discussion: candidates and their platforms

[seperis]

This is a cut and paste of all the candidates platforms linked from here.

If any candidates wish to have the text of their platforms removed from this entry, please email seperis at livejournal and I'll remove the text and keep the link only.

Discussion Rules1.) Comments must be balanced; when making a post with negative comments on one candidate

Comments

a quick comparison

[spare_change]

I support rm. I already wrote here why I support her, but just to summarize:

- She puts free speech issues foremost. My argument is for the broadest range of speech permissible under the laws of California (where LJ is incorporated). [...]If it's legal speech it should be permissible on LJ.

- She is the only candidate who is a member of OTW.

- She argues that LJ needs to honor its original commitments made to the users, specifically the ongoing availability of free accounts and the right of every user to experience an ad-free LJ if they so choose.

- She advocates greater transparency and accountability for the Abuse Team.

- She is not already entrenched in the LJ structure: I have no personal friendships or loyalties to the staff or other powers that be.

- I like her attitude: I love LJ with all my heart, but I am not a cheerleader. I will call it like I see it, and can be both diplomatic and aggressive. ;D

In contrast, I am not comfortable with the assumption that legomymalfoy represents fandom's interests over LJ's. legomymalfoy is a long-time

Re: a quick comparison

[spare_change]

As a former LJ Abuse member, I can say that they were put in a really difficult position during the strikethrough/deletegate issue.

It was my understanding that, however, that no one simply quit rather than refuse to execute LJ policy. Difficult position or no, one always has a choice. ;D

find it's sometimes easier to change the system from within than to attack it from without.

Can you give me examples of anything Legomymalfoy has done to change the system at LJ Abuse (or elsewhere at LJ)? Her platform says nothing about this, and doesn't make any promise to do so except to explain better to people why their requests aren't being dealt with in a way they find satisfactory. That doesn't sound like changing the system to me.

[zillah975]

I'm throwing my support behind rm wholeheartedly. I'd like to link to spare_change's comment here because all the reasons she outlined there are reasons I share.

I think that there are many strong pro-fandom candidates running, but rm has impressed me the most of all of them. I agree with each of her concerns and her points, and I like that she has not been a member of the LJ staff. Although there are arguments to be made for electing someone who has been on the staff and as such has staff contacts and an intimate knowledge of the way LJ works, I believe it's more important to elect someone who does not have existing loyalties to staff members. Also, fair or not, I lack confidence in candidates who were on-staff when LJ was deleting fannish accounts.

I like rm's professional experience

[zillah975]

And also, *points up* All that, too.

[kenboy]

Hi. seperis asked if I'd repost my thoughts here when this post was live; apologies if you've already read all or part of this. I've modified the last paragraph; everything else is as it was, so you can skim down to that if you've previously seen the rest of what follows

[soph]

For the record, Jen has never been on staff. She's a volunteer.

[rusty_halo]

I'm just seconding what the comments above me said about rm. She "gets" fandom and she cares about protecting the broadest range of content.

[icarusancalion]

Regarding legomymalfoy:

synecdochic, a former LJ employee knows her and states here that she has the right balance of fandom interest and experience behind the scenes to be effective.

furiosity (whose LJ kenboy mentions above) states here that "I can't say I see anyone more qualified than Jen to occupy an Advisory Board position. She's been involved in many aspects of LJ for many years, and that doesn't just include being a content contributor or paid user -- she's served both as a support volunteer and a member of the Abuse Prevention team. She gets fandom, particularly the HP fandom, and she gets LJ, having seen LJ's history unfold from both sides of the fence for years and years."

bookshop says that she's been a mod for years, including on Fiction Alley, and that " to this day [I] don't think I've met a single person in it who's conducted themselves with more integrity than she has, and consistently tried to bring only positive things to fandom. She's pretty much the best that fandom has to offer Livejournal's advisory board. There's just nobody who would be more honest

What we need is massive fandom voting. Get out the vote.

[icarusancalion]

The current numbers (as of 1:30 am, Sunday morning, hush, I'm always up this late):

jameth - 2400 (17.9%)
legomymalfoy - 3491 (26.1%)
rm - 1410 (10.5%)
vichan - 671 (5.0%)

After last night's spike in votes for Legomymalfoy, Jameth has kept pace with her. She's dropped from nearly 30% since 5pm.

Now if we added RM and Legomymalfoy's current votes together and split them exactly in half, then our two main fandom candidates would only lead Jameth by 50 votes.

That's divvying up the current 4,900 votes. If 14,000 of the 35,000 people in fandom_counts vote for the two of them, then it won't matter which candidate we pick of those two, both will pass Jameth. So the main priority is to get out the vote.

We can always change our minds (well, between now and Thursday).

[amireal]

re: resiging, I'm pretty convinced that not only would resiging have done nothing, resignation en masse could possibly have made things worse in the long and short term.

I've seen a lot of comments suggesting that people are assuming because the lj abuse members have said nothing about what happpened that means they simply rolled over and took it. In reality all team members sign contracts and nondisclosure agreements and those agreements probably got so far as to prevent them from even talking about the thought process behind why they (the people who probably know better about how the company works than any of us) stayed. Etc.

In summation: Non talking about it =/= did nothing. Or even only objected quietly.

[kenboy]

Resigning in mass would have made things worse how, exactly? By showing both users and management how completely wrong the decision to delete these accounts was? By demonstrating the existence of spines? By opening the way to put in place a somehow less open and transparent abuse team