rule/guideline for journal usage

[Arigatomina]

We need some sort of guideline for how the journals are to be used. I thought there was a rule regarding them, but I can't find it now.

Can the admins contact Phade and get a section on journals added to the Site Rules sticky?

Some of the issues being debated - Are journals to be used for conversation between members? What about long one-liner conversations that clog the 'new journal entries' list for days, weeks, on end? There should be some sort of limit, given that we have a chatroom attached to the site, and we have a pm option for private messeges between members. Some people use the journals to talk back and forth every five minutes. Is that a legitimate use of the journals? Were they intended for that?

Can we get a line added to the rules saying that journals "shall not be used to wage any kind of personal attacks"?

I know we don't moderate journals like we do the forum, but we could still use a written guildline regarding their purpose on the site. If there aren't any "shall not" rules regarding the journals, a simple "do whatever you want" line in the Member Main page FAQ would suffice.

We don't just have people complaining about the chatroom entries. We have people complaining because people are complaining about the chatroom entries. And without any rules or guidelines to point them toward, the complaining won't go away anytime soon.

[BasharOfTheAges]

Some people use the journals to talk back and forth every five minutes. Is that a legitimate use of the journals? Were they intended for that?

No, not really.

I've found not looking at them to be the best answer to the problem though.

I planned to use it to update on project status, but with the "off topic message board mentality" it's become, it kinda makes me just stay away. Nobody's going to read what i post (you know, the PURPOSE of having it on the main page) since conversations between random people immediately flood the list soon afterwards. It's just a waste of space the way it is now, so i post my progress elseware to other people that don't care (but at least they get the chance to read it).

[Cornwiggle]

I agree. Most of the time a lot of replies are "Hey, look at my banner! PLZ vote it worthy!"

And then with that getaidsndie guy flaming people a lot too hasn't helped. It just gets people more riled up to make it a chat room.

[Kionon]

Journals, in theory, are good. But they need to be better controlled. Until then, I, like Basher, do not use or view them.

[JaddziaDax]

truthfully i say as long as they arent used for personal attacks O.o then i see nothing wrong with how people use their journals...

[BasharOfTheAges]

truthfully i say as long as they arent used for personal attacks O.o then i see nothing wrong with how people use their journals...

Even if it prevents and/or dissuades others from using them as they were intended to be used?

[JaddziaDax]

was there a specific charter ment for the journal section?

perhaps then they should call it something other than a "journal" becasue to me journal denotes something you write whatever you want in.... like a livejournal... ive seen people carry on conversations in livejournals...

perhaps adding a "comment on this" section would help eleviate alot of the back and forth...

[Kai Stromler]

I planned to use it to update on project status, but with the "off topic message board mentality" it's become, it kinda makes me just stay away. Nobody's going to read what i post (you know, the PURPOSE of having it on the main page) since conversations between random people immediately flood the list soon afterwards.

I do use my journal as a .plan file, under the following assumptions:

1) Nobody reads it anyways.
2) Anyone who's going to be sufficiently interested in my AMV progress to actually want to read about such has me in their Journal Buddies list.

If you want to catch people's eyes and drum up interest, that's what the forums are for. I look at the current main-page journals as a snapshot of what the .org is thinking lately, much like NVOTB right below it is a snapshot of what the .org is doing lately; both largely noise but occasionally some cool signal gets through.

For this reason, and because it'd consume too much programmer and mod time to renice them, I oppose regulation of the journals except in the degenerate case where the abuse affects the system, like when those idiots were using it for IM like two years ago. If people don't realize there are other, much more convenient places on the internet to do what they're kludging with the AMV journal, that's their problem, not the site management's.

As for commenting, that would solve a lot of the current problem, but...
1) If you want commenting, seriously, take it to Livejournal since they support that already, especially since
2) A lot about the current journal function suggests that it exists because it exists; it is not a custom or heavily maintained part of the site, and it's doubtful that changing this would be seen as useful effort.

--K

[Arigatomina]

...I oppose regulation of the journals except in the degenerate case where the abuse affects the system, like when those idiots were using it for IM like two years ago.

See, that's what I remember. I remember there being some sort of statement on the forum about how journals were not to be used for back and forth discussion. And they certainly weren't to be used for personal attacks.

But both of those are all over the place in the journals now. Is it because no one's reporting it? If so, then we can blame that on the lack of rules or guidelines telling new members that sort of mis-use is not welcome here. The mods don't have to watch the journals - as long as it's established what is and is not 'okay', you'll get your tattlers (like me ;p) dropping notes about flamers and insta-spammers.

I miss Sammy's posts. But I agree that allowing a repetitive flamer to stay on the journals is bad for the site. I like how the Journal Junkies have formed an actual community via their public posts. But I remember two new girls getting their Journal privileges taken away for chatting back and forth a lot less than the self-proclaimed Junkies are doing - just a year or two ago. Are Sammy and those two girls still members of the site? If so, we need to give them their privileges back or give the same punishment to the new offenders.

If the unwritten rules have changed, make it official in some sort of statement. It's not fair to those people who've had their journal privileges reduced for nothing less than our current posters do three or four (or 10+) times a day now.

[Kai Stromler]

...I oppose regulation of the journals except in the degenerate case where the abuse affects the system, like when those idiots were using it for IM like two years ago.

See, that's what I remember. I remember there being some sort of statement on the forum about how journals were not to be used for back and forth discussion. And they certainly weren't to be used for personal attacks.

<snip>

I miss Sammy's posts. But I agree that allowing a repetitive flamer to stay on the journals is bad for the site. I like how the Journal Junkies have formed an actual community via their public posts. But I remember two new girls getting their Journal privileges taken away for chatting back and forth a lot less than the self-proclaimed Junkies are doing - just a year or two ago. Are Sammy and those two girls still members of the site? If so, we need to give them their privileges back or give the same punishment to the new offenders.

Sammy IIRC is not banned, and continued to write in his journal after it got blackholed -- it won't appear on the mainpage, but you can still go to it if you like reading an Australian version of Seth Putnam. The users who were doing IM-over-AMV-journal may have gotten a short time-out, but the fix was to make the journal code more robust -- the problem wasn't nearly so much that they were chatting as that their chatting was occurring at a rate that was making the server throw up. The fix in both cases is to change the mechanics, not to try and correct user behavior; as elsewhere on the internet, there are going to be people who write interesting stuff, but also people who feel they have to tell the world what they had for breakfast, and people who get off on calling everyone in spitting distance an asshat.

People are not always uncorrectable. But it's nearly always easier to fix the communication layer than to change the culture that uses it. If there are abusive users who could use a blackholing, let the admins know. If there are non-abusive users who you don't want to see because all they do is spam, drop a note to the admins suggesting a member control to block selected journal users from showing up on your mainpage, and after they deliver the feature, start building your killfile. (shows internet age with Usenet word)

As I mentioned before, there is a lot of programmer inertia around the journals, so they may not feel that it's bad enough to justify making changes. However, if enough people say "no, it is that bad, we want killfiles", they'll probably do the implementation as they did with streamlining/flood control when that was necessary.

--K