Social protocols on lj are complex, strange, and often really interesting. Clearly you missed the entertaining discussions that resulted when some users discovered that RSS feeds were being automatically generated for their journals and demanded the right to turn them off ...

On the second point, though, it's worth pointing out that no-index is just the default; individual users can choose to make their journals google-searchable.

The fact that it’s off by default is already creepy. And who’s going to think to turn it on? It’s not as though LJ configuration is super-intuitive in the first place.

Speaking as a neurotic paranoid bipolar-type who friends-locks the heck out everything because of an overwhelming conviction that they are, in fact, out to get me -- or at least judge me and find me wanting -- I was totally relieved to find I'm not google-able by default. It irritates me looking for threads of days-gone-by, to be sure, but.

What creeps me out is the idea that LJ is not the property of the community it serves: that it is in fact under the control of a corporate entity that has already changed hands once and has, on at least one occasion in recent history, demonstrated that it is totally willing to make and enforce arbitrary decisions, even in the face of a community-wide uproar.

As an ancient Mac user (manual? we don't need no stinking manuals!), I don't check defaults unless I know something's not working as I expect it to. I always assumed the LJ default was public.

My LJ is mostly to have a log-in name, so I'm not complaining.

But most of my LJ posts are about how odd LJ seems to me.

Keep thinking I should check out MySpace, but it's probably GeezerSpace by now, so I should actually look for whatever surpassed whatever surpassed it. Given the nuisance of that, I'll keep my jalopie parked at Blogspot for as long as I can stand it.

Jackie, I’m pretty sure friendslocked posts wouldn’t be indexable anyway. And as for everything else — well, I understand how you feel, but I still think it’s wrong.

In a post-Lovecraftian wrongness sense.

(Did Lovecraft ever use the word “wrongness”? It sure shows up a lot in discussions of his work . . . .)

I was mostly referring to other people's public posts. But yeah, still irritating.

As for the p-L wrongness: See, I used have this goldfish named Neurosis... we called her that because she wouldn't actually go to the surface to eat until after she'd seen her buddy Draino-the-Indestructible-Fish go up there and safely return. Draino was eaten a few months later by a new addition to the tank, one evening when my roommate and I had gone out to watch the campus cinema's showing of "Silence of the Lambs."

Microcosmic Moral: caution is a better survival strategy than invincibility.

(We named the new fish Dr. Lector.)

But to opt for clarity instead of cuteness: I think what we're missing here is a discussion about situational dependencies. For example, I think I have a much pricklier online persona than you do... given enough time, I can convince most people that my posturing, interrogational style, and incessant taboo-breaking are actually all just harmless eccentricities, and that there's really no need to take offense. But it takes time, and focus, and I can't possibly accomodate every single person who cursorily scans my online contributions.

So I limit access to my journal to the people I've had some opportunity to convince of my general harmlessness, who will hopefully cut me a little slack. That way I have some awareness of who's watching me make an a** myself in the space where I'm most likely to do so.

(And then... well, maybe I don't always want to be "harmless"? Hmm.)

I don't think everybody needs to do this. I don't think you do -- in part because you're less prickly; in part because your situation is simply different. And in part because you don't have a "severe nervous twitch" component to your personality.

Oh, but the "don't want to link to" thing -- it isn't actually an LJ-specific mannerism. I've broken that rule in completely LJ- free environments, and only realized I felt bad about it much, much later... it's really just a polite accomodation of the fact that many people haven't given adequate thought to their potential audience in an open online environment, and may therefore be completely freaked out when their cozy space is suddenly invaded by, oh, 32,000 Making Light readers. For example.

This is one of those points where my knee-jerk reaction is to just stop using the Internet if it's going to be like that. Obviously this is not going to happen, any more than I was going to leave Scotland immediately after being yelled at for talking too loudly on the Glasgow subway, but the impulse is still there.

:(

I think it's just about having a little privacy? Or the perception of privacy? Because different people need it in different places, for a wide variety of different reasons? Many of which, honestly, are mostly internal.

And LJ happens to have the ability to accomodate those people, if that's what they feel they need... even if they're too inept to figure out on their own where the google search preferences are kept.

Privacy my arse. It is just a lame excuse for people who want to slag others off in public and not face the consequences. If you don't want people to link to your posts, use the facilities that are there to keep them private. Personally I find this whole idea that people can say whatever they want online and then portray themselves as victims if anyone calls them on it to be deeply offensive. How would you like it if someone punched you in the face and, when you complained, said you'd violated his privacy by noticing his fist?

On the other hand, have you noticed that friends-locked posts appear in Bloglines feeds. If you try to click through then you get an "unavailable" message, but you can read the posts. Yet another reason to despise LJ.

hmm, I was really thinking more along the lines of, say, an inexperienced blogger who posts about something deeply personal, like the loss of a family member. And then a thousand people flood into their previously-unnoticed journal because they also posted a funny picture. You can still argue that they should have given a bit more thought to their potential audience, but I'm apt to give that individual a bit more sympathy than I would the "victims" in the cases you're focusing on -- I'm not going to squander any sympathy on those folks, let alone defend 'em.

And I'm not saying places like Making Light shouldn't share cool links, and I'm not saying that the internet shouldn't be all about everybody sharing everything with everybody. But... sometimes people just think they're sharing with a small group of friends, and they don't really understand the implications of "posting something for the whole world to see." Sometimes I can be convinced to feel sympathy for them when they find out the hard way, and sometimes, very rarely, I can anticipate when I'm about to dump a bit more attention on someone than they might like. So then I have to decide what I'm going to do about it -- especially if that person happens to be my friend.

But I'm also out of steam defending LJ. I happen to be happy with them right now, but that in and of itself worries me -- because I'll be sad to loose it all when they close my account because I used an icon disrespectful to Zoroastrism. Or whatever.

I'm delighted to see you say this!

For me, the creepiest thing about LJ is the stooopid names. You don't know who the hell these people really are. Which just proves you are Unworthy, because if you were worthy, you'd know, wouldn't you? You'd be on the Friends list. And who the hell said you could sit down at OUR table, anywayhow?

Most LJ'ers use Livejournal to post to a smaller group of immediate friends. If I recall the statistics, most posts on LJ are friends only by a significant margin.

I have a public blog these days (though I still use my livejournal account) but when I got onto livejournal in 2001, I and a general group of friends and friends of friends used it as a way to keep track of each other, know what was going on in the often distant lives of old college friends, etc. It wasn't meant for the whole world to see, the focus was on our friends. Some braver souls just posted everything public and every now and then it would blow up in their face.

LJ has a much different userbase than the general blogosphere.

LJ has a much different userbase than the general blogosphere.

And if it was a wholly closed userbase, I’d never see it and it wouldn’t bother me. But some people use LJ for its LJ-ness, and some people just use it as if it were Blogger or Typepad, and some people are deliberately on both sides of the fence.

I have every sympathy with people who make a genuine mistake. LiveJournal doesn't exactly advertise how public it is, and all those stupid names encourage people to think that no one knows who they are (although it is very easy to track down their IP addresses). What I object to are the people who, having made a mistake, rather than admit to it get all pissy and claim you have violated their rights by reading what they wrote.

Well gee Mrs. Smith, it is a real shame that I ran down your daughter and killed her, but I was drunk at the time so I can't be held responsible. She shouldn't have been standing on the sidewalk when I drove by. And by the way, I'm suing you for the damage she did to my car when I hit her.

On the other hand, have you noticed that friends-locked posts appear in Bloglines feeds.

Not as far as I can determine after a quick scout. Or to be specific: if I'm logged into lj, my friends' friends-locked posts show up in their RSS feed, although not in bloglines; if I'm not logged into lj, my friends' friends-locked posts don't show up in their RSS feed or in bloglines. And either way I can't see any friends-locked posts from non-friends.

Maybe this calls for an LJ-style meme thing:

10 Things That Creep Me Out About LJ

Cheryl: So I saw what you were talking about with the feeds, and the locked entries persisted even after I'd logged out, restarted the browser, then disabled and deleted all the cookies. However, I can't reproduce it while viewing the feeds from either my husband's computer or my own while using Internet Explorer (which I think I've used exactly twice, and never to view livejournal).

The effect finally disappeared completely when I deleted the cache on my primary browser. So I think what you were seeing is the feeds adjusting themselves to your LJ-login status as Niall is describing, and then the browser being lazy and grabbing that copy stored in the cache at a later date when you were logged-out.

David: I use LJ and, I'm not being facetious, but I'm not getting what the outrage is here. At this stage of the game, isn't expecting anything you put out on the internet to remain secret kind of a pipe dream? Or am I missing the point entirely -- a situation I fully expect could be the case. Please, if you could, explain in very simple terms -- I'm missing it.

I've certainly had instances where I've read a post in Bloglines, tried to click through, and been told it was unavailable. Lazy browsers sounds like a plausible explanation.

Also I don't think you can tell from within Bloglines that a post has been friends-locked, which makes it kind of dangerous.

I've already stopped following most LJs where the owners have pseudonyms because so many of them seem to think it makes their posts "secret". I guess I should also cancel my LJ account so there's no danger of my seeing a friends-locked post.

Jeff: you didn't follow the Tiptree controversy, did you.

Cheryl: I was aware of it. You mean the fact that a piece of fan fiction showed up on the ballot? I was aware of it, but cared so little one way or the other that, you're right, I didn't get deeply into it. It seemed like a tempest in a tea pot. But I'm getting that you are telling me there were discussions that were supposedly, or should have been, cloaked, I guess that turned out not to be? And feelings were hurt? Is that the gist? And this was due to the technology? If that was the case, then I understand David's original post. And thanks! I have no great love for LJ, I only used it because it seemed the easiest to use when I started. I'm not too sharp with this stuff, but I asked here, because I like to know about the stuff I'm using. Thanks!

Jeff - there were all sorts of fusses going on, but one part of the discussion was that the fanfic in question was publicly available on the Internet. A number of people got very angry with the Tiptree judges because, so it was claimed, they had exposed the author of the fanfic to risk of prosecution by drawing attention to her story. When it was pointed out that Liz Henry had actually talked to the author before suggesting the work for the Long List they went on to claim this this was unfair because the author couldn't be expected to know how high profile the Tiptree was. In summary, yes, there are people out there who believe that LiveJournal postings are "private" and who will scream about their rights having been abused if you link to them.

Cheryl: Thanks so much for explaining. I get it now. I see what David was talking about in his original posts. Makes sense.