asta77

Fear of lawsuits in the kingdom of ridiculous lawsuits might explain the rash action. As long as they re-install those journals that have been wrongly deleted, calm down people! But one thing struck me when I read the link to Cnet:
trying to coordinate a large group of volunteers to enforce a policy

Try paying people for work.

No, seriously, they have a awesome group of volunteers who are well trained, committed, and actually interested in doing the work they do.

(I say this because I *do* volunteer, but on the Support end - that is with more technical stuff.)

Abuse has a much more stringent policy for who is allowed to volunteer as well as the training that they go through. You can read more about it on the profile page of lj_abuse. But even in Support you'd be amazed at the kind of structure there is.

I can go into more detail if you're interested. But I'd lay money down that LiveJournal has one of the best Support/Abuse teams in the business.

There are problems, yes. And having more paid staff would be great. But from what I can tell the specific problem here has nothing to do with whether those specific people are paid staff or volunteers.

(disclaimer that while I do volunteer, I don't speak for LiveJournal or know anything more about the situation than the rest of the public, etc, etc.)

Oh, not dissing the volunteers at all! I just have this oldfashioned idea that companies should pay for work. It just struck a nerve cause in Germany it has become a big problem that qualified university graduates are being "hired" as volunteers/interns before they can even think of getting a real job. I worked for a magazine as an unpayed intern that was practically run by "volunteers". All of which has probably nothing to do with lj-volunteers :)

Ah. We obviously have totally different knee-jerk reactions :)

I just deleted a whole long weird explanation of how the volunteers are organized, which you so didn't need :)

How did I not know you were an LJ volunteer? I'm learning more and more because of this debacle!

I was happy to see that people weren't blaming the LJ support members for what happened. The people who pulled the plug on the LJs were just doing what they were told to do and it's the corporate office that needs to take a look of how they run their business and choose to take action.

Or at least ask the people (the volunteers) that have to deal with the every day running of LJ what the best course of action may be? The may have suggested posting some info as events occurred.

I get the anger and frustration, but the pessimist in me says that this could very well happen again elsewhere.
I like to think it's the realist in me that came to the same conclusion. Also I've been flashing back to the FBI incident back in... 2004? You know the one I mean, I'm sure. Someone will be watching, where ever you are.

Yep, I know of which incident you speak of. Where fandom goes, trouble follows. ;)

I think they handled this much better than Nipplegate'06. But to mis-quote BSG: "this has all happened before, and will all happen again"

Yeah, I have no doubt. They'll be good for awhile because they'll want the bad press to die down, but then they'll either forget this happened or, as some speculate, formulate a plan to get rid of all the fandom people because we are too much trouble.