courtesy would demand....

[rm]

http://community.livejournal.com/innocence_jihad/194527.html?thread=3153375#t3153375

Man, these people are all so lucky I don't eat gluten anymore and am not pulling out the Snape lecturing factor on all of them.

Comments

[winterknight.livejournal.com]

The one thing that I still don't understand is what the administration is thinking letting so many people speak for them at once. It's to the point that it looks like there is no organization whatsoever and no head of anything at all. It really frustrates me because what I see is a bunch of smart people who really don't want to be shifty and who are probably frustrated no end by not being able to clarify things with the user base.

The problem is that if one takes everything at face value without the benefit of trust it looks really bad. And every time I think I'm just going to let it go something new crops up that makes it impossible for me to do so.

One of the things that frustrates me is that there is not a general assumption -- it seems -- among the administration and employees of LJ/SA that the users are invested in the continuation of Live Journal as a whole. The very same thing that makes the users so upset at what they see as poor management and uncertain policy and unfair execution of that policy is exactly what makes them want to keep the business afloat. The users have no investment in damaging or closing down LJ, at least most of them don't and most of them didn't until they felt that they were being insulted and misled. There seems to be a fundamental lack of understanding in the investment in community here. One would think that the repeated uproar will it have illustrated that effectively but instead it seems to be translated as a type of reactionary immaturity or petulance or simply recalcitrance.

I don't like the sense that fandom (and I'll note here that my Dragon voice recognition program has that word in the vocabulary, which is hilarious) is perceived as a handful of wank-mongers and drama-queens who have legitimate points only by accident in the manner of Shakespeare and the million monkeys.

[winterknight.livejournal.com]

(I apologize for any weirdness in my reply, I'm still learning this program and the only chair that I can sit in right now has to be a couple feet from the computer.)

[rm.livejournal.com]

I will say I've been speaking (in email and on phone soon) with LJ's new head of customer service. She seems to be genuinely listening, has been unfailingly polite, and has been willing to learn about fandom and fandom conventions (i.e., there are reasons anime looks the way it does and they are largely about status of characters, not age; LJ not grokking this is part of where the racism noise is coming from). If she has the power or ability to convey this to people making decisions, I don't know. One of the things I keep emphasizing to her is "if LJ is uncomfortable with something about fandom, it would go a long way towards diffusing this situation if they asked why certain things are done the way they are or portrayed the way they are within our communities." She hasn't really asked questions yet, but she has done a lot of "tell me more."

I don't think she can solve everything. I'm not sure if she can solve anything. But if LJ could get a few more people like her running the involved departments and then shut everyone else up where they shouldn't be talking from unprepared points, this might just be, if not fixable, resolveable.

[winterknight.livejournal.com]

Is that Rachel? (I swear, if this program doesn't stop typing her name as "racial" I will have one more reason to beat someone with this headset.) I have been found her to come across particularly well in many of the threads I've read but I understand that she has a particularly difficult job and is not in an enviable position at all. I do have to say that I am impressed with whom she's chosen to consult with (not that I'm sucking up to you here *grin*) and I would be interested to see her talk to someone like Penknife as well.

I always understood that a certain amount of the difficulty comes from culture clash. And, I think this is one more example of how spending a great deal of time in one corner of the Internet causes one to lose perspective on the whole. I admit that I'm guilty of having a supremely liberal viewpoint and I have the luxury of raising a child who self-censors, at least to date. I live in a family where even my mother and mother-in-law understand what chibi artwork is, and that anime characters often are not representative in their apparent ages. I suppose, again, that is the imposition of the culture in which my partner and I live on their worlds.

I think a great deal would be solved or as you say resolved by a greater understanding of the fandom culture and of the way that it has structured itself to separate into sub genres not for artistic purposes but to protect the sensibilities of its members. Fandom, I have found, is almost obsessive about identifying and categorizing its content in order to maintain a unified whole to the best of its abilities in which all members can choose what material they will be exposed to.

I know my grammar sucks, I apologize. :p and I can't be completely sure that I'm making sense because I am still not fully accustomed to organizing my thoughts out loud. Being isolated and has down for seven years now has left me out of practice speaking and now I'm expected to rely on it instead of my hands. Of course with the lack of searing agony, it's a fair trade. :)

[rm.livejournal.com]

You and that program are actually doing remarkably well.

A lot of the dialogue I've been having with Rachel (who is talking to several other people at least, but I don't know who) has been me saying "I'm not saying LJ is being racist, sexist and homophobic, but that's what it looks like. Here's why. For people to believe you when you say you're not, you need to understand where this perception is coming from and not say its absurd. We're opperating in a different culture."

I've also talked a lot abut how fandom is no longer a ghetto. That things like HP and Lord of the Rings and Stardust and even shows like Lost and Heroes puts people who love speculative and fantasy stuff squarely in the mainstream and that many of the people who feel threatened by this situation are both peopel with good, normal corporate jobs as well as people who are professional artists and writers -- folks who create cultural capital, not just obsess on it.

[winterknight.livejournal.com]

You know, the original fandom went through a period of what you might call emergence when zines and cons brought people together and when fan writers began achieving publication. I'm just thinking of who I would call the old-school fans who are in their 50s and up. I think anyone who assumes that fandom has ever been off in a corner is mistaken because fans come from so many different places. Acknowledgment of the subculture has not been so easy but that has definitely changed.

Sexually explicit literature and art has also -- possibly more so than fandom -- emerged from the shadows lately. I think the extensive involvement of women in the production of that art and literature is particularly significant. My knowledge of historical examples of something similar is extremely scanty.

Going back to the issue of the ghettoization of fandom, I do think that the Internet probably contributed to isolating fandom more than it had been. Or at least in providing a private playground for fans in which it became easy to lose touch with the larger world. I would have to talk to some older fans to get a better sense of it but that might be interesting to pursue an intellectual sense.

Good lord, I've gotten verbose since I stopped having to use my hands. Funnily enough, when the windows are open and my allergies take hold my dictation goes right down the drain. Decongestants are my friend. :) I don't know what it says about me that one of the first things I figured out was how to make my kind of smilies. ;)

[graene.livejournal.com]

"people who love speculative and fantasy stuff squarely in the mainstream"

Did they really not know this? That just left a hole in my stomach for some reason. They really couldn't correlate best seller/box office/ratings numbers with general population statistics? *none* of their employees with a voice has admitted to being part of any fandom? I'm rather glad I'm already lying down.

[feyandstrange.livejournal.com]

A new head of customer service is a good start. Any word on a new head of abuse? Because that's in even more dire need.