some links

[charmian]

Via elena: Microsoft to shut down their Windows Live Spaces blogging site, allows users the option of moving to Wordpress.com.

A User's Guide to Websites, part 1: If it wasn't broken, why fix it?

I was also talking to someone who felt that SUP splitting LJ into Cyrillic (meaning mainly Russian and other languages using the cyrillic script) and non-Cyrillic services (mainly English) as a bad thing for users. However, I don't really agree. It makes sense to split them up, because the Russian-language and English usages of the site are so different, and because certain things which Russian (and other Cyrillic-script using languages) users like, might be disliked by the English language userbase, and we might have had even MORE drama. Also, some of the features for the Russian-speaking userbase are more useful when restricted only to journals which use a common language, such as 'popular posts' and 'top users.' [edited for clarity]

/goes back to reading very long book which they made an anime of. PG 400 w00t. Why do I read so slow in Japanese...

Comments

[petronia]

If you're there - where do you go to get the latest user stats for LJ.ru? XD;

[charmian]

Eh? You can only really get them by talking to the LJ staff, if they feel like talking about it. In the official stats they don't differentiate.

[acari]

FYI, Cyrillic is not a language. It's a script used for a variety of languages. The equivalent here would be the Latin alphabet and not the English language. :)

[yvi]

Yeah, I can read Russian as well as I can read Finnish... And it's not like they also split apart the users using kanji, or devanagari,...

[charmian]

Yeah, whoops. Sorry, will edit post to be more precise.

[azurelunatic]

As I recall, the thing was named "Cyrillic Services" because it was specifically being offered by SUP to not just Russian-language users, but also to Ukrainian and Belorussian.

And while the split would be more properly described as Cyrillic Services and Everyone Else, most of public Support in my time was in English.

In my ~2.5 years of helping with LJ Suggestions, I only recall a handful of requests that were neither English nor Russian, and those were dealt with on a case by case basis.

[yvi]

And while the split would be more properly described as Cyrillic Services and Everyone Else, most of public Support in my time was in English.

In my ~2.5 years of helping with LJ Suggestions, I only recall a handful of requests that were neither English nor Russian, and those were dealt with on a case by case basis.

Which only really means that users of LJ mostly were taught English as some kind of foreign language and not whether they use it for blogging etc. Also, that people not capable of writing English to such a degree didn't dare to post at suggestions. I am not sure what other conclusions could be drawn from that?

Yes, I am a bit cynical when it comes to this topic.