Hello, and welcome to the News :3

The DA Journal. Having spent a year on this site now (I hardly ever come off it nowadays) I have made my fare share of entries, and indeed read a lot in this time.

As I matured, so did the manner of my journals, and I have compiled a list of a few things that I personally have trouble with in my own and others entries. This is just a list of my opinions, and I am not trying to state them as fact, just as my last Article, which still stirred the blood on a few deviants.

Anyway, Enjoy
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1: The Point / Subject of your Journal
I am someone that has a good amount of watchers. In turn, I tend to watch them all back. On average I skim through 20 journals at the start of the day, and what ever ones my friends post through out the rest. As you can probably understand, I don’t have time to comment or read each Journal, so I tend to read mostly the ones of interest or importance. Unfortunately, there are always a big percentage of ‘I’m Bored’ Journals, in which the writer is telling each and every watcher that they have nothing to do or say. I am sorry to admit it, but I never read these journals.
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2: The Length of your Journal
I am very guilty of over stretching peoples reading patience with my journals. I just start off expecting them to be a couple of paragraphs and end up with a dissertation. Though I want to tell everyone every little detail of something, I can’t realistically expect them to bother reading something that puts ‘the entire works of Shakespeare’ to shame. It is best to just stick to the facts and go into detail if someone responds and is interested. That way you have much more chance of someone actually reading the whole thing.
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3: Journal Tidiness
This mostly refers to subscribed journals, though there are a few nonsubbed members that are guilty of it too. A while ago, I thought it would be nice to have all the gifts that people made for me to be in the footer of my journals. This worked out fine for a while, until things got a bit crowded. I was getting comments from friends telling me that it was taking ages for my journals to appear cos of all the thumbnails it had. The more common of these are stamps. Its cool to collect stamps, and I think that they are a great idea, but I think it is a bad idea to put them above or bellow what your journals say, as they can slow, and even freeze (if you have as bas a computer as mine) peoples PCs. One thing to remedy this that some people do, is to have a separate stamps journal, just like a have a separate gifts journal now. Also, there are some people that have tags, stamps, pics and all sorts of other things on their main header and footers, every time they update, making it very hard to actually find the new update.
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4: Tagged Journals
I enjoy a good tag Journal every now and then, but I most admit I have stopped reading others though. They are fun to do, but not to great to read, and a lot of people do A LOT of tag journals. You will find that less and less people will comment the more of them you do, so I suggest limiting doing them. Also, don’t get too offended if someone you have ‘tagged’ doesn’t have time to do it.
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5: EMOTIONAL Journals
These have got me in trouble a couple of times. If I am tired or a little but drunk ^^: I may write something I don’t really mean. Insulting people (which is against DA rules), getting over emotional about little things, and upsetting friends. Choose when you write your journals carefully. You don’t want to regret it after. Also, lately I have seen an increase of “THAT’S IT! I AM LEAVING!” journals. Now, these are VERY rarely truthful, but still worry a lot of friends and watchers. These journals, if not sincere, only serve to upset your friends, and though you will get attention, it is far from good attention.
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6: propaganda Journals
These are against the rules of DA, as well as being very childish. These are journals that insult and humiliate particular people. They very often lead to witch hunts (all the watchers going to that persons page and harassing them into leaving) which in my opinion is the lowest of the low. I have, how ever done this once before (drunk again ^^ and it led to a lot of bother. These journals prove that you can not win arguments on your own and that you are very immature. I have also begun reporting journals like these (after warning) , as they lead to a lot of bullying. A lot of people don’t even realise that they are bullying when they are.
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7: Too many Journals
One final thing that is important, is to not post more then a journal a day. Even one a day is a lot (30 journals in a month o_o). People don’t have time to read that many journals and will not read or comment on all of them. It is best to save up a few things to say, then post them all in a too the point journal.

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AND MORAL OF THE STORY IS?

I am not here to tell you want you should and shouldn’t do in your journals, just a few things I think it is best to avoid. I get the feeling that DA was never meant to be SUCH a social networking site, but now that it is what it has evolved into, it is natural that very young and none artistic people join. I have no problem with this personally though. The more the merrier.

The Journal is a medium that can be used to contact friends, announce important information, and to start games/ tags/ RPs, but if not done in measured doses, you may end up posting a lot of Journals that no one will ever read.


Please Comment and discuss! Is there anything that annoys you that I haven’t listed? Any thing that annoys you because I have? Let me know what you think.