Paper Flowers.

  Thanks to all of you for providing your feedback and voicing your concerns about LiveJournal's new comment system. Please understand that we are taking your feedback seriously, and will continue to evaluate this new feature. In the meantime, we'd like to explain the reasons behind the change and the greater impact this has for LiveJournal.

  First of all, our new S1 comment system was completely rewritten from scratch.  The comment system has never been updated on this scale before. In the past, code was being piled upon old code, which turned out to be messy and unstable.  A complete rewrite means an updated, cleaner and faster system - which is a good thing for everyone. The default comments pages are the first step in an update to our overall site design, which is meant to improve performance and user experience.  The addition of Ajax features is a major part of this update and has many benefits for users:

• Pages no longer need to refresh after adding comments, which helps reduce load times
• Keyboard shortcuts to ease navigation (Ctrl + enter for a new comment, Alt + left arrow/right arrow moves between pages, Ctrl + Alt + '+ / -' expands or collapses all comments on a page)
• Buttons for editing, tracking, adding to memories, etc.  are now accessed by hovering over a comment, removing general clutter
• New comments on pages are marked as such
• There's a new, more visual icon selection tool

  In addition to all of these technical improvements, there are no longer advertising banners on default comment pages.

  The following issues are a known priority as we work through the kinks of our brand new comment system:

• General performance issues with certain browsers
• Improvements for mobile devices, including user pic selection
• Post subjects added to email notifications
• Restoring visibility of notes in comments
• Restoring 'parent' links
• Adding some additional RTE features to comments
• Adding spell check

All well and good, but somehow? I'm not buying it. Sorry. :/

For those wanting to know more about the recent DDoS attacks, yes, it looks like it was the Russian government trying to shut down the dissidents again.

As I said last time, while it's frustrating not to have access, LJ is a lot more than a social network platform. From the article:

"LiveJournal isn’t just a social network. It’s also a platform for organizing civic action. Dozens of network projects and groups mobilize people to solve specific problems — from defending the rights of political prisoners to saving endangered historic architecture in Moscow."

So while I know many are considering the move over to Dreamwidth and other such sites, supporting LJ is a way we can help support those who use it for more than a writing/roleplaying/social venue.


Also, as a FYI, LJ is giving paid users effected by the outage two weeks of paid time as compensation.