Information, please:

[tzikeh]

I was directed to an lj user's info page today that was about ten browser-screens long; it had photos and quotes and lyrics and drawings and policies and school info and art credits and every possible thing lj lets you display on it and then some. And it made me wonder (among, uh, other things) what it is people hope to find on info pages, and what people put on their own info page, and possibly why.

So, naturally, it's time for another poll!

ETA: *sigh* I forgot to include "interests", because I am a chowderhead.

[Poll #1220018]

Comments

[thefannishwaldo.livejournal.com]

If I get a little banner for winning/participating in a contest I'll throw it in my userinfo.

[brak666.livejournal.com]

In addition to the things I checked off, my info page also has a banner ad for Star Trek: Hidden Frontier and an absolutley bloddy massive picture of Luke and Noah from As the World Turns kissing with tongue and the caption "This blog supports open-mouthed homosexual kissing".

[vickita.livejournal.com]

Why yes, this *did* prompt me to go look at your info page. *g* (Very nice, yo.)

[gchick.livejournal.com]

MAD MEN MAD MEN MAD MEN!!

Also, I generally look at people's info pages once when I friend them and never again -- I always think of the really long blinky ones as people who really secretly want a profile-based site instead. And profiles are fine for myspace or facebook, and work well there, and all that, but the thing that's interesting about an LJ is the journal you know?

Mostly? MAD MEN!!!1!

[vickita.livejournal.com]

My user info page has a link to a Firefly quote of the day thingy that I just noticed is *down*. Argh. It wasn't down the last time I looked. Hopefully it'll come back up; it always gave me a grin whenever I looked at my profile page.

I look at other people's pages sometimes when I'm reading a story they've written and I think to myself,

(a) "How the hell *old* is this person, anyway?" (usually when I get the impression that somebody probably isn't of majority age)

(b) "Heh, this person has never, ever been to [location I'm familiar with] in her *life* has she?" or

(c) "Wow, this person must be from [location I'm familiar with] -- where is this person from, anyway?"

Re: cake -- I came across a recipe last night telling how to make an individual serving of chocolate cake in a mug in the microwave in five minutes. I'm going to try it tonight. If it works out, I'll post Teh Bigge Sekrit. *g* (Why should I be the only one going to hell, one mug of chocolate cake at a time?)

[klia.livejournal.com]

I'd add to your list:

(d) "Has this writer ever actually had sex with another person?"

[vickita.livejournal.com]

*g* That's frequently why I'm wondering how old this person is, although it's not always a one-to-one correspondence.

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

Holy crap - single-serving cake?! I'D NEVER LEAVE THE HOUSE AGAIN!

[vickita.livejournal.com]

Huh. I just tried it; it's cake, all right. I think it needs a little refinement -- I'm going to try it again tomorrow and throw in a few drops of vanilla, maybe -- but this is definitely a happenin' thing. Especially if you were to drizzle a little chocolate syrup on it after you cooked it.

This is a bad, bad thing for me to know. Heh.

[vickita.livejournal.com]

Okay, I got permission to repost the recipe, so here it is (http://vickita.livejournal.com/487737.html). If we don't hear from you in a few days, we'll put together a rescue party. *ggg*

[luminosity]

(a) "How the hell *old* is this person, anyway?" (usually when I get the impression that somebody probably isn't of majority age)
(b) "Heh, this person has never, ever been to [location I'm familiar with] in her *life* has she?" or

God, yes. It's seldom that I can't deduce the person's age from his/her user info. Even if it's not blatantly stated. hee

[vickita.livejournal.com]

Exactly. They usually out themselves, even if they don't mean to. *g*

[lapillus]

I have art resources up there because frankly it's the easiest place to credit them (as is considered polite within the icon and related communities I lurk in) as I grab them. It's much easier than finding a sticky post on the subject and editing IT or worse yet try to do it on a non-lj webpage which isn't set up for dealing with lj user links easily. Alos it's very easy to direct folks to look there to see that they've been credited or whose stuff I've found interesting.

I tend to check the info on folks who've friended me who I don't otherwise recognize (i.e. I remember their posts in a given community or I friended them specifically so that they'd friend me back so I can read their fic or look at their art or whatever.) I've found some interesting non-fannish areas of overlapping interest that way - especially others with fibromyalgia.

I VERY frequently check community info to see if what I intend to post is within guidelines.

[fantasmabob.livejournal.com]

I use other people's flists to find people. Like, "Man, that really good reccer in that fandom I'm not in, what's her screenname?" And then I scroll through the friends/friends-of lists of BNFs until something rings a bell.

[klia.livejournal.com]

I'm okay listing my interests on my info page, but want as little personal info as possible there.

I don't look at user info pages a lot, but when I do, it's usually because someone on my flist (*waves*) posted a link to something that made my brain explode. I guess I like to reassure myself that most of the people behaving like asshats are kids (translation: teens or early twenties), which is usually the case, but not always.

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

it's usually because someone on my flist (*waves*) posted a link to something that made my brain explode.

Well, I like to bring the splodey. :)

And yes, unfortunately checking info to assuage your fears about idiocy almost always does the opposite, I've found. (*sigh*)

[jacquez.livejournal.com]

I have a bio on there, but it contains mostly some outright lies, as you will see if you look at it.

You didn't have a checkbox for "interests", which I found odd because it's one of the things LJ asks for specifically.

In addition to my other reasons for looking at someone's userinfo, I often look at the userinfo of people who post to communities I am a member of or moderate, sometimes because I think "wait, is this who I think it is", sometimes for idle curiousity, sometimes for other reasons I don't think I can explain well (they're not nefarious, just hard to explain).

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

You didn't have a checkbox for "interests", which I found odd because it's one of the things LJ asks for specifically.

*HEADDESK*

I always forget something obvious.

[dorothy1901]

I recently checked a couple of profiles to find out why "armor" was being spelled "armour." It turned out that one writer is in Australia and the other is in Finland.

I keep reading it as "amour." It's distracting. Tony Stark, Love Machine.

[tinylegacies.livejournal.com]

I have some color bars and other random things on my user info page.

Also - Testimonials from my friends about why I'm awesome :)

And a table that needs updated lists all my RP characters and links to their journals/games.

[jacquez.livejournal.com]

based on your icon and use of "needs updated" I am going to guess that you are either located in or spent a fair amount of time in my hometown. :p

...blast! your profile gives me no clues! although it is still loading...

[tinylegacies.livejournal.com]

Hee!

I was born & raised in Pittsburgh, though I've been living in Maryland (just outside of DC) for about 3 1/2 years.

[jacquez.livejournal.com]

I just found your Bones story set in da Burgh. Woo!

It was the "needs" construction more than the icon that gave you away; I hadn't even LOOKED at the icon until the language made me stop and think! Ah, dialect.

[nomadicwriter]

I check out someone's profile page if:

1) I've just read some of their fic and it was awesome enough to make me want to see if they've got a website or fic index. (I will spend many minutes digging around in desperate hope of an off-LJ archive before I admit defeat and dig into tags or memories, for woe, large numbers of LJ windows and my craptastic dial-up are profoundly unmixy things.)

2) I have stumbled across them being particularly witty or interesting, am thinking about friending them, and want to check out how many of my fandoms/interests they share to see if it's worth it. (I use my flist as a daily reading list only, so I'm reluctant to clutter it up with people who spam a lot or are heavily into interests I don't share.) A brief mission-statementy paragraph about what kind of stuff they post is also appreciated here, whereas epic blather, memes and banners are a big turn-off because I assume they'll be posting that stuff in the main journal too.

3) To see if they list what country they're from. (Generally when I suspect someone who has posted highly WTF Britpicking 'advice' is not in fact British at all, or if I'm having a nitpicky grammar/spelling argument that might turn out to be a US/UK divide.)

Beyond that I find most extra information annoying, rather than useful. If I have to hit page down more than once to find the interests, then you've lost me.

My own profile has two lines explaining that I'm a British 20-something writer and it's mainly a fannish journal, a note to say where to find my fic and recs now that my website is kaput, and a paragraph explaining that I probably won't friend you back but that's not because I hate you. I keep the interests up-to-date, but avoid all the schools, location, birthdate, contact details stuff, because I'm not into the social networking aspect at all and would rather people didn't follow me anywhere else from LJ or randomly approach me just because we're from the same general area.

[musesfool.livejournal.com]

I completely redid my user info when strikethrough happened, so now it's just a couple of quotes I like and my interests are... not at all comprehensive. I used to have a small bio and a friending policy, but not anymore. I mostly use other people's for the interests and the flist, to see if we have people or fandoms in common.

[dementedsiren.livejournal.com]

You know, there's something so satisfying about ticky boxes. I mean, dropdowns and radio buttons are OK, but ticky boxes are fun

Yeah, that's the whole point of this comment.

[phoenix64.livejournal.com]

I actually have almost nothing in the way of non-fandom-related personal information on my userinfo page. I try to be pretty clear that this is my fandom journal and it's not that I don't care about you as a person but I just don't want to go there.

Interests are probably what I pay the most attention to on someone else's userinfo page. I'm usually especially attentive to the ones that aren't shared by 50,000 other LJ users.

The fact that one can not edit a poll is still made of MASSIVE FAIL.

And I can't support the idea being bored *and* avoiding homework shouldn't exist as a state of being.

TICKY-BOX.

[umbo.livejournal.com]

If people do have a ton of blinky flashy stuff, that tends to make me less likely to be interested in reading their journal/friending them.

[txvoodoo.livejournal.com]

Other things in my info: credits to resource creators (photoshop brushes, textures, etc)

I often look for the same on the info pages of people who create stuff, or a link to a page with their resources

[vass]

I read a person's userinfo to get a general sense of who they are.

[ratcreature]

I don't want to clutter my info page (I hate the huge blinking ones), but I have a link to an introduction post of things to know about my LJ, which is a bit out of date, but still valid enough and a "friending policy" if you want to be pretentious, but really it's just a sentence that I'm thrilled if people friend me but don't friend back automatically. I used to have my fandoms as interests, but removed them on LJ during that interest-related strikethrough debacle, but still have them on IJ.

[ubixtiz.livejournal.com]

I also have a brief adult content warning and a request to my parents not to read my journal if they find it. (Only my dad ever could, and if he saw the warning he would click the back button. We have similar policies on what he ought to know about my personal life.)

[carla-scribbles.livejournal.com]

The point being, MAD MEN.

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

I knoooooooow! I'm poring over the DVDs for proper screen-caps to represent the ESSENCE of each CHARACTER so I can EXPLAIN.

And trying to figure out how to convey it's complete awesomeness without giving any awesomeness away. Because so much of the awesomeness comes from the viewer discovering the awesomeness on their own.