[lj] Evacuation Plans, Protest; Long, Read Anyway
Summary
1) There is a protest planned tonight. In about 2 hrs (5pm, PDT == 8pm EDT), I'll be keeping radio silence on LJ for 24 hrs. If you want to reach me, email me.
2) There's plans afoot to start a new LJ clone. Come join us: elsejournal. Right now, it is the only journal platform which looks like a viable alternative for me, so I hope it happens, as I would like to have a bolt hole.
3) In the discussions of Elsejournal, LJDist keeps coming round, aka Federated Livejournal, aka Peer-to-Peer LJ. That is what I really want. Are there other perl programmers who are want it too? Enough to belly up to the bar and do some real coding for it?
Why Protest
The protest is over LJ's new owners' (SUP's) conduct of late. There are a number of controversies, but they boil down to: 1) You promised us you'd consult this beautiful advisory board before making policy or service changes, 2) You made policy and service changes without consulting the advisory board who 2a) would have told you your plans were dumb/evil, and then 3) fed the users who objected a really unimaginably lame and intelligence-insulting excuse of glass-like transparency. I'm not even getting into the controversy over what the SUP executive said-or-not about the user base of LJ in the Russian media.[*]
[* However, I need to stop here and wallow in the blissful, Bruce-Sterling-esque irony of American users explaing to a Russian executive the great "Capitalist" tradition of "strikes" (sic!!!1!), and how they are just part of "Capitalism" (sic!!!!oneeleventy!!) he, having grown up under Communism might not be familiar with, and is just going to have to get used to... and I'm either going to dissolve in hysterical laugher or my head is going to explode.]
This is protest, not an outmigration. LJ has been apologizing, which I completely appreciate.
And I'm still going dark for 24 hrs.
One of the things LJ has lost track of is that this is not a social networking site. Social networking sites aren't content driven, they're user driven. Every user who signs up is an asset. LJ, however, is a social *journaling* site. A user who signs up and does nothing here is not an asset. The assets -- the value which brings people here and keeps them -- is not merely "being in contact" with other people, but the specific content those people create.
LJ's value is in being a repository of content with complicated, user-controled ACLs.
My value to LJ as a customer is not that I have an account. It's that I write in it. It's that in my doing so, I increase the value of their platform.
LJ needs to get its head on straight about that fact. So for 24hrs, I'll be taking me and my fresh content/marbles home.
I invite you to do likewise.
Why Elsejournal
So, about that outmigration.... I want the option of leaving. In fact, I'd actually like to leave if I can move to a system superior in several ways.
1) So what are my alternatives to LJ? Right now, there are no LJ alternatives with which I am comfortable:
I will not be posting on InsaneJournal -- I registered an account to keep from anyone representing themselves fraudulently to be me.
PirateJournal is not a clone and, er, having difficulties.
GreatestJournal is collasping under its own weight, is advertising supported, and someone's already snagged my username.
DeadJournal is... no.
2) I have proposed that Elsejournal be a non-profit and/or consumer coop. Getting a little tired of people saying, "Well, SUP owns LJ, they can do whatever they like with it?" I know I am. Like they've been saying about OTW, "We (the users) need to own the servers". Amen, halleluia.
3) Migrating journals is sort of like how flocking birds migrate. A large group of them eventually all just peels off and goes, but there's a lot of initial circling and landing first. The group which is peeling off of LJ to IJ is fanfiction writers. But apparently the birds who are starting to circling and talk about Elsejournal are, well, our demographic. Older bohemians and techies. Non-fanfiction-writing Weirdians. That is to say, the rest of Weirdians, especially local to the Camberville area.
I would love to see this work and take the entire SCA with it. And the MIT community, and the Davis Square crowd and....
Why LJDist?
The answer to this is longer than I am going to write, now. See what I've written before. I will write at length, eventually. For now, suffice it to say:
1) If collectively owning the server is good, renting your own server is better.
2) There is a problem -- insurmountable AFAIK and intrinsic to the very nature of things -- with importing comments from LJ into any multi-user system. But a single-user system can have comment import. That's why things like WP allow users to import their entire LJ including comments, but LJ clones (all multi-user) like GreatestJournal don't. I want to bring my comments with me when I go.
3) Distributed systems can be more robust against censorship and more secret. They're harder to subpoena.
4) There's all sorts of things I'd like to see fixed in LJ's code. LJ isn't a very effective OpenSource project because, well-nigh nobody ever installs their own copy and does enough with it to get Itches in need of Scratching. But a federated version of LJ means lots of geeks all downloading their very own OS copy of LJDist and kicking at it, and getting enlisted in the LJDist OS project.
5) WP Is Not The Answer. Anyone who thinks WP is the answer has probably disqualified themselves from the discussion.
I am thinking more about moving on LJDist. What I'd need is perl programmers (familiar with MySQL) who'd want to work on the project. Anybody out there?
1) There is a protest planned tonight. In about 2 hrs (5pm, PDT == 8pm EDT), I'll be keeping radio silence on LJ for 24 hrs. If you want to reach me, email me.
2) There's plans afoot to start a new LJ clone. Come join us: elsejournal. Right now, it is the only journal platform which looks like a viable alternative for me, so I hope it happens, as I would like to have a bolt hole.
3) In the discussions of Elsejournal, LJDist keeps coming round, aka Federated Livejournal, aka Peer-to-Peer LJ. That is what I really want. Are there other perl programmers who are want it too? Enough to belly up to the bar and do some real coding for it?
Why Protest
The protest is over LJ's new owners' (SUP's) conduct of late. There are a number of controversies, but they boil down to: 1) You promised us you'd consult this beautiful advisory board before making policy or service changes, 2) You made policy and service changes without consulting the advisory board who 2a) would have told you your plans were dumb/evil, and then 3) fed the users who objected a really unimaginably lame and intelligence-insulting excuse of glass-like transparency. I'm not even getting into the controversy over what the SUP executive said-or-not about the user base of LJ in the Russian media.[*]
[* However, I need to stop here and wallow in the blissful, Bruce-Sterling-esque irony of American users explaing to a Russian executive the great "Capitalist" tradition of "strikes" (sic!!!1!), and how they are just part of "Capitalism" (sic!!!!oneeleventy!!) he, having grown up under Communism might not be familiar with, and is just going to have to get used to... and I'm either going to dissolve in hysterical laugher or my head is going to explode.]
This is protest, not an outmigration. LJ has been apologizing, which I completely appreciate.
And I'm still going dark for 24 hrs.
One of the things LJ has lost track of is that this is not a social networking site. Social networking sites aren't content driven, they're user driven. Every user who signs up is an asset. LJ, however, is a social *journaling* site. A user who signs up and does nothing here is not an asset. The assets -- the value which brings people here and keeps them -- is not merely "being in contact" with other people, but the specific content those people create.
LJ's value is in being a repository of content with complicated, user-controled ACLs.
My value to LJ as a customer is not that I have an account. It's that I write in it. It's that in my doing so, I increase the value of their platform.
LJ needs to get its head on straight about that fact. So for 24hrs, I'll be taking me and my fresh content/marbles home.
I invite you to do likewise.
Why Elsejournal
So, about that outmigration.... I want the option of leaving. In fact, I'd actually like to leave if I can move to a system superior in several ways.
1) So what are my alternatives to LJ? Right now, there are no LJ alternatives with which I am comfortable:
I will not be posting on InsaneJournal -- I registered an account to keep from anyone representing themselves fraudulently to be me.
PirateJournal is not a clone and, er, having difficulties.
GreatestJournal is collasping under its own weight, is advertising supported, and someone's already snagged my username.
DeadJournal is... no.
2) I have proposed that Elsejournal be a non-profit and/or consumer coop. Getting a little tired of people saying, "Well, SUP owns LJ, they can do whatever they like with it?" I know I am. Like they've been saying about OTW, "We (the users) need to own the servers". Amen, halleluia.
3) Migrating journals is sort of like how flocking birds migrate. A large group of them eventually all just peels off and goes, but there's a lot of initial circling and landing first. The group which is peeling off of LJ to IJ is fanfiction writers. But apparently the birds who are starting to circling and talk about Elsejournal are, well, our demographic. Older bohemians and techies. Non-fanfiction-writing Weirdians. That is to say, the rest of Weirdians, especially local to the Camberville area.
I would love to see this work and take the entire SCA with it. And the MIT community, and the Davis Square crowd and....
Why LJDist?
The answer to this is longer than I am going to write, now. See what I've written before. I will write at length, eventually. For now, suffice it to say:
1) If collectively owning the server is good, renting your own server is better.
2) There is a problem -- insurmountable AFAIK and intrinsic to the very nature of things -- with importing comments from LJ into any multi-user system. But a single-user system can have comment import. That's why things like WP allow users to import their entire LJ including comments, but LJ clones (all multi-user) like GreatestJournal don't. I want to bring my comments with me when I go.
3) Distributed systems can be more robust against censorship and more secret. They're harder to subpoena.
4) There's all sorts of things I'd like to see fixed in LJ's code. LJ isn't a very effective OpenSource project because, well-nigh nobody ever installs their own copy and does enough with it to get Itches in need of Scratching. But a federated version of LJ means lots of geeks all downloading their very own OS copy of LJDist and kicking at it, and getting enlisted in the LJDist OS project.
5) WP Is Not The Answer. Anyone who thinks WP is the answer has probably disqualified themselves from the discussion.
I am thinking more about moving on LJDist. What I'd need is perl programmers (familiar with MySQL) who'd want to work on the project. Anybody out there?