Ready, set, SNARK!!!

[kellinator]

(this is not meant to offend anyone, especially on my friends list!!)

Here's my version of the comment-drama currently going on in news with the new limits on posting:

bradfitz: Posting limits start right now. It's my birthday. Gimme money.
random free user #1: You suck!! You're, like, so unfair!! I'm gonna take my ball and go home!!
random paid user #1: Shut up, you big baby!! Free users eat shit!!
random paid user #2: How dare you mess with the Brad!! I <3 BRAD!! BRAD 4-EVA!!!
random paid user #3: *makes a "Happy Birthday Brad" banner that surely eats up tons of the argued-over bandwith*
random paid user #4: If you mess with the Brad I will hax0r your journal!! I am a l33t hax0r!! kthnx
random free user #2: How dare you!! I'm calling my lawyer!!

It's like there are two camps of droolers: the greedy cheapskates and the Brad-drones, drowning out the people who have sensible things to say. It's a drama diva's dream...

Seriously, I'm with alm35 here. Brad and crew need to make a choice. When they want us to be patient with slow service and down servers, we get the "LiveJournal is a big community" argument. But when they decide to make a sweeping change without even mentioning it to lj_dev or any of the other groups first, LJ's a business that has to survive. They can't have it both ways indefinitely. And limiting paid users is just stupid, considering how little of the site they make up. And the sneaky way this was implemented makes people -- including me, I was planning on getting some more paid time because I like LJ and want to support it -- less eager to buy time. I'll end up doing it because I've invested too much time and energy in my LJ to abandon it, but being forced to do it is at odds with the cheery "we're all a big family!!" image that the entry page projects.

Comments

[lost-angel.livejournal.com]

This is the typical result that happens for projects that start off as a "community" or personal project and end up as a "business".

To clarify, I'm a paid user, I rarely post over thrice a day, and I haven't posted a quiz in over a year. However, I find the post limitations, especially for paid users to be undesirable and a bad "business" decision. Like you said, it makes me less likely to have the goodwill of putting more money into livejournal if I feel like I'm thought of only in terms of what monetary contribution I might make.

Moreover, I have a severe problem with posting limits because many paid users use their journal for more than simply writing a terse and uninteresting account of their day. Many use livejournal to write fiction, poetry, or post assignments for their students (I know a couple teachers who use livejournal for that purpose and it's honestly better for less web-saavy people who don't know enough about web-design to create their own webpage or pay for webspace if they can't get it free somewhere). As much as I abhor quizes and boring posts, if that's what they pay for this service to do, then they should be able to do it.

Plus, I think this is even more ridiculous for one very important reason: less than a few months ago, the developers mentioned removing the codes and allowing all new free users to sign up because the server drain had significantly decreased and the load had become more stable.

I know you don't know me, but I was followed a link here from my friend, arkhamrefugee. Thank you for your very pragmatic and thoughtful look on the issue.

I'm off to class for the day; I'll check this again when I return tonight.