutely time better spent on a nap.

[gwendraith]

Thank you for being a good communicator and for always doing your best for DW. I left LJ some years ago and have never regretted it.

[princessofgeeks]

Thank you!

[sarajayechan]

I appreciate Dreamwidth more than ever in light of all this.

[bemused_writer]

This clears things up a bit for me. I kept hearing Russia was withdrawing, but I was having a hard time finding a solid article confirming the when. Even if they are rumors, I agree now is the time to back things up!

Welcome to everyone joining and rejoining Dreamwidth. (^^) There are lots of cool and fun things here, which I'm sure you'll discover through exploration of various journals and communities. I look forward to meeting some of you. \o/

[denise]

Basically: the Russian government issued an edict that all sites located inside Russia had to ensure they were using Russian DNS providers, etc, as of yesterday. (There was already a law that sites couldn't hold data on Russian citizens on servers outside of Russia; that's part of why LJ moved the servers to Russia in the first place.) It either means "the Russian government plans on cutting Russia off from the internet at large" or "the Russian government wants to make sure there won't be service interruptions if DNS providers outside Russia decide to stop providing services to Russian sites", and nobody knows which is the intention, so everyone is deciding "better safe than sorry".