my 2 knuts

[heidi]

I think is very brave to have entered this incredibly weird world of people who enjoy forcing others to adhere to a rigid rulebook. Brave, but somewhat, um... er... besieged, I think, is the right word.

This vaguely reminds me of some posts back in January on a multifandom fanfiction discussion list, where the list admins indicated that there were Rules of Fanfic Writing. Well, nobody gave me such a list when I started. Same with LJs. Nobody gave me a list of what it could and could not be used for. Ha! Wonder what the reaction would be to the fandom-market research thing I am setting up this week?

Personally, I find it a little DISTURBING to have it so blatently broadcast that people read other people's LJs "...to find out about people..." It's such a peeping tom kind of thing to do that it makes me uncomfortable and gets me to wonder if I should make more posts friends only (for my 100 person plus friends list) and leave a few posts public so they can be here for "community" purposes, like the one of yesterday regarding the new list. All that review made me think was "ew!" - and not about Olympia (as I know HP is a perfectly fine thing to be obsessed with :) - but about this twenty year old who posts quiz results in her bio...

just edited to add (June 27, 9:45 am)
My humble opinion yet again, but:
1. Commenting on a review is not harassment.
2. Saying, in your LJ, that you're confused/discomforted/otherwise befuddled by a review, and posting a link to that review, does not mean that you are sending your friends to harass the reviewer.
3. If you're going to rate or review LiveJournals and give points for providing ways for people to contact you off of your LJ, there should also be points given for allowing people to contact you on your LJ, via the Comments feature.

but, of course, this is just MHO, and yet another clear indication that different "communities" operate in different ways online. Not that one way is worse or better, as an absolute, but we should all recognize that when we step outside of the fascinating and multifaceted HP live journal community, which *is* a community even if we don't actually have the community tag (we have friends lists instead) people will look at us through standards that have little if any relevance to our community.

Of course, I am curious as to what they would make of Cassie's Secret Diaries LJ... with it's near-4000 posts IN her LJ, and the contrast to the approx. 200 posts she's left in others' LJs. Oops! There goes one star - she's clearly not a positive member of the LJ universe...[end edit]

Comments

[sundancekid.livejournal.com]

I think the sad part is that people are reviewing other people's journals. Wait, not so much sad as creepy.

Allison

[ex-mahoney365.livejournal.com]

Why would someone request a review if they didn't understand/couldn't handle the fact that said review would surely be subjective and therefore not necessarily glowing?

Why would someone request a review, at all? Why would they care?

Huh.

And, I missed the part where rules of LJ-writing was being enforced. Saw the rules of reviewing LJs in that LJ community, but completely didn't see the other. I am possibly blind.

[ivyblossom.livejournal.com]

Uh huh. Read journals to find out about people? Uh huh.

I hate to be catty--oh wait, no I don't--but for the record, that reviewer as all of 16 people who think her journal is interesting, and is really in no position to talk about what is deserving of the classification content.

And yeah. Quiz results. cause yanno, that's how to find out about a person. Quiz results. I don't know about you, but I always get Gryffindor. So now you know me all about me. How handy.

Kids these days.

[ivyblossom.livejournal.com]

I don't know why anyone would submit their journal for reviewing, honestly. But I don't think the problem is that the review wasn't glowing. The problem is that this person seems to think that because Olympia talks about fanfic in her fanfic journal, this is not content.

Er, not so much enforced, but the idea that fanfic discussion should go on a community and not on her journal.

How does one manage to determine what is a good or a bad journal anyway? Especially a clearly noted fandom journal. Should probably be in the fandom.

Hell, the idea of judging makes me furrow my brow. I read journals of people I like, d00d. Bah.

[heidi8.livejournal.com]

was the content I didn't like much, simply because it wasn't that interesting to someone who reads LJs to find out about people.
That's what I was refering to, specifically, in my comment about the "rules" of what content should be in an LJ. I think it all comes down to how you define substance (Do the posts have much substance to them? ).

[lore]

I'm not sure I understand the whole shebang. Journals "worth reading"?? Who set these yahoos up as The Lords of All LJ? Is there any criteria to becoming a reviewer? I looked around at some of the reviewers' journals. Not Impressed. The whole damn project smacks of a high school popularity contest. THAT's ickier than HP slash any day.

I went to that Elf person's journal, and s/he whines about the response the review received.
1. There will always be people who can dish it out, but can't take it back.
2. S/He obviously needs a lesson on the nature of being flamed. No one in the thread at the time I'd read it got personal.

Olympia did asked to be reviewed; it's just unfortunate that the community is so rigid that it cannot match knowledgeable reviewers with the proper journal.

love, um...strangely passionate lore

[meril.livejournal.com]

There are other LJ-review communities out there, some of which are staffed by actual HP fic authors and readers. ljreview appears to be geared towards the typical teen journal (which most LJs are, I regret to inform the Harry Potter fandom; I had to correct someone on this. LiveJournal is not the HP fandom. It's a hosting site, basically Diaryland with comments.)

I was pretty involved in the personal domain/personal site side of the Internet about 4 years ago, and there were lots of sites which would review other sites. In order to get a good review, one had to find the set of site reviewers whose views fit most with the sort of site you have; there would be site reviewers who would mark personal pages down in points because the person had an anime-art layout, or liked boy bands, or other silly things like that.

Oh, and the most annoying thing about site reviews is when someone complains about their review (after agreeing to have their site removed) and then sends their gang of friends to spam the site's guestbook.

[heidi8.livejournal.com]

Well, I guess some of us in the HP fandom are so used to commenting on comments, because that's not uncommon on discussion groups and fanfic-discussion LJs (even personal ones) that it seemed like a perfectly ordinary thing to do. Also, I've never heard the word "spam" used to describe signed comments or constructive criticism, but that might be some new usage that has slipped in below my radar screen. I can't be up on everything.

I find the whole concept of regular people reviewing other people's sites to be just a little too close to the Pass Your Test To The Right thing we did back in junior high school to take it too seriously. I admit, though, that I tend to bristle at unstated standards being applied where they've never been explained, which might be part of the reason I responded the way I did to the reviewer's comments.

One more thing...

[heidi8.livejournal.com]

Then again, Meril, you once bristled at me for commenting in my LJ when you thought I hadn't informed the person whose canon-discussion I was commenting on. Now, I feel like you're bristling at me for commenting in the LJ post of someone whose review I thought needed a bit of clarification. Which, in your opinion, is worse?

Heidi, curiously

[smilie117.livejournal.com]

Quite the interesting topic Heidi, thanks for providing the links... will check it out soon out of curiosity... *if I can stand the humidity right now when I am by my laptop*

Take care and take it easy,
~Sabs

[(Anonymous)]

Olympia did asked to be reviewed

Well then...that left her open to a less than satisfying review, didn't it? I'm just an observer in this, but I don't know why people have made such a stink over it. Didn't she get a B? It's not like the Elf girl slammed it and called it a piece of worthless shit. I don't see the harm done, honestly. It was her opinion, and reviews are inherently opinionated. If she didn't like the possibility of receiving an average review, then she shouldn't have made herself available to be reviewed. 'Nuff said. It's not like she would have gotten some sort of treat if she had received an A, anyways.

No offense, but seeing all this whining, sometimes you guys are way too touchy.

~Anna

[heidi8.livejournal.com]

She did ask, and while their review and all the comments have been pulled down so we can't see them anymore (I presume it's been deleted but perhaps it's just been made private or friends only so others can see it...), the review that was up there at the end of the day on Wednesday was indeed a "B" review. However, when it was first put up, it was a "D" review, and a "D" only by one point. In terms of my comments about the review itself (separate and distinct from my comments about the concept) one of the two things that bothered me was that those who were familiar with the review process were insisting that the standards were uniform and that someone who submitted an LJ for reviewing purposes would know what s/he was getting herself/himself into. However, some of the "questions" for the reviewer weren't clear at all, especially the one which allows the reviewer to give 2 points if the LJournalist lists interests. It says nothing about giving extra points if the interests are unique, yet the reviewer implied that she was giving one point because only 3 of the interests were what she condidered unique. I am not saying that's a bad standard. I am just saying that it was not a clearly explained standard.

But as they've pulled it down, this is all monday morning quarterbacking, anyway. What do they call post-World Cup strategizing?

[(Anonymous)]

OK, I see your point. A D is ridiculous, but they shouldn't be "reviewing" LJ's anyway. Whoever thought up such an inane thing? Reviewing a diary makes no sense.

~Anna

Re: One more thing...

[meril.livejournal.com]

It is a bit junior-high, really, that's the intended audience of site reviews at this level (SXSW and the Webbys they are not)

You didn't do anything wrong. I've seen too many blog wars play out in someone else's blog comments. This is just another blog war, and I still haven't learned to keep my (in Internet terms) abnormally large nose out of other people's business.

I have a feeling we'll just agree to disagree.

[socialista.livejournal.com]

color me confused.

what, exactly, is the point of reviewing journals, anyway? is it some ploy by a select few to assert their superiority over the masses by saying that they know what you should have in a journal and what you shouldn't? and why would anyone want their journal to be reviewed, anyway? isn't that like asking someone to tell you what they think of your life? jesus christ. call me crazy, but i always thought that journaling was about saying whatever you wanted, in whatever form you wanted, to whoever you wanted, not adhering to a specific rubric that describes the "perfect" journal. both those who have wasted their time coming up with these inane standards and the poor souls who actually care what total strangers think about their everyday lives have gained none of my respect in this battle. *sigh* --alisue, whose journal is boring and proud of it.