We have an apology...

[lyore]

LJ issues a statement

Well, took 'em long enough, but looks like our journals are going back up. They better, or there'll be hell to pay.

At least they are admitting they made a mistake.

ETA: Reading through the comments to the post, I'm starting to feel sympathy and a tiny bit of admiration for barakb25. None of it excuses the complete lack of communication (not to mention the absolute fuck-up in the first place), but he sounds sincere, apologetic, and dignified in his statements. (Chris Williams, start taking notes - this is how you apologise!) Of course, I retain the right to withdraw this comment if the communities and journals don't get back up in the next couple of days :)

Comments

[ashavah]

Yeah, I'm feeling sorry for him too. Apparently several staff members were travelling yesterday, and people are launching into them for not responding quick enough. I'm sure they needed time to consult with their lawyers, with each other, and to read some of the zillions of complaints.

[seldear.livejournal.com]

I'm cynical. When advertising money is involved, I am deeply, deeply cynical.

He's dealing well with it, that's for sure. But I'm not entirely convinced that this isn't just more of "the motive is money" since a lot of people have started making noise about taking their account money elsewhere.

And the overall attitude displayed over the last few days is not encouraging. Even a "we know there's shit going down, please wait while we sort it out - we will have an answer for you, but you have to be patient" post would have appeased the masses somewhat.

[psuedoskribe.livejournal.com]

I just followed developments and waited for the whole thing to blow over (it's still blowing), but when exactly did the purge begin?

I'm most swayed by the complaint of users who were paying big money for their accounts and not to discount those other users who 'simply' lost material they'd invested their time and effort in over the years, but I'm really unimpressed with the abuse some commenters are hurling in barakb25's direction. Perhaps they justify themselves with the Incomparably Gross Injustice of Strikethrough, but it doesn't help anything or anyone to harass the LJ team after the apology was issued.

Evidently, LJ need to assemble a broader and better team for this kind of venture in the future and probably in better communication (e.g. any) with those under suspicion. Bad project management, bad!

I admit that I've been generally unmoved by Strikethrough, but that's probably because I'm:

a) all for the objective in which the movement was pursued, though disastrously executed, but I'm an 'ends justify the means' person and I understand that most people won't agree with me (in fact, it's a highly controversial position that's socially impractical).

b) pretty much unaffected by this bar all my friends who've been crying about it on my flist (wait 'til the Heroes comms I'm on disappear, then I might join the chorus),

c) I view the notion of half of Harry Potter fandom collapsing into the vacuum of the Nothing as... a potential benefit. Ok, a little harsh, but my beef is really with Rowling and the nonsense she inspires rather than the inspired themselves. Truly, a diverse array of fandom was affected, but I always come back to the happy thought of even a datum of Harry Potter going poof!

[lyore.livejournal.com]

I still think they should have put out some sort of official word - but at the same time, I can see the point that saying something and then having to backtrack would have been even worse for everyone involved.

So I'll wait and see if things come back up, I guess.

[lyore.livejournal.com]

Well, as long as we keep having the money on *our* side, I don't mind if that is his reason :P

Yes, I agree that something should have been said before now. I don't think they expected half the reaction they got. (And I'm somewhat cynical, and think that if they hadn't deleted pornish_pixies, there would have been a lot less mainstream fannish involvement. Which wouldn't make SA's actions any more reasonable, mind you.)

Right now, I'm just waiting to see if things go back up. They can't go back in time and fix their fuck-ups, but they can damn well try and fix them now.

[lyore.livejournal.com]

It started about 2 days ago, I think.

a) My problem is, apart from the collateral damage, I don't think this was ever going to achieve the aim. WfI announced their intentions to target LJ about a month ago, and since REAL pedophiles watch these communities (at least the smart ones), they had heaps of time to cover their tracks. And seriously - how dumb would you have to be to advertise the fact you were a pedophile in your userinfo? They didn't even check the actual posts.

It's also been pointed out that real LE agencies could have been tracking/watching actual suspect journals, and summarily deleting them would do harm to the investigations.

So it's not even an 'End justifies the Means' question for me, since I don't think those Means would ever achieve their intended End.

b) yeah, me too. One of the times being a Gen fan comes in handy :)

c) A little harsh, yeah :) But, unfortunately, the ones who were deleted were the more adult, less annoying fans, AFAIK.

my beef is really with Rowling and the nonsense she inspires rather than the inspired themselves

OK, that I don't get. You're blaming Rowling for the actions of her fans? I mean, I have lots of issues with Rowling, starting with the travesty that was OOTP and going from there, but I've never blamed her for that.

[psuedoskribe.livejournal.com]

It's also been pointed out that real LE agencies could have been tracking/watching actual suspect journals, and summarily deleting them would do harm to the investigations.

This is a very good point and I hope LJ didn't botch such investigations otherwise they're going to have to deal with more than a horde of angry users when this comes to its conclusion.

So it's not even an 'End justifies the Means' question for me, since I don't think those Means would ever achieve their intended End.

Their objective definitely isn't something that could be solved with an annual purge and/or deletion, they had the wrong approach so perhaps this is better phrased as the project on the path to an inglorious, messy revolt that was paved with good intentions. I was trying to calculate the numbers of joined fans counted on fandom_counts against the number of registered users and comms and I came a statistic of 0.2%. Obviously, that's a rough number because not all fans have joined and there are comms as well, but still, that's pretty disheartening. Please tell me my calculator is broken or my method is wrong (otherwise I weep for the fans).

b) Ah, gen. Clearly this is an evolutionary imperative of fandom.

c) You mean all the sensible un-emo kids are the ones who vanished? I think fate took the wrong demographic.

You're blaming Rowling for the actions of her fans?

This is where I point at Rowling and hiss, "the seed of fictional travesty!" (You stole my 'travesty' buzz word1!)

I have issues with Rowling starting from the first letter of her first book, she certainly had an idea that sold well (the first eleven publishers that rejected her must still be kicking themselves), but I pity the young generation growing up on her books with a sad and skewed notion of morals and grammar through the broken glasses of The Boy Who Lived. I admit that when I first read the books I was initially hooked too, and it took a while for me to step back and realise that all magicalness in wondrous magical world aside (aspects I still enjoy), her flagship characters and their heroic allies are jocks (Harry), bullies (James and Sirius) and snobs or such people's unintervening accomplices, whose actions she does little to question.

It was okay when the characters were young and stupid (and oh so BRAVE, let's not forget), because the two qualities are interwoven, but I'm by no means advocating the other side of the coin either (you know, the KKK Von Doom Eaters in black led by a half-breed hypocrite). So, who *do* I like in HPverse? [sniff] Maybe just the unicorns and flying cars. They have feelings, too. Oh, and Seamus because he catches on fire a lot in movie verse.

One good thing in all of this is that it will keep fantasy in young people's minds and hopefully they'll be willing to broaden their fantastical horizons from there. Otherwise, God help us all. I coordinated a fanfiction archive for almost seven years, I have witnessed the horror first-hand (this is largely the reason I'm allergic to the site now, but several gems, however, alleviate the duty). If we're going to talk about launching boards, maybe we should sit the next gen of fic writers down to read 1,000,001 books of Mills and Boon until they develop a similar allergy to redundant cliche.

I'm sure some of the greatest writers of the ages started out like Paolini, they just need to see... the errors... of their ways (come to the dark side) and not smite their villains in the fork of their legs (o0;).

[lyore.livejournal.com]

Yup it's 0.2% of total journals. I think I saw somewhere that between 4-5 million journals have only been updated once, which would get us to about 0.3-0.4%.

But if you consider regular updaters, I suspect the ratio will be a lot higher, and paying members, higher still.

What might be a fairer assessment would be a comparison to the size of any other 'single' group of users out there. Then I think we are getting into significant portion. Unfortunately, I don't know how to check those stats. ohnotheydidnt has hit 50,000 users, which I suspect is the limit, but I can't find another community with more than 10,000 (but I can't really check this apart from going to the profile of large communities I know off, so there are probably more). Regardless, I think that 30,000+ (current count) is a significantly sized interest group.

And my Harry Potter bit is getting long - so it's going to get it's own post. Stayed tuned :)

[ashavah]

They are coming back up.

[lyore.livejournal.com]

Yay!

(And in an act of shameless self-promotion, I shall mention that I just wrote a long thinky Harry Potter post you might find interesting here (http://lyore.livejournal.com/53305.html))

[lyore.livejournal.com]

My long and thinky HP post is here (http://lyore.livejournal.com/53305.html), FYI.

[psuedoskribe.livejournal.com]

I appreciate long and thinky posts, I'll have to read this after essay and will probably use tomorrow as an opportunity of replying when we see you guys. You guys are coming to go_the_brumbies' at 3, ya?

[lyore.livejournal.com]

Yup, we'll be there.