lj stealth upgrades

[egypturnash]

And yet again LJ just quietly implements something with no fanfare. I noticed this somewhere in the last couple days, where a serial adder I'd preemptively banned quietly vanished from my 'friends of' list, but did not vanish on Joule's graph of recent changes.

For those of you who have people watching your LJ who give you a twinge in the gut every time you just see their name on your 'friends of' list... go here and type ban_set fucktard, where fucktard is the user name of the person you have too many horrible associations with, then hit the 'execute' button. You can put multiple bans in there at once, too.

They won't be able to respond to any of your entries, and will vanish from your 'friends of' list. They'll still be able to read your public entries, mind you. And you'll still show up in the 'friends' list on their info page. And you'll still see their name in the friends window if you use a client on your own machine. But hey, it's one less reminder of them, and maybe it's the only one you need to worry about.

Comments

[dv-girl.livejournal.com]

Waaah! Now I'll have to resume stalking you from afar! *sniffle* ;)

[doodlesthegreat.livejournal.com]

I'd hazard a guess you're not one of the ones Peganthyrus refers to. =};-3

[doodlesthegreat.livejournal.com]

I'd heard about this from some other folks, and there's a couple of names I'll have to take out. Thanks for the reminder.

[space-wolf.livejournal.com]

You have been tossed from a bunch as well.

[doodlesthegreat.livejournal.com]

No surprises there. Nice icon, by the way.

[defenbaugh.livejournal.com]

One has to wonder how much of this has to do with Sibi :)

[kiala.livejournal.com]

Only how much people give him attention.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Not in my case, as I have no idea who that is.

[borghalrantipol.livejournal.com]

I added you some time ago and you never added me back. I do like reading your journal, but if you wish me to take you off my list I will.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Oh, no! I'm not telling anyone to go away with this. If I wanted people to not read my journal, it's be friends-only; like it says in my user info, I don't mind people adding my journal to their friends list, but I don't add everyone back - my criteria for doing that mystify everyone, including myself.

The accounts I banned are ones like butt_buddy that exist solely to add lots and lots of people in hope of getting precisely the reaction you worried I'm having to you. And other ones that seem to exist for the sole purpose of making "funny" and "ironic" comments.

I'm just pointing out a quiet little change LJ made with absolutely no fanfare, because I know a few people who are endlessly irritated that people they have horrible memories attatched to have their LJ account watching, even if it's a wholly friends-only journal. Which is why I included directions.

...I can tell I'm tired, too tired to be succinct. Ah well. Back to curling up in bed with a silly book.

[kiala.livejournal.com]

doh!

set_ban ***********


Failed!

Unknown command 'set_ban'

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Ugh! I got it backwards, it's ban_set - I did that while looking at the docs, too! I fixed it in the main entry.

[defenbaugh.livejournal.com]

reversed.. ban_set (name)

[kensan-oni.livejournal.com]

I'm so confused... I thought I was a 'fan', or at least a follower, but it doesn't even list me. Phoo. :'P

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Yes it does. Here, under "friends of".

[kensan-oni.livejournal.com]

YEah! (Mad deer dance)... but it didn't on that page. Hmmph. :')

[sirius-achamoth.livejournal.com]

I'd like you to attempt to explain to my ignorant self how this could help in any way, apart from increasing the amount of teh drama floating about. Livejournal is already close enough to a soap opera to my liking, without this being implemented... then again, not all would view that as a bad thing. 'Sides, the friends only thing doesn't stop the content of hate posts being strewn throughout people's inboxes, and people are still going to be able to read public entries and bug you over AIM or whatnot.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Let's see:

Say you had a horrible experience with gongoozler. One that was so bad that seeing any reminder of them hurts. They put you on their friends list. Every time you look at your user info page, there's their name to give you a little rise in blood pressure. To remind you they're out there.

(This is not a theoretical example, by the way; I know someone who is in this situation. I originally took the attitude of "why does it matter", but listening to her explain the emotions behind it made me begin to understand.)

Now, you could go ban them for a good while, but they'd still show up as watching you. Well, now they're gone from 'friends of'. Other methods of getting that data still show it, but the one most people are likely to see regularly do not. And by banning someone from commenting in your journal, I think there's a pretty clear message being sent that you do not consider them a friend.

Hate posts in inboxes? You regularly get people mailing you nastygrams? Well, that's not really something LJ has any power over. Or do you mean people making nasty responses to LJ entries? If that, then banning someone means they can't comment in your journal.

And yes, people can still read public entries and hassle you over other channels. That's what blocking them on those other channels is for. And exercising some care in what you write about publicly.

[sirius-achamoth.livejournal.com]

I understand... I think. But I find that the banning option is already overused. As I have much skill at unknowingly instigating conflicts, tolerance is something I have had to learn. Out of the dozen journals I have been banned from, most of them were political skirmishes with people refusing to acknowledge the viewpoint of anyone else. There was, of course, the person I threatened physical violence against, and the individual who was unfortunate enough to attract my affections, other than that most instances of banning I have been witness to aren't necessary and do more harm than good.

If you can't handle people online, how the hell are you going to handle them in the real world? Attempting to talk with people you dislike is far more beneficial to both parties than banning them, regardless of if they are some SA goon asking you to betray some fluffbunny otherkin, or if they are a drop-out transgendered Californian asking you for net sex.

[turbinerocks.livejournal.com]

There's more than a few people I know who have been the victims of online stalking. Like the same people, pestering them and digging up dirt about them, possibly threatening them, for years. Not flamewars, not diagreements, not silly SA nerds, these are mentally broken human wrecks who are incredibly persistent, infatuated with the person in question, and there's no way to reason with them. I don't think it's unreasonable to have tools out there for various online communications mediums to ban someone who's being a total nightmare.

And what's the problem with having more options in LJ? More tools for sorting out who you want to see and who you don't, is a good thing.

[bobguthrie.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the info. ^-^