If you all would take just a moment to go and read this entry over on Dreamwidth and then go to Livejournal feedback to tell them what you think, I'd be grateful. Be polite, but firm
( Read more... )
Apparently enough people wrote in. The DW entry you linked to has the following ETA:
"EDIT again: reply just received from Anjelika Petrochenko, US general manager:
hi Denise,
thank you for your feedback. This is all very informative, I received many email with this already. However, the code update that you refer to is not live and did not have any chance to go live. That was a beta release, we always push code to beta to see if everything works correctly. In many cases it does not and we either fix bugs or pull the code from the final release plan. We were going to add a gender field to the sign up user flow, which is fine, but by mistake it became a mandatory "female/male" field for everyone. This is why this is not going live. And this is what beta releases are for, to see problems and solve them before any user faces a problem.
I would appreciate if you share this information with your friends that are also concerned.
Best regards, -- Anjelika Petrochenko GM, LiveJournal US"
Glad to see that they are not being evil after all.
See my icon. I don't buy it. I think it was a quick excuse to shut off the flood of trouble they saw they were bringing down on themselves. But eh, as long as the code doesn't go live, it doesn't matter. At least they know it's a bad idea if it gets pitched in any future meetings or something.
Reading the code... it looked to me like a fuck-up. I think if there were a policy-change in this direction the code change would have been more comprehensive about that (unless they specifically wanted to try to slip it in under the radar, which I'm not sure I'd put past them).
But even if it is a fuck-up it speaks of a lack of diversity/awareness training at LJ-HQ. I mean, this kind of mistake is made much easier if you don't really care about what it is you are meant to be implementing. If you think the feature is important you are much less likely to forget about it (you might still mis-implement it).
Quoting from the answer naamah_darling received (see ETA in entry):While the code in question had gone to our beta (testing) server, it had not gone to our production server, and will not do so due to this problem. Furthermore, we'd like to clarify that code posted to the changelog community is not always final, as such code must then go through the beta testing process and can often be changed before actual implementation. While I don't know the specifics in this instance, I can attest that this is in general true. (I follow the code changes, and submit code and informal or spot reviews occasionally.)
"EDIT again: reply just received from Anjelika Petrochenko, US general manager:
hi Denise,
thank you for your feedback. This is all very informative, I received many email with this already.
However, the code update that you refer to is not live and did not have any chance to go live. That was a beta release, we always push code to beta to see if everything works correctly. In many cases it does not and we either fix bugs or pull the code from the final release plan.
We were going to add a gender field to the sign up user flow, which is fine, but by mistake it became a mandatory "female/male" field for everyone. This is why this is not going live. And this is what beta releases are for, to see problems and solve them before any user faces a problem.
I would appreciate if you share this information with your friends that are also concerned.
Best regards,
--
Anjelika Petrochenko
GM, LiveJournal US"
Glad to see that they are not being evil after all.
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But even if it is a fuck-up it speaks of a lack of diversity/awareness training at LJ-HQ. I mean, this kind of mistake is made much easier if you don't really care about what it is you are meant to be implementing. If you think the feature is important you are much less likely to forget about it (you might still mis-implement it).
Reply
While I don't know the specifics in this instance, I can attest that this is in general true. (I follow the code changes, and submit code and informal or spot reviews occasionally.)
Reply
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