Heads up.

[whiteadelphi]

Due to LiveJournal's recent dickery and lack of professionalism, chances are high that I'm leaving the site. I've already created Dreamwidth accounts for this journal and two others and one for zaibatsuproject, but I am not using them yet. I'm giving two weeks to see if LJ will actually listen to the complaints raised about their new changes, or at least address why they won't be addressing complaints in a professional manner.

The new commenting changes have crippled most RP communities on LJ, so that's why my RP accounts might end up moving. LJ's attitude about the thousands of protests they're receiving is what's making me consider moving. I'm sort of hoping LJ backtracks a little to give us a workaround, which is why I'm still here at all, because a workaround would kind of...be an improvement on both the changes and the attitude. Also, I'm old and decrepit and hate change, so it's depressing that I'm thinking a move is the best thing to do right now. 8|

I'll let you know if I do go. In the meantime, have a good Christmas.

Comments

[totorojo.livejournal.com]

What have they actually done to the comments? It's not entirely clear to me. (Everything I'm seeing looks pretty normal but I'm not much of an LJ user these days...)

[whiteadelphi.livejournal.com]

Custom comments are still okay, but for their default comment settings they've basically:

a) Removed the subject header
b) Changed the way the icon is selected-- that is, they now give you a dropdown picture menu in which all your icons must load before you can select one
c) Changed the colour scheme to be washed out blue on white
d) Done strange things to the font so there is a lot of white space around your comments (I should edit to say: the colour scheme and font layout is now migraine triggering for a great many people by the looks of things.)
e) Removed the preview button, and
f) Removed the ability to link to the middle of a thread.

In most personal LJs I don't think these are that much of a problem, but any large community (including RP comms, including anonymous fiction memes, things like that) have their default comments on and heavily rely on being able to sort by subject header and be able to read only the last part of a thread. When it gets to a comment thread that's even 20-30 comments long, it now sort of vanishes off the page and is unreadable.

So in this case they've pretty much made a lot of RP etc impossible on the site. >.> And with regard to the lack of subject headers, there is now no place to put a trigger warning if the content of the comment might be traumatic to a select people. A few have been burned by this already, apparently.

The LJ team's response to this has been to:

a) Ignore the massive outcry of people saying "No, that's a terrible change, please don't!" when it was first mentioned
b) Ignore the even huger outcry once they did it
c) Make unprofessional snide comments about the "Americans complaining again" on things like developer twitter feeds. Not only that, but the developer/head designer for this new feature first gave notice to LJ users in an entry on his personal and Russian journal, hence cutting the English speakers out of getting much warning in the first place.

Most suspicious to me is the fact that a lot of people have cancelled their subscriptions etc as a result, or turned off the autopay function. And LJ has developed a "glitch" that seems to turn this back on for a large number of journals without warning. Uh.

This site now makes me pretty damn uncomfortable.

[kokoronagomu.livejournal.com]

i am way older than you and i hate change too *wails* and getting used to using different things is a real pain and intimidating too. it would be something if i actually knew anything about dreamwidth.

lj isn't messing much with me but i have the simplest and darkest skin and it's not hard on the eyes (IMO the best thing ffn did was give the option of making text portion of stories black with white font, dA did that with their literature posts too).

[rafira.livejournal.com]

)):! i really hope you don't move. I'm not going to, and if i lose friends because of this thing then that's ultra shitty. ))): just wait to see what happens- they might fix it!

[mikangirl.livejournal.com]

I'm hoping not to, honestly. I've spent too much time on LJ and too invested, but if it comes to the point where LJ staff are just not listening and treat us like dirt, I'm also not going to give them my patronage because that would be like saying "Yep, you can do what you want and we don't care."

[rafira.livejournal.com]

fingers crossed. this is a really shitty situation.

[enkorvaks.livejournal.com]

Do you need any more DW accounts? I only ask because I think I have an invite code somewhere...

Hmm, in posting this comment, I see some of the changes. I'm not hugely fond of them.

image not directed at you, but seems to be what LJ are saying to their paying customers. Unlike Facebook, where the users are not the customers, LJ users are (in that they pay for the service).

[mikangirl.livejournal.com]

Oh, thanks for the offer! As it stands though, Dreamwidth has waived invite codes until 1 January, apparently. Seems coincidentally timed for all these LJ shenanigans. So I think I'm covered, but if I end up needing a new account over there I'll keep that in mind, thanks. <3

[urban-twilight.livejournal.com]

Sad to hear that the new changes have been such a nightmare. Personally they haven't bothered me much, but I don't frequent the RP threads. But I can see how they can be a serious problem. But I think you made a very good point in that it isn't necessarily the changes, but more the attitude LJ staff have taken in addressing the issues so many users have.

That being said, I do hope you don't have to leave :S I have an account over at Dreamwidth, though I haven't used it much...

[mikanthief.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the attitude is what really worries me. if it weren't for that, I'd just keep my personal journal here forever, but when they treat us like dirt, continuing to stay and use their service is like telling them that it's okay to treat us like dirt. -_-;;

If I do go, I'll leavea bunch of links for where people can find me, though.

[lonely-tora.livejournal.com]

So, on the (probably very good) chance that things don't improve on LJ, I made an account on Dreamwidth while it's open. If you see some sort of alert from chibi_oniyuri, do not be alarmed, 'tis I.

And I will lurk just as sneakily over there as I do here... >.>

[centauri-.livejournal.com]

Ah ok, good to know. Have an account at DW already too. Nice to hear you're migrating the zai'-project there as well. :D

[centauri-.livejournal.com]

...and my username is 'centaurie' over there >_>

And Merry Christmas to you too!

I have the sneaking suspicion that you have a custom journal style...

[jjhunter]

I go by jjhunter. I've subscribed to you over there, and will defriend here once you make the move over. (Don't forget that it doesn't have to be an immediate all-or-nothing binary: the cross-posting tool is a delight.)