Posting for a friend!
The internet is failing ghost_lingering, so here is a post that I believe she has been trying to make for four hours ... not mine!:
Hey all,
This has taken me FOREVER to post. You realize that fandom killed lj right? Anyway.
I posted a suggestion here in a comment on the initial community post, but thought I'd repost here, edited and expanded, so more people would potentially read:
I've got a proposal, if it seems like this is still necessary. (Initially I thought it could be an alternative to day 3, but now I'm thinking it's something that we could/should do ANYWAY, even if it turns out this seven day thing isn't really necessary.) Perverted Justice, which seems to be a legit anti-pedo-cyber-org thing has a write-up about this whole fiasco on their main page. They link to a report they did on lj a while ago which, to me, is super super interesting--apparently they told lj about many many actual pedo comms and ljs and the LJ people did absolutely nothing, citing that it wasn't illegal. So. Here's what I propose:
I don't want lj to be a home for actual honest-to-god pedophiles any more than...well, I'm assuming most people in fandom/on lj. So let's do something about it! I say that we find all of the actual, real, creepifying communities that weren't shut down in all of this (because according to Perverted Justice, there are several) and we all contact lj telling them that not only did they handle this badly from, well, most angles, it didn't even work--they didn't get everyone they were looking for. And then we say that, in addition to being angry at the way the situation was handled, angry that fans were mistaken for pedophiles, angry that fiction seems to be a dirty word, we're angry that lj wasn't taking responsible, sensical, logical, reasonable, smart measures to prevent/limit/get rid of the problem of pedophilia comms in the first place. Because, you know what, I for one *AM* angry about that. I'm angry that a website I've loved for a really long time is apparently historically known as being a perfect place for pedophilia comms because, when told about it, lj wouldn't do anything. Until now. I think that, beyond apologies to fandom/fannish comms, and the Lolita discussion comm, and survivor ljs, I think that lj really needs to start to talk, publicly, about what they are going to do about stuff like this in the future. Because obviously the way they are doing it now (or not doing it, as the case may be) isn't working.
In the original write up by Perverted Justice they list examples of ljs/comms that they took issue with, so I suspect that if fandom can't figure out what communites which should have been targeted then contacting Perverted Justice might prove useful. It would also be good to have examples of times that people have submitted complaints to lj previously about stuff like this and were ignored. I remember seeing someone write an lj post about this, but I lost the link. Anyway, it would be nice to set up a pretty good list of times when people, fannish or no, complained about this in the past and lj ignored it, so we can have something definitive to point to when we say: "You knew about the problem, you didn't do anything, and now you've bungled what you did do". Although probably a bit nicer than that--I know that lots of people are angry at lj over this, but I think, hey, the devil you know, right? I'd love to see lj address the issues we put forth to them, instead of having to co-ordinate a move for all...28173 (# from fandom_counts) of us. So, I'm all about taking this as a concern to them, and (nicely) forcing them to have a dialogue with us about how to fix it.
If nothing else this makes the actions we take less about "Oh no our porn! Our fanfic!" (at least from an outsider perspective) and more about some of the overall issues that lead up to this (i.e. lj being stupid about their policies on this to begin with)...which possibly will make us look more sympathetic to the casual reader.
Thoughts? Yes? No?
Hey all,
This has taken me FOREVER to post. You realize that fandom killed lj right? Anyway.
I posted a suggestion here in a comment on the initial community post, but thought I'd repost here, edited and expanded, so more people would potentially read:
I've got a proposal, if it seems like this is still necessary. (Initially I thought it could be an alternative to day 3, but now I'm thinking it's something that we could/should do ANYWAY, even if it turns out this seven day thing isn't really necessary.) Perverted Justice, which seems to be a legit anti-pedo-cyber-org thing has a write-up about this whole fiasco on their main page. They link to a report they did on lj a while ago which, to me, is super super interesting--apparently they told lj about many many actual pedo comms and ljs and the LJ people did absolutely nothing, citing that it wasn't illegal. So. Here's what I propose:
I don't want lj to be a home for actual honest-to-god pedophiles any more than...well, I'm assuming most people in fandom/on lj. So let's do something about it! I say that we find all of the actual, real, creepifying communities that weren't shut down in all of this (because according to Perverted Justice, there are several) and we all contact lj telling them that not only did they handle this badly from, well, most angles, it didn't even work--they didn't get everyone they were looking for. And then we say that, in addition to being angry at the way the situation was handled, angry that fans were mistaken for pedophiles, angry that fiction seems to be a dirty word, we're angry that lj wasn't taking responsible, sensical, logical, reasonable, smart measures to prevent/limit/get rid of the problem of pedophilia comms in the first place. Because, you know what, I for one *AM* angry about that. I'm angry that a website I've loved for a really long time is apparently historically known as being a perfect place for pedophilia comms because, when told about it, lj wouldn't do anything. Until now. I think that, beyond apologies to fandom/fannish comms, and the Lolita discussion comm, and survivor ljs, I think that lj really needs to start to talk, publicly, about what they are going to do about stuff like this in the future. Because obviously the way they are doing it now (or not doing it, as the case may be) isn't working.
In the original write up by Perverted Justice they list examples of ljs/comms that they took issue with, so I suspect that if fandom can't figure out what communites which should have been targeted then contacting Perverted Justice might prove useful. It would also be good to have examples of times that people have submitted complaints to lj previously about stuff like this and were ignored. I remember seeing someone write an lj post about this, but I lost the link. Anyway, it would be nice to set up a pretty good list of times when people, fannish or no, complained about this in the past and lj ignored it, so we can have something definitive to point to when we say: "You knew about the problem, you didn't do anything, and now you've bungled what you did do". Although probably a bit nicer than that--I know that lots of people are angry at lj over this, but I think, hey, the devil you know, right? I'd love to see lj address the issues we put forth to them, instead of having to co-ordinate a move for all...28173 (# from fandom_counts) of us. So, I'm all about taking this as a concern to them, and (nicely) forcing them to have a dialogue with us about how to fix it.
If nothing else this makes the actions we take less about "Oh no our porn! Our fanfic!" (at least from an outsider perspective) and more about some of the overall issues that lead up to this (i.e. lj being stupid about their policies on this to begin with)...which possibly will make us look more sympathetic to the casual reader.
Thoughts? Yes? No?