cinnamonwings asks:

Hi Pretty, how was 221b con? I wanted to go, but I’ve had a string of exams and presentations (and now finals to prepare for). I’d like to hear what it was like since I’m planning to find a way to attend next year. Ah, and also, I don’t think I quite understand how to use tumblr yet – other than reposting or the ask box, there doesn’t seem to be any way to talk to other people. How do you hold conversations with other people on tumblr? Hope you had a good rested after you got home 🙂

On the other half of your ask, conversation on Tumblr:

The reason you can’t figure this out is because Tumblr does in fact suck for conversation.

Tumblr is not a social network.  It’s a social sharing platform.  It’s basically Twitter with a higher character count and better support for graphics.  It’s not meant to facilitate extended exchanges between individuals, or to build and support communication and relationship-building.

That said, here is what Tumblr makes available:

1: Ask box, of course.  With that bitchy character limit, ugh.

2: Reblogging, of course.  With the twin hassles of having to try to track the conversation back through multiple posts, and also inundating all the followers you’re not trying to talk to with copy after copy of the conversation so far.  Oh, and opening your conversation to anybody else who feels like weighing in, regardless of whether their opinion is wanted or not.  Reblogging is really meant to be the equivalent of somebody climbing up on top of a desk in a crowded room and playing classroom question/answer.

3: The private messaging function.  This is different from the ask box.  It doesn’t have a character limit, and the text cannot be posted onto a Tumblr stream (without cut-and-paste, anyway).  Also private messages are not deleted when you reply to them.  But all the font and display options for them are hideous and kind of hard to read.

4: Post replies.  These are great, insofar as they work.  If you have been following someone for at least two weeks, AND if it is an original post (not a reblog), you get the little speech bubble that lets you leave a reply directly on the post.  They, however, cannot reply directly to you without cut-and-pasting your reply as yet another post on their blog and then adding their response.  Tumblr used to make this easier, but they have actually actively dismantled the majority of the functionality that used to exist regarding replies.

5: Mentions.  This is a new function Tumblr added recently, and it works pretty much like mentions do on Twitter.  You create a mention by typing the @ symbol before their username.  I’ve actually done this with your name up there at the top, cinnamonwings, so you’ll be able to see exactly what it does.  It makes the username into a live link, AND it connects the post directly to their activity feed, so that the person who is mentioned will get a notification that a post about them has been made and they will be able to see the activity surrounding that post in their activity feed even if they aren’t actively following it.

Keep the implications of this in mind, though.  Anotherwellkeptsecret posted a gorgeous piece of art in thanks to a few of us who had been writing a lot of meta, and she included our usernames as Mentions.  I have since been able to see all 1000+ reblogs of that piece on my dash. ^_^  It was a bit awkward there for the first day or so (but totally worth it! So if you’re reading this, anotherwellkeptsecret, don’t feel bad.  It made me happy ^_^).

6: Tagging.  This one is kind of weird and unreliable, though.  You can add somebody’s name as a tag (or in the body of the post, for that matter, since Tumblr changed its search and track functions), and then—assuming that person tracks their own username and actually remembers to check it on a regular basis *ahem*—they will be able to see your post the next time they check their tracked tag.  Oh, but that also assumes that you have not flagged your blog/been flagged as NSFW (if you don’t know about this, you can find it in your Tumblr settings), in which case your blog and posts do not show up in Tumblr search/track.  

Mine is flagged NSFW, for obvious reasons, and so while I can see posts other people tag as ‘prettyarbitrary,’ my posts do not show up in Tumblr searches or tag tracking.  

And those are all the methods I know of for communicating with people on Tumblr.  They all suck to lesser or greater degrees, and there is no good method of carrying on an extended conversation, especially if it’s one you want to be able to refer back to.  The best way to do it is really to send a message to the person you want to talk to and arrange to catch up with them on an IM service or via email.

I have no damn clue how people manage to use Tumblr for roleplaying.  Poor brave souls.