insomnia has been killed by a grue

[tongodeon]

I've been a fan of insomnia, AKA Mark Kraft, for a long time. Sometimes I think he's a little too strident or picks the wrong battles, but the information he brings to the LJ community vastly outweighs the criticisms that I could make of him.

insomnia recently made a post about scienceofsleep, a community created in exchange for payment by that movie's production company. insomnia

Comments

[mrvetinari]

" without habeas review or the ability to defend himself against his accusers"

Is this snark? 'Cause really... the Terms of Use for LJ let them cut us off pretty much whenever. Their hardware, their bandwidth, their rules.

Still, I feel pretty much exactly the way you do about Mark, and to ban an "Anchor Member" of LJ over anything short of stalking is sort of BS. There are really only a couple hundred (if that) Anchor members of this community, and many many more emo kids talking about falloutboy and old ladies with their cats.

[tongodeon]

Is this snark?

Of course it's snark. insomnia hasn't been arrested, is not being sued, and is not being charged with a crime so it's pretty much impossible to give him habeas review.

[mrvetinari]

Didn't notice any [snark] [/snark] tags. Sorry.

[pir_anha]

i'd be extremely surprised if he was suspended for criticizing LJ's business decisions. heck, loads of people have criticized those, and we all still enjoy our journals as far as i can tell. i think this will turn out to be one of those cases where he was too, uh, strident

[mskala]

I didn't see the start of this, but from reading some comments, it appears that the "personal information" in question was a WHOIS entry. WHOIS entries are public, for important reasons. Posting them is not an invasion of privacy, and if Livejournal sees it as an invasion of privacy, Livejournal is simply wrong.

Of course, if the information was not actually from a WHOIS entry, then that doesn't apply.

[tongodeon]

I made the argument that it's not as clear-cut as that.

if he's got a problem with her professional decision to create [info]scienceofsleep he should have posted her professional contact information - it is inappropriate to bother her at home about what she did at work.

Conversely, if he's got a problem with her personal life (jilted lover?) it's inappropriate to post her employer's phone number and contact information to harass her at work - everyone's got a right to earn a living.

Obviously not from a legal standpoint, but from a "don't-be-a-dick" standpoint...

[mskala]

But the contact information in the WHOIS database is by definition professional contact information. Anyone who puts contact information there should expect business-related contact at that address and phone number; that is what it's for. At worst it's contact information for the wrong professional role, if she has more than one.

To a very rough approximation: the WHOIS is more like the yellow pages than the white pages.

[agentelrond]

And he's returned.

[usernameguy]

Hehe. I like the phrase "killed by a grue" in place of "account deleted by administrative action." Andre should take it up.

[kshandra]

I think it's important to note here (as I have elsewhere) that Mark is a former paid employee of LiveJournal, and has taken great pride and pleasure in being a flea in the company's ear since he was let go several years ago. I understand it to a point, particularly in the case of things that have happened since the 6A merger/acquisition/FITB that seem counterintuitive to the site the Early Adopter crowd remember (I don't quite go back that far, but I reached my 5th anniversary here in March). But as you noted above, he does tend to get rather strident at times (which is one of the reasons I no longer read his journal), and doesn't always seem to pick his battles well.

I have nothing personal against him; he was one of the first people to add me here who I didn't know in person, and his wife iceblink has become someone I consider a dear friend. But to be honest, I'm surprised his actions didn't bite him in the ass sooner.

So, does this icon count towards losing the bet, too? Or does it need to be more anthro? ;-)

[tongodeon]

So, does this icon count towards losing the bet, too? Or does it need to be more anthro? ;-)

If the teddy bear had a penis or an enormous bulge in the trouseral area I'd be losing the bet. As it stands, it's just a teddy bear.

[ikkyu2]

I like livejournal.

I like livejournal now exactly as much as I did before Six Apart took it over. They've done nothing I consider to be an improvement.

So I can understand why someone who was instrumental in helping build all the good stuff would be pissed off that others are now profiting from it.