LJ Advisory Board Elections: LJ United

[rm]

As part of the LJ Advisory Board elections, I want to point you all to ljunited which was founded by someone you all probably at least know of, insomnia who has long be a voice of reason, passion and technical knowledge here in the world of LJ.

ljunited was founded in reaction to LJ's many broken promises to the userbase and after some tough questions and good discussion they've endorsed my candidacy for the LJ Advisory Board.

One of our big concerns right now is that the issues oriented candidates may split the votes amongst themselves while folks who are very popular or have candidacies that don't address issues people find stressful and emotional walk away with it. We are trying to work together to make sure this doesn't happen, and whatever happens with the election want to make sure we create a unified block to speak out as the userbase relationship with LJ/SUP moves forward.

So, I'd encourage all of you to join ljunited for the election and beyond. Also, squeaky19 has just joined us. He's the fellow who runs IJ, and has a lot to say to those of us with concerns about the status of LJ's code, and open source and journal migration issues.

Meanwhile, while I'm a decent designer when working for others, the idea of branding myself for this campaign all by my lonely is a little daunting. So if anyone wants to offer suggestions, advice, designs, images, graphics, etc., I'd love to see them.

Additionally, I'll be in Sicily May 17 - 25 studying swordsmanship, but have found a way to make sure I deliver at least one election-related issue post each day during that time. I'm taking suggestions for issues you'd like to see addressed in those and also reminding people that I'll need help getting the word out about said posts both in general and particularly during that time.

So what can you do right now to support this candidacy and an LJ that is both viable as a corproate entity and respectful of its users?

- join ljunited
- If you haven't already posted in support of my nomination, do so here: http://community.livejournal.com/lj_election_en/836.html as momentum is critical to any battle of this sort.
- Talk about ljunited and/or my candidacy in my journal.
- Help out in the above mentioned graphic design context.
- Talk to me about your LJ concerns, especially if you're part of a constituency I'm less familiar with -- hearing technical concerns and concerns from non-US users would be a big help to me right now.

Once we have some campaign materials together and once voting opens there will be more to do, but this is a huge start.

Thank you!

Comments

[upstart-crow.livejournal.com]

I am happy to post about your candidacy every time you post :) You have my backing 210%. :)

(A question an LJunited post said you are the "english" candidate. Does this mean that you are now *the* candidate representing the English-speaking LJ users? I'm sorta confused.)

I really, really, really would love it if you addressed disability and LJ - including those of us who have disabilities that are apparently "embarrassing" and "non-existent" like clinical depression. I've gotten nothing of substance despite raising this issue on no less than three occasions with LJ. A lot of people have been talking about fandom and hate speech issues, but I think the issue of disability has fallen through the cracks.

And with people telling me on posts where I try to even air my concerns that depressives "deserve to be messed with" and that suicides are apparently amusing, the safety of MI users has to be addressed.

[rm.livejournal.com]

No, I am the English-language candidate they are endorsing. There are at least 5 or 6 other people who have reached the required number of votes to be nominees for the position).

On the mental health/disability issue there's actually going to be some decent news from LJ on that front soon that I was involved with, and I hope I'll have more to say on it shortly. But accessibility issues are also a key technical issue with the site, as are how abuse complaints are handled so I think there are several angles from which to raise the "invisible disability" issue which does need more formal addressing from the powers that be.

[upstart-crow.livejournal.com]

No, I am the English-language candidate they are endorsing. There are at least 5 or 6 other people who have reached the required number of votes to be nominees for the position).

Ohh. Sorry. Thanks! :)

On the mental health/disability issue there's actually going to be some decent news from LJ on that front soon that I was involved with, and I hope I'll have more to say on it shortly. But accessibility issues are also a key technical issue with the site, as are how abuse complaints are handled so I think there are several angles from which to raise the "invisible disability" issue which does need more formal addressing from the powers that be.

This is so fantastic. Is it possible for me to raise my support for you to 300% :)

I can't help with graphics, but maybe I could post like "top ten lists of why you should vote for Racheline" or something. I'm good with words like that.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Good with words is good!

I'm sorry I can't answer your Wiscon polls, btw. One year I'll get there. Also you'll be getting lesbian werewolves soon.

[upstart-crow.livejournal.com]

It's fine :) I am not sure if I can go next year as is as the airport is hard to get into from SLC without spending a month's salary or so :x.

Yay for lesbian wolves! and thank you for writing it before your trip.

[feyandstrange.livejournal.com]

Hell, there's *visible* compliance they could stand to work on in the code base. How hard is it to fix the ALT tags for folks with vision issues?

More on that later when I have time... looking forward to other god news.

[insomnia.livejournal.com]

Basically, the way they've designed this contest is for one "Russian / Cyrillic language" user to be nominated, and one "everybody else" candidate... which, as far as their community is concerned, is "_en", for English language.

So, if you're one of my friends in Brazil, you're kinda screwed, really...

[upstart-crow.livejournal.com]

Ahh, thanks for that.

I'm surprised they don't have at least one other language candidate, though, considering that Russian and English can't be the only large language groups on LJ.