It's only a flesh wound
I hate how paranoid LJ is making me. With all their bannings and horrible communications as of late, it's quite understandable for one to read their latest post feeling very defensive and wary. I certainly felt that way. And the post is hard to understand for someone who isn't 100% tech savvy, which is most of LJ's userbase, including me. I was very concerned after reading the post, but before I commented (and got too paranoid) I read the comments. Thankfully someone there clarified that this is a regular, non-alarming thing that most sites do and it's nice that LJ even let us know about it. So now I feel better. But the post could have contextualized what they were doing and use less technical speak. That would have calmed a lot of us down from the get-go.
That said, reading the new comments is upsetting me - as a lot of "LJ is just trying their best" and "anyone on the internet should know what 'analytics' means, and if you don't, you're an idiot!" commenters have started appearing. And I now know many of the commenters (both with whom I agree and disagree) which gives the whole enterprise a surreal feeling. I think we're all tired and rubbed raw by everything and that makes arguments easier to explode and rational, reasoned, calm discussion harder to come by. Maybe I just shouldn't read the comments at all, even though I like to stay informed (and mod a related community).
The main things that are pissing me off:
- People saying that if you don't understand the technical speak in the original post, then you're an idiot. And that (if you understand the technical speak), the original post is perfectly clear. Have you people heard of PR? That stands for 'public relations' and it's all about phrasing things simply so that Joe-and-Jane-Blow off the street know what the fuck you're talking about. That's what LJ should be doing, and no it's not the end of the world if they don't, but don't fucking troll the comments saying that people have no reason to be confused.
(I worded this much more calmly in the comments: "I completely agree. 'You should know this if you use the internet' is a great self-defense mechanism for people who are immersed in the technical world and the language in the post is second-nature to them, and they don't understand how someone can NOT know most tech lingo. But reality check - most people on LJ aren't tech specialists, and LJ/6A would save themselves a lot of headaches if only they would remember that. Public relations rule #1: Know your audience. ")
- People commenting (joking or not) about cat macros - how they're surprised they haven't shown up yet, how LJ/6A didn't have comments enabled in the previous lj_biz post because they're sick of cat macros, etc. GIVE IT A FUCKING REST.
FACT: The cat macros only start after unannounced deletions when users don't feel that they're being heard. The few that do end up getting posted in lj_biz in these updates are just that - few. And far between. The only "Cat Macro Wars" that have been seriously and consistently launched by a large group of users for days on end has been in direct response to Strikethrough and Boldthrough.
It's a legitimate form of protest for an online medium when people have been unceremoniously deleted and a concerned userbase has been ignored for days (usually it takes a week to get any kind of official response). I see no reason to use it now, so calm the fuck down.
More positively:
- This is my favourite comment explaining why people are paranoid.
- A HILARIOUS description of the level of "debate" in the comments.
Okay, I feel much better now. Yay, ranting!
Someone just posted a screencap they took of the second-last lj_biz post (the one that announced 6A CEO Barak Berkowitz had been replaced) before comments were disabled. Awesome! I'm adding that to ljconfl_archive.
Also, if you voted to be on my poetry filter, you've now been added. My poetry tag is here and my archive post is here.