12 April 2017 @ 11:37 pm
LJ Changes Discussion  
For those who might not be aware, since the start of 2017 there have been changes to Livejournal with servers moving to Russia and, most recently, a change in LJ Terms & Conditions.  We would like to share with you some of our thoughts on this and then we would like the community's input, with a view to possibly making some changes. Your mods may be manning the bar, but without all of YOU there is no community. Your views are important so please do comment after reading. Thank you.

Please be aware that your mods are nowhere near the likes of Tony Stark in technical knowledge and futurist thinking, however: never asumme that information you post on any social media is entirely private. Social media companies hold the rights to your information (see: instagram owns all your photos, see: you can never completely delete your Facebook). In addition, unless you are very, very good there will be someone better than you who can crack your security; we can take precautions but we are not immune. This has not changed with LJ. It's just that instead of LJ being in Trump's America it's now in Putin's Russia. Your opinions on those administrations and on your online rights associated with companies located within them are your own.

Our Position: Your mods are not panicking, but we are wary of these changes. They do not at first glance impact the main activities of this community - a main change in the T&Cs concerns politics for example - but with things such as this and Russia's LBGTQ rights record we are wary. We also, of course, have to take into account our members. If the majority of you move elsewhere then it would make sense for the community to follow the community.

Dreamwidth: An alternate social media site that we could host the community on is Dreamwidth. It is relatively easy to import a community there from LJ. There are pros and cons to Dreamwidth vs LJ and these are different for personal journals and communities. KEY POINTS: we could import the entire community including all of the comments to Dreamwidth. You can't crosspost on communities and future comments would not crosspost, although we could re-import the community on a semi-regular basis. Dreamwidth has an OpenID log in system so that you can comment there using an LJ, and other, online identities - you do NOT have to have a personal Dreamwidth account to post to a Dreamwidth community (although it makes it easier). None of your mods are familiar with Dreamwidth and there may be stumbling blocks that we wouldn't know about until we trip over them.

Options under consideration:

1) We keep the community on LJ. We back it up on Dreamwidth and re-import to Dreamwidth on a semi-regular basis to keep it current. We do not moderate or use the Dreamwidth version. It remains inactive unless needed in the future.

2) We keep the LJ community AND have a Dreamwidth community. How this would work: we re-import semi-regularly to Dreamwidth, we comment on both, we moderate both, we keep both active. Dreamwidth would have BOTH LJ and Dreamwidth posts. LJ would just have LJ posts. Dreamwidth would (hopefully) end up with the comments from both. LJ would just have LJ comments. 

3) We move the community to Dreamwidth and maintain a presence on LJ. Dreamwidth would be the main community but monthly/ on a semi-regular basis we would post a summary post to LJ with links to Dreamwidth posts and activity, so people on LJ would know what was going on and could either comment/chat on LJ or use OpenID to comment on Dreamwidth.

4) We move to Dreamwidth completely. We archive the LJ version and don't use it at all.

For easy commenting you can copy and paste the following. Or you can just comment with whatever you think about all of this. The important thing is that we have a discussion as a community, so please do comment. There is no deadline for this post and we open to changing our minds (again) in the future. However, if you could comment before MONDAY 17th APRIL that would be helpful.

 

PLEASE NOTE: please be respectful of other people's opinions, emotions, and countries. Think debate, not argument. Thank you.

Your Mods
 
 
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inkvoices: avengers:assassins hug[personal profile] inkvoices on April 17th, 2017 02:34 am (UTC)
Personally I don't think the changes will have a huge impact on us, but there's also people's principles and if people move then there's no people to form a comm, hence discussion needed :)

Interesting thought on backing up LJ only fics. There'd have to be a discussion around if this would be a be_compromised account or a general LJ backup account with some fics tagged as be_compromised or included in be_compromised collections - I think there's a niche here for all LJ, not just be_compromised? The original writers would have to be contacted and agree, plus credit would have to be appropriately given. Which, as most fic writers use AO3 these days you might find the LJ only fics are authors who don't want those fics on another archive or aren't active/contactable anymore, but you'd have to find that out. And it'd take work - you'd need a list of those fics, who to contact, organise it, upload it... I don't think the be_compromised mods have the time, to be honest, although again we could discuss. If anyone wanted to take this on as a general LJ backup project though, possibly an idea?

Perhaps in the meantime, or as a starting point, a post with links to LJ only fics relevant to be_compromised so people could download them if they wanted? Inviting commenting with other LJ only known fics relevant to our interests?
franztastisch: regina[personal profile] franztastisch on April 17th, 2017 01:31 pm (UTC)
I mean, that why I think a discussion would be good. Because there are some fantastic fics on this comm that are posted only to this comm (I've searched for some when i was fixing my bookmarks and yeah... for some, this is literally the only place their housed). I understand that it'll be a big undertaking but maybe the comm would think it's worth it and we could sort of... group tackle it? I dunno. But I think a discussion might be worth having.
inkvoices: avengers:natasha thinky[personal profile] inkvoices on April 17th, 2017 08:33 pm (UTC)
Maybe start with a post to collect fics that are on be_compromised LJ only then, with some that you've spotted and an invite for others to join the job? If you wanted to kick that off as a starting point and a wider discussion about LJ fics as backup...? Maybe as an ATTF???