Ramblings

Well, I need more links (I think. I still can't really tell what counts and what doesn't) so I'm going to totally linkdump while complaining about LJ at the same time.

I'm sure no one really wants to hear me talking about LJ anymore, but for once I'm not singing its praises! LiveJournal is a great free blogging site. With a basic account, users get a journal, can upload up to six user icons, and watch news, friends, comments and the like. Also for free, users can upgrade to a plus account, which puts advertisements on the journal, but offers more of the basic features, as well as allowing photo posts, voice posts, custom mood themes, polls and surveys, and other nifty features (a full list of accounts and features can be found here). The community is great, and a lot of fun, but more recently there's been some weirdness going on as far as content is concerned.

See, a while back there were some people upset about some of the user generated content on LJ. Recently, LJ has decided to implement a flagging system (for comparison, here is YouTube's flagging system). This post outlines the changes made, providing this quick summary:

- Adults will remain able to see all content on the site unless prevented by the exisiting security settings.
- The primary goal is to give you the ability to mark your own content so that kids aren't seeing stuff that is meant for adults.
- You now have the option to flag other people's content that you think is inappropriate for users under the age of 18. However, nothing will happen to that content unless multiple people flag it. Only then will it be sent to the Abuse Prevention Team for review.
- If your content is flagged by other users, adults will still be able to access it as long as they have the appropriate permissions.

Meanwhile, LJ users are sitting around rolling our eyes. It's hard to take this flagging thing seriously. Lj_biz posted some clarifications, but reading the comments makes it abundantly clear that most of us think it's stupid. This led to the creation of lj_policy where users could discuss and give feedback on policy matters, as well as the formation of a LiveJournal Advisory Board which at once brought up the question of how people are elected/appointed to this board and mostly caused more resentment than ease.

Of course, this is only what I've obsereved. I try to stay out of LJ politics myself, since, as you can see, it's a rather messy business. Every so often my friends page features some of the latest news and controversy, but as far as I can tell, it doesn't affect me much, so I'm staying out of it. Call me lazy, but it really isn't my problem.

Well, if that doesn't put me over the required number of links, it at least gets me close XD. I'm gonna relax with some Mahjong Titans.