Option to show "originally posted as" on imported entries and comments

[cesy]

Title:
Option to show "originally posted as" on imported entries and comments

Area:
entries, comments, importing

Summary:
Expose "originally posted as" on imported entries and comments, as an option that can be added to styles if desired.

Description:
Some users would like to be able to see where a comment or entry has been imported from, if they are importing from several locations or different names, or wish to display the history in full on Dreamwidth. Other users would prefer to keep the current display. I propose that the importer is updated to preserve the username and site/OpenID name at the time of import, so that this information is available to style designers, who can then create styles with it displayed, or add it to their styles as an option for those who want to show it on their journals. For previously imported entries where the original import site has not been saved, this would display something like "Originally posted as: information not available".

Poll #9857 Option to show "originally posted as" on imported entries and comments

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 63

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
22 (34.9%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
10 (15.9%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
7 (11.1%)

(I have no opinion)
24 (38.1%)

(Other: please comment)
0 (0.0%)

Comments

[azurelunatic]

I would say make it a double-option: allow journal owners to turn this off in their own journal (opt-out, and prompt at the time of import), and then allow people to turn it on in their styles.

This would mean that some users could decide to not show information that other users would like to see, even if the information can still be found in search engines or at the source journal, but I think user privacy trumps reader's nosiness (even if that nosiness is of historical intent rather than personal nosiness).

[lorax]

+1, this is my "with changes"

+1

[larissa]

[turlough]

+1

[havocthecat]

+1

[susanreads]

+1

[azurelunatic]

For community entries & comments, I think showing original comm name but not users' names there might work. Those are OpenIDs anyway; if a DW user claims their OpenID they could be asked then.

[azurelunatic]

The original suggestion doesn't appear to take communities into consideration at all. I recall a discussion that may have been a partial inspiration for this suggestion, which was someone who was a historian by profession, who was upset at OpenID claiming, because it left no trace of the original source.

Giving "jhumor posting as originalname in DWCurrentComm" isn't actually particularly useful for "where does it come from" because if the whole community is imported, the relevant information is actually going to be XXXOriginalComm if a historian wants to go looking for the source.

[azurelunatic]

From the perspective of a person who isn't familiar with how easy it is to change a personal domain name (which isn't my perspective; I used to work for a registrar/host/etc.) changing the domain name and, say, changing the CMS around such that the URL structure is changed, would look like moving stuff entirely.

The discussion that I saw had someone pretty upset that stuff would be appearing as if Dreamwidth had existed from the start time of LiveJournal, as that person was imagining pages from Dreamwidth appearing in isolation and absent the context of Dreamwidth's FAQs and dw_news. I am not personally upset, but I think that it might be nice to offer the ability for journals and communities to acknowledge their roots. From an administrative side, I can imagine some scenarios where the journal owner/admin/Support knowing which entries were imported and which were posted on Dreamwidth and had their dates messed with, and which were imported and which were crossposted (in a personal journal) would help out.

I do think that if importing a community and all its entries and comments is something that may be decided by the administrators, then deciding whether to turn on a notice that it was in fact imported is also a decision for the administrators.

[cesy]

Yeah, that was the inspiration, and I think "jhumor in DWcurrent comm, originally posted in OriginalComm" would solve the issue for communities.

[ciaan]

I think it could work to just have this feature for personal journals, and then comms could put somewhere on their profile or their journal layout that they are a DW import of a previous comm elsewhere. No need to have each entry necessarily contain that information.