State of the me

[rivkat]

I have already been making a feed available for Twitter as rivkat_lj because some people asked, but that’s a feed of my entries only; I do the same for my pro blog; I don't get why people want notification of long blog entries via Twitter when RSS is available, but I also don't want to make it difficult for anyone who wants to read my stuff to do so.  I'm actually trying the LJ implementation because in my experience twitterfeed, which I've been using, misses about one post in five. 

I will never crosspost comments anywhere, and I don’t really get why you would in most cases, since my mental image of comments is things that participate in a particular conversation. But then I think that about a lot of tweets too. This latest LJ trick obviously increases various risks, though I think it increases them in direct proportion to the similarity of your LJ name to your Facebook name.  As far as I’m aware, anything crossposted to Facebook will show up there as “comment on rivkat’s post” and not as “comment on legal name’s post,” so even if you have overlapping friend sets (as I do, a bit) it won’t be obvious to someone looking at your Facebook page that the two are the same. If I am wrong I will be very perturbed.  Obviously it would make me sad if someone crossposted comments to one of my very few locked posts, and I could seriously do without the changes in the comment form.  I installed the greasemonkey script and it seems to work, but my guess is that it will break eventually.

ETA: Okay, this just got bad.  I got a pingback to an entry to which I don't have access.  I don't like having talk behind my back shoved in my face, and I think it's silly to have pingbacks in those circumstances along with being invasive of the journaler's privacy.  But that's not the bad part.  The bad part is that a big chunk of the access-controlled entry was contained in the pingback.  Which, if I unscreened it, would be visible to everyone (since the post at issue is public).  Not on, LJ.  Not on.  Has anyone else seen this?  I thought the pingbacks only had post titles.

I have DW invites if anyone wants.

In other news: For some reason the button on my library access authentication page that says SUBMIT reads as very sexual to me. Possibly I’m just strange.

Eureka! This show is just much better than it has any right to be. How much must the writers have loved giving James Callis (1) hallucinations and (2) a male ex? It was like a perfect storm of crossreferences and subtext. But is he still stuck with his hallucination, since he hasn’t dealt with it? Also I now ship Carter/Jo. Or Allison/Carter/Jo, or Carter/Jo/Zane. Or, hell, some happy foursome, though I tend to think that Allison and Zane would not ever hook up in that combo.

Comments

[giandujakiss]

Okay, this just got bad. I got a pingback to an entry to which I don't have access. I don't like having talk behind my back shoved in my face, and I think it's silly to have pingbacks in those circumstances along with being invasive of the journaler's privacy. But that's not the bad part. The bad part is that a big chunk of the access-controlled entry was contained in the pingback. Which, if I unscreened it, would be visible to everyone (since the post at issue is public). Not on, LJ. Not on. Has anyone else seen this? I thought the pingbacks only had post titles.

Seriously?? Seriously? Yes, I knew that pingbacks had full posts but I thought they didn't operate for FLocked entries - I remember that was a concern when LJ first rolled out the feature and I thought it was all okay.

[brownbetty]

I just got a pingback from an entry which is locked to me as well, which, happily for me, includes enough context to know exactly in what context I was being discussed, and it's neutral to mildly positive, so I shan't have blithering insecurities, but really. Definitely makes a strong argument for using redirects when posting wanky stuff under flock.

[cofax7]

Oh, CRAP.

So glad I'm no longer a paid LJ member, so I won't get pingbacks from posts dissing me. I do not have the kind of kevlar skin to deal with that.

I'll be boosting this, if you don't mind: people should know.

[rivkat]

I find it wryly amusing that you would ask, given the context, but: of course. It may be a glitch that will work itself out in the wash, but it's not a good glitch.

Update! Breaking news!

[cofax7]

I'm no longer a paying member of LJ, but I am still getting pingbacks, and YES they include pings from locked posts. (Why someone has locked their RECS post is beyond me, but whatever.)

Re: Update! Breaking news!

[rivkat]

Some people just like to keep a low profile, I guess, and/or they default locked and don't bother to change. Rec is better than slam for the recipient, but either way it's not a great deal for the original poster.

I reported my experience at the news post; you might consider doing so as well, to show that it's not an isolated problem.

Re: Update! Breaking news!

[cofax7]

It was a public post at one point, since locked, which apparently is the problem.

And thanks for the idea to post at news.

[ilyena_sylph]

Thanks for the heads up. So damned glad I quit LJ a while ago, but I'm gonna pass the word on to some people.

[yvi]

Is there any chance that the post linking to you was posted publicly at first?

[rivkat]

I do not know. I have sent a message to the user affected by the breach and suggested that s/he report the issue to LJ.

[sid]

I just found out that was the case with the 2 pingbacks I received today on recced stories. The rec posts were public for NEARLY THREE YEARS, until the LJ owner decided to f-lock her journal today, due to all the new privacy issues. :-D

But I would like to thank the pingbot for transporting me back to 2007. Srsly. It was a trip. A head-scratching, time-wasting trip.

[ursamajor]

This was what happened in my case as well.

The irony? The newly-locked post in question was one explaining to people how to back up their LJs and not to panic and/or overreact, just be prepared. It was from the day SUP laid off half the US-based LJ staff. It had been public for a year and a half, but I'd decided to flock everything until I could figure out if the LJ comments situation was salvageable or not.

[sid]

Definitely a lot of ironic things happening!

[faithofone]

hsapiens linked me here when I asked for info about the pingback issue.

I've got pingbacks turned off, but I posted a locked entry about the crossposting & pingback issues, so if you get a pingback from that, I apologize for having a locked entry waved in your face.

[rivkat]

Heh. I'm cool with people talking about me in locked posts; not like I can stop them! But usually I think neither they nor I want me to know it's happening. I run Google Alerts for publicly visible stuff, so I'm curious, of course, but I don't want to circumvent privacy settings.

It seems like this is a problem only for any post that was created public, then changed. Given the reasons people change the settings on posts, though, I think that's enough to be a problem.

[faithofone]

I'd be curious as heck too if I knew people were talking about me. Which is why I kind of have a rule in RL that if someone's talking about me, just don't tell me. I'd rather be blissfully ignorant of it than having the idea that it's going on eat me alive.

Good to know that it appears to only be an issue with posts that were created public to start with, at least that saves me the headache. But it's rather frightening that it is happening at all.

[waldorph]

Hope you don't mind: I got linked over here and I'll be linking people to your post.

[rivkat]

Sure. It seems that this occurs only when the post is or was at some time public; in this case, the post was made private nearly a year ago, but the trackback still picked it up today. I think that's still a problem, given the reasons people change the status of posts, but it doesn't seem like it would happen to an always-private entry.

[amalthia]

How do you check pingbacks? Do they just show up in our LJ inbox? or is an email notification sent? I don't know much about the topic to be honest.

[rivkat]

They show up as screened comments on the post at issue, and so you get a comment notification. You can then unscreen the pingback if you want so that other people can see it.

[amalthia]

so that's how they work...that's kind of weird. I'm debating what to do. I rarely post flocked stuff so I'm not sure if the twitter/FB thing bugs me beyond the principle of the thing. I also rarely talk about other people so I'm not sure if the pingback would cause trouble either. I'm just baffled as to why they are not implementing cut tags that unfold like DW instead of this????

[rivkat]

Unfolding cut tags, yes please! I think pingbacks are a good idea if properly implemented; I use Google Alerts to catch references to myself, because why not? But that's only public stuff. People should be able to opt out of pingbacks just as LJ allows you to minimize inclusion in search engines, definitely, but I actually do like the idea for public posts.

[amalthia]

Yes, I agree with this too. I think LJ has a serious problem with how they roll out new features. This should have been something you have to opt-in to use. Not opt-out. Plus the privacy issues...are problematic if it's pinging briefly unlocked posts.

I also track my name as much as possible to help in my efforts to promote the Ebook Library.

Now the twitter/facebook thing...do they even know their user base? I'm not sure how it's beneficial to them or the users? (non-withstanding the current outstanding issues with how it's implemented)

[bliumchik]

Ah, LJ. Implementing ill-advised features without bothering to envisage worst-case scenarios since....


(PS I'm available to beta if you still need one.)

[rivkat]

Thanks! What email address should I use?

[jenrose]

I just turned off commments in crossposted entries, with the link back to Dreamwidth. Yeah, I'll read LJ. Yeah, I'll crosspost there. But privacy? Is important to me. It's why I like LJ-style journaling. LiveJournal? Can BITE MY SHINY WHITE ASS.