Pingback?

[darkemeralds]

Can anyone explain the pingback thing--and the Twitter and Facebook crosspost-y thing--on LJ in Captain Dummytalk?

Comments

[elf]

I am also pretty blurry about it, but azurelunatic has a set of Personal thoughts on r69 which go into some detail about how it works & what it means.

(What it means for me: I will be even less likely to comment at LJ. But I doubt it'll impact me much; I don't have a FB account so it can't attach to me there, and I don't post in my journal at LJ.)

[darkemeralds]

Oh hi. And thanks. It was azurelunatic's tweet that got me asking the question. I'm afraid her post was a step beyond my knowledge to begin with, so it didn't make a lot of sense to me.

If I turn the option on, I gather it mean that my comments everywhere on LJ get Tweeted or Facebooked (assuming I have either type of account)--is that about right?

[elf]

From what I gather, you have the option to turn on "crosspost my comments to Twitter/Facebook," and they get a link back to the comment. Including to locked posts, including screened comments. I am not sure how this compromises other people's security, other than it gives out a link to someone else's locked post. (Which is annoying, but shrug.) There doesn't seem to be a way to prevent other people from crossposting links to their comments in your journal.

It looks like you decide when you make each comment if you want it crossposted or not; it doesn't seem to happen automatically (but the "crosspost this" box may be checked by default on non-locked posts.)

And Pingback_bot is nifty; if I still posted at LJ I'd be all over it. (Since I don't, I disabled it.) Pingback means:

• If you make a public post, and
• someone else makes a public post linking to yours, and
• you *both* have the bot activated,
• 
  You get a "reply" to your post from pingback_bot that gives you a link to the post that linked yours. (And possibly a fragment of text.)

It's a way of saying "who's linking to me?" In return, when you link to someone else's public post (and they have the bot turned on), they get a comment about your post that links to them.

When it was on before, it made the metafandom swarm post move much faster 'cos people got notified about when & where their posts were mentioned.

[darkemeralds]

Thank you! I feel so much clearer in my head now.

Very helpful.

[lamentables]

As I understand it:

Pingbacks - let you know your post has been linked to by another LJ user. Only works if both of you have opted in.

Twitter/facebook - you can crosspost (posts and comments). You have to opt in and can either default to always crosspost or can select on a post by post basis. Commenters can opt to crosspost their comments.

Facebook connect - you can access LJ using your Facebook ID just like LJ users on DW

[darkemeralds]

Thank you. Everything is pooling together.

I don't keep a Facebook account, but when I did, it was for Real Life and Family, and I really wouldn't want bleedthrough to my fandom/LJ/DW life.

But the pingback thing sounds useful. I wonder if LJ's (re)introducing these features suggests that they're feeling the pinch from DW. I can't remember the last time LJ introduced a new feature--at least not one that I noticed.