Nostalgia: LiveJournal's Greatest Fuck-Ups.

[stewardess]

Since July, 2007, when I decided to migrate from LiveJournal to the bullshit-free land of InsaneJournal, folks have asked me, "Hey, Stewardess, aren't you worried the majority of fandom/porn writers/lolcat communities will stay at LiveJournal

Comments

[caersidi]

You forgot a few options on this list.

I use LJ primarily because this is where my friends are and they are not moving. It's not apathy on their part as just not being bothered by these changes to the degree of leaving.

Plus, six years of history isn't something I am willing to jettison.

I think the Interest Search blocking may have been quietly fixed in that there is a new ticky box 'safe search filtering'. Haven't tested it though.

[lady_deirdre]

Same here.

My friends are here, and not (or not active) on IJ. The communities on LJ that I read and enjoy most (discworld and metaquotes) do not exist on IJ or are hardly active. Most of IJ, as far as I can see, is about fanfic and role-playing, two things I am hardly interested in.

So there's very little for me there.

[caersidi]

That was pretty much the way it was on GJ as well. It does seem that communities about topics such as books, movies, various topical issues (like livejournal_uk and support communities have remained here. Occult and pagan communities that interest me also seem to have remained firmly on LJ.

I use IJ as a mirror/archive but in the near year I've been over there mainly it does seem to have focused on fanfic/roleplaying.

[pferde]

woah! Hello!

[cocoajava]

Something to keep in mind, by the way

[helsmeta]

*agrees*

IJ is covered with ads and butt-ugly. Free users are limited in ways that I never realized an LJ-based site could limit users (IE, they've turned off S2 comment pages for free users).

But seriously: it is covered with ads, as was GreatestJournal. I think people who have paid accounts (and/or AdBlock) forget that. I've loaded up IJ in IE a couple of times and run screaming. If that were my main experience with the site, I wouldn't still be there. If I couldn't use Stylish to overwrite the terrible site schemes, I wouldn't still be there. I don't like the fact that I have to overwrite site schemes to get a legible site, and of course I can't overwrite the site scheme on my phone's mini-browser.

I'm not expecting Squeaky to hold out doing this forever. Brad didn't, and Brad had a lot more in the way of programming skills, I think, and more commitment to open-source. I'm honestly not sure what's going to happen from here, but I don't think IJ is what's going to save us -- it's far too much of a downgrade from LJ.

[cocoajava]

I'm a free user at IJ, and yep. That butt is ugly! Squeaky is a hell of a neat guy, and he's doing what seems to be right for everyone involved, right now. But he's in a period of explosive growth, and may be faced with some interesting choices in days to come. Some of them could be lucrative for him. Gold can be blindingly shiny stuff, and eventually when it's glare is dimmed, a no-longer-goldenchild website can become a bitter bitter place. I hope this never happens to Squeaky. I've seen it happen enough times to make me simply pause and watch, though.

BTW, I am not by nature a pessimist. I am a realist, though. :)

[pferde]

I wouldn't use IJ if I didn't have adblock. Then again I wouldn't use the internet at all if I didn't have adblock. As for siteschemes, yeah some are ugly but on the other hand the new ones are okay, and readable. I don't much care what colour a website is, only that it's functional, readable and does what I want it to do.

Free users are limited in ways that I never realized an LJ-based site could limit users (IE, they've turned off S2 comment pages for free users).
Wasn't that always the case with LJ anyway? I don't recall ever having the option of showing comment pages in journal style except when I had a paid account.

[helsmeta]

Another reason on the list for people to stay on LJ:

*) Much better technology that works almost all the time, better uptime, more features. Tracking still doesn't work on IJ, and many features we're accustomed to on LJ are only just becoming available (embedding objects, etc.). This is a pretty huge thing for some people, and I dearly wish the other journaling sites were better about upgrading their technology.

[stewardess]

For me, it's becoming a moot point, because as a basic user I'm prevented from using all of LJ's functionality. For instance, I can't search for a user name, and I can't edit comments. I expect the list of what basic account holders can do will shrink steadily, and that we won't be included when new features are rolled out.

[cygna]

Maybe you should consider paying for what you use, then, instead of expecting others to support it for you and then criticizing it when it doesn't work the way you want.

[stewardess]

The people generating user content (you and me) aren't LiveJournal's customers. The customers are the advertisers, who pay LiveJournal for "eyeballs," displaying advertisements to us.

I had ten paid accounts here. I'm letting them lapse, but there are still two.

[pferde]

I left LJ totally after Strikethrough. Deleted my account, moved to IJ lock stock and barrel, bought a permanent account there. Love it. Unfortunately my friends chose not to follow, so I ended up getting another account here and starting again. So it's not MY apathy that keeps me here, it's the apathy of others.

[stewardess]

You may have misunderstood my list of reasons. I applied "apathy" to the people who simply don't use LiveJournal. If you haven't used your account for a year or longer, you aren't going to feel a pressing need to take any action.

[pferde]

Ah yes in that case I misunderstood. I thought you meant that some LJ users had apathy towards the failings of LJ.

[emmuzka]

I estimate that the basic accounts have 6-8 months to live before they are forcibly put to death.

I can give you more reasons for not migrating to other platforms. I have a lot of RL friends with Lj's and every time something happens, they are like "huh? I didn't notice". They don't read Lj news or TOS' and they arent interested in general issues surrounding Lj that don't concern them immediately. I think that this last one, they WILL, because this wasn't about the fandom at all.

[pir8fancier]

Agree with you. It's only a matter of time before they can the Basic accounts.

[stewardess]

SUP has many ways to eliminate basic accounts without being obvious about it.

For instance, switch basic account users to plus, then make it almost impossible to get basic back (require a service request).

Some Russian users who opted out (of the SUP owned Russian LiveJournal, not a choice they have any longer) were shown ads anyway.

no_lj_ads's sup tag is interesting reading.

http://community.livejournal.com/no_lj_ads/tag/sup