I has a soapbox! (At least, until THEY be takin it!)

[melannen]

Fanlib.com is now the first google search result for fanfic for my Stargate otp. To those of you saying FanLib was doomed and irrelevant: ttpphhptt! With tentacles on top!

Okay, so the author of said fics took them down after she noticed the debacle. Still! How long d'you think it will take all 115 of those search results to sink out of Google's database and stop polluting my need to read every single published piece of soppy Asgard romance? Apparently until *just before* I whine about it on lj. :P
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Meanwhile, fandom_counts is stalled out at just under 34000 journals. Berkowitz's last news post was remarkably more reassuring than his last, proving that at the very least someone has now drummed the concept of 'customer relations' into his head.

However, lolita_icontest, a Nabokov fandom community, is still suspended, along with a variety of other journals and communities, proving that the return of journals and communities had more to do with how many people complained about them than about any actual attempt at making things right. On one hand, the return of journals people care about while the languishing ones continue to languish proves that they did listen to us. On the other hand, not terribly working on regaining my trust here, 6A. (PS: Your new lj homepage *sucks*. And, incidentally, is broken on lynx view.)

And a new version of Movable Type has just been announced.

I know a lot of people, now that the initial rage is dying down, have been talking about the deletion debacle as a tempest in a teapot, asking whether it's so important that they deleted our porn.

It wasn't about deleting our porn. It was about *deleting anything at all*. It was about thoughtcrime. LJ markets itself as a place for private journals and discussion forums, as well as for publishing and networking - that's why many of us are here. And when you tell someone it's evil, wrong and illegal to write about something in their personal journal (however risky it might be when that journal is on the internet) you're about two inches away from telling them that it's wrong and evil to think it. Persecution for yhoughtcrime should *not* be allowed to stand, wherever it is. (And yes, that includes pedophile journals. Even if they were actively breaking the law, lj should have called in law enforcement first. If they weren't actively breaking the law, they've as much right to be here as our porn - maybe more, if you want to start talking about writing as therapy.)

Meanwhile, I'm still planning on posting anything that isn't specifically for an lj audience over at my jf account.
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And the offer to make people jf accounts is still open. Have I mentioned how much fun I'm having at jf?

It's quiet - too quiet - but it reminds me of my early days here on lj. Where everything was shiny and new and I didn't have to think about playing to my audience, because they didn't know what to expect of me yet. When my fandom on lj was still small enough that I could try to follow everything, more or less.

Also, I posted a crack crossover poll the other day and got over 1/3 of my flist to answer - a total flist that includes people I know for sure only log in when LJ is down! I post a poll here, I'm lucky to get 1/10. (Be honest - all ya'll filter me out, right?)

Which reminds me: I remembered this poll, from last year. frek and stephanometra, you tied for first with two wrong answers each! (everybody got those two wrong - Tia *didn't* get to mack on Will (anyone notice how much they tamed down her sexuality in this movie? I could go on about that, but I won't.) and I was the only one to predict that Jack wouldn't get the Black Pearl in the end. :D ) Name your prizes, winners!
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PS: Lt's down. Has been for almost two days now. On the days I set aside for book-organizing, no less. Three things LJ could learn from LT about crisis management:

1. Treat your customers like allies, not enemies. And like they're intelligent. Communicate. Honestly. If you go awhile without updating the news, mention that it was an unforgivable mistake, and explain that it was due to technical issues. Not due to not trusting your customers.
2. Give them something to do. They want to be doing something. If you make a useful suggestion, chances are they'll do that. If you don't ... they'll have to occupy themselves.
3. Don't be evil. And sing along with the songs in your comment thread. :D
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Also, speaking of the internets breaking, the FCC's deadline for public comment on Net Neutrality is June 15th. That's until this Friday to keep our internets out of the hands of monopolistic robber barons (to the extent that it isn't already, anyway.) Speak out here:


...or anywhere else, really. We got LJ to listen to us; Congress isn't beyond our reach.

I was born in the generation that grew up with the Internet, from comics with Superman and the Tandy Whiz Kids to the wireless-enabled laptop I'm typing on now. And the internet has brought with it a wonderful flowering of creativity and thought, of learning and teaching, friendships and found families, that are the most valuable thing I have today - the most valuable contribution that American has given the world in my lifetime.

Today, in between a myriad other chores of living, I have visited websites in order to watch a video of a child being stoned to death in Iraq, to read a classic and influential feminist essay, to analyze a survey of socioeconomic demographics in the United States, to learn about poisonous plants in my area, to read a moving first-person account of abuse and the ways children fall through the cracks, to study the history and value of the corporately-packed literature of the Stratemeyer Syndicate, to protest to my government about a change in regulations, and certainly not least, to talk about television with my friends. (and all of that after church!)

None of those places would have survived in an internet where corporate interests were given financial subsidies on the backs of individual people and small providers.

In 1887 the US Congress passed the Interstate Commerce Act, the first of the sweeping anti-trust legislation that would shape the develpoing American economy for all time. The act was passed in response to price discrimination by railroads, which used their control of the means of distribution to form alliances with large corporations and create a stranglehold on the marketa stranglehold on the market to suppress the small farmers and businesspeople who were the foundation of American democracy..

In today's increasing white-collar US society, the valuable commodities are not raw materials of manufacturing, like steel and grain, but the raw materials of the mind: information and imagination. They're passed along the wires and waves of the internet rather than the tracks of the railroads, but the new pathways and opportunities they are creating are just as important for the new nation we're building in the new century as the old frontiers were for the old one.

And just as vulnerable - if the government forgets the lessons of its past - to control and exploitation by monopolistic interests bent on destroying the free spirit of independence and competition on which this country was built. Learn from history. Keep our common carriers free. And give my generation a new frontier to keep building a great nation on.

Yeah, I know, but I can't *not* sputter about "interstate commerce act! 1887! @^@$%" every time Net Neutrality comes up. Mrs. Savignac trained me well in AP History, bless her tiny Reaganite heart.
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And if that wasn't meme-y or sky-is-falling enough for you, try a zombie uprising on for size. :P