More on the LiveJournal Deletions

[dawn_felagund]

Since I kicked the hornet's nest on that one, I think it's only fair to update with what I've learned/done since.

• There is still no information on what has triggered the deletions. A commenter on the original post by yiudirnt suggests that people who have had their journals/communities deleted have asked for more information and received none, which isn't terribly surprising, since new!LJ doesn't seem particularly able to handle its English-speaking userbase.
  
  However, there is also no evidence that any outside links will get you deleted. Frankly, that'd be most of us. I feel badly because my post yesterday about this gave some people that impression. Generally, spam algorithms go beyond "OMG link!!" and take into account things like the number of links, destination of the link (is it a site where spam is likely?), the IP address (is it from a country that produces a lot of spam? is the IP blacklisted?), and other keywords in the post (are there words like fake, cheap, drug, rolex, nfl, or anything porny that tend to make frequent appearances in spam?). But I say that even as I admit that LJ doesn't seem to be particularly sophisticated in, like, anything lately, so I might be using my brain too hard on this one.


• Case in point:
  hhimring has posted that she had a cross-post from Dreamwidth rejected by LiveJournal because it contained a link to an outside site and was therefore "spam." The link went to either the SWG or Faerie. (AO3 links were not a problem. *eyeroll*) Anyway, this is not exactly the same thing as deleting an entire journal/community, and it's possible that different algorithms are being used here, but it does suggest a low level of sophistication that honestly makes my brain hurt, like OMG!link = spam.


• Likewise, per comments in the original post, journals with links behind friends-lock were just as subject to being deleted as a spambot as those where the links were in public entries. Which makes zero sense since the whole point of spambots is to litter the Internet with links like Canada goose droppings on a golf course. Again, this suggests that LJ ain't really thunk things through.


• Per comments in the original post, some people who were deleted contacted support and got their journals back. Others did not.


• I asked yiudirnt if they minded sharing the evidence they'd gathered, but it seems to be a list of journals/communities only (whereas I was really hoping to find out what links, link volume, etc. were in the deleted journals), and they are in a fandom where privacy is a serious and legitimate concern. So unfortunately no new information came from that inquiry.


• I was chatting with
  makamu about preserving fan history through all this. I emailed the OTW just a little while ago to see if 1) all of this is one their radar and 2) if Open Doors (or someone else in their organization) would consider getting involved in preserving fandom history. When I hear back from OTW, I'll update here with whatever I learn. It's touchy because, of course, these are journals; the personal and the fannish are often intertwined in a way that they aren't in other fandom spaces, content wasn't necessarily created with a broad audience in mind (even if publicly available), and much content is locked. The best solution I've come up with is to maintain a list on a shared Google Doc and just contact people and ask them to migrate their content to Dreamwidth or set their accounts so a volunteer can do so.
  
  ETA: I heard back from OTW's Open Doors. Essentially, they can import communities with consent of the moderators. This isn't much different from importing to DW, however. It does present another option but doesn't solve the bigger problem of "rescuing" content that has been abandoned on LJ and may be deleted. So that leaves me thinking that the next item on my list remains the best option. I'm open to other ideas.
  
  (Wait, didn't I say I wasn't getting involved in this?! Nrgh.)


• I'll be contacting almost seventy of them as part of letting them know about the silwritersguild export to
  silwritersguild and will include that information. (Which, if you know about and haven't told me that you know about it ... please do. Because I will be contacting everyone who's not a mod and hasn't acknowledged the export! Seventy. Sheesh! Please help me out; it literally takes ten seconds! Thanks a million to those of you who already have!)

This post was originally posted on Dreamwidth and, using my Felagundish Elf magic, crossposted to LiveJournal. You can comment here or there!

http://dawn-felagund.dreamwidth.org/417853.html