I just replied on News.

[heidi]

LJ is reportedly about to discontinue having Subject lines in Replies to posts, and changing the way the Expand feature works, as per discussion here. Given my work on the help_haiti comm, I have feelings that I wanted to expand beyond my initial do not want so here's what I posted here news.

Hi! About two years ago, I founded the LJ comm help_haiti to fundraise and host an auction to support the rescue of survivors and the rebuilding of Haiti after one of the worst earthquakes on record.

The LiveJournal platform was wonderfully suited for our auction to take place on, in large part because the subject lines of the Offerings were informative and evocative, and because of the ability to Expand a discussion to bidders could easily see all the threads.

Because of the way the community was organized on LiveJournal, we raised about 125,000 for charities that helped Haiti and its citizens.

In the ensuing 23 months, over a dozen communities, including help_chile, help_japan and others, have been created with similar purposes and missions, and astoundingly fantastic fundraising totals.

We at help_haiti greatly appreciated the support that LiveJournal gave to the project; it was the first time that LJ had set up a Virtual Gift tied to a specific community's fundraising project, and it was promoted by news. Authors like Neil Gaiman posted about it and promoted the project on their Twitter feeds and blogs. It brought people to LJ who hadn't been here before.

At the time, we appreciated LJ's support of the project and since then, as I said, other charitable projects have as well.

These projects will not be able to be hosted on LiveJournal if Subject Lines are eliminated from the Reply process. It will be difficult, if not impossible, to host such projects on LiveJournal if Offerors and Bidders can't Expand the comment threads.

Please, reconsider the design, so that beneficial, charitable, helpful projects like this can continue when needed.

+1s and contrary opinions are both appreciated.

Comments

[imaginarycircus.livejournal.com]

Oh good lord. That's just a dumb idea on their part. co-signed and signal boosted.

[ashkitty.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's excellent! It has a bit more weight than say, RP journals.

[heidi8.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much! I really appreciate it! <3

[heidi8.livejournal.com]

Much appreciated! I just don't understand what benefit to the whole system comes from removing subject lines. They're character-limited as to length already anyway, right?

[ashkitty.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I mean, the answer was 'because most people don't use them,' and that's probably true--but are they really hurting those so much that they need to be done away with? Surely just ignore it if you don't need it and let the things they are useful for have them!

[tptigger.livejournal.com]

I've long since given up on LJ doing anything sensible.

[longtimegone]

You might be interested in the update to igrick's post here. The majority of the post is in Russian, but there is a note in English at the bottom:

A note to users of RP, Meme and other communities, where subject line is crucial for operation: for the moment we are developing only standard commenting representation, well know in LiveJournal as S1 styles, but we will keep subject lines, both in terms of form and representation, in advanced — S2 — styles, and provide an ability to keep it forever for certain communities, as well as, by request, will develop an extra functionality for such communities thru OpensSocial applications going public next year.

I don't know how they will define "certain communities", but that wasn't on that post yesterday when I originally checked it.

[heidi8.livejournal.com]

Well, as long as they stay around in S2, then it's available as an option, which is good. It doesn't have to be there for everyone as long as it's there for those who want it.

THANK YOU for sharing the update!

[heidi8.livejournal.com]

Sometimes they back up to noncrappy options. Hoping!

[heidi8.livejournal.com]

Fwiw, I don't always use them (like now) but when I need to, I need to. So, yeah.

[longtimegone]

Though, now that I think about it, isn't the "regular" site comment page an S1 style? Like, the option to NOT use "style specific" comment pages? That's entirely how I view all LJ posts (I hate style specific pages) and I think a lot of comms use them for readability as well?

[pengolodh-sc.livejournal.com]

According to this from azurelunatic, it seems that "the primary reason for the decision to take away the comment subjects was not for performance or other database-administration reasons (...), but instead because the look of long collapsed comment threads with "(no subject)" is aesthetically displeasing to this dude-in-charge."

At least, this gave me an impetus to import my LJ to DW, and set up cross-posting from there.

[pengolodh-sc.livejournal.com]

That's how I do it, as well - and it is the reason I prefer Dystopia, as I feel it shows me more clearly where in the thread the comment is. I prefer Dystopia even to Vertigo - not crazy about that pastel sidebar there.

[heidi8.livejournal.com]

Afaik, you can set it to use your comment page style, which is how it's set for help_haiti. I think?

(Have had Shiraz and Bailey's. Unsure of things ATM.)

[chinawolf.livejournal.com]

+982375093270572387236709!

[ani-bester.livejournal.com]

Brilliance! Thank you :)
I just, I'm boggled by this decision, and this one of the best write ups against it I've seen!