LJ Feedback Regarding Proposed Release 88

[moragmacpherson]

I may be making the permanent paid move of this account to DW shortly. (I've bought time for other accounts here before, but for reasons listed below, have retained LJ as the main space for this account.  Do you think if enough of us show up with cash, Denise will be able to upgrade the servers and maybe finally fix the span/cut tag bug I've sent eleventy-billion bug reports on?  I still don't want to lose my comments over there or have to change all of my internal links manually, but it's looking pretty grim.)  Anyone who needs a DW invite code, I have a few.  Anyone else who just doesn't feel like going through the pain in the tuckus of moving their internal links, I suggest you start sending individual feedback or just make your feelings known on the latest LJ news post.

To whom it may concern,

I am a paying user. All of my stuff is here.  I don't want to move it to a new service-- it would be an incredible headache.  I am going to try very hard to be civil and courteous and use capslock only when necessary.

If the proposed Comment System changes go into effect, I DON'T HAVE ANY CHOICE.  I WILL HAVE TO STOP USING THIS SITE.  IT WILL NO LONGER PROVIDE THE SERVICES I NEED.  THIS IS A STATEMENT OF FACT.

But that's actually kind of secondary to my main issue.  Here's the thing:

I'm a native English speaker
Puedo leer en español. 
Ich kann Deutsch lesen.
أنا أتكلم وأقرأ باللغة العربية
אני קוראת גם עברית

That's five languages and three alphabets which I can read and understand.  Among the languages I can't read? Russian. I can't read the Greek or Cyrillic alphabets - so I can't even make intelligent guesses about word meanings.

I understand that Livejournal is currently a Russian enterprise, but its original founder and much of its userbase remain English-speakers -- and many of them are ONLY English speakers.

So why is it that the details of a proposed major site overhaul were released exclusively to the general public in Russian and Russian only?  (igrick.livejournal.com/528687.html)

I even tried running that post through google translate, Russian to English.  It's incomprehensible.  (http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Figrick.livejournal.com%2F528687.html)

I had to search out a Russian speaker to give me an idiomatic translation before I realized that the post proposed changing the comment system to eliminate subject headings on comment threads (something which several of the communities I belong to REQUIRE all commenters to use) because I had no clue what "have no more comments field "issues", and claims at this time are not accepted;" was supposed to mean.

It appears that your main site designer igrick is a native Russian speaker.  That's fine.  He's an engineer - I don't expect them to know how to communicate in their native language, much less a second one - but at least one of your marketing people should have put out ANY form of prior notice in English (or Spanish or German or Arabic or Hebrew, or-- I dunno, SANSKRIT - ANY OTHER LANGUAGE) would have been appreciated before the mysterious line "Comment pages have been redesigned! More information about specific changes will be announced in the next few days." was announced FIVE DAYS prior to the implementation. 

Prior notice certainly would have saved igrick a lot of time coding and programming an entirely new commenting system that a large and vocal portion of your customers DO NOT WANT. And when I say "DO NOT WANT" I mean: the proposed new system which will FORCE many of us to migrate to other services.  It will no longer be possible to use LJ to hold the discussions, competitions, and games that many users play here - the way we've done so for nearly a decade.  It's not just "DO NOT WANT," it's "If you make this change, I no longer have any use for your services and will cease paying to access them."  If we'd known his intentions earlier, pehaps igrick could have used his time  fixing glitches that users had actually complained about? 

Furthermore, you should peruse the comments on igrick's aforementioned post.  I have no idea what the Russian commenters are saying, but around page five or so, English language replies begin to appear (I suspect as user translations started to trickle down).  Mr. Igrick's responses vary from unprofessional to downright condescending and snide.  In particular, this thread (http://igrick.livejournal.com/528687.html?page=6&view=7804975#comments) reveals him to be... less than optimal at dealing with the general public, much less the angry mob that is rapidly forming.

And if you have any doubts about whether I (and others who use this site for similar purposes) will walk out on this place, please look into the very recent past and what happened when delicious.com drastically altered its interface and usage system and the amount of web traffic and paying accounts which it lost permanently as a result.

tl;dr: Implement the new comment system and you will lose thousands of paying customers who don't really want to go, but have no other choice.  Including me.  Please take this under advisement and consider pushing Release 88 (or simply the comment system change) back until your designers and marketers understand the full impact of what they propose.

Good luck sorting out this fine mess you've made,
MM
 

Comments

[jjhunter]

Note this interesting bit of backtracking added to the main post (in English!):

A note to users of RP, Meme and other communities, where subject line is crucial for operation: for the moment we are developing only standard commenting representation, well know in LiveJournal as S1 styles, but we will keep subject lines, both in terms of form and representation, in advanced — S2 — styles, and provide an ability to keep it forever for certain communities, as well as, by request, will develop an extra functionality for such communities thru OpensSocial applications going public next year.

And isn't that a weird bit of side communication - what if someone who reads that journal doesn't speak English?

[moragmacpherson]

It's most likely in English because all of the English language responses have been highly negative. Some, but not all, of the Russian responses are positive (or at least, they come up as positive sounding gibberish on google translate - and I thought Gtr was bad at Arabic--yeesh!).

Seriously, I wanted to spend today on the soap box about SOPA but meanwhile, my main pit stop on the internet is doing its damndest to implode on itself. We're besieged both from abroad and on the homefront.

[tabaqui]

This frustrates me no end because i *like* lj. My community is here, my friends are here. I know that if some or even a lot of us move to DW or AO3, what we/i have will be lost. And the thought makes me angry. Why can't they just *leave it alone*!!

It works - quit trying to 'fix' it!

[moragmacpherson.livejournal.com]

As I said to someone earlier: it's not the money, it's all of the stuff! Even if I move my paid account to DW, while I may stop crossposting here, I don't think I'll delete. Some of my friends who have fully migrated deleted their accounts and I go back to the comms and see all of the Deleted Posts and it makes me want to cry. I honestly don't know if I should start making PDFs of all my favorite posts and stories right now, before the mass deletions start. It's the holidays, guys: I really don't have time for this. Not to mention, all of the re-bookmarking and broken links... ARGH!

It's not that I dislike DW -- just that I'm already here, and so is most of the stuff that I use most. I hate that so many of my favorite things get lost whenever LJ decides to group-fail once again. I'm way too invested in this place -- it's where and how I meet really awesome people like you. ♥


**clings**

[tabaqui]

This exactly! I hate it when a comm or lj just *vanishes* - i hate seeing favorite people or stories going away. I am seriously considering - and i'll probably do this in the new year - saving all the fanfic i really like to my hd. I just...can't stand the thought of it all going away. I already dl and save art and vids, because things just vanish too much.

Dear gods, it will be a project. But i just don't want to lose this stuff!

*clings back*

[moragmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I have a pretty decent collection of .pdfs with fics because I like to read them on my Nook, but the COMMENTS... good heavens, I've learned so much and made so many good friends in other people's comments. Not to mention the closed comms and the Wayback Machine is wretched even with OPEN comms on LJ...

Hell, I already have a spreadsheet to help me keep track of who people are on LJ vs. GChat: I really don't want to have to add a DW and an AO3 to it. I AM FUNDAMENTALLY LAZY! LJ, IF YOU JUST STOP AND SETTLE INTO COASTING ALONG, I WON'T BITCH, HONEST.

And until today I thought there couldn't be a worse mod reaction to complaints about a shitty, dysfunctional redesign than Jeff's "You'll get over it," back on Fark.com in '06.

/Left Fark, still hasn't gotten over it. Take that, Jeff!
//Okay, I went to a couple of Fark parties after and I may or may not have drunkenly mooned/flashed Drew in 2008 (there's photographic evidence of one and allegations of the other), but that was because they were held by people who migrated to Gchat with me!

[tabaqui]

Oh yes - comments are so awesome, especially in thinky or meta posts. It would totally suck to lose them!

I don't have half the lj people i follow regularly friended/followed on DW, which is awful. And i don't update over there. I wish there were an lj to dw update...thingy! Instead of the other way around.

Yis, omg, this guy is so damn *snarky* about this, tossing out lame-ass 'statistics' and just generally being an asshat. Rar.

[sneaqui.livejournal.com]

I am completely ENRAGED that all this information about site updates is being posted exclusively in Russian on a journal that no one would think to look at unless they were pointed in that direction.

Plus, does LJ not have its own US "branch"?

Let me know what you find out about the difference between S1 and S2 accounts because ?????

[moragmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Thanks. The only reason I got to that site was I saw the "Comment pages have been changed!" line in the lj_news post and said to myself "Well, this has never been a good thing in the past, how have they screwed this up now?" An hour later I finally got to the failfandomanon thread which had the idiomatic English translation so that I could understand the thread title thing. No one I've found has actually been able to get into the beta server, so... yeah.

My individual "contact us" feedback re: the design got a somewhat canned response, but it mentioned that "I will ensure that your comments are passed along to the appropriate personnel for consolidation with other user feedback for review," which makes it sound like I was far from the only one to send the personal feedback. The respondent's profile indicated that she's based in the U.S., so they have at least a few American employees remaining. The lj_news thread is over 700 comments now, almost all negative (and in English), but there's no real feedback from the staff there. igrick has updated his post to indicate that he's open to keeping thread titles as "an option on some styles temporarily," but as far as I can tell he really doesn't get it (his English is better than my Russian, but not by much) - at least he's stopped being openly insulting.

As I stated at one thread or another: I have no idea what the difference is between S1 or S2. I'm a writer, not a programmer or designer: which is why I wound up at LJ in the first place. I'll ask around to see if anyone else knows, because I definitely don't get it.

In the meantime: spread the word and the rage, make yourself known at the LJ thread (try to be civil: as much as this makes me WANT to curse, it doesn't make us look reasonable) and through individual feedback notes (a good consistent title has been "Proposed Comment System Changes in Release 88). As tabaqui pointed out, we're invested here now. This is my cozy place. But if they mess with my ass groove much more, I'll do a complete migration.

/I had every intention of spending today ranting about SOPA and I'm starting to get suspicious that igrick is a troll planted by Hollywood to distract us.

[moragmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I'm not entirely sure. This account dates back to 2009 and has an LJ-generated free style which I haven't messed around with at all because I'm a writer, not a designer. When I go to "home" and then to "Edit Journal Style" and scroll down to "2. Select a New Theme," I see this option:



The menu option "Switch to Old Style system (s1) is circled in red in the lower left corner of the image. When I clicked that, I get taken to a warning screen that asks me "Are you sure?" then states "The S1 style system is no longer supported. We recommend that you stay with S2 for the latest features and themes." There is a green button underneath that says "Keep me in S2" and a grey button that says "Switch me to S1 anyway". I've pressed neither, so I have to assume that I'm in S2 right now.

tl;dr - As someone who is not a designer or a programmer and does not know what diferrentiates s1 from s2 I believe that anyone who created their journal at least as early as January 23, 2009 - has a default s2 style. But as I said: I'm far from an authority here.