quick update for LJers (especially fandom)

[anildash]

i'm really trying *not* to turn my personal LJ into some secret back-channel community support blog, but i'm loving the thoughtful, constructive feedback i'm getting from folks and just wanted to let y'all know what's up. i'm collecting all the comments on my last post or two (and of course the whole team is reading everything written on lj_biz's

Comments

[dharma_slut]

I do appreciate your willingness to talk with the lj users!

[estioe]

I'm sure fandom would love to hear about this in the lj-biz community. Not many of them know about this LJ, Anil, not even I. I just found it on an lj-biz post, not the most recent, but the one before it. People are getting a little roudy again and I really do think it would be prudent to write a statement like this one and let them know. I do appreciate you writing about it here. You seem like a reasonable man and I thank you. Just know that fandom is really angry, sad, paranoid right now, and need to be calmed down. A simple, "We're working on it, guys! We've compiled a huge list of all your great advice and are talking over it as I type this! I'll be back!" would calm so many waters.

[hanna_jo]

Yeah, even a new comment in the second lj-biz post would help, if a new post can't be made.

[jslayeruk]

Hey man, thanks for giving us a heads up. Seriously, all that most of us want is just a "We hear you, we're working on it" so thank you for giving us that.

Links Can Get You TOSsed?

[cryptoxin]

I really appreciate that you've opened up this space as an additional forum for feedback.

I'm excerpting this from a post in my journal:

"Today I learned that LJ Support is telling people that you can get TOSsed for merely linking to "prohibited" content hosted entirely offsite. Not hotlinking, not embedded videos -- just posting a link that leads you completely away from LJ if the destination includes content that could get you TOSsed if you'd posted it on LJ. You risk getting TOSsed if you post a link to fanfic or fanart that would violate LJ's policies. And now it really isn't just about fanworks -- not that it ever really was. Suddenly we can get TOSsed for linking to all kinds of websites hosting content that runs afoul of LJ's policies. That's right, LJ's policies now extend to policing the content of other websites

[florahart]

I hear you that you don't want to make your LJ where people ask questions, but since you indicate you are willing to take thoughtful feedback back to the team, I have three things I would like to say. I'll be (relatively) brief, and I'll try to be thoughtful

[anildash]

I don't know much about the first two points, but I can say categorically we're not a homophobic company and that the policies we create are always neutral in regard to orientation. Honestly, we're an extremely LGBTQ-positive organization and I think most of the complaints in that regard have been because people are (understandably) upset, because statistically so much fic *is* homo slash, and because the totaly number of actual suspensions is so tiny (I think I was making the argument in an earlier post that it's literally one in a million users) that it's impossible to draw any statistically valid conclusions.

[florahart]

No, I understand, and this is why I say I'm not particularly of the opinion there's something bad at the company in this regard. In case I wasn't clear, I really do mean, it may be worth talking about the problem of it being more likely that slash material will get reported (because people doing the reporting may in general have an objection), and whether there are ways to make sure that because those images are not as so-common-as-to-be-invisible, they aren't winding up looking more shocking to a reviewer than they really are--talking about it as an awareness issue, rather than as an issue that is a current problem. I hope that makes sense, because I do understand that in terms of percentages, there's no good way to make any kind of statistical case, and I also do understand that you can't help what people report.