Unfriending.

[swestrup]

Bleah. I'm unfriending kayleighb. I like reading her journal and all, and occassionally post comments when I have something relevant to contribute. Lately though she's been harassed by some psycho chick who keeps posting weird comments in kayleighb's journal. As a result all commenting has been turned off for non-friends and she's never friended me. Since I can't stand one-sided conversations, I'm going to unfriend her as well, so I don't end up wanting to post a comment, which I can't do.

This seems a major flaw in LJ's system. In order to keep someone else from being obnoxious, she's had to take action which has prevented a number of other folks from being able to interact with her. This sucks.

Comments

[swestrup]

Then let me be more specific: I blame the makers of LJ for not having realized these sorts of things would happen and for not having taken steps to prevent or mitigate the problem. Their entire 'friends' and filtering system has serious problems and should have been much better thought out.

[thebabynancy.livejournal.com]

Of course they knew these things would happen!

Long before LJ - there were online stalkers. Long after LJ - there will be said stalkers.

It's nice that one can control who reads what, and what one reads. One cannot, however, control everything...

I think I understand what you are saying... and I dunno if you've ever been so unfortunate as to have someone turn psycho online towards you... it's not fun, to say the least. But, I don't think any amount of planning - be it individual or on the onus of a particular website can control stalkerish behaviour.

It can only impede it.

[swestrup]

Actually, I know of a number of things that would make it virtually impossible. NWO for one. But I wouldn't expect the folks at LJ to have invented NWO. I WOULD expect them to build a better friends system.

I could. It would be simpler to use, and make it much harder for psycho stalkers. What's more, it would do far less damage to innocent bystanders...

[kay.livejournal.com]

Not sure what NWO is?

[swestrup]

> Not sure what NWO is?

Not surprising. NWO is short for 'New Web Order' and is the code name for a product that _sps_, me and a non-LJ'er came up with a design for. You could think of it as The Web V2.0, and it would replace HTML, TCP/IP and most of the other underpinnings of the current web with stuff that actually works. Most of the parts of the design have shown up in various proposals around the web, but I think we're the first folks who've woven them all together and figured out how to make it work.

That said, its only a design at the moment. Much as I would love to see it put into place (it would eliminate spam, for instance), we haven't been able to interest anyone in funding its development.

Still, if the project I'm working on now proves profitable, it could help fund some of the development.