Any Russian-speakers out there? LJTimes feature disliked by Russian users

[charmian]

Recently, a new feature was added to Cyrillic Services on LJ. This feature, LJ Times, causes a scrolling field to appear at the bottom of LJ pages, showing popular posts. Many Russian users were very displeased, to say the least. Eventually, SUP made (I think) a statement that there will be an LJTimes opt out. From some of the blogs, I get the impression that LJ held a meeting with some popular bloggers, who agreed that the intent of the feature was good, but had problems with the implementation. However, LJ launched the feature without revising it.

Posts in official LJ comms related to the feature:
http://ru-news.livejournal.com/17853.html
http://community.livejournal.com/lj_ru_support/616422.html
http://community.livejournal.com/lj_ru_support/616642.html
http://community.livejournal.com/lj_ru_support/616918.html

Posts made by SUP employees:
http://kapibaras.livejournal.com/115160.html
http://igrick.livejournal.com/484199.html
http://igrick.livejournal.com/485414.html

Posts made by Russian LJ users about the controversy:
http://exler.livejournal.com/1460381.html
http://walland.livejournal.com/96381.html
http://sergeydolya.livejournal.com/219258.html

News posts by roem.ru about the controversy
http://roem.ru/2010/09/28/addednews16611/
http://roem.ru/2010/09/29/addednews16636/

Comments

[bell]

They do seem rather adamant about throwing new features on to the users without testing them first, don't they? I know they can't ask about every change, but this thing of giving-and-then-back-pedaling doesn't seem optimal, either...

[charmian]

They appear to be saying it's a beta, and so now they're going to be making changes. Betaing with the entire user-base, it seems.

[opusculus]

I was rather wondering what the reaction was like on that side of things. I have Cyrillic enabled on a couple of my journals, and it was easily one of the most obnoxious features I've ever seen. I'm pleased to see how often "Adblock" appears in the comments over there. Thank you for the links!

[charmian]

Yeah, the reaction doesn't seem very positive at all.

[foxfirefey]

From Google Translate, the backend technology sounds pretty interesting, it's just that the frontend has everybody up in arrears.

And oh my gosh reading this controversy through Google Translate it sounds SO MUCH LIKE CONTROVERSIES ON THE ENGLISH SIDE. I feel this warm kinship (even though I'm not really a part of LJ controversies anymore, not like I used to be). Right down to eye rolling staff over getting overblown threats from angry users:

Well, then manager of recruitment SUP Svetlana Lactarius asked to complete a naive childish question, I quote:

Why is everyone so gone mad? mental health of the nation's cause for serious concern, if some people are willing to kill others just because they added to their pages - oh, horror! - A little red button.

And there are even screencaps of something some LJ staff person said on Facebook? Oh my. (I admit, though, I can see getting upset by service changes, but nothing's happened that's so bad to warrant threatening some staff member's family.)

[azurelunatic]

I see that someone in the comments is talking about a migration to another service, since LJ is an open platform.

[charmian]

Yeah, there are Russian language LJ clones as well, I think.

[charmian]

I don't see why they didn't beta test it more, or at least listen to the feedback the bloggers they interviewed had given them.

Yeah, things have gone pretty crazy there, I see. 0_o

From what I can figure out, she referred to some people by some bad word (not really clear how bad this word is), and later claimed she was referring only to those who had made the threats, but others interpreted it as she was talking about all the people who complained about it.

[foxfirefey]

I think I saw the reason to beta test it on everyone was...stress testing or something? I don't even know.

[azurelunatic]

I had Cyrillic Services turned on, and my GOD THE FUCKING BLINKING HOLY FUCK MAN.

[charmian]

It blinked? Yikes. What made them think people would like to see that?

[azurelunatic]

Not actual blinking like the blink tag, but rapid vertical scrolling in a bar at the bottom of the screen, stark black-on-white contrast. So it looked blinky if you weren't actively reading it.

There were complaints about how it looked on netbooks in the linked discussion.