Since there is always at least one person who doesn't get this ... this is an archived copy of a post from the previous copy of this blog, on Livejournal. Please do not misquote me, and say that I'm saying that Deadjournal has been censoring its users. As far as I'm concerned, at the moment, Deadjournal is very, very cool. Livejournal, not so much.
Which is why I'm here.
Yes, I've finally started writing and yes, this should have happened ages ago. The first stories, being of novelette length, aren't going to be posted to the blog. Neither livejournal nor any livejournal clone has static pages, as far as I know, so there's no good way to display a fifty page story on one of these blogs. In these first few stories, I'll be introducing you to a few of the characters and creating the world they inhabit, a place that bears some resemblance to Chicago. The longer stories will be found on the blog homepage, which is currently on Artshost.com, the first of these being Supplicants. As I'm writing this, I have a few hundred handwritten pages to upload, by hunt and peck, and an enthusiasm for that task that can be measured by the fact that I've only transcribed about five pages so far - a fact for which I don't apologize. I got outside more this summer, and that was wonderful.
You might notice a little evasiveness, as I say "the blog" and not "this blog". That's because this blog will probably be moving, most likely to Deadjournal, which certainly won't be offering as nice a look as Livejournal does. Much like Livejournal didn't offer as attractive a look as Imeem did. This is not a trend that I like. I won't pretend that the reader's experience won't be diminished by this, but ... even with the kind of amateur writing that I'm doing, nothing to be taken too terribly seriously, censorship has to be seen as being a deal breaker. Livejournal, after many assurances that it had learned from its past mistakes, is back at it, again. I'll discuss this in greater detail elsewhere, but let's say that the offending party in this case is one whose name you've probably heard before, and he's doing the same sleazy stuff. For all of the talk about how Livejournal has seen the error of its ways, it's interesting how that guy, whose name keeps coming up in such a horrible way, never gets removed from his post.
The way I read this is that, in each case, Livejournal was far more interested in getting a loud public outcry silenced than it was in honestly learning from those mistakes. This most recent time around, there is one guy being treated very unjustly - with management having been advised of this and refusing to act - maybe there are a few others experiencing the same at the moment, and as blatantly wrong as this is, there isn't going to be an outcry, so Livejournal is not going to back off. Even if they did ... are they going to start having employees enforcing the TOS instead of a group of volunteers? Doubtful, and the implications of this should be obvious to anybody familiar with the expression "putting the inmates in charge of the asylum". Power given to volunteers is going to be abused, as it has been in the past. This is inevitable. The volunteer abusing his position gets a little ego rush from doing so, and if he gets caught, at worst, what does he lose? Not a career, just a chance to volunteer his time. Not much deterrent value in that, especially for those whose motivation in volunteering in the first place, was to get that ego rush.
Somebody might read this and ask, "so do you think that you'll be teaching Livejournal a lesson by walking off". I don't know, and I don't care. What is of greater interest to me is that I'll be walking away from a headache. Livejournal seems to have forgotten this, but the power abusing folk on the Abuse team aren't the only volunteers on this service. Approximately 100% of the content on which Livejournal places its ads, the ads on which its revenue stream depends, are provided by a different, unappreciated class of volunteer - the volunteer writers who fill out the blogs on this site. If Livejournal can't grasp that, and obviously they can't, there are always companies that can and will, and it's not like I'm being paid to take abuse from these folks.
How they'll respond to the fact that they're being criticized in print, I don't know. Note the subscription options in the right margin on this page, none of them powered by Livejournal. These, I can and will update, as I move my blog to a new location. Oh - and yes, I have saved copies of all of my posts, so if this blog should be deleted, Livejournal Abuse will accomplish absolutely nothing other than making itself look even worse than it has in the past. I'll leave this blog up as long as I can, with enough posts visible on it for it to clearly not be an inactive blog, as defined here, or a gateway, but until real reform is seen out of Livejournal, the action is going to be elsewhere.
As it should be.
