LJ etiquette 101
Jan. 4th, 2005 11:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cellio![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
grouchyoldcoot is a relatively new user of
LJ (but has been around the net for a long time), so he asked me about the etiquette norms. LJ itself doesn't
seem to have any beyond the guidelines for indecent material, so
I thought I'd start a discussion here. Related topics often come
up in ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif){kind=small}
blog_sociology too.
(Let me get this out of the way early: the word "friends" is very wrong in this context. Personally, I think of it more like a "subscriber" model. But I will use the word "friend" here, because that's the LJ lingo.)
LJ is big. Really really big. Over 5 million users, half active, or there-abouts. The vast majority of them are teenagers, and their norms probably differ from those of my circle of friends. I haven't been a teenager for a very long time, and to the best of my knowledge none of my LJ friends are teenagers. These are my opinions; YMMV, especially if your demographic varies.
Adding friends: Some people like to be asked before you add them; others don't care. The user info might contain a hint. I generally do not ask; I figure that if they put it out there for the public to read, there's no difference between reading discreetly and subscribing explicitly. If I see that the person has a very small friends list, I am more likely to post a comment fairly promptly upon subscribing.
Introductory comments: Some people like new subscribers to pop in and say hi explicitly; others don't care. I personally do not leave comments that consist entirely of "hi, I added you"; that sounds kind of high-schoolish to me. The first time I post something of substance, though, I'll often add something like "by the way, I found you via so-and-so".
Recipricocity: Some people expect you to add them back if they add you; others don't care. My advice is to not get into the game of keeping score; add the people you want to read and/or the people you want to give access to your restricted posts. While I don't automatically reciprocate, and it might be for reasons ranging from general content to grammar/format/spelling to the number of posts per day to a high concentration of quizzes to, in one past case, not speaking the language the journal is written in, I do periodically pop into the journals of the people I didn't add back. Journals and posters change over time, after all, and I may subscribe later. Or I may just pop in once every couple weeks, catch up, and maybe leave some comments. Usually it's just about managing my reading list and is not at all personal; there are only so many hours in a day. :-)
Quizzes: Mistakingly called "memes", these are the entries along the lines of "what LotR character are you" or "what color eggplant are you" or whatever. They usually have a graphic (sometimes large) and boilerplate text, with no original content. There are gazillions of them out there. Personally, I dislike them and appreciate it when my friends put them behind lj-cut tags, especially if they're doing a bunch in one fell swoop.
Other "memes": there are lots of things called memes floating around. My recent interview entries are part of one of them. There are also surveys floating around, and some others. I personally like the ones that involve original content, that tell me something about the person posting them. I really like the interview meme because not only does it tell us something about you but it encourages interaction. I think that's kind of neat. Yeah, it's a journal and not a bulletin board, but if you didn't want some level of interaction with your readers you'd just keep a private journal on your home computer, right?
Long posts: there is a convention that long posts should be partially or entirely behind an lj-cut tag so that people don't face excessive scrolling when reading their friends' pages. The definition of "long" varies. You'll get a feel for the local definition among your own friends just by hanging around. There's also a convention of putting large pictures, which consume a lot of bandwidth, behind a cut, particularly if you're posting more than one.
Ok, what basic ("101") topics have I missed, and what do the rest of you think about these?
Thanks, and a couple of questions...
Date: 2005-01-05 07:22 pm (UTC)So here are a couple more questions. First, is it considered impolite to give out people's real identities? It seems to vary a lot between individuals, so I'm curous what the ground rules are.
Second, a meta-question: it would be easy to write a python script and scrape enough 'friends' information off people's pages to sketch out the social network. It might be a fascinating little dataset. Is this sort of thing considered hostile?
Re: people's real identities
Date: 2005-01-05 07:58 pm (UTC)I prefer to keep online and real life identities separate, and assume that's everyone else's default, too.
Re: people's real identities
Date: 2005-01-07 03:17 am (UTC)"LW" is not half so descriptive of one of my former co-workers as is the epithet "Problem Child", nor does "Don" have quite the ring of "Rev. Nice Supervisor".
I will sometimes use two or more nicknames for someone, especially if I interact with them in two different contexts. There were two of my LJ friends who I was previously involved with who don't wish me to associate their involvement with me with their LJ name; consequently, I call the one by an obscure nickname related to their offline name, and I call the other one "Mr. Shallow", because his behaviour warrants the name (an assessment he agrees with fully).
Re: Thanks, and a couple of questions...
Date: 2005-01-05 09:42 pm (UTC)If they're LJ users, I take a cue from the user info. For example, my user info contains my full name, so someone referring to me as Monica in a context that ties it to
I may talk about doing things with friends (who may or may not be on LJ) using first names only, if I don't think there's anything that might be objectionable there. So if I know that Bob had skipped out on work when we went to see a movie I won't name him (even just with a first name), but if he came to a large public party I'd hosted I wouldn't see any problem naming him. I pretty much never use people's last names. Broadly, I use guidelines no looser than those I would use in spoken conversation (and probably am more conservative because of the bit trail).
Second, a meta-question:
People have done that. Check out the
(While you're looking at communities,
Re: Thanks, and a couple of questions...
Date: 2005-01-06 01:49 am (UTC)This drives some people being cagey about who they (or those around them) are. This drives a lot of friends-only posts, and motivates some people to make their journal entirely friends-only. It would be tempting to call the more extreme cases paranoia, if there weren't so many anecdotal cases of pointy-haired overreaction demonstrating how many states have at-will employement laws.
If your employer is still who I believe it is, they're going to be less rigidly corporate and relatively sensitive to the curious ways of those wacky but useful techies. But it's informative to know that other people are often thinking along those lines.
Social network mapping
Date: 2005-01-10 10:19 pm (UTC)True.Names
Date: 2005-01-10 10:26 pm (UTC)It varies between individuals, and between contexts. For example, there's a lot less potential privacy-infringement involved in saying "My friend Joanne bought a pair of Brand X shoes, and they fell apart in three months" than in saying "My friend Joanne broke up with her boyfriend, and spent all night crying on my shoulder over it."
Also, someone named Andreas Kaloolik from Summerland, British Columbia, is a lot more vulnerable to being Googled than someone named Andy Johnson from Chicago.
A special note: many parents hide the real.names, birthdays, etc. of their kids to help protect them from online predators and identity thieves.
Social network mapping
Date: 2005-01-11 08:06 pm (UTC)Revealing People's Identities In LJ Posts
Date: 2005-01-19 07:25 pm (UTC)Even though the ex-aquaintances full real life name is on his info page when he complained to LJ about this saying it was a violation of the Terms of Service regarding privacy LJ required my other friend to remove the real life name from the post.
In short: Don't assume that just because someone's full name is on their info page that it is okay to refer to it along with their LJ name in one of your posts unless you have that person's permission.
Re: Revealing People's Identities In LJ Posts
Date: 2005-01-19 07:45 pm (UTC)Wow, that's pretty surprising. I wonder why they ruled that way. The TOS doc does say that you can't reveal private information about others, but it also contains the admonition that if you post it on the web it's not private.
Re: Revealing People's Identities In LJ Posts
Date: 2005-01-19 08:10 pm (UTC)It was pretty freaky. Then again, the ex-aqauintance was pretty freaky and I'm just as glad to not be involved in all that anymore. But thought I would just put that out there as a possible problem people might run into.
Re: Revealing People's Identities In LJ Posts
Date: 2005-01-19 08:19 pm (UTC)Re: Revealing People's Identities In LJ Posts
Date: 2005-01-19 08:32 pm (UTC)I don't think it was much more than 24 hours at the point that they suspended his journal. It was only down for about a week.
And the glee the ex-aquaintance took in the fact that it was suspended is one reason I am no longer associated with him.
It is sad that sending enough complaints, in effect being loud enough, worked in a case where violation of privacy was ludicrous. But it does prove that you need to watch what you say even when what you say is backed up with blatent truths.