Some links, some thoughts

[tzikeh]

Icon courtesy of tcklmepnkfloyd. AWESOME. She's made more, all gankable, which should be posted soon.

Re: free speech, I reiterate and expand - no, they're not restricting your free speech, because you *don't have the right to free speech here*. This is a corporation which can make rules about what you can and cannot say on their dime.

That aside, please don't misunderstand me. This entire thing is a grand fuck-up, and I think that's slowly sinking in for 6/A.

6/A responds to a thread about this at metafilter here.

My response is here.

I don't know where this is going. None of us does. Trust has been *seriously* damaged. 6/A has shown that, once again, they are completely clueless. But look, let's be serious: a mass fannish migration would be a daunting undertaking and would likely fracture online fandom forever. Let's take a deep breath and watch the next few days. There are some great suggestions in the metafilter thread about how to at least begin to make amends.

1) When re-instating the journals taken down by friendly fire, immediately upgrade them to permanent accounts, free of charge.
2) Offer maximum icon space, free of charge.
3) Stop blaming the victim in your public statements, boneheads.
4) Stop changing the rules at a whim and not informing your members before enforcing these new rules.
5) Don't be stupid.

In a sideways thought - fandom_counts is a wonderful idea regardless of the circumstances which brought it about. I love watching the numbers climb -- though I'm wondering where the hell all the Harry Potter fans are, because their joining would double that number in an instant, I am certain. Please continue to spread the word, even if you're CERTAIN that everyone on your friendslist knows about it. I like the idea of a fannish headcount.

I hope things work out here in our favor. I hope fandom can take that collective step back, that collective deep breath, and allow the wait-and-see option.

My final thought - when the first warning went out, it was roundly mocked as bullshit and histrionics. I mean viciously, and in public on various livejournals. One person lost her job and her significant other due to her taking the risk of passing on the information. Another was cut to the bone by the nasty personal attacks. I'm still waiting to see some apologies for that. It's something fandom doesn't do well, is it?

Comments

[nestra.livejournal.com]

I should obviously send a resume to SixApart/LJ, because despite the fact that my total PR experience is two classes and an internship, they clearly need my help. Or some help. Anything, for the love of god.

ION, happy birthday!

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

Yeah, they really do need a bit of brains.

Thank you for the birthday wishes! And par for the course for me, the first thing I did on my birthday (I think it was just after midnight) was go tear someone a new one on metafilter. YAY!

[gchick.livejournal.com]

Ah, but what a tear it was! Hippo birdies!

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

Thank you! As I have been saying all over today: friends are better than cake. And I am lucky to have such friends.

[kelliem.livejournal.com]

Wow, someone actually lost her job over this? I had not heard that bit of news. ::shakes head::

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

Hey, happy birthday!!!!

And just, yes to the rest, esp. the last paragraph!!!

[rydra_wong]

One person lost her job and her significant other due to her taking the risk of passing on the information.

Shit. I didn't know that.

[danceswithwords.livejournal.com]

One person lost her job and her significant other due to her taking the risk of passing on the information.

Ach. I was just on the edges of that whole conversation, but I was wondering how it would shake out, and the answer is: not well.

[thebratqueen.livejournal.com]

Happy birthday!!

[yahtzee63.livejournal.com]

Although I don't condone anyone being viciously mocked for believing in the first version of the rumor, I think it's worth noting that the first version of the rumor was in fact wrong -- at least, assuming that what I heard about on Saturday was the first version. That rumor had fanfiction as the sole target, copyright as the cause for the deletions and cited things like the mainstream media attention over the Mary Jane statuette as the reasons that "outside interests" were pressuring LJ to cancel accounts. That I did not find remotely plausible. I didn't mock it as bullshit, but if I had, I wouldn't apologize for having done so; it wasn't the truth. It was a fairly farfetched interpretation of something that was really going on.

That said, there is a big difference between mocking rumors and mocking people, and it sounds like some folks crossed the line.

[kirbyfest.livejournal.com]

Happy birthday!

And I think tearing someone a new one is a lovely way to start a new year. ;)

[boniblithe.livejournal.com]

I'm wondering where the hell all the Harry Potter fans are, because their joining would double that number in an instant

Um, quite a number of them are HP fans, T. Pornish Pixies comm deletion hit the s**t fan pretty hard over there.

[umbo.livejournal.com]

I am aghast at the news that someone lost her job. That really sucks.


Um, but happy birthday anyway?

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much!!

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

The version of the rumor was wrong. I know personally, in meatspace, the woman who sent out the emails about what was going to happen, and it did not say that. This is what people get for playing internet telephone and going by what someone said about what someone said about an email someone else read.

And yeah, people crossed the line big time. Even once proven *wrong*, they were still posting comments like "I still maintain that Fan X is a crazy person, even if she was right this time." In public.

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know that many of them are. I'm just pretty damned sure there are *way more* than have joined thus far.

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

HEE! And thank you, honey. I'm having a hobbity birthday and trying to give back. You are a dear friend to me, and I love you, and I'm grateful for your friendship.

[kirbyfest.livejournal.com]

I give you Dexter to demonstrate my birthday joy! And my affection for your bad self. :)

[seperis.livejournal.com]

*snorts* Whatever. So far, the big message seems to be, but you said it wrong! So I was right!

It's very--something.

[morgandawn.livejournal.com]

is it Ok to repost the 'are you planning apologize" part in my LJ?

"My final thought - when the first warning went out, it was roundly mocked as bullshit and histrionics. I mean viciously, and in public on various livejournals. One person lost her job and her significant other due to her taking the risk of passing on the information. Another was cut to the bone by the nasty personal attacks. I'm still waiting to see some apologies for that. It's something fandom doesn't do well, is it?"

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

Of course. Anything I post publicly I consider fair to repost anywhere, and with my name attached. :)

[alope-midnight.livejournal.com]

Happy birthday to you! May you have even more energy to fight the good fights this year. (Wish there didn't have to be so many of them.)

[sensine.livejournal.com]

Happy birthday!

And ouch! I missed the part where someone lost her job and so - that's awful! Especialy if she was so thoughtful as to warn people of what would happen.

Good amends you suggest!

I've seen that more girls than myself are taking precautions now and brushing dust off their GJ account, but it would never be the same, I fear. This is our collective home...

[cleversimon.livejournal.com]

I stopped reading MeFi a year ago for a number of reasons, but that thread, that thread is solid fucking gold.

[morgandawn.livejournal.com]

here is my take on what happened. http://morgandawn.livejournal.com/635056.html

[mecurtin.livejournal.com]

I am still really unclear about what was going on with that rumor. In your opinion, did my post (http://mecurtin.livejournal.com/429547.html) count as mocking the person who started that rumor? -- and I still have no clue who that person is, or what, really, was going on, who learned what and told what to whom and why.

But I do know a little about birthin' babies, so I suppose that's something.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

No, that was not.

I did a post or two on Sunday under flock. It wasn't filtered, so you should be able to see it.

[bethbethbeth.livejournal.com]

Eeep! Happy One-Day-Late Birthday!

Also...I posted the link to fandom_counts, but most of my f'list (70% of whom are HP fans) had joined already. Where are you getting the sense that the HP folks are lingering at the sidelines? *g*

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

No, that wasn't at all mocking. There was really *cruel* stuff out there. Posting the question of whether or not the rumor was real or a hoax is not mocking at all.

[blktauna.livejournal.com]

I still fail to see how LJ tanking will hurt fandom. There are other places like it, without the mundanes and the idiots running it. I'd really rather see a fannish version of it happen for precisely this sort of reason.

I've backed away from LJ for privacy concerns and for its general suckiness so maybe my view is skewed.

[keiko-kirin.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the MF links. Your response was excellent, btw. I also appreciated the user eriko's sobering, but realistic, take on the technical economics of finding an alternative. See, my thing is, I didn't really want to come to LJ, but all my fandom buddies did, so I stopped resisting. If the buddies all migrate now, they're going to different places, some of which I would not be able to enter. So I'll lose people, and that sucks. I'm not a big fan of LJ qua LJ -- I don't do icons, I don't friends-filter, I don't do the daily navel-gaze post -- but at least I can stay in touch with a critical mass of folks here. *shrug* I dunno. I hope if there's a mass exodus, everyone will end up in the same place, or that someone can figure out the tech & $$ to run a server farm for millions of fans. /end irrelevent musing

And fandom_counts? Is amazing if no other reason than to demonstrate the many languages fans can (and will) translate a text into.

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

And fandom_counts? Is amazing if no other reason than to demonstrate the many languages fans can (and will) translate a text into.

HEE!

Yeah, I know several people in your boat; lj isn't their thing, but they're here because that's where the action is at this point in fandom's history. I don't think that anything's going to happen anytime soon to change it, really; no one I know has taken off or shut down at this point.

And a few good things have come out of this; various fandoms are more interconnected than they were before if only because of the "we're all in this together" vibe, and it appears that a tipping point was reached in fandom so that a single, unifying clearinghouse for fanfiction (or at least links to archives for all fandoms) may one day be a reality. That would be cool; I feel we really lost something when we lost the "central archive" model (all archived X-Files fiction could be found at Gossamer, etc.).

I have hopes.