Azz (bolt of blue) - makes surreal things more so ([info]azurelunatic) wrote,
@ 2006-10-01 00:08:00
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Entry tags:lj, lj summaries

More Clusterfun than Chef and Filetmignon's last big downtimes! (An [info]lj_biz summary.)

Poll #6666666

Open to: All, results viewable to: All

So how's about some Sponsored Communities, in addition to the Plus accounts, huh? (Oh, and, um, paidusersmightkindaseeads.)

View Answers

Run away screaming
1024 (80.0%)

Politely decline
256 (20.0%)

Cautiously try some
2 (0.0%)

Enthusiastically try some
1 (0.0%)

(Propz to Berv for these excellent poll answers, which I swiped from her. Definition of cheese may not be sanity or stomach-safe. )


Somewhat later...

[info]bradfitz: "Holy hell, sorry about that. Communication is not our strong point this weekend. Lemme get the red pen and re-do that post. Previous stuff still applies: you paid, you no see ads. OMG. Sales and I are going to be having a nice long talk, as much as I hate taking time away from the geeking. SMS is totally for the win, though, and we're willing to let free users use it if you recognize that THERE WILL BE ADS on that part of the site, just like your buddy with the Plus account, the one you don't comment to anymore. Sponsored comms are going to happen, but they'll be well-labeled. And I totally want to use the word "clusterfuck" to describe this situation, but I can't put that in this post and get away with it, so forgive the typo, 'k? Now. I'm'a leave for the weekend and address the rest of this on Monday."

Slashdot Refugees: "You know you love us."
Snarky Users: "Um, no."

Relieved Users: "OMFG THANK YOU BRAD WE LOVE YOU MARRY ME THINK OF ME FONDLY! (Please promise me you'll try...) "
Relieved User: "Well, now what do we do with the angry mob we assembled?"
Relieved Users: "Party time!"

Annoyed Users: "But we'll still see those comms on the front page when we log in. We don't have the choice to avoid them."
Support Volunteers: "Um, you do know you can log in using the Navbar and never see the front page, right?"
Annoyed Users: "Brad, reality check. You're no longer paying attention to LJ. LISTEN TO US. We are saying NO here."
Annoyed Users Who Swore They Were Leaving Last Time: "LJ, YOU ARE LYING LIARS WHO LIE!!"

Luddite Neophobic Users: "STOP giving us new features. Or at least make them opt-in only."
Observant Users: "If they were opt-in only, no one would use them, if these comments are any indication. Maybe LJ wants us to at least try the shinies before declining them."
Neophobic Users: "No. Enough with the bells. Enough with the whistles."
Opinionated Users: "Navbar hate thread forms over here! Tips on how to get rid of it when it's forced on! Come one come all!"
Detail-Oriented Users: "The Console is fun."

Feedback-Oriented Users: "There are still a few issues with how sponsored comms come up in searches, though."
Cynical Users: "And here comes the damage control. How come Brad only comes out for the damage control?"
[info]bradfitz: "Dude, I sold this thing so I could concentrate on the geeking, and not have to go play with users all the time. I come out and raise hell if things start going wrong, but otherwise, I'm in there with my headphones on so I can't hear y'all screeching."
Brad's Fanclub: "Where's 6A's respect for Brad? OMG CORPORATE CORNHOLINGS ALL AROUND. It's not your fault we're in this handbasket."
Other Cynical Users: "This munged-up announcement and then retraction was a ploy to get us to accept it. Notice how this isn't in [info]news?"
Concerned Users: "So exactly how much is LJ going to bow to these sponsors? Will LJ start jerking the users around at the whim of the sponsors? How much of our data gets shared? Do they get to spam us? Give us some reassurance here. Please."
Concerned Anti-Establishment and Explicit Slash Writing Users: "Please tell me they get dumped if they try and commentspam us. If Warner Brothers sponsors comms, they had better not take my disestablishmentarianism icons and my graphic NC-1701 22+ chan slash noncon away from me!"
Anti-Fanfic/RP Users: "...wait, this could make fanfic and RP go away? I ♥ this."
Constructive Critic Users: "How about an extra section on profile pages, for sponsored comm memberships, that gets hidden from Paid users? Or you could switch to a different financial structure."
Detail-Oriented Users: "'Mostly not evil people' work for LJ? Um."
Archive.org and Google Cached Page Fans: "LJ, YOU ARE LYING LIARS WHO LIE!! Um, that is to say, you say it ain't a slippery slope. I see you sliiiiiiiiding."
Constructive Critic Users: "And something you haven't thought of yet but I see 1000 other people have mentioned: there needs to be a separate little picture for the sponsored comms. This one: $!"
Users Who Have Read the Previous Post: "Um, they're planning on that already. Though maybe not with that picture."

[info]slashdot: "Pwned."
LJ: "Dude, it causes a tiny blip on LJ's servers when /. hits us. We could totally /. your ass by linking you in [info]news."

Support: "Brad! Your communication boo-boo, YOUR FAULT. Not Rah's. WE KEEL YOU."
[info]bradfitz: "Sorry. My bad. ETA: Not Rah's Fault!! MAJOR BROKEN COMMUNICATIONS HERE AT LJ CENTRAL!!"
Observant Users: "... no fucking shit."
Reproachful Users: "'ETA: Sorry Rah' does not cut it. You have more problems than you realize."

Page 4 Commenter: "'Clusterfuns.'"
Non-US Users: "There is not enough voice post love for us."
Political Debaters: "Politics wank thread forms over here!"
Annoyed Users Who Swore They Were Leaving Last Time: "Still sucks. Still haven't left yet."
Righteously Annoyed Users: "Try more with the 'asking us first' or at least the 'telling us well in advance' rather than the 'sneaking stuff in and then announcing it', eh?"
Cynical Users: "Stop talking down to us. You suck."
Optimistic Users: "Thanks for not talking down to us. You rock."
Drama Fans: *pass around popcorn and brownies*
People Who Still Maintain an LJ For Some Unknown Reason: "So why don't the people who are bitching about it just, you know, leave? I did."
Disgruntled/Disenchanted Paid Users: "This is not the kind of service I paid for. Why should I keep a paid account if Plus accounts get all the cool stuff for free?"
Irate Trolls: *troll*
Haters: *hate on Rah*
Easily Amused Users: *get involved in fun comment threads*
Thoughtful Users: *realize that their lengthy, well-considered essay responses just ended up on page 42 because the quick-comment people got here first*
Random Commenters: *make no sense*

This summary has been brought to you by Henrik Nyh's adaptation of the LJ Thread Unfolder with "Unfold All" (a GreaseMonkey script for FireFox), and 12 cups of coffee.

(Post a new comment)


[info]matttt
2006-10-01 10:06 am UTC (link)
Thoughtful Users: *realize that their lengthy, well-considered essay responses just ended up on page 42 because the quick-comment people got here first*

THAT is something that should go on [info]news's userinfo, as well as that of similar communities. :-)

(Reply to this) (Thread)

[info]azurelunatic
2006-10-01 10:16 am UTC (link)
It's true of almost any mass forum. Yay "first comment", where by "yay" I mean "OMFG STFU" in most cases.

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[info]pauamma
2006-10-01 10:57 am UTC (link)
Frist rely!

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[info]azurelunatic
2006-10-01 11:13 am UTC (link)
/me gets out the foam pun cluebat that her roommate uses on her

/me sends you a Bill for the resulting damage

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[info]pauamma
2006-10-01 12:04 pm UTC (link)
/me ties you to a post before you can hurt yourself or anyone with that bat.

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[info]azurelunatic
2006-10-01 12:12 pm UTC (link)
/me puts you in the post

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[info]pauamma
2006-10-01 12:43 pm UTC (link)
/me watches the post melt.

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[info]matttt
2006-10-01 01:53 pm UTC (link)
I'd love to see LiveJournal use a Slashdot-style 'kudos' system for comments. My ideal would be one where, if I chose, I could by default sort comments by their ranking, meaning that all of the 'OMG 1st page!!!!!!!!!11111111111111!!!!!1' comments would, for me, become a thing of the past.

But that kind of thing would be quite difficult to sell advertising space on, so I don't expect to see it any time soon. ;-)

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]azurelunatic
2006-10-01 06:44 pm UTC (link)
I wonder if anyone's proposed anything like that in [info]suggestions, and if so, how recently. Because if that were mixed in with the collapse of the threading like Slashdot does it, that would make heavily interactive threads like the one I summarized so much easier for the average person to read.

It would be difficult to sell advertising space on, but to list it as a feature, especially in a sponsored community where perhaps the community maintainer could exert some level of control over the ranking of the comments rather than it be a strictly user-voted mechanism like /. -- that could be a serious selling point. I don't believe I've seen slashdot-style massively multiplayer comment ranking with overrides in any forum. That would be totally killer should some LJ-geek devote coding time to it.

I hang out in the LJ IRC "break room" enough to know that this idea would go over brilliantly well with the people who have to actually spend any amount of time working facing the users.

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[info]jennifer
2006-10-01 09:53 pm UTC (link)
One word for why that won't ever happen: WHUFFIE. Seriously, that was a huge, huge debacle. People hated the idea then and I can't see why they'd want it now.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]matttt
2006-10-01 10:35 pm UTC (link)
There's no reason what I want to see would have to be like that, though. What I would like to see is a rating for each comment (0 = waste of electrons, 5 = compulsory reading, for example), whereas that whuffie thing seemed to be around rating users.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]azurelunatic
2006-10-07 09:29 am UTC (link)
The obvious abuse would be, of course, to comment in the middle of a long thread with an offensive or page-breaking image, and then have associates/sockpuppets rate the thing up, but it would get rated back down near-immediately, and there would have to be some kind of journal owner/community maintainer/post owner override -- say, a "lock ratings at X" control along with the delete, screen, and freeze.

At some point I will take the time to take this to [info]suggestions, with Whuffie-related caveats, so I might as well get as much of the debate as I can worked out here and now.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]matttt
2006-10-26 10:41 pm UTC (link)
Sounds like a plan - apologies for not responding sooner; I'm a slacker when it comes to timely comment response.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]azurelunatic
2006-10-07 09:24 am UTC (link)
Oh, man, I remember that!

No, a karma-type thing wouldn't work for LJ at all. Too big, too many different places. One of my buddies is really abrasive when he's dealing with idiots over in communities he helps run, and comes off really sadistic-bastard over there, but is the picture of courtesy (well, sort of) when in the company of friends, or at least in the company of me.

This would be for individual comments, and it would make sense to integrate permissions for rating comments with permissions for tagging, or at least treat it the same way. Really, the only major thing it would borrow from /. style comment rating would be a) the concept of rating comments, and b) the collapse patterns leaving high-rated comments out.

...and I bet if it were introduced without karma attached, people would be begging for it, because it's another way to measure popularity. But it just wouldn't work properly on LJ. Not without becoming too overly social-networky.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]matttt
2006-10-01 10:41 pm UTC (link)
Feel free to make the suggestion on my behalf, if you know the right people to talk to!

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]intheblacklodge
2006-10-01 02:48 pm UTC (link)
2 comments:

1. You always leave out the people who insist on on using the news posts to write long messages to each other in Russian.

2. In terms of this development, I actually think the sponsored features idea is a really good one, but the sponsored community thing is not only a bad idea, it doesn't even make any sense. Why would we need to have Warner sponsor a Science of Sleep community when any random LJ user could do exactly the same thing for free? What am I missing here?

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[info]wibbble
2006-10-01 03:00 pm UTC (link)
LJ can sell this to whoever as a means of 'interacting with the target audience', or some such bullshit. The production company doesn't want to just create the community themselves normally because it could be seen as astroturfing from the fans and as commercial use from LiveJournal (which is against the TOS, IIRC).

It also helps to bring a lot of attention to films/products/whatever that everyone was otherwise ignoring.

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[info]azurelunatic
2006-10-01 06:22 pm UTC (link)
And in-community, they can control what's going on. An ordinary fan-controlled community might develop explicit slash or something.

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[info]chas_
2006-10-01 04:19 pm UTC (link)
It's all about the greenbacks.

A Science community? Discovery Channel or Scientific American or something else of that nature(I'm sure Warner owns something that would qualify). A Sleep community? Drug companies, who burn astounding loads of cash on advertising.

6A wants in on that action. I don't blame them, there's a nice wad to be had there.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]azurelunatic
2006-10-01 06:19 pm UTC (link)
When I read Brad's post, there actually weren't any long messages in Russian. I gave up on reading the previous post on page 2.

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[info]intheblacklodge
2006-10-02 03:37 am UTC (link)
Well I didn't mean that posts specifically, I just meant as a trend in general.

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[info]azurelunatic
2006-10-02 06:30 pm UTC (link)
I know at least some of it is generally a translation of the original post and commentary to it. There's a rather thriving Russian LJ population, enough so that there's a general call out for Russian-speaking Support volunteers. The #1 language I should learn for business reasons would be Spanish, because I live in Arizona, but the #2 language would be Russian, because I volunteer on LJ.

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[info]neitherday
2006-10-01 03:51 pm UTC (link)
It is threads like that (and there are plenty of them) that make me very glad that I do not work for LiveJournal.

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[info]azurelunatic
2006-10-01 06:47 pm UTC (link)
I believe the two top-rated coping mechanisms are: booze, and plenty of it, and summaries like these.

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[info]ursamajor
2006-10-01 07:51 pm UTC (link)
And more booze.

Excellent job with this :D Particularly Annoyed Users Who Swore They Were Leaving Last Time: "LJ, YOU ARE LYING LIARS WHO LIE!!" Beautiful. :D

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[info]azurelunatic
2006-10-01 08:48 pm UTC (link)
*grin* I do try to get the crux of the positions down.

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[info]amanda
2006-10-01 09:08 pm UTC (link)
Drama Fans: *pass around popcorn and brownies*

BEST LINE EVAR!

Awesomely funny and amusing as always!

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[info]azurelunatic
2006-10-07 09:32 am UTC (link)
*grin*

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[info]larkspurlazuli
2006-10-01 11:23 pm UTC (link)
*giggles uncontrollably*

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[info]azurelunatic
2006-10-07 09:37 am UTC (link)
Thank you. :D

(Reply to this) (Parent)

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