Crazy 88

[sigma7]

God, Livejournal, you can't do anything right, can you? You roll out a patch for a feature that wasn't broken, infuriate everyone, and you just double down on it. At least the English-speaking staff is cordial in its helplessness.

Honestly, I could give a damn about comment subject lines. But the manner in which this decision was arrived at and inflicted upon the userbase (and subsequent oblivious shrugs from those in charge) disgusts me. But I shouldn't be surprised by now, I know.

If LJArchive was actually working I'd feel a lot better; as it is I'm taking a long hard look at all my options here. Not looking forward to manually backing up nine years of posts and comments.

I think I like LJ more when it's down.

Comments

[norabombay.livejournal.com]

For the back up:

Set up a DW and import. They are letting people create with out codes now.

I'm not saying this in a DW Evangelist way, but in a 'save the files till LJ Archive works' way.

I just witnessed a community mod spend an entire day, just to get the subject lines back.

[dewline.livejournal.com]

Now that must've been a nightmare and a half for that moderator to get the thing done.

*shakes head in shock and wonder at the will to cluelessness, asking if it's a cross-border cultural issue to be worked out...*

A community work around

[norabombay.livejournal.com]

FFA did a full custom workaround and put the code up for everyone:
http://fail-fandomanon.livejournal.com/25451.html

[gloomchen.livejournal.com]

La la la it is happy in my world over at Google+.

I also managed to get everything backed up on my journal before LJArchive got broken, and the only reason why it hasn't all been deleted is because they don't have a mass deletion tool (and again... all 3rd party programs that could assist have since gotten broken).

Seriously though, you already host your picspam on Picasa, right? G+ would be a good alt at least for that, if you needed it.

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

It's under consideration. I'm not entirely comfortable with G+'s "use your real name or we kill all of your Google services" aspect, as I've gotten acclimated to having at least the thinnest possible separation between this identity and what passes for my real life. Hrm. I dunno. It's on the table, though. Going to spend some time thinking about it before LJ completely comes apart, and I give that a month at most.

[aardy.livejournal.com]

Not that it's likely going to do any good, but here's a poll I stumbled across about the issue. If nothing else, the journal icon is a bit of a laugh.

http://rollback88.livejournal.com/557.html

(I have a permanent account, so despite having a Dreamwidth account--chiefly in order to comment to folks who post there friendslocked and echo here but disable all comments on LJ--I'm not going anywhere.)

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

The funny thing is that losing comment subject lines is just about the most arbitrary change I can imagine making, and I can't imagine why anyone would be vehemently in favor of it, unless it's simply to prove the totality of their authority. It can't improve database responsiveness by any measurable amount. It can't be a dealbreaker to any coherent theme design. And they're sticking to it like they have a gun to their heads (insert igrick/Soviet Russia comment here).

My account winds down in the very near future and I've turned auto-payment off. I'll probably keep this LJ account active until they start purging us cheapskates, but even by posting here I feel complicit in something ugly.

[kateshort.livejournal.com]

Definitely open an account at Dreamwidth and at least do a backup there. It's really easy!

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

It's been in the queue for a few hours.

Reading the latest news post has me spitting nails.