Barak Berkowitz ([info]barakb25) wrote in [info]news,
2007-06-08 17:42:00

moving forward

I want to say thank you to all of you who have been giving us a chance to correct the issues around suspended journals, and particularly to the abuse volunteers who have been working tirelessly to keep up with your feedback and correct any remaining problems. If there is any doubt, the abuse team thought they were executing exactly the policy that we wanted them to execute, and they thought it was as dumb as you did. The unfortunate fact is, a large amount of the problem was a failure in communications. That is my failure, not theirs, and I am very sorry about it.

Over the last week, we have been making significant progress in clarifying and redefining or policies and procedures.


  • We have gone through another review of the journals that were suspended last week, and we have restored a few more of them. We will continue to work with people who feel they have been suspended in error.

  • We have had our first call with the EFF and exchanged information about where we are now. They have shared with us some ideas about who they think is doing a good job on these issues. We will continue to consult with them over the coming weeks.

  • We have reviewed what we could have done differently with the entire LJ team, and next week we will have a discussion with the abuse volunteers about the same issues.

  • We realized that we need to clarify policies and procedures BEFORE we give feedback to journals that were taken down and then put back up. That will not take place for a while, and none of these journals will be suspended again without prior notice unless clearly required by law (that effectively limits it to child pornography or a copyright violation reported under the DMCA).

  • A number of you have discussed how we might make amends for our mistakes with the people who had their journals suspended incorrectly and with the community. We have been listening to your ideas, and expect to announce a program this coming Tuesday.

  • We have realized that as we review policies it is important to also look into copyright issues. We have opened a dialogue with Creative Commons about ways we can make it easier for users to be clear about content that they are willing to share and content they wish to maintain ownership and control over.



While we have a great deal of work left to do, I want to share with you some of the ideas we are exploring:

One thing that people have been upset about has been the implication that the community standards would be set by Six Apart and not the community. I agree, and I was wrong to imply that. Six Apart is a critical part of the community (with the help of our paid users, we pay for bandwidth, employ the staff, and run the servers), but clearly the LiveJournal team and the LiveJournal users have a critical role in defining what is acceptable on LiveJournal. We know we can learn a lot from other communities that use a combination of reputation software and human judgment to gauge community opinion, and we are now actively exploring how we can let the community "vote" on what is acceptable content in order to create greater consistency.


When I say "vote", I don’t want people to fear that this will become the tyranny of the majority or mob justice. Metafilter, Craigslist, Flickr, Wikipedia, and many, many other sites effectively use these types of systems to make the jobs of their support teams easier and to reflect the standards of the community. Clearly law takes precedent over such votes, but in case where the line is not legal content but rather objectionable or acceptable content, community input can be a great help. Members of the team are starting to explore what is working for whom and we will share these ideas in more depth soon.

How can you help?


  1. Be patient; we are trying to do this right and incorporate a broad range of feedback, so this will take some time.

  2. Keep sharing your opinions and your ideas. We really are listening.

  3. Read these posts. Many questions I have seen have been answered in previous posts, particularly in the update in my first post: http://news.livejournal.com/99159.html

  4. Volunteer for the abuse team. It takes time and dedication, but you can really help: http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=57&view=full

  5. Understand that there is no perfect solution, and compromise will be needed.



Following this post, I would like to move this discussion to the [info]lj_biz community. When we have announcements about new policies, we will of course post them here, but I think [info]lj_biz is a more appropriate place to keep people informed of status and to discuss ideas.

Once again, I want to thank you for your feedback, your ideas, and most of all for your passion for LiveJournal.

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[info]burr86

June 9 2007, 00:57:13 UTC 4 years ago

Thanks for the update! :)

[info]rahaeli

June 9 2007, 00:58:24 UTC 4 years ago

cheat0r

[info]burr86

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[info]rival

June 9 2007, 00:57:42 UTC 4 years ago

Good.

[info]driftingfocus

June 9 2007, 00:57:46 UTC 4 years ago

w00t!

[info]stillimage

June 9 2007, 01:12:21 UTC 4 years ago

I dig your user name, a lot.

[info]driftingfocus

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[info]rc

June 9 2007, 00:58:45 UTC 4 years ago

Neato.

[info]rc

June 9 2007, 01:05:06 UTC 4 years ago

Also, can you or someone else elaborate more on the copyright issues?

[info]necrotica

June 9 2007, 00:58:58 UTC 4 years ago

I'm impressed.

[info]atalantapendrag

June 9 2007, 00:59:39 UTC 4 years ago

If you want our patience, don't abuse it. We shouldn't have to wait a week between updates.

[info]rahaeli

June 9 2007, 01:03:38 UTC 4 years ago

We didn't want to update just to say "hey, still thinking about this!" We wanted to wait until we had substantive progress to report, which is what we were doing this week -- talking to people, talking to each other, and making sure that everyone fully understood the problems and what led to the miscommunications before we could begin to address them.

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[info]flamingo_killer

June 9 2007, 00:59:43 UTC 4 years ago

Although I still don't think the system is perfect, this does seem like a step in the right direction. Thanks for the update.

[info]tavalya_ra

June 10 2007, 04:27:27 UTC 4 years ago

I agree, although I'm disappointed that there is nothing dealing with the definition that Barak previously gave of "interest."

[info]miakun

June 9 2007, 00:59:55 UTC 4 years ago

Thanks for actually making newsposts and commenting on the situation. That was really my main problem with it. Letting things get out of hand and not being sure if it's a rumor or not is disheartening.

[info]stillimage

June 9 2007, 01:05:09 UTC 4 years ago

Icon love.

[info]miakun

4 years ago

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[info]boredinsomniac

June 9 2007, 01:01:44 UTC 4 years ago

Thank you.

[info]ravenwcatz

June 9 2007, 01:02:01 UTC 4 years ago

Yay Livejournal!

[info]stillimage

June 9 2007, 01:02:07 UTC 4 years ago

Good deal... but still, it'll take me a bit to get over it.

[info]longlongwaytogo

June 9 2007, 01:52:22 UTC 4 years ago

yep.I for one am still not exactly in a 'forgiving' mood.

[info]flyboy_fox

June 9 2007, 01:02:40 UTC 4 years ago

About time. Still not sure why it takes so long between updates. I think some of us would just like to hear "we're still here, still listening, still working on it" a bit more frequently, just so we don't feel our comments are being pinned to a silent brick wall. A few issues still haven't been addressed, and wouldn't take a terribly long answer, but hopefully the policy updates will clear most of that up. Thanks for the update, anyhow :)

[info]mkb_technologie

June 9 2007, 03:17:12 UTC 4 years ago

Updates with no information is a bad precedent to set.

[info]yrena

4 years ago

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[info]dr_funbags

June 9 2007, 01:02:49 UTC 4 years ago

Thank you for working diligently to correct what you did.

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[info]ms_daisy_cutter

June 9 2007, 02:16:02 UTC 4 years ago

Precisely.

I can't believe all the retards who clamber onto these posts and rush to kiss SixApart's collective pustulent ass, then snark at the people who insist on holding 6A's feet to the fire. "OMG GET A LYFE OFF TEH INTARWEBZ HAW HAW HAW!!!"

Oh, wait, yes, I can. This is LJ.

[info]180milehug

4 years ago

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[info]genmaicha

June 9 2007, 01:04:11 UTC 4 years ago

Thank you for the update.

[info]crazykimmy

June 9 2007, 01:04:17 UTC 4 years ago

...I with the disbelieving.

While there are steps in the right direction with this post, it does not solve the corporate culture that created the mess in the first place. Are you looking at changing your company mindset as well as your posted policy?

Because that takes real dedication.

[info]tealeavesgreen

June 9 2007, 20:37:33 UTC 4 years ago

They don't WANT to change their corporate mindset or profit-first attitude. They just want the uproar to die down a bit so they can get back to their regularly scheduled subversion of free speech.

[info]crazykimmy

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[info]sapphs

June 9 2007, 01:04:19 UTC 4 years ago

This didn't affect me at all, but I do thank you for your updates. It's nice ot be kept in the loop :)

[info]kencf0618

June 10 2007, 05:07:33 UTC 4 years ago

I think of it as the OODA Loop.

Observe-Orient-Decide-Act!

[info]tokimi

June 9 2007, 01:04:30 UTC 4 years ago

Thank you for keeping us updated.

[info]photosinensis

June 9 2007, 01:04:45 UTC 4 years ago

Now that I've calmed down some, here's the biggest change I want: transparency in abuse team decisions.

If a journal is suspended/left alone due to the results of an abuse investigation, everyone needs to know. Right now, it seems arbitrary. Why, for example, was [info]fandom_wank suspended? I guess the world will never know that one. Why do people who are known to be stalking others via LiveJournal not get removed? We all need to know.

To this effect, set up an official community that not only posts abuse team decisions, but tells the rationale behind them and the number of people involved in reaching that decision.

[info]flamingo_killer

June 9 2007, 01:07:26 UTC 4 years ago

I'm sure there is some privacy claim that can be made for this, but I agree 100% about making those decisions public. Just letting the maintainer know isn't good enough--the members want to know, too, and how can moderators let them know reasons if the community is suspended?

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[info]thevelvetsun

June 9 2007, 01:05:03 UTC 4 years ago

Thank you for updating again.

We realized that we need to clarify policies and procedures BEFORE we give feedback to journals that were taken down and then put back up.

Does this include clarifying the TOS and letting users know ahead of time about changes? One thing that was frustrating about this whole thing was that there was zero warning about deletions.

One thing that people have been upset about has been the implication that the community standards would be set by Six Apart and not the community. I agree, and I was wrong to imply that....We know we can learn a lot from other communities that use a combination of reputation software and human judgment to gauge community opinion, and we are now actively exploring how we can let the community "vote" on what is acceptable content in order to create greater consistency.

I'll be impressed if you guys actually do this.

[info]longlongwaytogo

June 9 2007, 01:57:31 UTC 4 years ago

yeah. And 'interests' once again not addressed...

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[info]amativus

June 9 2007, 01:05:08 UTC 4 years ago

I seriously can't believe people above me are STILL complaining. "I can't get over it" blah blah, what do you want? LJ has been very polite and thorough in its apologies and they've clearly learned any and all lessons you hoped they would. Thanks for being awesome, LiveJournal. I promise there are at least, like, three dozen sane individuals using your services gladly.

[info]stillimage

June 9 2007, 01:07:17 UTC 4 years ago

I'm over it.. it just the fact that it happened in the first place that hurts my mind.

[info]boredinsomniac

4 years ago

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[info]ficcentricity

June 9 2007, 01:05:14 UTC 4 years ago

Excellent. :)

[info]dawna

June 9 2007, 01:05:28 UTC 4 years ago

Thank you Barak

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[info]burr86

June 9 2007, 01:08:56 UTC 4 years ago

Every website gets attacked, and every website has some period of downtime. Poorly timed, yeah, but we don't really have any control over other people trying to slam our site with a metric ton of traffic. :)

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[info]owly

June 9 2007, 01:06:17 UTC 4 years ago

But have you given the wrongly suspended users their perm accounts and ponies yet?

HMMMM??? HAVE YOU???????

Remember, soldiers of fandom: May, the month LJ killed free speech dead with its nefarious bookburning fundie fascist Nazi tactics. ~*~NEVAR FORGET.~*~*~

[info]mizanchan

June 9 2007, 01:48:24 UTC 4 years ago

OMG, you so win with that comment.

Seriously people, LJ isn't nearly as important as that thing outside your house called "life". Go outside, go for a run, go swimming, get some sun...ANYTHING!!!

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