unjapanologist (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
unjapanologist) wrote2011-09-30 12:55 pm
unjapanologist) wrote2011-09-30 12:55 pm
Entry tags:
[fanstuff, random] Diigofail, the reckoning: export from Diigo and all private bookmarks turn public
So, I got a Pinboard account and imported my 9843 Diigo bookmarks. All 3244 of my private bookmarks showed up as public on Pinboard. Confused, I took a closer look at Pinboard's explanation of its import function, which indeed states that imported private bookmarks will remain private.
Then I checked the bookmarks file I exported from Diigo. It looks like this:
No information or variables related to a bookmark's public or private status. This was in the Delicious-format export file; Diigo's export tool offers IE, Netscape, RSS, and CSV formats as well, and I tried the CSV format, but there was no public/private information included in that one either. Since I couldn't quite believe my eyes, because that information not being there just makes no sense, I e-mailed Pinboard's owner and asked if he had any idea what was going on. The reply:
Summarizing: if you make anything private in Diigo, you will not be able to take that information out, and any service or program that you import data from Diigo into will assume that all your data is public. This is completely baffling. Private/public is one the most basic bits of information about a bookmark that anybody will ever need, and an export tool that doesn't include that information is a laughably useless export tool. To top it all off, Diigo's help section doesn't even include the word 'export', so there's not even a way for users to find out in advance that the service they sign up for will not let them take out public/private information.
Maybe Diigo is trying to make up for those public bookmarks that they turned private without permission? Ehehe? I suppose I could try to contact Diigo support about this, but contacting Diigo support is clearly a waste of time. They haven't gotten back to me on the last two problems I asked them about, repeatedly, politely, before I kind of gave up sometime in 2010. They haven't replied to my tweets asking about the bookmarks they censored, even though I took care to mention that I was a paying customer. And they forced me to waste a ton of valuable time over the last couple of days figuring out what the hell was going on with my bookmarks. So no, I will not contact support again, and I will take every opportunity from now on to tell everyone who mentions Diigo that it sucks beyond all description.
BTW, I'm u:fanficforensics on Pinboard! Still busy sorting out all the fannish and non-fannish things and the things that I want to keep private, so please excuse the clutter. I'll be leaving my fannish links public from now on, though. And I need more angry icons, because the ones I have can't quite convey the depth of my disappointment in this service that used to be so awesome.
Then I checked the bookmarks file I exported from Diigo. It looks like this:
<DT><A HREF="http://lavanyasix.livejournal.com/75633.html?view=113265"LAST_VISIT="1301095884" ADD_DATE="1301095884">TAGS="fic,zuko,suki">Lavanya Six's lj - Zuki Prompt Post</A>
<DT><A HREF="http://community.livejournal.com/avatarbigbang/23649.html?view=581985#t581985"LAST_VISIT="1300829240" ADD_DATE="1300829240"TAGS="fic,zuko,azula,ty_lee">Welcome to the Avatar: The Last Airbender Big Bang - Not As Hard As You</A>
<DT><A HREF="http://cinephile.ca/call-for-papers">LAST_VISIT="1300565334" ADD_DATE="1300565334"TAGS="academic,call_for_papers,anime">Cinephile: The University of British Columbia’s Film Journal » Call for Papers</A>
No information or variables related to a bookmark's public or private status. This was in the Delicious-format export file; Diigo's export tool offers IE, Netscape, RSS, and CSV formats as well, and I tried the CSV format, but there was no public/private information included in that one either. Since I couldn't quite believe my eyes, because that information not being there just makes no sense, I e-mailed Pinboard's owner and asked if he had any idea what was going on. The reply:
I'm as puzzled as you are - I think basically we rarely get anyone trying to import private bookmarks from Diigo, and so I had not noticed the issue before. Most of our imports come from Delicious, where private bookmarks are marked as such in the file. But like you point out, the Diigo export file doesn't show any such information (like a SHARED="NO" attribute, for instance). I would encourage you to yell at the Diigo developers about this, since it's a pretty shocking error.
Summarizing: if you make anything private in Diigo, you will not be able to take that information out, and any service or program that you import data from Diigo into will assume that all your data is public. This is completely baffling. Private/public is one the most basic bits of information about a bookmark that anybody will ever need, and an export tool that doesn't include that information is a laughably useless export tool. To top it all off, Diigo's help section doesn't even include the word 'export', so there's not even a way for users to find out in advance that the service they sign up for will not let them take out public/private information.
Maybe Diigo is trying to make up for those public bookmarks that they turned private without permission? Ehehe? I suppose I could try to contact Diigo support about this, but contacting Diigo support is clearly a waste of time. They haven't gotten back to me on the last two problems I asked them about, repeatedly, politely, before I kind of gave up sometime in 2010. They haven't replied to my tweets asking about the bookmarks they censored, even though I took care to mention that I was a paying customer. And they forced me to waste a ton of valuable time over the last couple of days figuring out what the hell was going on with my bookmarks. So no, I will not contact support again, and I will take every opportunity from now on to tell everyone who mentions Diigo that it sucks beyond all description.
BTW, I'm u:fanficforensics on Pinboard! Still busy sorting out all the fannish and non-fannish things and the things that I want to keep private, so please excuse the clutter. I'll be leaving my fannish links public from now on, though. And I need more angry icons, because the ones I have can't quite convey the depth of my disappointment in this service that used to be so awesome.
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Also, because I'm toying with the idea of further study and looking at fandom and convergence culture, lots of your links are very interesting.
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The ways fandom's interactions with commodity culture are changing are so fascinating! *is glad to see others interested, whack me when I start rambling* The bookmarks I currently have in Pinboard are a bit outdated because I stopped updating my Diigo three or four months ago, back when I was just meh and disappointed with it rather than furious. I moved all my research stuff into an evernote notebook, greatly expanded the tags there, and added a bunch of bookmarks and notes and book references that aren't on Pinboard right now. So you might find more resources in evernote right now, but I'm working on getting it all in sync with what's on Pinboard. This is going to take a while.