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To be honest, following the gender sign up/profile debacle, I wonder if the lesson LJ/SUP is going to take is that they should make the LJ changelog comm locked. /cynical

Well, thankfully they did roll-back, and they are now saying that they will never do this in the future, so we'll see what happens. Am also kind of surprised to see that a user rep has actually talked to LJ users, and is apparently working on some kind of status report (not related to this).

Anyway, I also noticed that after the limericks comm, LJ has now come up with a new idea: tmi_lj, which is supposedly a comm dedicated to group narratives involving TMI (too much information). However, they must be suitable for youth. Which means, predictably, they veer into toilet humor.

However, there DOES seem to be some method behind the madness: there are now new free TMI virtual gifts, which are AdNectar promotions, [note: Paid Perm users see them as Sold Out] and when you click on them, you see some videos (people doing embarrassing things, although I'm not sure the first vid is work safe), which are part of some 3M campaign for privacy films on video screens or something. There is also a link to share the TMI campaign w/ your Facebook friends.

EDIT:

Looks like stats have arrived at LJ
http://www.livejournal.com/statistics/

So far, most of them are only available to paid/perm users. However, the My Guests thing is live. People who have opted out are shown as "invisible guest."

Also, LJ seems to be holding a holiday promotion
http://www.livejournal.com/friends/holidaypromotion.bml

You can only see this if you are a paid/perm user, and what it seems to be is that paid/perm users can send $10 off coupons to Basic/Plus users. The coupons though, cannot be used to extend paid accounts.

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bluemeringue has the energy of a thousand suns and I envy her.

Looks like the category you link to just says sold out!

Edited Date: 2009-12-16 09:44 pm (UTC)

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Well, she's getting paid for it. I have to say, in a way I'm impressed. I wonder what she has in line next.

Really? It's still showing for my account.

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Huh, is your account paid?

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No, my LJ account is Plus.

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I downgraded to a basic, and am still seeing it?

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It's just a suspicion, and I think that's why, since my account is Perm. I checked with my tester Plus and they show.

I don't think downgrading to a Basic would take it away; Basic users are expected to see sponsored stuff like this, they just don't see banner ads besides on Plus account pages, that's all.

I admit I'm surprised that a paid user can't see them, even going directly there. I mean, I'm not too hot on LJ ads in general, but going directly there is pretty much an opt in, and I don't think a sponsored category listed along the side of everything else is a violation of not seeing ads as long as it's not the one loaded by default. Additionally, having a paid/perm account does not give one vgifts to give out, so the sponsorship is giving them benefits they would otherwise have to pay for. Since paid users can block receiving sponsored gifts only (and other accounts can block all vgifts), and because sending one is an opt-in action for the sender, I think it's probably okay to show them to paid users even if I appreciate the forethought. In fact, I suspect paid users will complain if sending free sponsored vgifts is denied them, as paid users are not all ad haters.

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Ah! I see. Yeah, it doesn't take it away.

Well, isn't that what the people complaining about ad creep wanted? For promotions NEVER to be shown to paid users? The problem is now with things like this the line between "feature" and "promotion" are being blurred, I suppose.

Anyhow, I now wonder if they can receive these gifts? I also do indeed wonder if there will be such complaints. (However, do you have sponsored gifts turned off?)

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Well, not everybody who complains about ad creep is in lock step, and I can say that the majority of them by the time you get towards the feature-promotion side of the spectrum have varying opinions, but overall if something is not obtrusive and opt in, they're okay with it being available to paid users. In this case, paid users can opt out on all levels.

People are much more likely to complain about say, beginning to use interstitial ads.

And I strongly suspect being sensitive to not showing sponsored things to paid users this time is going to get them far more flack than being cautious, because when they promote this in

news there are many paid users who are not the kind to complain about ad creep who'll want their free vgifts. And they won't like being locked out because they've given LJ money.

And yeah, I have vgifts in general and notifications for them turned off ever since the option came around--for which I'm glad considering that snowflake toss up, hehe.

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Well, what I mean is I recall a lot of complaints about them mentioning promotions in news posts and such.

However, I think we have to find someone who is a paid user AND doesn't have sponsored virtual gifts turned off to test this. It could be that it does display to paid people who do have them turned on.

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Enabling them doesn't seem to change it. "SOLD OUT" is kinda a weird message, too.

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Interesting. I will add a note about that too.

Is that the usual Holiday Promotion, BTW?

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Nope, they were more like this:

http://news.livejournal.com/95692.html

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LJ release post is live: it seems that paid/perm users can see the free stuff after all by going here.

http://www.livejournal.com/shop/vgift.bml?cat=all&showmore=please

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Aaah, that should work just fine then.

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Huh, looks like stats are live, too:

http://www.livejournal.com/statistics

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Whoa, did they do an early code push? interesting
Let me update this entry.

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And this:

http://www.livejournal.com/friends/holidaypromotion.bml

On the other hand, it does mean that if the whole ruckus had not happened, the mandatory gender would have gone live. The code was only rolled back yesterday morning, and it was unlikely it would have been caught beforehand.

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Oh, what is the holiday promotion? It only says I'm not allowed to send invites.

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"Share the love with our $10 holiday coupons! If you're a Paid or Permanent user, you can send up to 10 Basic or Plus users a $10 coupon to upgrade to a one year paid account.

Recipients can upgrade for $9.95 (instead of $19.95) for one year by enrolling in our automatic payment plan or make a manual payment of $15 (instead of $25). Please note that these coupons are not transferable and cannot be used to renew existing paid accounts."

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I like Kyle Cassiys work as a photographer, but his comment about the *bug* most likely happening because a 25 year old nerd living in his parents basement not knowing about gender-fluidity just added insult to injury

I commented to him directly, that I preferred the last user rep ... with saying nothing she at least did not help LJ sell PR spin

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To be honest, following the gender sign up/profile debacle, I wonder if the lesson LJ/SUP is going to take is that they should make the LJ changelog comm locked. /cynical

I actually think that it would be really good if they did that.

Why?

Well, consider this; changelog doesn't actually show all changes. If commits are tagged with "[int: ...]" (where ... is the log message), then it doesn't show up in changelog. Most of these uses are for so-called 'commitbacks' - I'm not entirely what these are. It might even be that all of them are. But the capability exists for them to hide any changelog entry they want. It would still show up in the repository logs, but not in the community.

If the official changelog account gets shut down, there's nothing to stop anybody from making their own from the repository log - and that one will show all the logs, including the ones which would have been hidden from the official comm.

In fact, I wonder if it's worth doing that now...

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Huh, I didn't know that.

But then what is to stop them from privatizing the repository log?

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A lot, actually. Despite however much LJ wants you to believe otherwise, the code in the "livejournal" repository is still GPL'd, and as long as they continue to make the Subversion repository itself available to the public, they can't stop the logs being available; that's the way Subversion (and other version control systems) fundamentally works, by storing the differences between each version of the code.

They could theoretically cut off access to the repository and just somehow have a 'latest snapshot' of the code, but to do that would be to discard any pretence that they're at all interested in the fact that LJ is open source; it would alienate every LJ clone site out there and make it much harder for them to upgrade. (Dreamwidth, of course, is a fork and so its development wouldn't take a hit, except it would be harder to merge in changes from LJ.)

In short, I don't think that'd be a problem.

Edited (Oops, left a word in from a previous draft.) Date: 2009-12-17 01:30 am (UTC)

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So but aren't there non LJ repositories also? Like code which isn't released under GPL?

Does SUP/LJ really care whether they alienate the clone sites?

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I can't answer that last one; I'm not in a position to be able to say how they feel about clone sites. But I can tell you now that if Squeaky made a fuss about it on InsaneJournal, it could prove problematic for SUP.

As for other repositories; the main non-GPL repository used for it is ljcom. And yes, they could easily make that private. But the thing with the GPL is that modifications to GPL code have to also be licensed under the GPL; that's its viral nature. In other words, if they modify any of the code in the "livejournal" repository, the modifications have to stay in that repository, or not distribute the code at all. (It is, as far as I know, perfectly acceptable to modify GPL code and not to distribute the resulting code - but if you *do* distribute it or a binary version of it, it *has* to be under the GPL. I'm not sure how this relates to web services like LJ, though.)

That said, I do agree that the open repositories is almost certainly more traditional than anything else, and I know that 6A/SUP have already once wanted to rewrite the whole thing in C++, probably precisely to get away from the GPL.

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Whoa, what could he do to make trouble for them? 0_o

Huh... but then, if they didn't want to distribute it, they would then have no reason to make it public?

Wouldn't that be a lot of trouble for them? Is the GPL extremely inconvenient for them, or something?

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Actually, you're probably right about Squeaky not being able to do much in regards of making trouble; I was figuring that sine IJ has a large userbase, any news that LJ are cutting them off would be received with a lot of anger and they'd make their feelings known to LJ. But, really, those on IJ may not be really that bothered about LJ anyway; it depends. So, yeah.

And I can't answer for LJ on why they continue to make it public. Maybe the GPL's definition of "distribution" includes making it available for use on the Web, and as such they're obliged to keep the source available. But if not, then they could legally take the source away tomorrow. It might not even result in a lot of backlash from LJ users who don't even know about it; rather, the backlash would come from Dreamwidth/InsaneJournal/etc, and spread to LJ from there. Most LJ users might not care about it, though, so it's possible that the net result might not be too bad.

I suspect the GPL is inconvenient for SUP, yes. I don't claim to know such though.

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Oh no, what I meant was, rather than taking the repository away, would people be up in arms if they only updated it sporadically? It seems as things are, IJ and such are not running with the latest versions of the code anyhow. JF's is ancient, and so is DJ's, for example.

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Maybe the GPL's definition of "distribution" includes making it available for use on the Web, and as such they're obliged to keep the source available.

Not that I know of--I think the GPL3 was supposed to have some kind of clause to prevent that loophole, but not GPL2. Otherwise, Squeaky would have to make his code repository available, too.

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synecdochic

There are three repositories:

livejournal: open source, GPL
ljcom: source available, but not open source; not for use
ljcomint: closed source.

www.livejournal.com draws from all three; clone sites technically can only use livejournal, but historically speaking many have also taken pieces from ljcom, since it's not actually possible to run a working production site on livejournal only without some hacking, and it lacks critical functions. (The payment system, for instance, is ljcom and not livejournal.)

Most everything LJ has that DW doesn't is ljcom, aside from a few things that are in livejournal but we hated the way they were implemented.

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Thanks for the information!

Huh, so the "livejournal" repository is totally not functional alone? That sounds... awkward, from an open source perspective.

Is there a lot of stuff in ljcomint, or are most of the proprietary features in ljcom?

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synecdochic

It's functional, in a barebones sort of way, but I wouldn't want to try to run a business site on it (as opposed to a hobby site), due to the amount of stuff you need to reinvent. Most of ljcom is business specific and branding stuff: the payment system, renames, vgifts, many styles/layouts, all site schemes past '01 or so, voice posts, TxtLJ, etc, etc, etc. ljcomint is mostly code they can't publish due to partnership agreements (the other half of TxtLJ, for instance), configuration details, and admin/backend type stuff (tools that they didn't want publicised such as the ability for an admin to log into any account, etc) although I'm sure I'm forgetting something.

A lot of what we had to do in the ramp-up to open beta was to rewrite functionality that only existed in ljcom. (We still haven't gotten it all, obviously.) It was made harder by the fact that many of our coders used to have access to ljcomint, so we had to clean-room engineer a lot of vital functionality; we specifically brought in

afuna because she'd never had ljcomint access at all.

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Very interesting. So most of the user-facing proprietary stuff seems to be ljcom.

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synecdochic

Yeah -- mostly because most site owners aren't aware of the things they're missing, since they don't know what's in ljcomint to miss it. (There are so many useful admin tools in ljcomint.)

ljcom in LJ's Trac.

Clean room is our list of things that need to be clean-roomed for LJ; most of that is ljcom, but some of it is ljcomint.

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commitbacks are commits that are made into a particular release branch, and then copied back into the main release branch, or to trunk. They're just a quick way to copy the same diff from one branch to another (and they're marked int so it doesn't get spammy with the same code being posted multiple times).

The "int" thing does have one good use: security-related patches. It was always used for those. It was also sometimes used for big promotions or features that should be kept secret for a while for whatever reason. Though honestly, it was hardly ever used when I worked there. That may have changed since then, but I have a feeling the majority of the new devs don't even know it exists. :P

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sub_divided

Owners of basic accounts don't see ads while logged in but their journals still show ads to the general public. Grrr. (I know this isn't news but someone gave me one of those $10 coupons, and now I'm internally debating whether I want to pay the extra $10 for the privilege of ensuring that people are actually able to read my blog - those full screen Best Buy ads are impossible to close on small monitors, for instance my netbook and the computer I use at work.)

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Reposting:

IIRC, if you're logged in, you won't see ads on basic accounts, right? It's only plus accounts that show ads to logged in unpaid users.

Maybe you could entirely lock your journal and redirect people to a blog that doesn't have ads, though? Like just replace it with a "go to this blog" link.

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sub_divided

Yeah I'm thinking of moving everything public to Wordpress and only using LJ as a private blog to other LJ users. Then I'd disable robot indexing on the LJ and enable it on the Wordpress. At this point, 3 years after I stopped writing fanfiction, my Google Pagerank has fallen to nothing anyway, so the move won't hurt it. :p

Ooooh, the MyGuests feature is nice! But why have so many LJ users chosen to be invisible, it's the choice of more than half my visitors. Are people on LJ really that afraid to be tracked?

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I think that would be a good idea, since then you wouldn't be subject to LJ's ad policies and since you have webspace anyway. IIRC there's a way to import LJ entries into a WP self-hosted blog (although I've never done it). Recently I've been quite satisfied w/ my self-hosted WP experience. I'm getting readers that I didn't get on LJ, and besides, the people who come over from LJ don't even leave comments, anyhow.

Heh, three years? Wow.

Because they want privacy? Yes, it seems so. XD

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I dunno, since when does a preference for a bit of privacy necessarily correlate with fear?

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I think it is still a bit of a difference if just an IP gets logged or a name

While you can track down a single user to an IP if you can prove to their provider that they did something wrong, you can generally just track it down to an institution, a city or a country.

There are people out there who I have to come to think off as unpleasant in the past, and sometimes there will still be an interesting discussion in the comment threads of those users that I will read, (and sometimes I just like to check out their entries to see if their still idiots) but do I want them to know that? No!

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