Global Expiration Date

[eyenot]

Title
Global Expiration Date
Short, concise description of the idea
A maximum age for all of the journal's entries. Entries any older go kaput.
Full description of the idea
The user sets an expiration date, of say four months and 20 days. Or, to make it easier in math, it could just be a number of days -- like 140, or 356+140=496

Comments

[belladonna]

I hope this is either meant to be optional or satirical.

I personally would despise and loathe this option. Part of the reason for the journal is to see how you've changed and grown over a certain amount of time, at least for some people. To have ANY entries be killed would be a violation of the users rights.

[kibbles]

Would defeat the purpose, for me, of having a journal -- I just recently went over my old entries and it was wonderful, even the most banal ones. Nice to see how my life changed over the past year.

I would have to make a point to regularly download my journal into that difficult hard to read text format, and then burn it to CD, to be safe.

So then I might as well get something like Grey Matter or Blogger and keep it on my own server, where I know my entries will always be safe.

I would hope that the option to keep for as long as possible would always remain.

[thelance]

1. "free up space": it's been said before, space is not an issue.
2. "free up time": what time? how? if i have to worry about putting in an exp. date, it will take longer to add an entry.

and some (most??) people do care what they said/did a year and a half ago.

and....

[thelance]

...something very similar was previously suggested:
http://www.livejournal.com/talkread.bml?journal=suggestions&itemid=49209

Re: and....

[eyenot]

It's not really the same thing; that's why I posted it. :P

Re: and....

[thelance]

and, that's why i said "very similar". :)

[dottey]

So far there have been 3 votes against this option. I too would never want to set an expiration on my entries. But I do see its usefulness - if you happen to want your journal to be like that.

So, I give my vote for someone to add this as an option. Just don't make it a requirement :-)

[eyenot]

Most definitely, this would be an optional feature, but I think it's not a bad idea for the option to default to ON.

But I sure do want to set an expiration date for my entries, and pretty badly at that. I think having to go back and expire them by hand, as was made in a previous suggestion, would defeat the purpose -- if that's the case, you could go back and just delete them by hand.

But I personally feel the journal is more useful and more powerful and dynamic for me when I am watching myself through a narrow band of progressing time. Six months if a long time with a lot of shit going on -- I would probably set my expiration date to three months.

Re:

[dottey]

Defaulting to ON is NOT a good idea. It goes against the basis for a journal.

Speaking of real paper journals, who writes in them with the purpose of throwing them away a year later?

Like I said, its useful for some. But do not default it to on.

OK! Default to OFF - But make it a visible option!

[eyenot]

I see your point. Livejournal is special in that you can store up all the journal entries over the years.

Okay, default to OFF, but -- I think the option, and explanation, should appear in your user options screen, which means users will see it as they are creating their new journal and be able to decide right there whether they want to turn it on, and where to set the expiration date.

[volkris]

I'm in favor of any features that give users more control over their own journals.... though this one seems kind of useless :)

So, sure, but I would consider it pretty low priority.
If space is becomming an issue then perhaps it should be a higher priority. And if the LJ crew wanted to start playing "screw the journalers" they could implement it manditorially for all non-paying users. Maybe even hold the entries as unreadable until they got a paid account.

[eyenot]

You read my mind -- it is for all of those reasons that I suggested it. As for people who 'repeat' that space is not an issue, I won't hold it against them or say 'i told you so' when there are like seven million free journallers and the same little south park server farm chugging along and breaking down.

As for 'screw the journallers', I would rather refer to it as 'quality control', but whatever ropes your goat :)

[eyenot]

doesn't make sense to rant at me about that, considering i'm a user, too.

sorry, but even if you don't like my suggestion that does not make me somehow Alien -- and therefore you can't use that against me.