phyncke

I am setting up RP journals and some graphics journals on dreamwidth - in anticipation of possibly moving things over here. What are other people doing about that. I am just curious. This redesign is surely coming, an impending fact of our online lives so I wonder what people are doing.

I don't see much life over here yet but the interface is snappy, the service is better. A kinder, gentler blog-o-sphere. And I have a permanent LJ and even with that, would consider a migration if the community were doing that.

Is it time to make a plan? I am not encouraged by this article (found posted a few places on the flist)

http://www.fastcompany.com/1809674/the-return-of-livejournal

I got mildly peeved at the lack of consideration that we as loyal users are getting. So for lack of that, why stay? Really. I would like to know what the thought is.

-I get that talkpost thing sometimes when I try to comment.
-Comments get hung up in the ether and I have to go back to save and copy my comment and retry it a few times and a few different ways until finally my comment will go through.
-Posting is slow

LJ is mucking up again. Has anyone noticed this? I wonder if it is at all connected to that other "attack" they are talking about (that login thing). To my paranoid mind it all seems connected. I am going to dust off my dreamwidth account just to be sure. For any of you with both platforms...I am phyncke over there.

Feeling a little better, more energy and no sore throat anymore. All set to go to Anaheim this weekend. Yay! I got my overnight bag out and started packing.

Cheers.

For those of you who RP on LJ and have multiple accounts there is this nifty little widget called LJ Log In:

http://ljlogin.e-space.gweep.net/

This let's you go from account to account like zippety doo da (it puts an icon on the bottom bar of your mozilla, you log into all your accounts, it remembers and you click, refresh, click, refresh). This was passed to me and I am passing it on. Huge time saver and it is letting me post much faster without the onerous logging in and out each time. Way good. I recommend. It is useful for non-RPers with multiple accounts who need to log in and out.

I found a new game and I am trying my Aegnor there - milliways_bar, an AU nexus, end of the universe, meta-fandom place. I did my first post this week and it is lively RPG with really fun writing. My elf is clueless but there is lots of activity and people to write with. Daily posting and no waiting. The characters are interesting too. More fandoms than I ever knew were out there. For real. LOTR is represented too so that is fun too. I am even pulling some of my fiction in there as back story. A very well organized and well-moderated game.

Loving it.

Anyways. That is what I am doing. Rainy night here in Berzerkeley. Had salmon and asparagus for dinner.


by geminigirl6879

Re. The content strike....

Found at: http://firefox.org/news/articles/1308/1/Editorial-Missing-Interests-and-Planned-User-Strike-on-Livejournal/Page1.html

"Technical glitch" blamed for missing content
Things are getting a little tight in San Francisco. Livejournal Inc., previously owned by Six Apart, before that owned by Brad Fitzpatrick, now in possession of Russian company SUP, has been gearing up some major changes for the site. Last week, keen-eyed observers found out that Basic accounts (the no-frills unpaid accounts with no ads) were about to become artifacts. Users with accounts prior to March 13th could keep or scale back down to Basic, but all new accounts created after that time default to Plus, with an option on Paid. (Plus accounts are still free, but ads run in the margins much like competitor sites MySpace and Facebook. Paid accounts are exactly what you think they are.) With no official notification to current users that this was going to be the case, Livejournal users once again applied excrement to fan and hit "High."

Then came this past weekend. Again, sharp-eyed users noticed a problem. This time, certain words were no longer showing up in the site's "Most Popular Interests" list. Among the missing interests: "depression," "bisexuality," "faeries," and "fanfiction." The interests in question appear to have been blocked after 2/28/08, according to one user's cache of the data.

Firefox News contacted SUP's corporate office and were told by a spokesperson: "Regarding the possible censorship of certain lists, this appears to be a technical issue. LJ is trying to fix this at the moment." As of this writing (and checked as of earlier today) those interests have been restored to the list. No reason was given from SUP as to the nature of the technical problem, leading some to speculate that an ad-monitoring program may have been the culprit; no use putting ads on that page if the program grabs the wrong keywords, after all.

However, despite the fix, users are displeased. Livejournal users are an eccentric, cantankerous lot, not quite as mainstream as MySpace or Facebook users (though of course, many of us have accounts there as well). Many Livejournal users were lured onto the site by friends who told us: "It's free.
You don't even need to have ads on your page," and we liked the place so much we stayed and paid for more. (I have had a Permanent account since 2005.) The viral nature of LJ means it's not the Web 2.0 goldmine that competing sites might be, but it also means LJ has a unique character. It's an ongoing conversation rather than an ad-laden destination, and the users who have been here a while like it that way.

During previous debacles (Nipplegate, Strikethrough, etc.) users have shown their displeasure in visible fashions. Nipplegate (aka LJ suddenly decided breastfeeding icons were obscene) prompted users to delete their journals for a day. Strikethrough saw an exodus of users to other journaling sites. This time, the planned protest is a content outage. On March 21st, for twenty-four hours (midnight to midnight GMT), many LJ users are going to simply not post, not comment, and not access the site. Since the previous protests appeared to have little effect on LJ's policies (other than to convince Six Apart to sell the whole thing off and get rid of the troublemakers from within and without) this will likely be symbolic at best. Nevertheless, we wish the protesters the best of luck.

The purchase of Livejournal by a Russian-owned company raised questions at the time of SUP's commitment to LJ's long-standing relationship with its user community, for good and ill. The recent decision to drop the ad-free Basic account is "a business decision. It is, emphatically." It may however be a poor business decision, one made in the hopes of making a fast buck off the content provided by the users without understanding the background of those users' relationship with the site. The removal, for whatever reason, of possibly controversial interests gives users good reason to worry that we are not wanted on a site we helped make so popular. The restoration of those interests, allowing us our thoughts on yaoi once more, does not immediately restore our faith in the company, especially with the clandestine removal of the primary way in which most of us first came to the site (and then brought our friends).

In short, Livejournal users no longer feel like customers, but product, and that's bad business all around.


Another article here:
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/26080

I will be participating in the Strike on Friday. It seems necessary to me. The more of us that do this...the more powerful it is.

Cross-posted from hoarilysatan

I have been talking to people and I think the way to handle this LJ thing is this---it becomes a mute point if we don't buy into their whole little schema. I mark my posts adult content or no and I use LJ-cuts when I need to. So I am setting my journal:

No adult content
Do not filter

Fuck em.

I will post what I want and choose what to view.

You change your settings here.

http://www.livejournal.com/manage/settings/