In case you were wondering -

[kyburg]

The announcement last Wednesday was a mistake in regards to Basic accounts, as the change was not clearly stated, it did not allow for you to provide feedback, and went into effect immediately. Many of you have pointed out that the decision worried you less than the way it was communicated. You should have been given a voice, and you were not; we didn’t follow our own rules, and we apologize.

At this point we are working on a solution to enable existing LiveJournal users to create new Basic accounts as so many of you have requested. Nothing has been decided yet, but we are considering options which would allow existing users to continue to create new Basic accounts.

Okay, so the timing is fishy. Big deal. (Emphasis is also mine.)

I've also done my due diligence and redownloaded my journal as an LJ Book - http://www.ljbook.com, and yes - *gasp* - I tossed 10 Euros into the pot to get it done without waiting.

Oh, that's right. I pay money to keep the lights on. What AM I thinking?!

I'm thinking about how much servers, bandwidth and the human labor to make all this happen costs, d'oh.

In signing up to use this service, I didn't join any union. The company does NOT consult me in forming its policy - and frankly, the amount of transparency is admirable under the circumstances. They also appear able to own up.

I ain't striking tomorrow. Matter of fact, I'm rolling it up right now to post as much CRAP as I can manage.

And I fully expect the option for paid users to create non-ad basic accounts is going to go right back to invite codes.

You want to give me a writing prompt, now's the time to do it.

Comments

[djdig.livejournal.com]

boycott?

Who's organizing that?

I have a perm. lj account. I've been witting since 2001, and figured it was worth it for me to support.

[cahwyguy.livejournal.com]

Heh. I've already queued up my first post for tomorrow.

[diepunyhuman.livejournal.com]

Boycotting, my arse.

[diepunyhuman.livejournal.com]

read this

[rarity.livejournal.com]

I'm not striking tomorrow either.

This link also made my decision of NOT striking more concrete in my mind.

[cahwyguy.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link. If you follow weirdjews, it might be worth noting there. I'm also not striking, and actual plan on commenting on the strike while no one is there to respond :-).

[luscious-purple.livejournal.com]

OK, riddle me this...

Why are people in such a sudden rush to either back up their LJs to LJ Book or to mirror their journals to GreatestJournal or other open-source clones? Are they afraid that LJ is going to ban them or something?

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

Ya got me - I'm just taking advantage of the reminder. It's not a bad practice to keep backups...because if for any reason the servers go away, so does all the content.

And I've been this for over five years now - that's a lot of content.

[violet-tigress1.livejournal.com]

I know one person on GreatestJournal.... it seems like a "so-so" kind of format to me. Plus, they have that stupid talking ad that tells you to type a message in the text box so that the bot can say it.

[yeoww.livejournal.com]

I'm not striking either - bigger fish to fry. LJ's good compared to a couple of others I've tried. I'm good.

[dracowayfarer.livejournal.com]

You know, when I saw that LJ Book thing I got a little excited because I've been wanting a way to do exactly that for years. I still don't understand why LJ doesn't provide you a good way to archive your journal. Obviously it's possible.

I was disappointed when I saw that it doesn't include user pictures, though. Half of the fun of LJ is the user pics people choose to attach to their entries and comments. Hell, comments saying "Cool icon!" are rendered worthless if you CAN'T SEE THE ICON and sometimes the icon provides a little extra side commentary all it's own.

Guess I'll just have to find time to save every entry page in HTML format.

[dracowayfarer.livejournal.com]

You're boycotting your arse??