In retrospect...
Nov. 5th, 2013 07:41 am... it should have bothered me a lot more at the time to encounter a science fictional world where the main antagonists were called a slur originally intended for gay men, and where the Noble and Oppressed protagonist comes from a family whose suppressed religion insists on large families.
Basically, authorial leakage equivalent to Twilight. Except with a lot less pleasant author.
Basically, authorial leakage equivalent to Twilight. Except with a lot less pleasant author.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shirozora recently posted about how default heterosexuality (particularly in the Disney property Tron) unnerved her in a fashion she couldn't examine too closely, and I put my finger square on the problem. From my comment: I don't like the feeling that in some universes, I would not exist because I am bisexual, because in those universes, everyone is heterosexual unless they are the Designated Gay. In some universes, it is not canonically okay for some characters to be quietly and discreetly gay, or quietly bisexual, or quietly asexual, and g-d forbid anyone actually be TRANSGENDERED. And that is not okay with me. I would not want to live in such a universe, but it overjoys the fuck out of me to go around queering up these universes so WE CAN EXIST.
Some default-heterosexual universes don't have anyone who is Designated Gay. I wouldn't exist there. My sister wouldn't exist there. Most of you guys wouldn't exist there. My best friend might exist there, but he'd have never met me, because I wouldn't exist. Dreamwidth wouldn't exist. Large parts of LiveJournal wouldn't exist.
Having a wildly disproportionately small number of Designated Gays sometimes feels worse. It's harder to pretend that anybody who might be one of us is just quietly closeted and not coming out to be stared at and bullied and beaten and killed. There are a few of us, and they might represent some of us, but they don't represent all of us, and maybe we don't even like them. Albus and Gellert don't even get main-text, they get subtext and an offhand post-series interview mention. (And I don't like either of them.) Pretty much everyone else gets an opposite-sex relationship plastered on.
I exist. Some universes are better. Jamie Crawford exists, and so do Kurt and Blaine and Santana and Brittany, and Aral and ... and Ethan and his whole damn planet. Jamie goes around being loudly fucking fabulous and daring people to make something of it.
Silence = Death. If fictional people are silenced by their authors, then fuck yeah, we're marching right the fuck in and giving them voices.
Welcome to azurelunatic’s Dodgy Analogy Theatre, in which she attempts to explain the Outsider’s View of the Current Mail Not Delivered/Spam Problem at LiveJournal! (The information here is gathered from news posts and discussions in news comments and such, and the analogy gets dodgier the further it's strung along.)
First, understand that I picture spammers not as businesspeople who need re-training on how to use the computer, nor as members of a shady underworld, nor even as the stereotypical cave-dwelling geek gone bad. Even though all three of the former are involved in spamming, that’s not my mental image. I picture them as birds -- in looks, a cross between the worst aesthetic properties and personal habits of the vulture and the chicken: the teenage chicken whose voice is breaking and still retains the shrillness of its chickhood peep, but the full volume and power of its adult voice, and nigh unto zero control of its voicebox. It makes inexperienced theremin players sound tuneful. They favor nesting in the concrete notches of Brutalist architecture, but are opportunists who make their homes anywhere.
Now picture LiveJournal as a home-based business: mostly family, a lot of kids, a few external staff members who come and go. They have a very large back yard with blueberry bushes in it, and they make blueberry jam and ship it off to people who order it off the internet. (These are the comment notifications.)
To make this analogy work, they somewhat unwisely leave the addressed boxes sitting out on the back porch. Most of the time, the box gets its jar of jam, and is closed up and shipped off.
Other times, a spammer (remember, we’re talking birds here) lays its egg in the box, and closes it up safely. And the teenagers doing the shipping runs figure that any closed box is jam ready to go, slap some tape on it, and ship it off, so some very surprised and annoyed customers sometimes get a spammer’s egg delivered when they were expecting a pot of very nice blueberry jam.
( It only gets dodgier and weirder from here. )
First, understand that I picture spammers not as businesspeople who need re-training on how to use the computer, nor as members of a shady underworld, nor even as the stereotypical cave-dwelling geek gone bad. Even though all three of the former are involved in spamming, that’s not my mental image. I picture them as birds -- in looks, a cross between the worst aesthetic properties and personal habits of the vulture and the chicken: the teenage chicken whose voice is breaking and still retains the shrillness of its chickhood peep, but the full volume and power of its adult voice, and nigh unto zero control of its voicebox. It makes inexperienced theremin players sound tuneful. They favor nesting in the concrete notches of Brutalist architecture, but are opportunists who make their homes anywhere.
Now picture LiveJournal as a home-based business: mostly family, a lot of kids, a few external staff members who come and go. They have a very large back yard with blueberry bushes in it, and they make blueberry jam and ship it off to people who order it off the internet. (These are the comment notifications.)
To make this analogy work, they somewhat unwisely leave the addressed boxes sitting out on the back porch. Most of the time, the box gets its jar of jam, and is closed up and shipped off.
Other times, a spammer (remember, we’re talking birds here) lays its egg in the box, and closes it up safely. And the teenagers doing the shipping runs figure that any closed box is jam ready to go, slap some tape on it, and ship it off, so some very surprised and annoyed customers sometimes get a spammer’s egg delivered when they were expecting a pot of very nice blueberry jam.
( It only gets dodgier and weirder from here. )
So there's a round of discussion about Mary Sue (and Gary/Lary/Harry/Barry Stu) happening in corners of fandom that I read, and one of the entries mentioned Wesley Crusher and got me thinking off on a tangent.
How could Wesley Crusher have been treated in Star Trek: The Next Generation, to make him identifiable and even awesome? He was apparently a blatant self-insert of Gene Roddenberry, and annoying, and because he was so disliked, when an episode focused on him, he was show-warping rather than show-enhancing. I think it would have been possible to make him identifiable rather than alienating, and with only a few tweaks to premise and casting. (Note: this is the perspective of someone who's not seen the whole show, and therefore I am pretty much guaranteed to be missing parts of Wesley's canon portrayal that might screw with what I'm proposing.) But he was basically shoved into the show without proper grounding for his existence, just a flimsy backstory, and viewers were expected to identify with him and accept him just because he was OMG TEENAGE. That ... doesn't really work.
Idea 1: Don't make him the exception.
( Holy fuck that's a lot of midshipmen. )
Idea 2: Even on a ship that *has* teens, Wesley really doesn't have any friends his own age.
( Read more... )
Idea 3: Give him some non-adult friends, or at least people he has a positive relationship with.
( Read more... )
With a those few tweaks, Wesley could have been transformed from being the Only Special Snowflake in a desert, to being the Only Special Snowflake in a blizzard. He's still a Special Snowflake, but now there's more support for his existence in his own society. He becomes identifiable: not just sole teenager in a world full of adults, but teenager isolated from his peers because of his intelligence and difficulty with/disinclination for social interaction, having more meaningful interactions with adults than people his own age, yet isolated from them too due to age and social difficulties. With identification, Wesley becomes awesome and not dreaded, and the audience can buy in: this is me, this is my friend who's too smart for his own good, and there I am/he is, and OKAY THIS IS KIND OF AWESOME.
If Wesley hadn't caught on with the audience even with the changes, with a framework that inserted a pool of teenage extras into the background, another teen or two could have been brought forth as a guest star and tested for recurring character potential.
How could Wesley Crusher have been treated in Star Trek: The Next Generation, to make him identifiable and even awesome? He was apparently a blatant self-insert of Gene Roddenberry, and annoying, and because he was so disliked, when an episode focused on him, he was show-warping rather than show-enhancing. I think it would have been possible to make him identifiable rather than alienating, and with only a few tweaks to premise and casting. (Note: this is the perspective of someone who's not seen the whole show, and therefore I am pretty much guaranteed to be missing parts of Wesley's canon portrayal that might screw with what I'm proposing.) But he was basically shoved into the show without proper grounding for his existence, just a flimsy backstory, and viewers were expected to identify with him and accept him just because he was OMG TEENAGE. That ... doesn't really work.
Idea 1: Don't make him the exception.
( Holy fuck that's a lot of midshipmen. )
Idea 2: Even on a ship that *has* teens, Wesley really doesn't have any friends his own age.
( Read more... )
Idea 3: Give him some non-adult friends, or at least people he has a positive relationship with.
( Read more... )
With a those few tweaks, Wesley could have been transformed from being the Only Special Snowflake in a desert, to being the Only Special Snowflake in a blizzard. He's still a Special Snowflake, but now there's more support for his existence in his own society. He becomes identifiable: not just sole teenager in a world full of adults, but teenager isolated from his peers because of his intelligence and difficulty with/disinclination for social interaction, having more meaningful interactions with adults than people his own age, yet isolated from them too due to age and social difficulties. With identification, Wesley becomes awesome and not dreaded, and the audience can buy in: this is me, this is my friend who's too smart for his own good, and there I am/he is, and OKAY THIS IS KIND OF AWESOME.
If Wesley hadn't caught on with the audience even with the changes, with a framework that inserted a pool of teenage extras into the background, another teen or two could have been brought forth as a guest star and tested for recurring character potential.
Entry elsewhere
Apr. 8th, 2010 06:42 amWhy I think Dreamwidth is a special Free/Libre Open Source Software Development Environment, and what I think is important about being a Dreamwidth contributor, by Azz, aged 29 3/4 (Summary of DW history and development principles as aimed at an outsider who knows very little about it, particularly the flood of Google Summer of Code students incoming. Is September over yet?)
Why I think Dreamwidth is a special Free/Libre Open Source Software Development Environment, and what I think is important about being a Dreamwidth contributor, by Azz, aged 29 3/4
Right, that's the soulless corporate drone version. Let me relate the history as I know it.
Basically, a couple people said, "You know, we're just waiting for you to start up your own blogging site." Dreamwidth's owners looked at each other and said "You know, we could do this." They did this not because the blogging end of social media was where the money was, but because they blog, their friends blog, and they wanted to see social blogging done not just reasonably well, but right.
Denise, the Suit, was previously a manager at LiveJournal.
Mark, the Geek, was previously doing things at Mozilla, LiveJournal, and Google.
( Doing things right that other places did halfassed or wrong. )
A year on down the line, I can still point to the diversity statement and say: "This. The site I now use every day called for my contributions, and this is the first mark that I made." Every time I hear someone praising the diversity statement, especially when they mention the part I contributed, I feel the clean pride of a job well-done. I think "It may not be much, but it makes a difference to me, and to other people who use the site every day."
Dreamwidth found itself in a delicate position as a startup, breaking into a niche already dominated by LiveJournal, the original project from which Dreamwidth was forked. The owners knew that while there was a not insignificant audience in users who had been alienated by various of LiveJournal's practices, that this audience alone was not a sustainable userbase -- nor would people (them included) ultimately want to use a blogging site that set out to define itself as "Not LiveJournal". They could not compete directly in terms of volume, and so did not set out to capture the exact same audience or attempt to become LiveJournal's replacement. Instead, they determined that they would become the type of blogging site that they themselves most wanted to use, and incidentally fix all the nagging things they'd never had time to fix when they were working for LiveJournal.
( And everybody pitched in. )
( Accessibility as priority, not afterthought. )
From the top down, there is very little distinction drawn between "user" and "contributor". The project takes the approach that every user, no matter how technically inexperienced, is either already contributing or has the potential to become a contributor. ( Anyone can learn, and even some of the smallest things are considered contributions. )
Developers come to Dreamwidth from two sources: existing users of the site who are interested in taking their contributions to the next level, and existing developers who have heard about Dreamwidth from friends who are involved or general buzz in the FLOSS community.
( Not all of the existing Dreamwidth users who enter Dreamwidth development were experienced developers at the time they began. )
Dreamwidth volunteer culture has significant differences from the general English-speaking technical community. ( Consider the sexism, racism, and more in the general culture. )
Because Dreamwidth is a social media site, people who develop for it, work on it, and volunteer for it also tend to spend recreational and social time on it, actually using the site as well as contributing. There is an ingrained reluctance to trust any would-be contributor who is not also willing to explore and use the site. If Dreamwidth development has any hazing rituals, it is this. A new developer has not really had the true Dreamwidth experience until they have run up against something in the site that drives them crazy when trying to use it, then turned around and filed a bug -- or found that someone else had already filed it -- or stomped over to Bugzilla and whipped out a patch to finally fix the damned thing.
But the true meaning of being a Dreamwidth contributor is being able to look at the site and say, "See that? I did that. This, here? That was me. I use this site, and I made it better for not just me, but everybody."
Dreamwidth is a social media platform with attention to diversity and accessibility.
Right, that's the soulless corporate drone version. Let me relate the history as I know it.
Basically, a couple people said, "You know, we're just waiting for you to start up your own blogging site." Dreamwidth's owners looked at each other and said "You know, we could do this." They did this not because the blogging end of social media was where the money was, but because they blog, their friends blog, and they wanted to see social blogging done not just reasonably well, but right.
Denise, the Suit, was previously a manager at LiveJournal.
Mark, the Geek, was previously doing things at Mozilla, LiveJournal, and Google.
( Doing things right that other places did halfassed or wrong. )
A year on down the line, I can still point to the diversity statement and say: "This. The site I now use every day called for my contributions, and this is the first mark that I made." Every time I hear someone praising the diversity statement, especially when they mention the part I contributed, I feel the clean pride of a job well-done. I think "It may not be much, but it makes a difference to me, and to other people who use the site every day."
Dreamwidth found itself in a delicate position as a startup, breaking into a niche already dominated by LiveJournal, the original project from which Dreamwidth was forked. The owners knew that while there was a not insignificant audience in users who had been alienated by various of LiveJournal's practices, that this audience alone was not a sustainable userbase -- nor would people (them included) ultimately want to use a blogging site that set out to define itself as "Not LiveJournal". They could not compete directly in terms of volume, and so did not set out to capture the exact same audience or attempt to become LiveJournal's replacement. Instead, they determined that they would become the type of blogging site that they themselves most wanted to use, and incidentally fix all the nagging things they'd never had time to fix when they were working for LiveJournal.
( And everybody pitched in. )
( Accessibility as priority, not afterthought. )
From the top down, there is very little distinction drawn between "user" and "contributor". The project takes the approach that every user, no matter how technically inexperienced, is either already contributing or has the potential to become a contributor. ( Anyone can learn, and even some of the smallest things are considered contributions. )
Developers come to Dreamwidth from two sources: existing users of the site who are interested in taking their contributions to the next level, and existing developers who have heard about Dreamwidth from friends who are involved or general buzz in the FLOSS community.
( Not all of the existing Dreamwidth users who enter Dreamwidth development were experienced developers at the time they began. )
Dreamwidth volunteer culture has significant differences from the general English-speaking technical community. ( Consider the sexism, racism, and more in the general culture. )
Because Dreamwidth is a social media site, people who develop for it, work on it, and volunteer for it also tend to spend recreational and social time on it, actually using the site as well as contributing. There is an ingrained reluctance to trust any would-be contributor who is not also willing to explore and use the site. If Dreamwidth development has any hazing rituals, it is this. A new developer has not really had the true Dreamwidth experience until they have run up against something in the site that drives them crazy when trying to use it, then turned around and filed a bug -- or found that someone else had already filed it -- or stomped over to Bugzilla and whipped out a patch to finally fix the damned thing.
But the true meaning of being a Dreamwidth contributor is being able to look at the site and say, "See that? I did that. This, here? That was me. I use this site, and I made it better for not just me, but everybody."
So, on the Mortal Instruments email list, a place that some of my Twitter readers are acquainted with by proxy (because there are certain aspects of it that make me put on my swearing-pants), one of the dear teenage denizens mentioned that she found Jace and Clary to be a better romantic couple than Romeo and Juliet.
After a few moments of hard staring, I found that I agreed: not because comparing the writing quality of a Young Adult swords & sorcery epic trilogy to the Bard was a sane proposition, but because Romeo and Juliet are not a romantic couple. Yes, Mae's shirt did help. :D
I have reproduced my natterings herein, complete with a reworking of the first 10 lines of III.V with some slightly more modern references.
( Read more... )
After a few moments of hard staring, I found that I agreed: not because comparing the writing quality of a Young Adult swords & sorcery epic trilogy to the Bard was a sane proposition, but because Romeo and Juliet are not a romantic couple. Yes, Mae's shirt did help. :D
I have reproduced my natterings herein, complete with a reworking of the first 10 lines of III.V with some slightly more modern references.
( Read more... )
I trust the LJ development team. Do you?
Dec. 15th, 2006 02:29 amI trust LiveJournal's development team to have LiveJournal's best interests at heart, to lead LiveJournal in a good direction, and to listen to constructive feedback.
I will do my best to make the feedback I leave for LiveJournal developers constructive in nature.
If you wouldn't do it in fandom, don't do it to the devs. I know that this is the choir section here that I'm ranting at, but I've spent the past couple hours in a room with some rather irritated engineers who are really code people, not people-people. They've been busting their asses for months to track down random crap that goes wrong. This site is so bloody huge and robust that Bantown could not take it down for long, even though they tried. Slashdot fails to have the Slashdot Effect on LJ. LJ is thriving and functional thanks to the developers who put it together and the engineer-types who keep it running day-to-day and the people who keep the money coming in to feed the monster bandwidth and all the rest of it, and the people who make sure that other people know how to use it, and the people who stay here and hang out and talk with friends. The developers work hard to keep things working and keep the site evolving so it doesn't become a great big code dinosaur. Lately it's been seeming that the harder they work to fix things that are broken and update things that are out of code (building code metaphor, not computer code; work with me here), the more they get screamed at for trying to ruin LJ.
In every![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
news feature-type post where something new and bell/whistle is announced, there is the inevitable complaint that things like virtual gifts are a waste of developer time that would be better spent on problem X, Y, or Z. And when LJ has been having a couple weeks where there are problems, and the problems stay there even though people are complaining about them, and the problems are still there, and still there, and still there -- yes, it does seem illogical that developers would go and do something like make it possible to put a flaming bag of poo on your least favorite serial adder's profile page. But sometimes you have to step away from a problem to get it back in perspective. I'm not in LJ Central, so I'm not there watching them bang their heads into a stubborn problem until headaches ensue, but I trust that they are allocating their time reasonably.
You know what I think the number one biggest waste of developer time is?
Dealing with unaccountably rude and hostile users.
LJ as a culture has the hugest sense of fandom entitlement ever.
LJ users want the same thing they've always had from LJ, namely, a place to put their journals and communicate and be with friends, and a geek-friendly, open, caring, open-source, user-supported, small-town environment.
LJ geeks want pretty much that same thing. Really. Truly.
Somewhere along the line, LJ users as-a-collective got the idea that if the development team did something that they didn't like, the best way of solving this was not to give constructively critical feedback and debate it with vigor and the knowledge that the developers had the good of the site in mind, but to jump on any available surface and flame away.
Imagine the utter fucking joy that the LJ developers must be having, wading through gods know how many hundred comments of flame to find the legitimate kernels of actual problems in between the complaints. Go through one of those posts announcing changes to LJ some time, and pretend that the changes to LJ are a fic that's already been beta-read, and the comments to those posts are comments in response to the fic. Read those comments with an eye to constructive criticism. The analogy doesn't stretch particularly far, because the core site pages of LJ are not a piece of fanfiction, but the principle of effective communication holds true.
Dear users, the way to get the development team to listen to your concerns is not to scream abuse at them and then expect them to abandon their ideas of what is right for the site and adopt yours. The louder you scream, the louder they're going to hit the delete key and say "Na na na can't hear you na na na." I don't actually think they're doing that now, but the temptation is very much there and very much real. LJ is a maverick site in that it has such open forums for user feedback and discussion. Plenty of services do not have anything resembling that. Do you really want to convince the developers and volunteers that an open forum will only collect whining and flames?
Hint: Bantown tried forcing the issue by attacking LJ. We all know how that turned out. Pwned, craxx0rbitches, pwned. In a similar case, visible nipple is still not allowed in the default userpic, and the flaming tantrums thrown at LJ's support staff by assorted self-proclaimed "boob nazis" have assured that visible nipple will never be allowed, on the principle that it's bad precedent to cave when the toddler has a meltdown because they didn't get their little way. Even though there are many people who do love the boob.
Tell them what you like about the shiny new stuff. Let them know what they did right. Sit on your hands for a few hours until you try using it a few times before you flame off at them. If you have to say something immediately, remember what you learned in those sensitivity training sessions and use your "I" statements. "I'm frustrated with this new user interface, and I'd really prefer something with the look and feel of the older version" comes over a whole lot better than "What the fuck did you do to my user interface, you morons? I liked it the way it was! Put it back!"
LJ, even current LJ under 6A management, is capable of recognizing if something goes really badly. The developers actively ask for reports of broken or unusable behavior. Things may not be fixed immediately, but there are little things coming out every here and there to make things better, things that you may not be aware of unless you're watchinglj_releases or changelog.
LJ really is a group effort. I do not have Super-Secret Inside Information that no one else has. I'm a relatively average occasional Support volunteer. (Very occasional, since Life Attacks.) I put time and effort into making LJ a better place, and I see the results of that effort. Things may not always go my way when LJ policy and I disagree with each other (I wouldn't mind seeing nipples in any boobtacular default user pictures, for example), but at least my technical suggestions are often dead-on, and my social suggestions are at least listened to respectfully.
I really do think it all boils down to three or four questions:
And you know? I find that I'm never short on database handles after this update. How about you?
I will do my best to make the feedback I leave for LiveJournal developers constructive in nature.
If you wouldn't do it in fandom, don't do it to the devs. I know that this is the choir section here that I'm ranting at, but I've spent the past couple hours in a room with some rather irritated engineers who are really code people, not people-people. They've been busting their asses for months to track down random crap that goes wrong. This site is so bloody huge and robust that Bantown could not take it down for long, even though they tried. Slashdot fails to have the Slashdot Effect on LJ. LJ is thriving and functional thanks to the developers who put it together and the engineer-types who keep it running day-to-day and the people who keep the money coming in to feed the monster bandwidth and all the rest of it, and the people who make sure that other people know how to use it, and the people who stay here and hang out and talk with friends. The developers work hard to keep things working and keep the site evolving so it doesn't become a great big code dinosaur. Lately it's been seeming that the harder they work to fix things that are broken and update things that are out of code (building code metaphor, not computer code; work with me here), the more they get screamed at for trying to ruin LJ.
In every
news feature-type post where something new and bell/whistle is announced, there is the inevitable complaint that things like virtual gifts are a waste of developer time that would be better spent on problem X, Y, or Z. And when LJ has been having a couple weeks where there are problems, and the problems stay there even though people are complaining about them, and the problems are still there, and still there, and still there -- yes, it does seem illogical that developers would go and do something like make it possible to put a flaming bag of poo on your least favorite serial adder's profile page. But sometimes you have to step away from a problem to get it back in perspective. I'm not in LJ Central, so I'm not there watching them bang their heads into a stubborn problem until headaches ensue, but I trust that they are allocating their time reasonably. You know what I think the number one biggest waste of developer time is?
Dealing with unaccountably rude and hostile users.
LJ as a culture has the hugest sense of fandom entitlement ever.
LJ users want the same thing they've always had from LJ, namely, a place to put their journals and communicate and be with friends, and a geek-friendly, open, caring, open-source, user-supported, small-town environment.
LJ geeks want pretty much that same thing. Really. Truly.
Somewhere along the line, LJ users as-a-collective got the idea that if the development team did something that they didn't like, the best way of solving this was not to give constructively critical feedback and debate it with vigor and the knowledge that the developers had the good of the site in mind, but to jump on any available surface and flame away.
Imagine the utter fucking joy that the LJ developers must be having, wading through gods know how many hundred comments of flame to find the legitimate kernels of actual problems in between the complaints. Go through one of those posts announcing changes to LJ some time, and pretend that the changes to LJ are a fic that's already been beta-read, and the comments to those posts are comments in response to the fic. Read those comments with an eye to constructive criticism. The analogy doesn't stretch particularly far, because the core site pages of LJ are not a piece of fanfiction, but the principle of effective communication holds true.
Dear users, the way to get the development team to listen to your concerns is not to scream abuse at them and then expect them to abandon their ideas of what is right for the site and adopt yours. The louder you scream, the louder they're going to hit the delete key and say "Na na na can't hear you na na na." I don't actually think they're doing that now, but the temptation is very much there and very much real. LJ is a maverick site in that it has such open forums for user feedback and discussion. Plenty of services do not have anything resembling that. Do you really want to convince the developers and volunteers that an open forum will only collect whining and flames?
Hint: Bantown tried forcing the issue by attacking LJ. We all know how that turned out. Pwned, craxx0rbitches, pwned. In a similar case, visible nipple is still not allowed in the default userpic, and the flaming tantrums thrown at LJ's support staff by assorted self-proclaimed "boob nazis" have assured that visible nipple will never be allowed, on the principle that it's bad precedent to cave when the toddler has a meltdown because they didn't get their little way. Even though there are many people who do love the boob.
Tell them what you like about the shiny new stuff. Let them know what they did right. Sit on your hands for a few hours until you try using it a few times before you flame off at them. If you have to say something immediately, remember what you learned in those sensitivity training sessions and use your "I" statements. "I'm frustrated with this new user interface, and I'd really prefer something with the look and feel of the older version" comes over a whole lot better than "What the fuck did you do to my user interface, you morons? I liked it the way it was! Put it back!"
LJ, even current LJ under 6A management, is capable of recognizing if something goes really badly. The developers actively ask for reports of broken or unusable behavior. Things may not be fixed immediately, but there are little things coming out every here and there to make things better, things that you may not be aware of unless you're watching
lj_releases or changelog. LJ really is a group effort. I do not have Super-Secret Inside Information that no one else has. I'm a relatively average occasional Support volunteer. (Very occasional, since Life Attacks.) I put time and effort into making LJ a better place, and I see the results of that effort. Things may not always go my way when LJ policy and I disagree with each other (I wouldn't mind seeing nipples in any boobtacular default user pictures, for example), but at least my technical suggestions are often dead-on, and my social suggestions are at least listened to respectfully.
I really do think it all boils down to three or four questions:
- Do you trust the people who are running LJ, including Six Apart core and the developers?
- If you do not trust the people running LJ, what can they reasonably do to demonstrate that they're worthy of your trust?
- If there is nothing the people running LJ can do to gain your trust, why are you still here?
And you know? I find that I'm never short on database handles after this update. How about you?
Fragments...
Nov. 24th, 2005 06:37 amOn scraps of paper I outline large clear eyes, a somber young face, tousled hair. This is the boy I met once between the pages of a book. ( Read more... )
All whee and stuff.
Oct. 30th, 2005 04:01 amSleep schedule has eaten me. Good job I woke up in the middle of the night to find that my smarter-than-good-for-it alarm clock decided to observe daylight savings time without me. (Arizona does not do daylight savings time. My alarm clock does. I have to catch it lest I be late for work.) 4 hours sleep, and awake now. Gotta get some more sleep. Don't have to be up until 6.
AD & D Book of Sex.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
theferrett has some recent pithy commentary on same, mostly the flaws. [awake enough to link as of 6:24 am]
Carlton Draught Big Ad. A beer ad worth watching. Rather meta.
Hetracil! The spoof anti-gay drug! (For men only.)metaquotes says it's the same people as the Onion.
PMS: the Game! (Potentially offensive.)
Lost as done by assorted different directors. Probably more amusing if you're a) familiar with Lost, and b) familiar with the other directors.
Birdhouse in your Soul music video via Google Video Search.ataniell93, the skinny John looks disturbingly like the teenage Tom Riddle actor!
( Adult. )
AD & D Book of Sex.
theferrett has some recent pithy commentary on same, mostly the flaws. [awake enough to link as of 6:24 am] Carlton Draught Big Ad. A beer ad worth watching. Rather meta.
Hetracil! The spoof anti-gay drug! (For men only.)
metaquotes says it's the same people as the Onion. PMS: the Game! (Potentially offensive.)
Lost as done by assorted different directors. Probably more amusing if you're a) familiar with Lost, and b) familiar with the other directors.
Birdhouse in your Soul music video via Google Video Search.
ataniell93, the skinny John looks disturbingly like the teenage Tom Riddle actor! ( Adult. )
Vaporware Meta
Oct. 6th, 2005 03:45 amWhy, yes. I do have entirely too much fun thinking up vaporware ideas. But at least I'm getting them down and out there so someone can do something with the killer apps my head comes up with at some of the oddest moments.
