Actual Journals

Additionally, if these never get implemented. I can see people using story submissions for needed journal-like posts. And then stories will get less visibility.

In addition to that, using stories submissions as journals is against AUP.

Yeah, giving Journals the full-blown Submission treatment would make a lot of sense. Give your journals titles, searchable tags, and the ability to fav/promote them, thus boosting the visibility of good content.

Agreed. Deviantart got it right with how their journals function.

I don't see the point of treating journals as submissions, I never did, not on dA either. But if people like that, sure, why not? However I think if we go that route we also need a checkbox, like on dA, that excludes a journal from that area. I mean, I don't want my TOS, and other generic info to be treated like a submission since that makes no sense.

I miss journals too, I think there are great for news, like when submissions get open, how people feel and stuff.

I think a good solution to this is to be able to pin an item to the top of your feed when someone checks your profile.

That's a really great idea too! Or even pin up to 2 items - this way we could have a featured submission too kinda! :D

That's a great idea! But it does not solve what journals are needed for. I'm not going to post my several pages long TOS as a status update and pin it to the top..........

Personally, I'd like to see journals separated from social update posts. It would definitely benefit a lot of people if they could have both, since social updates can be a quick message, while a journal takes a lot more thought before posting.

Exactly! And journals are used for things like info pages, TOS, detailed "About me", anything lenghty you do not want to put directly on your profile.

There's an earlier thread about bringing a journal system to FN here: http://support.furrynetwork.com/topics/153-actual-journals/

Might as well keep all the votes in one place, so the feature stands a better chance of being addressed.

I saw that one! I thought that my suggestion expanded the idea a little, though.

Maybe have the current thing become more of a "Status" post and make a new option for this kind of journal

Yup. In the last update, statuses got placed WAY out of the way for some reason. It's important the site has a way for artists to communicate with their audience directly via text/journals which aren't hidden away.

So yeah, +1

This is something we have planned - probably as a specific tab on the homepage, dedicated to actual journals.

We'll be discussing it as a team and make sure that Journals are well represented on FN!

Finally set up here and was shocked to find no journals - given the followers I have for stuff like the Paw-Post, having journals is more important than all the other forms of content I can add! I sure hope this gets added soon.

Copy-pasting Aaros' excellent description of the requirements here:

A journaling system that:

• allows users to write long journal posts, ideally with formatting as well
• sends notifications to people who follow them that show up in a notification icon in the navigation bar at the top of the page
• Has a large comments section for discussion

In my opinion this is very important for the culture of a site and the developing of community and the ability to have conversations about topics that spread across the community. Not being able to have those kinds of interactions is honestly a huge issue for me.

Some of us come for the art only. Can this change give us the option to turn off journal notifications or just not follow that piece?

That's very good idea! Would be good to be able to selectively choose what sort of updates/notifications you want to see/get from anyone you follow.

Glad to see this is getting worked on! I feel like journals got nerfed into oblivion in the revised feed and I really hope to see them return to prominence.

For an actual network, this is a crucial and fundamental feature, both to allow people to connect and socialize, and also to allow artists to share important information. For example, right now there is no place to put our TOS, and other infos.

This should be given top priority.

I agree that this is a much-needed feature, and I'm glad the team will be actively looking into it. The OP's idea of allowing users to promote a journal sounds intriguing -- it'd be an easy way to signal boost someone's journal without creating a whole new one.

I want this too.

And I think Journals should be a category of their own. Not as story submissions.