Support-related stuff
If you like to “tweak” your style, you need to read this.
To say I am upset is an understatement. I’m pissed off. I don’t want to go into all of it right now, but I’ve been working for 3 months with the eventual goal of getting full privileges in customization– I care very little about GUnk. As mullenkamp put it: I’m a web design person– this basically cuts me out of volunteering my talents for LiveJournal.
And yes, they’re looking for a few good tutorials. But let’s face it: nobody reads the bloody tutorials now anyway. Nobody reads the FAQ, and when they do, it’s tremendously confusing to find information. The tutorials are pretty lame, not because they don’t provide information, but because there is no good interface for searching for what you want. Despite all the memories and such, LiveJournal is a terribly disorganized system.
Plus, the decision was abrupt, unanticipated, and without input. Staff and admins will say there was input, but that was only from the handful of people who are staff and admin. Not even the volunteers were consulted, or even pre-warned in any meaningful way. It’s kind of like John finding out he lost his job by checking the morning press releases– it’s not the way to do things if you want to keep people interested in helping you.
Sigh. I was spending too much time on Support anyway, I suppose. This gives me more time to focus on my work, novel, training, and all the other things in my life that are important to me.
ciannait wrote:
LiveJournal certainly isn’t run very well. It’s been a hack job since the beginning, and this doesn’t make things any better. I spent ages tweaking my style way back in the beginning, and if they break it I’ll be rather irritated.
Posted on 27-Nov-02 at 3:36 am | Permalink
mortaine wrote:
There are two things at issue in the post I linked to. One is the important part, the announcement that LiveJournal will no longer offer customization support. That part’s important in the sense that if you want someone to help you tweak your style, you are pretty much SOL. There are good reasons for this, but it alienates many.
The second issue is given way too much airtime in the comments. S2, the new custom style system, is a hair-breadth away from being released (which they’ve been saying for about a year now, by the way). So far, it has not been announced if previous styles will continue to function perpetually, continue to function for a while and then go away, or will cease to function altogether. Similarly, it is not clear if the current styles will be auto-converted to S2.
S2 looks like a real bitch, by the way, but me trying to finish my novel and the recent announcement re: cust has pretty much meant I see no valid reason to try to learn it at this point, except for personal reasons.
OK, enough now. I’m gonna go eat some worms.
Posted on 27-Nov-02 at 4:06 am | Permalink
silsbycarr wrote:
this is totally unrelated… where can I make myself a lego person???
I really want one.
Posted on 27-Nov-02 at 4:25 am | Permalink
mortaine wrote:
I will dig up the link tonight– I don’t have it at work.
Posted on 27-Nov-02 at 4:43 am | Permalink
silsbycarr wrote:
Yey!
Posted on 27-Nov-02 at 4:45 am | Permalink
beginning wrote:
The only thing I don’t like about it is how suddenly it happened. There was supposed to be a lot of work done in advance to prepare for this, and then all of a sudden — poof! — Cust was dead. So now everyone’s running around like chickens with their heads cut off, scrambling to get things together, and it’s just a mess. And it looks really bad to people in the community, who are now thinking “LiveJournal is a mess, the people who run it can’t even get it together”.
However, as much as people will hate me for this, I think that killing Cust might be a good idea. We were providing free styles for people who really should have been doing it for themselves. It was incredibly time-consuming, and with S2 coming out (seriously, it really is right about here) a lot of the things we were doing before with Cust will no longer apply.
“Plus, the decision was abrupt, unanticipated”
That’s actually not quite true. All of the admins and virtually every Cust priv knew ahead of time. A lot of non-privs knew, too. But I agree, no one knew it was happening yesterday. Most people thought they had some time to get prepared.
I don’t know, it’s just all a mess. I don’t know what to think or say about it. Maybe I should just keep my mouth shut. I really do hope you aren’t leaving Support, though. You’re one of our smartest and most helpful volunteers, and you’re doing incredibly well in G/Unk. Maybe you can find another category you like?
Posted on 27-Nov-02 at 7:17 am | Permalink
beginning wrote:
ReasonablyClever.com
I had one for awhile, with LiveJournal accessories.
Posted on 27-Nov-02 at 7:30 am | Permalink
mortaine wrote:
How about: unanticipated by me? How about: I’ve been I2 in Cust since they made interim privs and had heard NOTHING about this decision in advance– NOTHING! I was planning to get cust supporthelp– I had a GOAL, dammit!
I don’t honestly care all that much about Gunk. It doesn’t challenge me the way cust does. It’s what I do when I’m bored and there are no cust things to do.
However, as much as people will hate me for this, I think that killing Cust might be a good idea.
And foxynam’s response here was a good idea, too? I’m upset for just as rational reasons as you were, except I’m upset about losing cust.
I’m staying largely out of the official support board discussions (I’ve posted 4 times, I think, and two of them were to say that this needed to be put on news), because I don’t want to get into this argument with people. I understand there are reasons– of course there are reasons. I don’t want to argue the reasons, though– because I can’t. The decision was made without anyone asking or caring what I, or anyone else not already holding supporthelp privs, thought about it; no one cares if we leave at this point– really. No one gives a damn if a mass exodus of customization people suddenly leaves– who needs us anymore? Or they want us to stay and write ourselves into obsolescence, when writing a tutorial and actually fixing something for an individual are completely different talents (I’ve done both– they’re not the same!).
Likewise, no one cares what we think– what we think about the category that we spend the most time in. Nobody asked me if I minded answering detailed cust requests. Actually, I love them– I LOVE answering hard requests that want me to re-write their styles for them. I like them best when the user is polite and understands that cust volunteers aren’t required to do this, but I really enjoy them. I disliked it when a cust request was not approved because it didn’t give the user the actual code for their comments but instead pointed them to the FAQ and said “the overrides are style-specific,” because I always felt that providing code should be a step above and beyond the norm, but I liked going that extra step when I felt it was warranted. And now I’m told not to go the extra mile.
Well, fuck it. I don’t know yet if I’m staying in support or not. I’ll decide after my novel is done this weekend, after I’ve had time to cool off. Volunteering in support has not been a stressful burden to me, so quitting now seems odd, and yet I have a hard time seeing where I can fit into the system in the future. I don’t know where this fucking line is between lj-specific and html/css help that we’re supposed to tell them to go learn on their own, and I doubt very highly that we’re going to have a well organized set of documents to help them out (since howto is tremendously disorganized, and even the FAQ, which is better, is still a bear to navigate if you’re new).
Whew. Ashley, this isn’t really even directed at you, actually. Obviously I’m still very upset and needed to vent more. Thanks for being a sounding-board, even if you did provoke me by slipping into Supporthelp Ashley for a minute there.
Posted on 27-Nov-02 at 8:11 am | Permalink
emmavescence wrote:
all of the cust privs did not know. if any did, then it was because an admin leaked the information to them. it certainly was not freely passed around, or communicated in any meaningful way. that is not the way to go about things.
sorry, got distracted when mortaine asked us to take a look at her style
Posted on 29-Nov-02 at 4:00 am | Permalink