Because "AdequateJournal" is too on-the-nose?

[sigma7]

GreatestJournal has struck an iceberg and is sinking. Essentially admins can't be arsed to (sorry, that was harsh, but still...) give support other than to abandon ship to InsaneJournal. Not a huge surprise, but disappointing. For fun, read its news journal to listen to its resources fold and crash sequentially. The StrikeThrough exodus obviously hammered its resources beyond its capacity, and I do feel a little sorry for it -- but for those of us who had trouble differentiating between GJ and IJ, it's a bit easier now: one works, one doesn't.

Comments

[dawnmipb.livejournal.com]

It would be very smart of IJ right now to limit new journals to paid journals only.

I do think most of the people who had GJs also had placeholder IJs as well.

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

I certainly did. I think that they both probably endured the same post-ST2007 influx, or at least approximate, and obviously only one of them was able to cope.

As for IJ, I do hope they have a plan, in case there's a post-GJ surge. Maybe their infrastructure is already strong enough to handle it, but better safe....

[norabombay.livejournal.com]

I hadn't even found the news journal.

I remember, back in the day, when I got my LJ it was a code or $5. I think that IJ would be greately benefited to start that sort of a thing....

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

I've found that endeavors of this nature are either fully commercial or fully volunteer, and that the gray area consumes those who try to lurk there. IJ might consider making the transition, because I think there's obviously a market for it -- I'm not saying go IPO, but maybe just a skeleton crew for now....

I'm mixing my PoTC and Titanic metaphors now. Hrm.

[norabombay.livejournal.com]

Exactly. And IJ is going to have to make the transition if it wants to survive- you can only get by on volunteer based until you hit a certain size- bandwith eventually costs soemthing....

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

And I don't know the specifics of the "donation" hullabaloo over on GJ, but there's a few fountains of fury about it, which says they didn't handle it very well. That's your gray area, filled to the brim with fail.

[blemt.livejournal.com]

As I read through it, the donations were specifically going to one of the volunteer admins to help offset her own bills. In exchange for the donation, she would bump them to the top of a particular feature list.

Looks to me like a case of people not stopping to read what they were getting.

[missmiah.livejournal.com]

From what I can decipher from the general crankiness in the comments - One volunteer type person with access to the inner bits of GJ received "donations" from people who would, in turn, eventually get first dibs on currently taken but unused or inactive user names once the volunteer went in on her own and cleared the old journals. The amount of $7000 was given by a few people in the comments, and was to be used by the volunteer to pay her personal bills and things, but we should probably take that with a grain of salt.

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

My problem with that is that in that "donation" process, it's not as much a literal donation as it is a payment for a specific service -- that service being preferential placement in the renaming queue. That service becomes meaningless and useless when GJ gets abandoned, and that's not right.

If it were purely a bona-fide donation, that's one thing. But payment for a service is a whole other monster.

[missmiah.livejournal.com]

Hence my deployment of the quotes. Since I'm pretending to be in a generous mood I'm going to assume that the volunteer who was collecting the funds was not aware that GJ was about to go butt up when s/he accepted the money; however, by making sure the payments were labeled "Donations" s/he may have been setting themselves up with an easy out that wouldn't require returning the funds if the services were unable to be completed.

Of course, I really have no actual clue what's being going on over there.

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

Me either. Suddenly LJ looks polished and professional instead of run by the executives of the Box Network from Bender's Big Score.

Yeah, I have the feeling the individual who received the donations was just someone else who was set-up-us-the-bomb by the whole "screw you guys, I'm goin' home" administrative approach. I wish that were an option in my line of work....

[adele87.livejournal.com]

Who actually uses GreatestJournal anyway? I had an account with them a while ago, but I never used it.