I, for one, welcome our new Russian Overlords.
Unless you've been living under a rock for the past 24 hours, I am sure that you have heard the news regarding LiveJournal. You're probably wondering why I'm posting about this over here, as this is certainly not LiveJournal! First of all, I want to ensure that everyone is aware of this sale (unlike the previous sale, which some people did not recognize until much later). Information can be found here!

The second point is that I want to ensure all of you that we are committed to maintaining LostJournal, and are pleased that SUP has agreed to maintain the open-source standard for the LiveJournal code. Without the code, LostJournal would not be here!

I wanted to let you guys know that in the coming weeks I will be doing a full code update. This will bring us up to speed with the current version, and will include a lot of shiny new things. This will, however, also bring content flagging to LostJournal. Now, before you force me to walk the plank over this, I ask you all to hear me out! I have gone through the code for content flagging, and there is nothing that can be done to a user's journal without intervention of the administrators, or Abuse team. This means that if someone flag's this journal, all it will do is create a report that most likely I will investigate. More often than not, I will just hit "ignore" and the report will vanish. I am enabling this to make a point: Every major service provider on the web right now HAS flagging of some sort. Go checkout Flickr or YouTube - guess what? They all have content flagging! This does not impede on your rights, nor does it turn users into vigilantes. All this does is allow users to flag a certain profile, comment or entry for administrators to review. I really don't understand why people are screaming bloody murder over this - it's a simple feature, and the people who are reviewing the content are only looking for major, law-breaking offenses. For LiveJournal, the people who are reviewing are the Abuse Prevention Team, which I proudly served on for almost two years before I went back to school. I know the people who are reviewing this content, and I know that they use common sense when evaluating complaints. So please, cut the people over at LiveJournal some slack!

That is all for now. Please feel free to comment!

(Post a new comment)

eunoia
2007-12-04 09:41 am UTC (link)

I'm curious about these shiny things. Could you expand a little on that here, or will that give away the surprise and thus should be withheld until the grand unveiling?

In terms of the content flagging and some melodrama not withstanding, one probable reason why there's a big hoo-hah is because the LJ userbase is so large and varied and has such potential for wank (sometimes with very good reason) that the chances of abusing the feature has some worried, especially when it comes to grudge-wanking. Another probable reason is that given 6A's er, questionable handling of some issues (various examples linked to in the pages of Nipplegate, Strikethrough and Censorwhatsitis), people do worry about the fairness of 6A's handling. Of course, that doesn't apply to LoJ here, simply because the userbase is much smaller and gradually expands instead of a population explosion, which is a good thing.

Self-policing sounded fine, but the flagging, given the LJ userbase size and nature? Those are things 6A should have taken into consideration before implementing it. Or maybe they didn't have to, since SUP is taking over and may have been the ones behind it. In the end, it's business as usual.

I have a livejournal account, and SUP taking over makes me wary. Especially given what the russian users have said about the history of SUP's implementations and their difficulty opting out. Anton Nosik of the SUP also comes across as a douchebag for being rather rude and contemptuous about his userbase when they tried to opt out of SUP. Plus other articles to consider, which can be seen as links in comments here (even if we ignore what the comments say).

Of course, other things like Facebook Beacon oversteps privacy boundaries with tracker and violates user trust is another worry for people in the blogosphere.

I doubt I'll have a problem with flagging here for now, and there's a reason I chose LoJ over others like DeadJournal, InsaneJournal and GreatestJournal (not to mention you guys weren't that easy to find). I like what I've seen, I like the personal touch you all seem to bring and the potential to grow at a reasonable rate and at some point, when my monies are stable and after seeing what features you all roll out... mebbe I'll buy an account :D

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sagami
2007-12-04 09:01 pm UTC (link)

Well said. That's the reason why I don't trust the flagging system myself. I mean, who's going to determine if what I'm doing is illegal or not? I use my journal for a ton of things, amongst them to rant. Now, I normally put such things on private--but I have been known to choose the wrong security at times. Suppose my content for the day (maybe some socialist ideas or what have you) are thought to be promoting communism or something that can be caught up in a witch-hunt...THAT would definitely be a problem.

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steve
2007-12-05 02:31 am UTC (link)

Promoting Communism isn't against the law, last time I checked. I grew up in Canada (semi-socialist), and have been accused of having Communism ideals when I came to the States for school.

The intent of content flagging is for material which is, without a doubt, against the law or TOS. More than likely I will be the one reviewing the reports, and I am expecting exactly zero reports when this goes in. The reason for the estimate of zero is because in the year and a half LoJo has been running, we have received not one abuse complaint about any material on here. You guys -get it-, as opposed to other blogging sites where the users are... yeah (enough said).

Thank you for taking the time to express your concerns.

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eunoia
2007-12-05 07:03 pm UTC (link)

Heh, where I came from, communism was a big problem that also affected the racial balance of things so that became highly frowned upon but as you said, it's not against the law to be promoted. Really depends on the geography and history of a place. Although I thought socialism was liberal whereas communism is conservative (if we're comparing the two), like Republicans are conservative.

And your icon comes from the atom smasher sign generator I came across 2 years ago, innit? :D

I agree with you about the userbase, which is probably why I have no worries with the flagging here (as mentioned above). That, and the fact that you guys in charge are cautious, clear and friendly helps. So once again, I appreciate all the hard work y'all put in.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	(Anonymous) 2007-12-10 07:22 am UTC (link)
	in soviet russa, journals flag you! (Reply to this) (Parent)

eunoia
2007-12-05 07:37 pm UTC (link)

~~If I were to summarise my longass comment above XD~~ In the end, it boils down to the user base and the owners in charge of the site. Takes 2 hands to clap, which is one of the reasons why I'm wary over at LJ and not here or JF. I take it you're also referencing the lj_2008 post with professional-sounding jargon that almost impresses me with the selectively vague PR and almost resembles me on certain days?

And although I could say much more on the subject, I won't clutter up this news post :p

(Reply to this) (Parent)

	(Anonymous) 2007-12-10 07:23 am UTC (link)
	is anyone else having a problem getting validation emails (Reply to this)