Journal Maintenance

[l33tminion]

One of the unusual things about Livejournal is the friendship system, which makes the meaning of "friend" a bit unclear.

I thinned my friends list, today. I don't think this will be any trouble, but if you have something to say, please feel free to speak up. I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings. I removed following users:

agent_01101010: Friended me first, but no longer has me friended. Journal is no longer active according to the owner.

neoronin03: Friended me first (I think) but does not have me friended now.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/_skye_/]

Interesting article.

I am more facinated with the overlap of Real-world and LJ 'friend' terminology. Specifically, the roles played by LJ friends and the relationship to roles in RL. For instance, I would find it useful to be able to talk about 'conversations' I've had with 'friends' on LJ -- but what words do I use? Conversation and friend have a slightly different meaning in Real Life, don't they? And whereas it's acceptable to overlap worlds when one is a teenager, being an adult means that less allowance is made.

THIS is what I want to hear about.

PS I look at friending/unfriending in a 'living together' way: it's a trial. If it works, good. If not, OK. Evidently my hyperfriendships are not so fraught with meaning.

[l33tminion]

I use "conversations" and "friends". Then again, I don't mind thinking of LiveJournal as a "place", either. After all, places can be described as graphs, with adjacent locations being connected and different "paths" taking different amount of times. LJ is like that, except the paths are all short, the connections are one-directional, and the connections can be redrawn at will. Think of it as a city, where everyone can choose who their next-door neighbors are (even to the point of allowing X to be Y's neighbor without Y being X's neighbor). So it's a very unusual place...

As far as the "friends" thing goes, I disagree with the essay's conclusion that the LJ Developers should have avoided real world terminology. Yes, using "friend" does cause confusion and drama due to the bleed-over of meaning. On the other hand, that bleed-over is helpful in turning LJ into a community, which is what the developers intended. Using the word friend to describe your LJ "neighbors" perhaps encourages people to think of them as friends in the older, more conventional sense.

Also, I don't agree that adults have less freedom to blur definitions than teenagers. Rather, the blurring of definitions is the function of a changing society. Teenage society is always changing, but so is Livejournal (and the blogging world in general) because it is a frontier.

[l33tminion]

Also, check this out. I started the section based on that essay (although it has been vastly improved by other users since then).