LJ Advisory Board

[rm]

Well, I've been officially certified as a candidate in the LJ Advisory Board Election and I've been offered the opportunity to talk a little bit about where I stand in a post that will be linked to from the poll.


Four questions were suggested to all the candidates for this post, and since this isn't a format I've pursued before, I decided to run with it.

As some of you know, I will actually be in Sicily for the next week (I leave later today), so my access may be sporadic during that time, but what online time I have will be dedicated to this election process, which I believe has the potential to make LJ a better place regardless of the outcome.


What do you think is the value of LJ?

For me personally, LJ has been a way to stay in touch with friends, hone my writing and document my life for myself, and at least intermittently, for the amusement of others. I met my partner here. I found support when I was diagnosed with a rather unpleasant genetic disease. And I have fun talking about the things I'm passionate about from fencing to fandom.

While those LJ experiences are far from uncommon, they don't even begin to speak to the totality of LJ's value both as a platform for personal expression and a tool for community development. LJ gives the user the unique ability to feel both less alone in the world and more singular, whether on issues serious or trivial.

LJ allows users to experience both the world as they wish it to be, through connections with like-minded individuals, and to witness the world as it is through exposure to those of completely different circumstances and views.


What changes would you like to see LJ make in the next year?

The number one issue has to be better and more respectful communications between LJ and its users. Every other concern (and there are a whole bunch we'll get to in just a second) can only be addressed if this happens. That means LJ has to recognize that users generate the content that brings in even more users that in turn generate the revenue in an ideally constant cycle. LJ's users -- free, plus and paid -- are the building blocks of the revenue model and should be treated accordingly.

What does that mean?

It means we need a clear TOS that is uniformly enforced.

It means we need communication with users whenever the TOS is updated.

It means we need a system for dealing with abuse and other user concerns that is transparent and allows users to present their side of the case -- justice without defense or appeal is not justice.

It means we need an LJ administration that recognizes and is comfortable with the diversity of its users and their interests.

Practically, what needs to happen in the next year?

LJ needs to finally resolve the free speech issues that began with Strikeout and Boldthrough. While as a private corporation LJ has the right to decide what type of content it will and won't allow, my argument is for the broadest range of speech permissible under the laws of California (where LJ is incorporated). This level of free speech should be the right of all LJ users, regardless of location or topic. Political speech needs to be protected. Religious speech needs to be protected. Creative speech needs to be protected. If it's legal speech it should be permissible on LJ.

LJ is a platform. Not a parent.

LJ needs to address disability issues. This includes getting the ALT tag working for our visually impaired users and apologizing to users with mental health/illness issues for essentially erasing their existence from the site in the debacle with the top 100 interests list.

LJ needs to honor its original commitments made to the users. These include the ongoing availability of free accounts and the right of every user to experience an ad-free LJ if they so choose.


Why do you want to be the elected representative?

To be frank, I hemmed and hawed about running at the beginning. This job is going to be hard. It's going to be time-consuming and it's going to be thankless.

But the fact remains that I have a set of unique characteristics and credentials that make me believe I am the person who can most make the LJ powers-that-be listen.

Why?

I currently have early adopter, paid and free accounts.

I am a professional author whose publisher advertises on the site.

I have an extensive professional background in public relations and marketing.

I have the previous experience of working for an on-line community of which I was also an active part.

I already have a good rapport with staff members on several of the current user concerns. At the same time, I have no personal friendships or loyalties to the staff or other powers that be.

I am relentless, clear, and systematic when it comes to problem solving.

I love LJ with all my heart, but I am not a cheerleader. I will call it like I see it, and can be both diplomatic and aggressive.

I am resilient.

I am an active and proud part of fandom (HP, Torchwood/Doctor Who, Riverside, His Dark Materials, Kushiel, etc.)

Everything that makes me not cuddly in most circumstances makes me perfect for this job.


What do you think are the community's greatest concerns?

Communication. Respect. The safety to be ourselves. The right to be ourselves. What the TOS really means. Free expression. A high quality user experience. Features that work. Features that matter. Preservation of community. Preservation of LJ's unique culture. Accessibility. Usability.

vote RM!
Keeping LJ a place we want to be;
Making LJ a place we want to stay.

Comments

[n-decisive.livejournal.com]

I found it interesting- and perhaps a bit insulting- that LJ decided to offer ribbons in honor of National Mental Health Month.

http://news.livejournal.com/108187.html

It's lovely that the money is going to charity, but it feels like as a demographic, we're their friends when it makes them look good and we're embarrassing when it doesn't.

These are wonderfully informative posts. Keep up the good work!

[rm.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

I am glad that LJ did the vgifts. One of the things I said during the 100 interests debacle over and over again was that if LJ really didn't have a problem with the groups affected they should demonstrate it by giving money to relevant organizations -- my list included everything from PFLAG to several mental health groups to the Comic Book Defense Fund.

This stops short of the point I was trying to make and we've still not received an apology from LJ, but this at least makes the issue not invisible and the charity is getting some dosh.

Dealing with the LJ powers that be seems to involve a lot of persistence and baby steps.

[punzel.livejournal.com]

Thank you for being willing to volunteer to do this. You are eminently qualified for this position. I have seen you model these behaviors for some years now, and I think you've been qualified for this for as long as it's been needed.

I have consistently seen you act as a strong yet compassionate advocate for all LJ users, in fairness to all, not just where your own interest is involved.

balticon barnstorming stuff.

[systris.livejournal.com]

wow...i think i will have to turn this into a pamphlet! do you have a press kit so i can put some bio infomation in it as well?

[ladyofthelog.livejournal.com]

This is great!

[feyandstrange.livejournal.com]

Good stuff as always - thanks.

If you have time, can you ask the maintainers of the lj advisory community what's up with allowing people to join or watch the community? Several people who tried to join or watch after my post about the upcoming elections have reported technical difficulties such as "This community is not accepting new members".

Danke.

[hikeru.livejournal.com]

I never thought I could agree with your ideals anymore than I already could. Yet here you've proven me wrong. :)
You have objectivity, determination, and definites; no abstracts or avoidances here.
Sorry for such a meaningless comment.
(PS- Have fun in Sicily.)

[rm.livejournal.com]

Thanks, I appreciate it.

Of course,...

[bjohnson.livejournal.com]

... you have my vote.

Re: Of course,...

[rm.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[kaifoxx.livejournal.com]

Personally, I have my reservations on whether the Advisory Board will have much success...however, if its to have it's best opportunity, I think it's gonna need you on it.

You have my vote.

Good luck, and safe journey.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Thanks very much. I agree it may not have a difference, but I think whoever gets elected for the first year has to be someone capable of pushing for it to as hard as possible.

[moem]

Good stuff. I'm glad I supported your nomination. You certainly have my vote, since I feel that you could actually represent me.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[eruditeviking.livejournal.com]

Very nicely written.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[virginia-fell.livejournal.com]

Found you through LJ United, and I've got to say... you list a lot of really specific things you want done. I particularly appreciate your attention for things like disability accomodation. Hasn't occurred to everyone, and it hadn't occurred to me.

You've got my vote.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[amandathegreat.livejournal.com]

Sorry, posted a comment here I meant to post elsewhere. Apologies if that got emailed to you.

[rhonan.livejournal.com]

It is all well and good to talk about what one believes in, but what sacrifices one is willing to make are also important. Let us say you are elected to the board, and SUP give the board a choice. For this hypothetical there is no compromise, it is an either/or binary choice. Choice A gives the users the fullest rights to free speech under the laws of California, but free accounts are completely gone, and SUP moves away from open source. Choice B restores the ability for anyone to create a free account and includes a written commitment to keeping LJ actively part of the open source community, but content that is offensive in any part of the world served by LJ is a violation of the TOS, and results in the poster being banned. Which do you chose?

[(Anonymous)]

Choice A, for many reasons, mainly because Choice B is wide-open censorship. Have you seen some of the laws in other countries regarding Internet?

-jameth (I am banned from rm and must post anonymously)

[dryad271.livejournal.com]

Just checking to see if I'm banned here or not

[dryad271.livejournal.com]

oh okay then

[kelism.livejournal.com]

I must not pay enough attention. What is this 100 interests thing you mention and why should LJ appologize to people with mental health issues?

[rm.livejournal.com]

I have to dig up the links, but a couple of months ago someone noticed that several key interests went abruptly missing from the list of "100 most popular interests" that LJ promotes on the site.

These included things LJ has expressed issues with in the past (fanfiction, slash) and also things like depression. This was eventually corrected and LJ said it was a mistake but never explain why or how such a mistake occured.

To many, many users it seemed like LJ was embarassed by them, and this was, understandably, particularly offensive to those with mental health/illness concerns.

[vertigo1021.livejournal.com]

I agree with what you say and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

That is all.

H.D.S.

[thecolourclear.livejournal.com]

Hold the hay.

There's an ACTIVE His Dark Materials fandom?

I MUST KNOW WHERE IT IS!

(erm, and yay for torchwood! I just finish series one last night!)

[rm.livejournal.com]

Well, not terribly active, but it does pop up from time to time and I do write in it:

hdm_fanfiction and there are a bunch of stories on Yuletide, which you surely know about if you have an interest in rare fandoms.

question for you

[bloggingsara.livejournal.com]

I've already spoke about this in other comm's but i wanted to see what you'd do about this particular issue.

I had a LJ acct dating back to 2000 that was inexplicably deleted. I received no warning from LJ and lost everything. I had some significant journal entries in there and I'm still pissed off about it. I emailed LJ several times about the acct being deleted and never received any feedback or help. I'm pretty much done actually journaling in LJ and only started a new acct so I could be a part of comm's like this one. I have my real journal on Blogger but I just don't trust LJ. I'm happy to vote for whomever would be respectful of users and at least warn a user before deleting their acct. I suspect I said "fuck" a few too many times or something of that nature in my journal to get it deleted.

If you were elected to the Advisory Board, would you make sure that users didn't have their accts deleted without notice or a warning ahead of time?

-Sara, formerly sfaithj

Re: question for you

[rm.livejournal.com]

Absolutely.

Users need to know why the company chooses to take a given action. LJ has recently laid out policy regarding informing affected users of such things. Whether it will be followed remains to be seen, but what you describe is a basic courtesy and one they even promise to do. A big part of my platform is about LJ honoring its commitments to its users. This is one of them.

[i-read-dead-ppl.livejournal.com]

This is really well-done. I like you :)

I'm not certain how many votes each of us are given, but I'll probably be sending one your way :)

[rm.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

Re: best of luck!

[rm.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[jesurgislac.livejournal.com]

LJ needs to finally resolve the free speech issues that began with Strikeout and Boldthrough. While as a private corporation LJ has the right to decide what type of content it will and won't allow, my argument is for the broadest range of speech permissible under the laws of California (where LJ is incorporated). This level of free speech should be the right of all LJ users, regardless of location or topic. Political speech needs to be protected. Religious speech needs to be protected. Creative speech needs to be protected. If it's legal speech it should be permissible on LJ.

Since May 2006 - the rules got changed in a 1984-like mode in late April 2006 - anyone whose default icon depicts a baby at breast is at risk of being suspended from Livejournal.

SixApart offered as a defense that they don't believe babies should be breastfed in public, and that in any case that kind of enforcement is something that LJ Abuse do and they don't try to nitpick LJ Abuse's decisions. (LJ Abuse say that the new owners have made no change in the old rules.)

For anyone following the anti-breastfeeding campaign by SixApart, their treatment of Livejournal users in 2007 and 2008 came a reprise: they lied, they were disrespectful, they made clear that their customer base was their advertisers and Livejournal members were product for sale, even Permanent or Paid accounts.

I doubt that this much-touted advisory board will have any power to do anything, but it would be nice to know that members elected will use whatever voice they have to make a thorough stink about the actions by Livejournal's owners - going back to their first cleansing of Livejournal, the purging of icons deemed "obscene" because they depicted a baby at breast.

Is this something you'll do? Or will you be strictly fannish in your interests?

[insomnia.livejournal.com]

It's important to point out that rm is not just fannish in her interests. She's been very outspoken on a wide variety of issues that effect individual communities, and as a member of LJ United, she's part of a growing group that opposes allowing *ANY* community of LJers to be arbitrarily targeted and victimized by unnecessary abuse actions.

LJ has *ALWAYS* had the right to act regarding specific illegal acts that are reported to them, but when they take on the task of intentionally targeting groups, interests, etc. who haven't committed a single illegal act, they cross the line and always step all over people's rights, hurting innocent members of the community.

As she said, "I also believe the broadest definitions of freedom of speech aren't only the best ones for the LJ community as a whole, but actually the most workable ones from a corporate perspective."

Basically, LJ's management *NEEDS* to step back, consider the promises that were made to its customers, and try to correct their mistakes to restore those broad definitions of freedom of speech and expression. It's not only what is best and easiest to enforce, it's also what will help grow their business. Everyone wins.

You may want to consider joining LJ United, if only because we could definitely use someone familiar with the breastfeeding issues to help us eventually build strong, informed arguments on the matter, because whether rm wins or not, we intend to keep working to educate, influence, and inform the other advisory board members, and the management of the site.

Frankly, they inherited a lot of these greivances and issues, and may not even be fully informed about them. We will *NEED* to be able to create some sort of fairly complete document with the the concerns of LJ's members, so having access to the finer details as to exactly what happened when and how would be great.

[funnel101.livejournal.com]

Well, you've got my first choice vote for caring about disabilities, fandom, and being a mom.

[fireflys-locket.livejournal.com]

I've just read all the election posts, and I just wanted to say I thought yours was the most inspiring. ^_^

[rm.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[carta.livejournal.com]

These include the ongoing availability of free accounts and the right of every user to experience an ad-free LJ if they so choose.

But we have that now. There are still free accounts, they're just ad supported. And all LJ users can choose to have an ad-free LJ by purchasing a paid account. I have absolutely zero problem with ad-supported free and plus accounts, none whatsoever.

[insomnia.livejournal.com]

The problem is, it violates the trust of LJ's members, because this is something they were previously promised wouldn't be the case... AND it's bad for business.

Right now, LJ is shrinking significantly in the number of people posting to the site every month. It's already lost about 1/3rd of these posts, and the decline ties in nicely to when they added ads on journals.

Back in 2000, LJ added ads briefly to free accounts... and found that it decreased growth by 30%. So, when LJ is shrinking, it can't really afford to turn off new potential customers with ads all over their journal, when there are free, ad-free alternatives available elsewhere online.

LJ literally makes *MORE* money by growing and trying to upgrade those free accounts to paid ones than by putting ads on them... and more can be done to earn income on those pages without the use of ads.

Keep in mind that ads *can* appear on some pages, such as friends lists, and not influence the general appeal of creating an LJ account. This goes some way to explain why insanejournal has ads on other pages, but not on journal pages -- to do otherwise would be counterproductive!

[brewsternorth.livejournal.com]

Yes. To all of these. Which is why I voted for you.

There are many good reasons why LJ is something other than MySpace or Facebook, and these must be borne in mind as LJ continues to develop.