Ethics

[waitingman]

Interesting how the whole LJ vs DW débâcle has thrown up so many opinions, viewpoints, rifts, chasms, schisms & behaviour that's not what you'd expect from people who value a sense of 'community'

Speaking, of course, from only my perspective, I would have thought that a foreign government with hostile policies regarding a, by now, significant portion of the human race, was a far more appropriate thing to get upset about, than some of the 'rats leaving a sinking ship'-style commentary I've seen around regarding those who have begun the process of departing LJ because of unease, or just plain distaste, over its new set of rules that come courtesy of a repressive régime

Anyway, one interesting point raised regards the comments one leaves in another's Journal & who 'owns' that comment. If you import your Journal to DW with all entries & comments, what about those comments from people who don't want to be on DW, or associated with it? Have you disrepected their privacy, or their views, by having their presence here by proxy?

Or are their comments, just like your Journal really... part of an open forum that anyone, from anywhere, could access, read & then go to the commenter's Journal via the link info, if they sound like someone interesting? Isn't that how a community grows?

I will shortly be going through my DW Journal & deleting all the comments left by someone very much of the former opinion. A shame... but their right to a viewpoint & their right to privacy should be respected

Do feel free to comment yourselves... via LJ or DW & let me know your feelings

Comments

[pink_halen]

The Russian thing has been festering for about 8 years. Lots of people took action in 2009 to move to DW then didn't really continue there.

I bought a permanent account on LJ years ago and have enjoyed the privileges for a long time. Someone commented that they had gotten their monies worth and it was time to move on.

I am still very conflicted knowing that some day the other shoe might drop. We will see it in the actions of the owners at LJ. It will probably start with deleting unused accounts then move to changing messages from public to private or deleting them entirely to protect themselves from Russian Law. There is very little that the Russian Government can do to American citizen. The two I can think of are deleting the accounts and denying Russian Visa.

Ethics is the reason for your "Friend" disliking DW. But I don't think it is necessarily good reasoning to demand that you delete only his comments from DW. It also may be damned impossible.

But people surprised me about their views on journals and blogs. I knew someone who would get violently upset if someone friended him without his permission. It is impossible for anyone to know his views when pressing the "Friend" button.

I can't comprehend how much trouble it will be to remove all his comments. I have contemplated a similar action with my LJ and found it too daunting. Given that I am a Gay man and that he gist of the Russian laws quoted are against messages I have posted, I considered removing them from my LJ account. I don't really have the energy to read and expunge 3600 messages and 5200 comments.

On the DW side, I have contemplated removing messages that reference defunct web sites and old new stories but that requires too much energy as well.

I see a duel here between unethical and impractical. The transfer was done by machine. There was no way to filter things. It is impractical to as to be removed manually. And I'm guessing that neither of us know enough about script languages and blog structures to build our own deletion routines.

If we want to talk about ethics, it is rather unethical to change the terms of a contract unilaterally but LJ has done that.

Will any of this matter in 10 years? 20 Years? 100 years?
Life is to short.