Matthew's Journal

LJ advantage - on LJ I (the user) controll who reads my journal (some bits are more private than others) whereas on cabal I (well, not *me* but $user) has no such controll, however the sysadmin does (read I don't have an account, therefore I can't read it - other people do and therefore can but presumably who gets an account is the sysadmin's buisness not $user's).

I'm not sure why I would want to post my journal in an entirely public medium and indeed I think that 'friends only' is one of the best features of LJ - I clearly don't want the *whole world* to know about my sexlife or the address of my house but I might want to tell the people I actually know about these things.

I'm presuming that the idea of cabal.journals is so that everything is 'public' (fsvo public, I know that I don't know most of the users of cabal for instance and would treat them as public) and no-one can go back and delete or edit postings. I personally don't delete stuff (except for multiple posting, grrr interface) and I only edit for grammar or f***ed up html...

If I were using cabal.journals I probably wouldn't say a lot of the things that I do say on LJ. I would say *even less* if it were actually public and searchable by, say, parents because there are people (parents) I do not wish to read everything I write.

I can view LJ like 'talking to my mates at the pub', I would view a public newsgroup as roughly equivalent to publishing in the tabloid press. I want a forum for 'talking to my mates' not one for being the tabloid press. If I wanted to be a columnist then I could do that on LJ or I could get some other form of blog, or I could use a newsgroup... where ever I thought my audience was, but that is not my intention (and never will be, I can't write essays).

Yes, I could use email for the purpose of talking to my mates but I wouldn't meet anyone new that way and further there would be more of a 'I am sending you this and want *you* to resond/help/etc' than a 'here is something that I will let you read, do what you like' feel to it. Besides, threaded comments are much better than email responses.