Help

It's a common misperception that folks maintaining an AOL journal or visiting and commenting on an AOL journal are on AOL. Let me dispel that misperception.

It is true, only an AOL member can maintain a journal. But they can manage their journal using AOL Anywhere fairly easily and there are some who choose to do this for a variety of reasons.

There are some folks that will use AOL Anywhere to update and maintain their journal. It's important to note to those folks that if you are reporting a problem with your journal, you state that right up front as it will help the techies find and fix the problem quickly. This means that they don't have the same capabilities, such as clicking on a screenname for the member's profile.

And while anyone on the WWW can read your journal, only AOL, AIM, Netscape and CompuServe members can comment (but anyone can email you).

That said, there are a few things we should all be cognizant of:

    Don't assume the owner of the journaler can click on your screenname
      left in the comments section and view your profile. If you want them to
      come visit your journal, provide the name of it (because the search feature
      isn't that inclusive) in your comments (most of us know the preceding
      addy is journals.aol.com/yourscreenname/)

    If you're leaving a comment in an older portion of the journal, drop the
       journalist a note via email to alert them. It's just a nice thing to do.

    Read through the "About Me" section of the journal. There could be some
       important information there, like where to send email so you're assured
       the journalist receives it, etc. (This works especially well when emailing
       for technical support via John M. Scalzi.)

Also note: Even if the journalist only uses AOL, s/he could have preferences set so that clicking on a screenname in a journal will open up new mail and not the member's profile.  Keep that in mind!  :)

Write on!

|  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this

• #3 Comment from mnelson581 
  11/8/03 10:52 AM | Permalink

  AOL Anywhere from my work Mac : style commands are missing. I can usually get the text in ok but that's about all. Also, it is a real pain to login correctly to access the journal in the first place. One time I spent the entire lunch hour writing and upon saving it was given an 'error' message that only the 'owner' could add an entry. What's that all about?
• #2 Comment from merelyp 
  11/6/03 7:15 AM | Permalink

  thank you for commenting on what I think is the perk to even publishing to the web at all--that it is just plain POLITE to sign a guest book via that utility or in the comments section.
  .... continued above!
  
  
  ARGHHHHH! COMMENT LIMIT!
• #1 Comment from freeepeace 
  10/18/03 1:18 PM | Permalink

  thank you for all the helpful info. glad i finally found you. ~peace~
  http://journals.aol.com/freeepeace/LivingroomSuperstar/