A LiveJournal-based tool for tracking anonymous guests by IP address

[azurelunatic]

(repost on account of original poster's deletion, cleaned up some and with points from comments added in)

Title
A LiveJournal-based tool for tracking anonymous guests by IP address

Short, concise description of the idea
A LiveJournal-based way to track otherwise-anonymous visitors by IP address.

Full description of the ideaSome LiveJournal

Comments

[ayoub]

I would very much like this feature to be implemented.

[the_cynic]

Totally against this. If you don't want random strangers on the internet to visit your journal, make all your entries Friends-only.

[sally_maria]

Yes, exactly.

[charliemc]

Agreed.

[trixieleitz]

I agree.

[gerg]

No, no, no, no, no, no.

From an abuse standpoint, this would be an utter nightmare and would up our caseload through the roof. "I BANNED X AND THIS IS THEIR IP ADDRESS AND THEY ARE READING MY ENTRIES HOW DARE THEY!!!!!"

That single scenario alone would probably double our case volume if this was implemented.

[azurelunatic]

(I don't actually want this either, but I really really don't like it when a discussion was getting interesting and the user deletes their suggestion.)

[charliemc]

As always (smile), you did the right thing to put it 'back' again. I agree that we don't want to lose a suggestion, regardless of whether we're supporting it or not...

I think people were being pretty reasonable about why they felt as they do, but I'm sure sometimes we seem a bit harsh...

[lied_ohne_worte]

I didn't see the original suggestion or the discussion therein, but from other, similar cases I also got the impression that some posters don't understand that this place is for discussing whether a suggestion would make sense for the whole user base, and that that may lead to people saying they don't want it or would never use it. I remember one where a user seemed to want a particular feature for their own comm and could not understand why we were discussing that it would not make sense if all comms could do that, because after all, they had wanted it only for their comm.

[sidheag]

What's the point of allowing people to opt out of being visible as My Guests, if doing that results in something *even more* invasive of your privacy being done instead? (IP address reveals more information that LJ userid, at least sometimes; at any rate it reveals *different* information). Very bad idea.

[azurelunatic]

Another point that the original suggester did not seem to raise. *edits*

[lifefailsme]

THIS!

[lied_ohne_worte]

No. If you find out that an anonymous person with the IP XX has looked at your profile page, what does that knowledge benefit you? It's not forbidden to look at people's profile pages, so what are you going to do about it? Phrases like "even when the visitors have no ill intent, or have done nothing wrong. " are quite telling - AFAIK, it is not possible to "do something wrong" by merely looking at a journal.

And if I don't use My Guests because I'm not that interested in obsessing about who looks at my journal and because I don't want other people to obsess about the fact that I looked at their profile page because I found an icon of theirs in a comment interesting and wanted to see what it was from, I certainly don't want another LJ feature to reveal what I looked at

[charliemc]

Yes. Yes, yes, yes. Well stated.

[gerg]

While Abuse (generally speaking, of course; every situation is different) will generally not do anything in these situations (since the worst thing we can do is make the content go away; in this case, real authorities can't really do anything once the content is removed from the service), that certainly doesn't stop people from filing reports!

Otherwise, this is definitely very well stated.

[lied_ohne_worte]

Oh yes, shouldn't have said that people "can't report it", but rather that the people it's reported to can't do anything - of course, people tend to report anything they can think of. Wasn't there someone who called the police because they didn't like their hamburger?