Hard words, humor, and hot, plus discussion on LJ matters.

[azurelunatic]

http://youswear.com/index.asp?language=Japanese -- swearing. In Japanese.
idonotlikepeas holds forth on the common assumptions of IM etiquette.
Hilarious bogus tutorials.
Hot, omg hot: http://synecdochic.livejournal.com/117619.html (sg1)
http://community.livejournal.com/metaquotes/5993308.html -- seasonal humorous blasphemy.
Via metafandom: Is the nature of LJ changing? Discussion.

My contribution to the discussion:

I consider myself on the very outside fringes of fandom -- I read and link on a semi-regular basis, and I very occasionally generate my own content.

I post a mixture of everything, focusing on real life/work, links lists, and an awful lot (lately) of LJ meta, since I've gotten far more involved in the LJ administration process. (And since it doesn't hurt to pimp it out: if you know how LJ works, feel free to hit up the support boards and learn_support to help people out and get involved!)

I have started to skim a lot more lately, since my friends list is getting very crowded and I don't feel like cutting anyone or anything. If I do skim things, it's long entries by people I have very little emotional connection with, or news articles I'm not interested in reading, or (especially recently) LJ change updates that I only peripherally need to know about. I have a Default View filter, which I installed when I was having some friendslist drama; I now only use it to keep some high-volume communities from completely clogging up my friendslist, though I still will wind up needing to see the locked entries. Useful, that. If I do need to filter the friendslist for reading purposes, I use LJ's built-in person/community/syndicated filter, which works excellently for all my needs.

I think I comment the most on LJ-development-and-admin-related and personal friend stuff, though there are some topics that make me run off at the mouth, like this one!

I use my friends list for reading, primarily. There are too many friends for it to be purely reading, but anything I need to read on a daily basis winds up on my friendslist or else it doesn't wind up read. All hail syndication!

My outside readership sometimes boggles me. I've had a few random rants go LJ-wide (most notably my summary of the bantown cracking drama) so I've become far more aware that I'm being read and linked to in ways I have no way of tracing the connection.

I think LJ as a whole is becoming more aware that their content is actually on the internet, where anyone might actually see it. People are becoming concerned about these issues, and locking their personal content down tighter, but at the same time, getting to interact more widely with other sites rather than LJ just being a closed community with no interactivity with other blogging sites. I think that this is due in a large part to syndicated feeds of other blogs and OpenID commenting. I can't wait for LJ to implement TrackBack (which has been on the to-do list since like FOREVER, and who knows when it'll actually come out), because I think that will help LJ users become more aware of the rest of the internet. We're not just in our own little corner, and I think LJ will benefit from opening up and having more direct interaction with other sites.

Comments

[foxfirefey]

I guess it might be worth it to note that it doesn't look like we will ever get trackbacks, at least not until the protocol allows for some measure of authentication.

[matgb]

I think Anil mentioned somewhere that they were looking at working out some way of using OpenID as an authentication method for it, not sure how it'd work but still. And while I look forward to it, I can see the drama when it's switched on and people start getting confused by what it is.

And I wish they'd finish OpenID for commenting off and integrate it fully, they're still treated as anon comments, even if they're on your friends list. And the loging box is as badly explained as ever.

[foxfirefey]

It might be possible to do that, although as far as I can see OpenID wasn't designed for machine authentication. (May be on purpose?) I could be wrong on that, though.

[matgb]

He suggested it here in response to an offhand question from me, but I may be reading more into it than he meant:

On the subject of promised but not yet implement features that 6A should be able to give us; trackbacks?

I think the thinking right now is to fix TrackBack first (authentication, spam issues) before it'd be considered for implementation. TB is on the standardization track, and given OpenID's rapid increase in adoption, I bet that might be part of the solution, too.

TB spam is definitely a problem, but some way of authenticating the link is definitely there shouldn't be too hard to arrange.

OpenID isn't designed for machines to do it, but a similar standard could possibly be arranged, I suspect. But then, I'm in no way close to being a coder, so have no idea.

[azurelunatic]

Yeah; I don't mind OpenID people commenting, even though I won't allow anonymous.

Thinking about it, they really need to be in a class by themselves. Anonymous, you don't know who they are. OpenID, you know who they are authenticated as, but there is really nothing stopping someone with too much spare time and a grudge from creating 100 different external IDs and sockpuppetpiling you to death. You can report 'em and LJ can try to take action, but I don't think there's much that can be done. LJ doesn't like sockpuppets-to-evade-banning, but if that can't be verified, what can LJ do?

[matgb]

Aye; I want OpenID to be a third type of allowed, and defaulted to treated like random logged in user. I'm actively encouraging blogging friends from other sites to comment/vote in polls, if I ever turn off or screen anonymous it'll make things a little difficult for them. Especially now that Technorati and Wordpress.com are ID servers.

But sockpuppets can be made within LJ or externally, I'd imagine it can be dealt with in the same way; ultimately, not an issue I'd deal with, but given LJ created it, the woeful lack of user end support on the site is annoying. Ah well.

[azurelunatic]

I know LJ has to have ways of connecting up harrassing sockpuppet accounts and helping prevent new harrassing sockpuppets from being made on LJ. I don't know if those tools extend to the ability to detect that an OpenID user is likely to be a harrassing sockpuppet. People having problems with harrassing sockpuppets at the current time would be advised to block anonymous comments, which blocks OpenID users at the moment, but if OpenID were grouped with regular users, this could become an issue.

[azurelunatic]

Alas!!