LJ communications improves?

[charmian]

http://news.livejournal.com/120988.html

Hmm, LJ steps up their communication a bit by acknowledging user dissatisfaction on such issues as the Best Buy ads, the lack of the Give More promotion, and the lack of A La Carte userpics. It seems that they have made the break-through discovery that transparency works well. I don't know... as good as this change is, isn't it kind of basic that in communication with customers or heck, anyone, it is beneficial to repeat their complaints back to them to confirm that you have heard the complaint? I really think the A La Carte userpics issue could have been handled better by explaining this months ago. It costs LJ nothing to explain the issue as they did in this post.

Anyway, the other strange thing are the comments by a user called davidnewhall, whose name resembles that of an LJ staffer, but whose account is a plus account with a theoretically impossible creation date. He certainly speaks as though he is a staff member (although, not in IMHO a very optimal way for an employee to speak to customers), but doesn't have that official icon. I think this simply adds to confusion, especially if the staffer does not identify themselves clearly as a staffer.

UPDATE: http://news.livejournal.com/120988.html?thread=80611484#t80611484
The manager of operations has explained the matter and apologized for the comments. It seems that this was a test account of a systems operations person.

Comments

[ex_bel786]

Now that you mention that, I do recall that a couple of years or so ago, there was a fellow who got taken off the news (or lj_maintenance, I forget now) reporting detail for making fun of the userbase publicly in at least one comm (and on his LJ too I think).

[matgb]

That was Abe/Burr86 I suspect, and I don't think he was taken off, more that he stopped making the posts as every time he tried to do something constructive, he got dogpiled by aggreived people wanting him to repeat an apology he'd already made.

Abe was one of the technically competent talkative types, and I never understood the fuss over the comment he made anyway, it was actually funny and wasn't offensive unless you're actively looking to be offended by everything.

This Newhall guy, however, needs to be hit by a diplomacy cluestick.

[ex_bel786]

That's who I was thinking of. I seem to remember he quickly became the target for people to funnel all their "every thing that is wrong with LJ" frustrations, even going beyond his comment (which I also thought was funny, but he made the mistake of posting it publicly, and touched off a segment of already-aggrieved users looking for a venting target).