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So LJ is now talking and apologizing
May. 31st, 2007 07:27 amThe link to the news journal is here, although it's availability is coming and going. If you want to read it, just click on the live journal homepage and it's there too for right now.
I'm glad to see both a coherant response as well as specific addressing of concerns from fandom and survivor groups. We cna only hope that when they start looking at the suspended accounts, they took a good, long hard one.
I'm still leary of the 'suspend before looking' policy they seem to have in place, since that's what started the whole thing. I understand they have neither staff, time, nor really, money to do a full investigative scan of every person and community that gets reported, but still...
Hopefully, though, this has taught them that going 'oh, okay, bad peoples, right *delete*' as an automatic response is a bad thing, escpailly with something as far-reaching as entire subject topics. Only time will tell, I guess.
As for our part, some of the outrage does remind me of the whole 'breastfeeding' thing that happened last year, and it got me to thinking. Yes, LJ owes its members--we are, after all, their lifeblood. But by the same token, when we start yelling about 'responsibility' and taking action and thinking (because gods know, so many people do not think), it occured to me that as the intelligent, responsible people in this equation, we could also do a few things to both make LJ's job easier, and keep those of us who might have 'questionable' material in the LJ's a little better out of reach when some numb nut organization gets their panties in a twist.
So...a few ideas:
On RP journals...most of the time, the interests are listed to give the character flavor, right? Which is cool if you're playing a 'white hat' and all the interests are nice and wholesome. NOt so good though, when they have some of those tag-words that got so many comms and LJ's deleted.
So...an idea. Most of us know how to backpost, put links in our bios, and so forth. So...rather than listing the 'questionable' interests in...well...interests, why not do a bio-post somewhere within the journal itself and include the interests there? Leave the interest page for generic things such as the show/book/characters/etc that your character is from. That way other fans of your fandom can still find you, but the crazies will have a harder time of it. This won't work quite as well for survival groups, but in their case, maybe listing the discussion topics in the bio page (where you can expand on them as well), rather than in the interests might work as well. IN those cases where a little more specification is needed, hmn...surely there are tagwords (or phrases) you can use that won't get the searchers up in arms. For instance, instead of just listing 'pedeophilia' as an interest, use the phrase 'surviving pedeophilia' or 'pedeophilia survivors'. If the full termniology is there somehow, then there's less cause for who-ever is doing the checking to have an automatic knee-jerk reaction and just delete out of hand.
For LJ's and comms that are all about the sex, drugs and rock and roll...again, I'm not really sure how to handle that to make it 'easy' to be found by new players, but someway of describing the intent of the subject matter and keeping the interest section 'clean' might be a good bet. Then use word of mouth for recruiting...
I know that that in a way seems to be a 'backing down' stance, but they're just ideas--don't hide what you have, just don't make it easy for people looking for trouble to find you. I also know it makes a little extra work for us as the fans and writers and artists, but...mutual back-scratching might smooth this out a lot faster and better than just one side being saddled with the whole repsonsibility for setting it right and improving how things are done.
((X-posted to GJ account))
I'm glad to see both a coherant response as well as specific addressing of concerns from fandom and survivor groups. We cna only hope that when they start looking at the suspended accounts, they took a good, long hard one.
I'm still leary of the 'suspend before looking' policy they seem to have in place, since that's what started the whole thing. I understand they have neither staff, time, nor really, money to do a full investigative scan of every person and community that gets reported, but still...
Hopefully, though, this has taught them that going 'oh, okay, bad peoples, right *delete*' as an automatic response is a bad thing, escpailly with something as far-reaching as entire subject topics. Only time will tell, I guess.
As for our part, some of the outrage does remind me of the whole 'breastfeeding' thing that happened last year, and it got me to thinking. Yes, LJ owes its members--we are, after all, their lifeblood. But by the same token, when we start yelling about 'responsibility' and taking action and thinking (because gods know, so many people do not think), it occured to me that as the intelligent, responsible people in this equation, we could also do a few things to both make LJ's job easier, and keep those of us who might have 'questionable' material in the LJ's a little better out of reach when some numb nut organization gets their panties in a twist.
So...a few ideas:
On RP journals...most of the time, the interests are listed to give the character flavor, right? Which is cool if you're playing a 'white hat' and all the interests are nice and wholesome. NOt so good though, when they have some of those tag-words that got so many comms and LJ's deleted.
So...an idea. Most of us know how to backpost, put links in our bios, and so forth. So...rather than listing the 'questionable' interests in...well...interests, why not do a bio-post somewhere within the journal itself and include the interests there? Leave the interest page for generic things such as the show/book/characters/etc that your character is from. That way other fans of your fandom can still find you, but the crazies will have a harder time of it. This won't work quite as well for survival groups, but in their case, maybe listing the discussion topics in the bio page (where you can expand on them as well), rather than in the interests might work as well. IN those cases where a little more specification is needed, hmn...surely there are tagwords (or phrases) you can use that won't get the searchers up in arms. For instance, instead of just listing 'pedeophilia' as an interest, use the phrase 'surviving pedeophilia' or 'pedeophilia survivors'. If the full termniology is there somehow, then there's less cause for who-ever is doing the checking to have an automatic knee-jerk reaction and just delete out of hand.
For LJ's and comms that are all about the sex, drugs and rock and roll...again, I'm not really sure how to handle that to make it 'easy' to be found by new players, but someway of describing the intent of the subject matter and keeping the interest section 'clean' might be a good bet. Then use word of mouth for recruiting...
I know that that in a way seems to be a 'backing down' stance, but they're just ideas--don't hide what you have, just don't make it easy for people looking for trouble to find you. I also know it makes a little extra work for us as the fans and writers and artists, but...mutual back-scratching might smooth this out a lot faster and better than just one side being saddled with the whole repsonsibility for setting it right and improving how things are done.
((X-posted to GJ account))
