gunk question

[bekijane]

http://www.livejournal.com/support/see_request.bml?id=423532 going around on the deleted / purged journal rename merry-go-round what is policy? I've noticed this happen a couple of times. Do we tell the user they can rename or not? In this case the requestor specifically mentions a username. I check,

Comments

[decadence1]

It's almost 3 go to sleep ;P

[bekijane]

/me reading some good fanfic bedtime story then turning in. I probably won't sleep though, what's a body clock?

[bedsheeteyes]

What fanfic? I haven't found any stuff worth staying up till 3 for in a long time.

[bekijane]

I was reading "Pawn to Queen" having finally found a link to it that worked. I won't link to it here it's rated NC17; nudge me if you want a link. That wasn't the reason for the 3AM thing. I'm having a bad time of it with some of the insomnia symptoms of the M.E at the moment. I'll live ;)

[christine]

I was the approving priv here, and in retrospect, the approval choice was a bit messier than I thought when I made it. But in short, it's fine to include the info- I just wouldn't pass over an answer that didn't have it for a later one that did. Reason being, it's an expensive way to get an account name, so unless the user is like "omgzors, I'd give blood to get the punkrawksweetEpi username", I don't consider it a super option for most users.

Of course, the answer that I did approve is a bit of a white lie, but it's consistant with the FAQs. So you'll probably get at least a few privs that would have preferred your answer. And like I said, I totally would have approved your answer if it were first.

[bekijane]

Right. I understand. Priv pref

[ex_shattered767]

#3 - how often are you requesting reviews? You could get feedback that way.

[bekijane]

Every two weeks on the dot. Honestly I couldn't get more reviews. Because I'm so active there are always requests that fall outside reviews, and this was a request type that I thought I had sorted out; I had relegated it to "I know how to answer those I don't need to include them any more" (on advice from my mentor) until this pulled me up short.

[bluemoonshark]

I would not have considered the first answer approvable and would have approved yours without hesitation.

[xtremesaints]

ditto

[penknife]

Me, too.

[draconid]

Agreed.

[snarkbite]

For me, the approvability on this type of question comes down to the 'specific-ness' of the user's wording in asking their question.

If they are generic (just asking about deleted journals in general, or inactivity, etc), then they can get a generic answer of just 127.

But if they are specific (a username they checked or we can check, they mention 'the one I want is purged', etc), then we need to be specific and give them all the information we have. Which is the renaming option -- they can then decide what to do based on all available information. So here, I would have passed the first answer and went on to a mentions-renaming answer.

It's rather akin to the 'how do I change my username' questions that are worded just that simple -- we don't pimp the 'rename' option over the 'create new journal' option, because we want them to read about both options equally. Let them make the decision they want to make without being biased or thinking there *is* only one option.

[bekijane]

This is how I was trying to judge it when answering these requests. It is almost as fine a distinction as the one that marks one IM profile request as embedding, and the next as gunk.

I feel I would be justified not mentioning the rename option if the journal they wanted was deleted and not purged - but again it's a very fine line. That only to avoid the "It's not purged you can't rename to it, we don't know when it will be purged -- REGREEN purge it already! -- !pony -- rinse and repeat sic ad nausem." Thoughts?

[snarkbite]

When it's just a deleted request (the username is only deleted), I personally would never mention the rename option -- it's far too much of an unnecessary carrot-dangling item. Purging of their desired journal may *never* happen, LOL, so there's no point in telling about this option in these cases. In those cases, just a standard "Deleted journals are still under the control of their owners, usernames are not recycled, pick another name" or whatever is appropriate wording.

[christine]

I really like your reasoning here ;)