One of my favorite hobbies is people watching. This can be done outside, watching folks as they go about their business (I spent a delightful hour doing this during lunch back in October when I was at a seminar at USC). It can also be done on Livejournal.
Right now, there is a very interesting dialog going on over some posts in news and lj_biz. You see, LJ announced their most recent set of revisions, and this included an adult content flag. You have the ability, when making a post, to flag it as containing either “adult concepts” (similar, I would guess, to PG-13) or explicit adult content (NC-17 stuff). Accessibility is based on the age you gave when you registered (not your birth year in your profile); if you don’t have one on file, you supposedly are asked the first time you attempt to access such content. LJ pretty much takes your word on this age, so there are way to get around it. No system is perfect.
LJ has also provided the ability to “flag” adult content by the reader. Now, this can only be done on truly public posts (I never see the flag on a friends-restricted posts), and not on your own posts. Multiple people have to flag a post to have it go in the review queue, and the *worst* that can happen is that it is marked as “adult” (heaven forfend!). You have to have had your account for more than 30 days to flag, and you can’t flag more than 5 posts in 24 hours, if memory serves correct. If you do too much false flagging, according to the comments I’ve read, they will start ignoring your flags.
You would think, reading the over 2500 comments that have shown up in less than 24 hours, that this is the end of the world as we know it. People keep commenting and asking the same questions, so fast that no one would be able to keep up with the responses. They spin and spin faster out of control.
I just don’t get it.
I can understand that some folks want to discuss adult subjects in their journals. Why they might want to do it in a 100% public post I don’t always get, but there could conceivably be reasons (for example, some womens health posts might be viewed wrongly by some). But if you are writing something you feel is adult, is there some reason not to flag it? If your audience is adults, they won’t see any difference by your flagging the post. Logged out users might have to log in, but this would actually be better as then they could more easily comment.
If you’re not writing adult content, why worry about someone outside being able to flag it? So what? If they do, LJ has no reason to mark it adult. If it is borderline and get marked, all you’re doing is making teens potentially have to go through a few more hoops to get it.
But the commentors seem to want a perfect system immediately… or they want a free-for-all where anyone can do anything. They seem to want LJ to enforce the laws that are only applicable in every country, forgetting that LJ is based in the US and thus uses US law as the basis for what it does.
I think people just like to complain. A good example is the menorah virtual gift. I notice before they announced it they didn’t have the right graphic for Chanukah — they were using a 7 candle menorah instead of a 9 candle chanukiah (chanukah menorah). They fixed the graphic. Now, folks are beating them up for calling it a menorah (or insisting on 7 branches).
Part of me wants to comment and try to fix things. Part of me, though, is enjoying watching the train wreck.
