Importing Dreamwidth journals into Dreamwidth journals

[ex_xo956]

Title:
Importing Dreamwidth journals into Dreamwidth journals

Area:
Import Content, Entries

Summary:
It would be uberly, superly awesome if you could import a DW journal into another DW journal. For example, I created ABC as a public journal and XYZ as a private friends only journal and eventually, I decide I'd like to import ABC into XYZ so I can have all my entries in one place.

Description:
I'm really surprised no one has suggested this yet and so now I'm wondering if it's one of those things that just can't be done and I'm the village idiot standing around waiting for everyone to breathe water. :P Or worse, it's some kind of cyber-faux-pas to request such a thing...

One drawback to this thing that I am suggesting is that, if someone combines their journals but leaves the original one still standing, it takes up superfluous server space. It could be implemented such that, if you combine DW journals, the one being imported is automatically queued for deletion...but there could be a reason someone would want to combine and leave the original standing. I don't know.

The reason I came up with this at all is because I'm consolidating ALL of my online journals into one journal and I would like to add my DW journals to this one.

OOO! I just thought of something else actually...MOVING entries from one DW journal to another. So it would be a totally different feature from the Import Content because would be A.) importing entries and B.) deleting the entries from the place they were imported. That could get really tricky though - if there were any glitches at all, entries could be lost forever...

Well, I think I'm done brainstorming this one. :P I'll go ahead and turn this over to the people who know what they're talking about and I'll wait to see if I've invented the wheel or if I'm suggesting we all start breathing water. ;)

Poll #1925 Importing Dreamwidth journals into Dreamwidth journals

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 45

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
18 (40.0%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
21 (46.7%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
4 (8.9%)

(I have no opinion)
2 (4.4%)

(Other: please comment)
0 (0.0%)

Comments

[ex_xo956]

Oo, oo, I know!!

What about...*drum roll*...making it an extension of the rename service?? In other words, making it a function you have to pay for, like the renaming service, but it's a separate function from renaming?

[ex_xo956]

P.S. Because it's a function I would be willing to pay for. Not sure if that makes it worth the effort of making it possible...but just in case...

[denise]

Now that's something to consider. Hrrrrrm. So, sort of like a rename, only instead of "rename JournalA to JournalB, moving JournalB's contents to ExJournalB, move JournalA's contents to JournalB, interspersing it with existing contents of JournalB?"

[afuna]

OH. You know, I wonder if this could help with the situations where someone wants to rename, but doesn't want the usernames on their old comments to point to them? You could import JournalA's entries to JournalB, but that wouldn't import the comments. Or, hrrrm.

[pne]

I think this is one of the big use cases for this feature.

If you want to start over with a new access/reading list, for example, you can't just rename because people can find you from old comments, even if you choose to have the old name not redirect to the new one.

[ex_xo956]

I'm not entirely sure I follow what you're saying Denise, but I'm pretty sure you've got it. :)

[kaigou]

When I renamed my acct (from another to this name, while on LJ), I absolutely would've been willing to pay a bit more for the delight of also being able to consolidate two journals into the newly-named journal. For fandom multi-account users (who grow out of a fandom but don't want to lose everything), I can't be the only one seeing it useful to pay $10 or $15 to save all that time of copying and pasting or deleting or just letting it sit there on another account, wasting space, bleah.

Except that in my case, it would've been more like "rename A to B, and move C's contents to the new B at the same time that all A-stuff is renamed to B-stuff." Unless that's what you mean to say, above, though it reads to me like you're talking about only one account: A, that gets renamed to B, in which case there's no importing because all A is now renamed to be B, while I mean more like:

A merged with B, and then B is renamed to C.

That's totally a service I'd be willing to pay for. Hell, I did offer to pay for it, when dealing with renaming/merging on LJ, and they said nope, they didn't do it, even if I was willing to pay for it. *shrug* It's worth the money when the alternative is a crapload of time doing it long-hand.

[denise]

I think that would technically be doable. I think.

[kaigou]

Don't you sort of do it already? When I opened this account, I imported one acct from LJ, and then turned around and imported another acct -- effectively merging like I'd wanted to all along, under the name of this third account. Since LJ and DW are (mostly) clones, there had to be something in that function that let you do that.

Or is it that in merging into new, you'd lose the ties connected the first accounts? Frankly, if you'd said (at the time), "you could rename this acct and just transfer all old-name to new-name, OR, you could create new acct and merge these two old accts into new-acct BUT you wouldn't be tied to old acct in any way"... I'm not sure I wouldn't've have said, 'that's fine, get rid of the old, I'll deal with being not-tied so long as I can have one full journal that has everything."

Actually, I'm pretty much positive that's exactly what I would've said, but door #1 was my only option.

[mirthalia]

Late on the wagon here, but is journal merging still on the consideration list? I would totally pay to be able to combine two of my existing DW journals into one.

[xaea]

yeah, me too. i still would too. ;) i have three i'd like to combine into one...

[manifold]

Clearly years late to the conversation here, but I so very much would be willing to pay for the ability to merge two journal accounts into one.

Honestly, I would be willing to pay more for it than the $15 that a rename costs. It's really NICE to be able to have everything organized in one place. A minimum of $30 for merging two journals seems completely reasonable to me.

[syderia]

This is the change I voted for.

[turlough]

+1

[kyrielle]

+1

[eruthros]

I wouldn't use this myself, but I know a bunch of people who've wanted to merge two journals. I like the idea of it as a rename-like pay feature.

[susanreads]

+1

[cheyinka]

Oo, I could see that being useful.

[dancing_serpent]

Oh, I like this!

[sophie]

There's only one problem with this; there's nothing in the code to stop you from using another DW-based site to import your journal to it, and then using DW to import your journal back from the other DW-based site, into a different journal.

[triadruid]

Now that seems like a useful add-on to the rename function. :)