strange LJ decision?
Tuesday, September 21st, 2010 12:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
charmianRe: the latest LJ news announcement.
It is somewhat puzzling to me why LJ announced that they would make it impossible for comments to locked entries to be crossposted by non-Cyrillic Services users, but possible for Cyrllic Services users. If they wanted to allow for the possibility that some users would have no problem with having comments to locked entries crossposted, why didn't they create an opt-out feature? Or, if they wanted to make Cyrillic Services the deciding factor, why not have it automatically disabled on non-Cyrillic Services journals?
This is pure speculation, but could it have to do with the way they engineered the software, so to have an opt-out based on whose post it was, vs. whose comment it was, require a huge re-engineering? So, under the current code, possibly they can only alter it based on the commenter's preferences/characteristics, thus they can make the boxes disappear for people who haven't opted in, and turn it off entirely for non-Cyrillic Services users, but not make it follow the preferences of the post owner.
http://news.livejournal.com/129945.html?thread=90205081#t90205081
Some interesting information here: currently the active users are evenly split between English-speaking and Russian.
Possibly this does go some ways to explaining the above decision. So far the English language userbase appears hostile, or indifferent to this feature, but if the Cyrillic language userbase likes it, that essentially means it's not a situation of 'vast majority of users hate this.' Otherwise, it seems like it would have been perfectly technically feasible to just shut it off entirely for locked entries like they said they were going.
According to the wayback machine, the amount of active LJ users are somewhere around what they were in the past (in the past it was higher also), which means that in absolute terms, the number of English LJ users has decreased, and the number of Cyrillic/Russian users increased. So, the perception that English-LJ has shrunk is probably accurate. It will be interesting to see in a year or two what the ratio is.
(Also, if you look at the wayback machine you'll see that the ratio of non-posters:posters seems to have increased, in that for the same number of active users, there are fewer people who posted entries to their journals. In other words, there seem to be more people who comment/lurk without keeping active journals. So, it seems that on the whole, LJ has shifted to a more broadcast model.)
EDIT: Staffer bluemeringue comments that: "We have addressed this issue internally with [info]brenden and [info]dnewhall."
(Context: This is re: the issues with dnewhall, which were already publicly acknowledged by LJ, at least as far as the commenting went, but dnewhall denied that the entry was locked when he saw it. Re: brenden's trolling, up to this point no one from LJ had acknowledged that Brenden was in fact trolling using a sockpuppet, so is this an admission that he was indeed trolling? I suppose so, because otherwise wouldn't the statement be more like 'Brenden was in fact not that person, blah blah.'?)
It is somewhat puzzling to me why LJ announced that they would make it impossible for comments to locked entries to be crossposted by non-Cyrillic Services users, but possible for Cyrllic Services users. If they wanted to allow for the possibility that some users would have no problem with having comments to locked entries crossposted, why didn't they create an opt-out feature? Or, if they wanted to make Cyrillic Services the deciding factor, why not have it automatically disabled on non-Cyrillic Services journals?
This is pure speculation, but could it have to do with the way they engineered the software, so to have an opt-out based on whose post it was, vs. whose comment it was, require a huge re-engineering? So, under the current code, possibly they can only alter it based on the commenter's preferences/characteristics, thus they can make the boxes disappear for people who haven't opted in, and turn it off entirely for non-Cyrillic Services users, but not make it follow the preferences of the post owner.
http://news.livejournal.com/129945.html?thread=90205081#t90205081
Some interesting information here: currently the active users are evenly split between English-speaking and Russian.
Possibly this does go some ways to explaining the above decision. So far the English language userbase appears hostile, or indifferent to this feature, but if the Cyrillic language userbase likes it, that essentially means it's not a situation of 'vast majority of users hate this.' Otherwise, it seems like it would have been perfectly technically feasible to just shut it off entirely for locked entries like they said they were going.
According to the wayback machine, the amount of active LJ users are somewhere around what they were in the past (in the past it was higher also), which means that in absolute terms, the number of English LJ users has decreased, and the number of Cyrillic/Russian users increased. So, the perception that English-LJ has shrunk is probably accurate. It will be interesting to see in a year or two what the ratio is.
(Also, if you look at the wayback machine you'll see that the ratio of non-posters:posters seems to have increased, in that for the same number of active users, there are fewer people who posted entries to their journals. In other words, there seem to be more people who comment/lurk without keeping active journals. So, it seems that on the whole, LJ has shifted to a more broadcast model.)
EDIT: Staffer bluemeringue comments that: "We have addressed this issue internally with [info]brenden and [info]dnewhall."
(Context: This is re: the issues with dnewhall, which were already publicly acknowledged by LJ, at least as far as the commenting went, but dnewhall denied that the entry was locked when he saw it. Re: brenden's trolling, up to this point no one from LJ had acknowledged that Brenden was in fact trolling using a sockpuppet, so is this an admission that he was indeed trolling? I suppose so, because otherwise wouldn't the statement be more like 'Brenden was in fact not that person, blah blah.'?)
no subject
Date: 2010-09-22 12:41 am (UTC)And then want to tell their friends where they comment.
It is a very strange way of doing it. "here, we've understood your concerns, so we're going to turn off the feature for you, but anyone can turn it back on if they want to".
no subject
Date: 2010-09-22 12:51 am (UTC)It is very strange. That's why I thought it might be prompted by technical constraints. On the other hand, since the complaints have centered around accidental crossposting, maybe they believed this would address the issue, since probably few English-speaking users use Cyrillic services.
no subject
Date: 2010-09-22 01:02 am (UTC)Pretty much. From what I can see of the stats, all that's left on LJ in the US/UK userbase now are die hard users. They're barely recruiting new users. 'Fey had a post watching the decline in user numbers, I think she's now archiving it automatically somewhere, but until the SUP buyout the numbers were terrible.
But the Russian userbase is expanding dynamically. So LJ has a future for SUP, in Russia.
But hiving it off as a completely separate operation would mean it'd need to be self sustaining. Which, from what I can see, relies on them figuring out how to monetise ONTD effectively.
no subject
Date: 2010-09-22 01:13 am (UTC)Hmm, I don't know about that. I've seen through Google Translate some murmurs that things that indicate that LJ might not be growing in Russia either.
Why? I meant that technically they should be separated more; probably right now they can already see whether the English side is self-sustaining or not. I wonder if it's at least breaking even... if it wasn't, you'd think that they'd take more dramatic action to cut costs.
no subject
Date: 2010-09-22 01:25 am (UTC)But also, it'll count people like me as 'active', I still read my friend spage, crosspost and comment there, so I am active. But if those features weren't available on DW, I suspect I'd have given up by now.
It may be that the increase has plateud, I don't follow it closely.
They took massive steps to make the US operation pay 18 months ago when they fired half the staff. It may, possibly, be breaking even, but that's all they need if they're still hosting all the Russian journals in the Billings datacentre.
Essentially, the US operation only needs to not be a massive resource drain, if they'r emaking money to cover it in Russia, that the host is bound by US law is a sales point, or at least used to be.
But splitting off would mean the US arm (and that's what it is, effectively, as all the revenue goes there) needs to support itself independently. They'd almost certainly need to cut back to the bone on staffing, and they're running on a much reduced volunteer base these days.
no subject
Date: 2010-09-22 01:44 am (UTC)Well, that does count as active.
http://lj-stat.2718.us/graph.php?field=activeWithin30d&sites[]=LiveJournal
This is a graph of the active users post 10/08, so we see some weird spikes which I think are the spambot invasions. But on the whole it's remained under 200K for 2010.
No, but what I'm saying is that why can't they make the code split between Cyrillic and non-Cyrillic deeper? If it weren't as easy to switch between, I think people would be far less anxious about this, and it might be easier to make changes for the Russian side without impacting the other side.
Actually, I'm wondering why they don't just take steps to make ONTD its own site already.
no subject
Date: 2010-09-22 01:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-22 01:50 am (UTC)It does seem to me that whatever the situation was, they don't want to share it with the LJ users-- which would support the theory that it really was Brenden trolling. I have to say that I don't find the "addressed the issue internally" statement all that reassuring.
no subject
Date: 2010-09-22 01:55 am (UTC)I'm totally not surprised that they're being vague. It's legally risky for them to discuss internal affairs, as that could subject them to a possible lawsuit by either Brenden or Dnewhall. However, at least in the case of Dnewhall, part of the misconduct was publicly admitted.
no subject
Date: 2010-09-22 02:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-22 02:05 am (UTC)Actually, what I tend to take away from this is that English-side LJ is not as high of a priority. I see more staff communication on the Russian side, although I can't really evaluate the quality of it. I mean, every Wednesday there they poll the readers of the equivalent of the suggestions Lj comm on features, and solicit their feedback. That pretty much shows you where their priorities are aligned.
no subject
Date: 2010-09-22 08:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-22 08:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-22 09:12 pm (UTC)Why is LJ's business side so (seemingly) incompetent? Is there just something I'm not seeing here? Are their decisions really working on some level we can't see?
Actually, I was reading what some staff members said, and they thought it was a good compromise because they figured that Cyrillic and non-Cyrillic users never met.
no subject
Date: 2010-09-22 11:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-22 11:13 pm (UTC)