(no subject)

[olivermoss]

I've decided that in the year of our lord two thousand and ... whatever year it is, that I am actually going to start a photoblog on tumblr. When tumblr was new it was huge with photographers. I am going to start a second tumblr and post a picture a day, starting with older content. I should have enough to keep a photo-a-day blog going for a while. The problem is that for branding reasons I need to call the new blog Dorkvania. My current tumblr, which I want to keep separate, is Dwarfvania... and to keep that separate I am going to need to change the name. I am very bad at coming up with usernames. Dwarfvania is one of my best, I tweaked it slightly into the perfection that is Dorkvania.



I can take a couple of days to think it over. I am going to clone my entire photo backup and delete from the additional backup as I post so I don't need to keep track of what I have posted. I used to do multi-platform posting and keeping track of what was up where took so many brain cells. One of the good things about doing a tumblr experiment is that is will take way less effort than my Insta Experiment.

One reason I decided to do this was I saw a post about how all the 'new people' on tumblr don't get that there is no algorithm, if people don't like your content it's because it's bad. My first thought was that everyone who reblogs that is wrong, tumblr does use an algorithm and does shadowban new users. It's just that if you are an established user it doesn't work against you. Also, people are so used to algorithms that they can't even tell when they are in a clearly algorithmic space. But, also, with the changes Wordpress made to Tumblr you can now sort by new and it... mostly works.

Some people who take their content curation seriously tend to sort by new to not blog what everyone else has blogged, and also a lot of the 'top' content on any tag tends to be old, incorrect quotes, or blogs reposting stolen art to engagement farm. With the return of /new, I actually have a snowball's chance of getting some traction there, I think, for fairly low effort. Well, low additional effort. I'd be starting with content from like 7 years ago and pouring in years of work.

Do posting queues still work? I could load up once a month, set it and forget it.

One downside is that new users are shadowbanned. I think it's a crappy attempt at an anti-spam measure. I'd need a few people willing to reblog at least one post. In the past, part of why I haven't done OC over there is that I've had sideblogs being unable to get out of shadowban because I can't get 4 people to rebloggle me. I think I can get out of shadowban this time around.

This seems like a good idea. Let's see if it works.

[edit] Wait, plot twist. I already have a Dorkvania account from ages ago. It has some organic reblogs, even if old ones. it might be good to go.

Comments

[mistressofmuses]

I can reblog stuff if you need! (And honestly, would likely do so anyway.) Afraid that won't help you get any extra traction, because I am definitely not a popular blogger. But it would at least be some interaction.)

Queues do seem to work pretty well, at least according to a fair number of tumblrs I follow that are either entirely queue based, or at least use it heavily.

[olivermoss]

Thanks! I've renamed my main/fandom blog to Outcider, somehow that wasn't taken. I've got a week's work up pictures up on Dorkvania, mostly to flush out the old content. I started it when I was still working for a photography magazine where I couldn't get the other employees to do things to help with PR to save my soul.

I know I need to set it and forget it, but I want to keep poking at it until it does something.

[mistressofmuses]

I am amazed that Outcider wasn't taken, but it's a fantastic name.

I've reblogged a few things, but I'll try to remind myself to check in periodically for anything I missed.

Ugh, that time with that magazine sounds frustrating as hell. You've mentioned them before, and just... how annoying for people to be unwilling to put even the SLIGHTEST effort in!

[olivermoss]

I love Outcider as a name. It's also the name of a locally made cider. I'd never come up with anything that good on my own.

I appreciate all reblogs! I also seem to be getting at least a drop of traction. We'll see what it does. I just need to not poke at it. Treat it like a turkey, just don't open the oven door and let it do it's thing.

Yeah, people were also just being weird and contrary about it, and then bitching when my articles were the top 10 on the site. I really need to migrate those articles to my own site, I just need to figure out layout stuff.

[mistressofmuses]

Props to them for coming up with the name! (And I'm glad you were able to grab it for tumblr.) I wish I had a talent for that sort of wordplay - I've accidentally made some atrocious puns, but never anything that good!

I hope it does get some sustained traction. Some of it definitely feels like luck and when it crosses the right peoples' dashes and all. But yes, maybe it's a souffle - don't open the oven to mess with it or it'll collapse!

That's... so weird. There are people who just cannot seem to grasp such basic stuff, and then go "surprised pikachu" when the lack of basic effort impacts their results.
You should absolutely put your articles up on your own site!

[olivermoss]

I am terrible at coming up with usernames. So, I am glad this worked out.

It may take a while, but I feel like this tumblr should work.

The style I used for my site is good for galleries, but not articles. I need some help setting it up a bit differently. I need to find someone I can work with to help me with the site a bit

[mistressofmuses]

I'm SO bad at usernames. I picked this one when I was in high school as something that just randomly occurred to me and I liked the sound of (and I meant it at the time as "mistress, as in not-wife" as opposed to kinky.) And now I've spent near-20 years getting swept up in profanity filters and getting weird messages from weird strangers. Not that the latter wouldn't happen anyway, but. At this point I would really like to change it, but haven't thought of something else good enough to make it worth renaming on so many platforms after such a long time.

I hope this tumblr does work out! I think it certainly should - it's just getting that initial traction that's a struggle.

Different styles are definitely better for different types of content... I wish I knew much of anything about site building. It seems like you should be able to set up a new page/set of pages that does favor text relatively easily, but I wouldn't know how to go about it.

[olivermoss]

Yeah, I've been using Rathany forever... only to wake up one day with a lot of messages from Koreans because I'd accidentally name-camped a Korean name a bunch of places. I also got a lot of email and messages meant for other people. I finally surrendered the twitter account.

Yeah, it's that I've got the .com install instead of the .org install that makes some things more difficult. .com styles want to be consistent over the whole site

[mistressofmuses]

Oh no! I... wouldn't have guessed it would wind up being a common name (to at least some degree) elsewhere.

...I did not know that about .com vs. .org. That seems like the kind of thing I should have known.

[olivermoss]

Yeah, it was weird to find out it was a common name in some areas.

The wordpress .com versus .org installs are weird. Using the .org is the fully customizable stuff and the .com isntalls are the ones were they do the install for you and have to fix things if they go wrong. It's a confusing way to refer to the two types of wordpress.

[mistressofmuses]

I would never have known!

I also did not know that the installs were so different for wordpress sites. That's good to know, even though I probably won't ever have cause to make a real site for myself. I can see the .com being helpful if you don't really want to go hard on the build-from-scratch thing, but that is something of a drawback.

[olivermoss]

I keep thinking I am techie enough to do a .org site, but I'm not. The irony is that every wordpress expert / freelancer I can find only will work with .org stuff.

[mistressofmuses]

I really do wish I had more tech knowledge than I do. It's one of those things I'd like to try and teach myself at some point, but time (and working computer) never seems to sync up the way I'd like it to.

That is kind of ironic, though. That the semi-pros will only deal with the more "difficult" type... though I guess if they ARE savvy enough for it, maybe it's easier to have the more fully-customizable site to work with.

[olivermoss]

Yeah, the .org stuff much be easier to work with for the pros. But I don't trust computer geeks. I wont work with an install I can't fix/redo. I'd rather set up a secondary site and have them interlink... actually there's a thought!

[mistressofmuses]

Not trusting computer geeks - particularly ones you don't know *personally* - is a wise decision. You should absolutely have the ability to fix/maintain/alter/redo/etc. anything on your own site, and if you can't do that, it's a pretty big risk of something breaking in a way that can't be recovered.

That's a good idea! Setting up a separate site that you can easily link between... that might be the better solution that lets you retain control without the struggle of having to rebuild anything.

[olivermoss]

Yeah, I've had bad experiences with people password protecting things or other BS.

I might do that, just have a separate, but similarly named site. Most WP layouts are still relics of the age when it was hard to download large images. So, galleries are one large header image... and then a bunch of small images. I am actually over-riding my layout's code to have it do what I want as it is. 2 sites might be a lot simpler.

[mistressofmuses]

Yup. Or even if it isn't something so malicious, sometimes they just do *weird* things that no one else can unravel.

That does feel a bit... vintage... in the layout department. Linking to a second site that's formatted better for the text posts is probably much simpler.

[olivermoss]

Yeah, I need to understand what is done to my site... not have it be something intuitive to someone else's brain.

[mistressofmuses]

Absolutely! I wouldn't ever want something that important and personal to be subject to someone else's weird ideas or whims, ha.