InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "Dammit, Janet!"

tsukinofaerii (tsukinofaerii) wrote in picket_line,
@ 2008-03-22 01:28:00

Current mood:

cheerful

Results
First off, thanks to everyone who supported the strikers! :D We definitely appreciated the help! (HUGS!)

Second, I've lurked, and found some results.

1) Many people are jerks of a high degree. Unsurprisingly, they attempted to make up for and out-do our lack of posting. This would be where I post a failcat for them.

2) Someone attempted to contact the organizer and offered to hack LJ in support. She broke the picket line to report it. (applauds) Maybe someone will disagree with me, but part of the point of this was to not hurt LJ. I completely agree that reporting it was the only way to go. Hacking is serious!

3) In reply to a support request, Marta said that Anton Nossik isn't anyone important in LJ or SUP and that what he said was an opinion only, and doesn't reflect the company.

4) Take this with a grain of salt. These numbers compare a Thursday to a Good Friday (Thursdays are historically slow on LJ though, and while posting is slow on Good Friday for some people, for others who have a day off from work but are not religious it would be faster) and are therefore skewed. Also, the anti-strike forces diminished our impact by posting insanely and spamming.

ETA: I goofed - the posts are in the thousands. So I edited the info. It doesn't change the ratios though. Also, comments contain 2007-2007 comparison for Good Friday and the Thursday prior. :D

Posting on LJ yesterday was 195,200. Today, it was 167,900. That's a difference of 27,300 posts, or 13.9%! Even with the skewed numbers, I'd say we had an impact.

Ads by Project Wonderful! Your ad here, right now: $0

(Post a new comment)

	pen 2008-03-22 05:47 am UTC (link)
	I agree. GOOD BEANS! (Reply to this) (Thread)

	tsukinofaerii 2008-03-22 06:28 am UTC (link)
	XD (waves a victory banner) Now for LJ's response! (Reply to this) (Parent)

	flurgh 2008-03-22 05:52 am UTC (link)
	There was a ton of #1 going on. I found that these people were either misinformed, completely unaware, or just wanted to piss someone off. Considering how much "sabotage" of the walkout I was hearing about, I'd say it was pretty good. I don't know if 13.9% is enough to make an impact though. Glad to hear that apparently Anton Nossik is just a "rear-end in a top hat". (Reply to this) (Thread)

tsukinofaerii
2008-03-22 06:09 am UTC (link)

Luckiy, I don't know anyone who did that! (grateful!) Why do people need to be so petty?

Look at it this way - translate daily posts into dollars. A company (based on a general rule) is worth what it nets in a year. SUP paid $30 million, so for the sake of generalizing we'll say that the pageviews which bring ad content profit equal that. Now theorize that the strike was a year-long, thus removing 13.9% of ad views. That's 4.17 million, which is a pretty significant loss.

Of course, this is horribly simplified, since I don't know the profit margins, how the ads are sold, we didn't strike for a year, no accounting for attrition over time... But it gives perspective.

Oh yeah, he definitely is. *snort* And so many people thought he actually mattered!

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	flurgh 2008-03-22 06:16 am UTC (link)
	Well it's hard to see through double-speak like that. Especially because it really seemed like he WAS somebody. I'd laugh my ass off if he got banned from the service for inciting a small mutiny. He's very counterproductive for the company. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	tsukinofaerii 2008-03-22 06:40 am UTC (link)
	And we were already up in arms over the interests and the basic accounts. Add his so-helpful interview in and boom. All I know if that if someone in any job I've ever been in talked to the press without permission, they'd be in serious trouble. If they'd done what he did, they'd be gone. (Reply to this) (Parent)

kaesa
2008-03-22 06:05 am UTC (link)

1) Many people are jerks of a high degree. Unsurprisingly, they attempted to make up for and out-do our lack of posting. This would be where I post a failcat for them.

I seriously do not understand these people. If they had a reason, like that they were hoping to crash LJ's servers (which would honestly be really entertaining if we could make it work -- WHAT HAPPEN? SOMEONE SET UP US THE USERBASE!) or that they were creeped out by the bizarre antisemitic comments about Nossik (-__- I hate people), I could see why, but I will assume these are the same people who shout GOD, EVERYONE IS COMPLAINING. I HATE IT WHEN PEOPLE COMPLAIN. STOP COMPLAINING! every time anyone dares to be a squeaky wheel.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

	tsukinofaerii 2008-03-22 06:14 am UTC (link)
	Agreed. And then they end up spending more time whining about people with valid complaints than than we do complaining! It's so frustrating, and so very childish. And they don't even bother learning what the real issues at hand are. sigh (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

DISCLAIMER: THIS COMMENT MEANT FOR AMUSEMENT, NOT COMPARABILITY

kaesa
2008-03-22 06:22 am UTC (link)

I can only imagine what they're like IRL.

"Ugh, I'm having the worst day. My boss just came in and yelled at me for--"

"WHY ARE YOU SO HARD ON YOUR BOSS ALL THE TIME? AREN'T YOU GRATEFUL THAT SHE HASN'T FIRED YOU YET?"

"...actually, I --"

"ALL THIS BITCHING AND MOANING. WHY DON'T YOU JUST QUIT?"

"I was thinking I could send out a r--"

"FIND ANOTHER JOB IF IT'S SO BAD. JESUS CHRIST, YOU'RE SUCH A WHINY BITCH."

"...you know what? You've convinced me. My boss isn't nearly as bad as some people I know."

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	Re: DISCLAIMER: THIS COMMENT MEANT FOR AMUSEMENT, NOT COMPARABILITY tsukinofaerii 2008-03-22 06:30 am UTC (link)
	XD OMG, I actually know someone like that! It's mind-bending and painful every time he opens his mouth. OI. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	Re: DISCLAIMER: THIS COMMENT MEANT FOR AMUSEMENT, NOT COMPARABILITY kaesa 2008-03-22 06:33 am UTC (link)
	D: I'm so sorry. I have only three words for you: heavy blunt object. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	Re: DISCLAIMER: THIS COMMENT MEANT FOR AMUSEMENT, NOT COMPARABILITY tsukinofaerii 2008-03-22 06:42 am UTC (link)
	I favor duct tape, actually, but he's my father so it's a bit difficult. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

Re: DISCLAIMER: THIS COMMENT MEANT FOR AMUSEMENT, NOT COMPARABILITY

kaesa
2008-03-22 06:48 am UTC (link)

...that is awkward. I have a few acquaintances like that but they're all more or less my age and, as far as I know, not related to me, so knocking them out with a flashlight is slightly more socially acceptable. My mom's really overbearing in other ways (it's just that... we're Jewish, so complaining is the only competitive sport either of us is any good at), so you do have my sympathy.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	Re: DISCLAIMER: THIS COMMENT MEANT FOR AMUSEMENT, NOT COMPARABILITY tsukinofaerii 2008-03-22 06:57 am UTC (link)
	Thank you. ^^; I didn't mean to sound like I'm whining, because I do love my father, but I love him a bit when his mouth is closed. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	Re: DISCLAIMER: THIS COMMENT MEANT FOR AMUSEMENT, NOT COMPARABILITY kaesa 2008-03-22 07:06 am UTC (link)
	Oh no, I get it. My mother's crazy tends to come in the form of PANIC that I could possibly be spending any of my free time not studying. (Oddly, this completely reversed itself as soon as I started college. I think we just get along better when we don't live together.) (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	Re: DISCLAIMER: THIS COMMENT MEANT FOR AMUSEMENT, NOT COMPARABILITY tsukinofaerii 2008-03-22 09:05 pm UTC (link)
	I know I get along much better with my father now that there's 1000 miles between us. The only time we've argued really badly recently was when I visited for Christmas. :/ Hm. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	shadowgardens 2008-03-23 01:06 am UTC (link)
	Agreed! And I think a lot of people just had no idea what was going on and assumed it was about getting rid of basic accounts which they have the right to do. But damnit, I pay for this service I'll be a squeaky wheel if I damn well want to! (Reply to this) (Parent)

sivullinen
2008-03-22 07:30 am UTC (link)

That looks like an impact! However, I'd like to compare the numbers from other days too, to see if Thursday had more posts (people informing others about strike...) than usual etc. But looks good! :)

1) sucks so much. I have one of those on my flist, and now I kind of want to defriend them. *facepalm* Idiot. And turns out their posts were almost the only ones on my flist from yesterday, lol, which makes me happy :D

(Reply to this) (Thread)

tsukinofaerii
2008-03-22 10:44 pm UTC (link)

I haven't looked for a cached file yet, but I should... Checking last Good Friday and the Thursday prior would give us a better estimate. In fact... (heads to search)

March 22 & 23 would have been the right days, I think... I'm not Christian, so I don't have any idea how things like Easter and Good Friday are figured out.

This is kind of interesting! Larger numbers are bold for reading ease. Used WayBack, btw.

March 22 2007 Total Accounts: 12,536,860
March 22 2008 Total Accounts: 15,189,754

March 22 2007 Active Accounts (Day before Good Friday): 1,833,701
March 22 2008 Active Accounts (Day before Good Friday): 1,750,265

So those 3 million gained accounts were balanced by 3 million dying accounts! LJ has actually taken a huge hit in the last year because of its antics, and here's the proof! They're hosting a lot more data without any growth to show for it. This kind of explains the recent emphasis on revenue. Because the active numbers are relatively close, we can discount a serious skew due to site growth - there's been none to speak of.

Strike-specific, here's the numbers for the previous year:

Thursday Before Good Friday
Total Posts March 22 2007: 214,154
Total Posts March 20 2008: 195,200

Ratio: 1.09:1 loss
Difference: 18,954
Percentage: 8% loss

... I'm assuming that I misread the original post, because WOW. That would be too big of a difference to account for.

Good Friday
Total Posts March 23 2007: 211,011
Total Posts March 21 2008: 167,900

Ratio: 1.26:1 loss
Difference: 43,111
Percentage: 20% loss

In other words... We had a 12% impact over last year.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

shadowgardens
2008-03-23 01:22 am UTC (link)

Wow, we did do well!

And I agree, I think they are losing users because of their antics. I know I personally created 2 different accounts recently to back up my fan fiction and BOS from GJ. I have to imagine that a lot of those new accounts were created by already existing users for gaming or fan fiction purposes.

I've lost several ppl on my flist and my best friend will never join because I've told her about some of the stuff that's been going on.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	tsukinofaerii 2008-03-23 01:32 am UTC (link)
	Next time I ~~bug the hell out of~~ talk to Marta, I might mention it. I might not. I imagine that they're got their own, much more accurate, statistics. I have no idea how we affected pageviews, and that's what the advertisers will be interested in. I've lost some flist too, but mostly they were only acquaintances. :( (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	shadowgardens 2008-03-23 02:18 am UTC (link)
	Who is Marta? (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

tsukinofaerii
2008-03-23 03:10 am UTC (link)

She's one of the LJ staff members that you can find poking around the News. She's awesome, and definitely on our side. But she has to toe the line because of her job sometimes. If they say "don't talk about this", she has to stay silent. It's rough on her, so I try to give her a venting forum. I suspect it comes across as annoying, but she hasn't told me to stop bugging her....

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	shadowgardens 2008-03-23 03:18 am UTC (link)
	Oh that's cool. I imagine it must be trying to be on LJ staff at times. And I like that you respect that what she tells you is private =) (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

tsukinofaerii
2008-03-23 03:33 am UTC (link)

It must be. *sigh* There's a lot less of then than I think any of us realized. Most of the staff we know and hated went with SixApart. So there's 6 people who are "of us", Jason Shellen who is a n00b Suit but seems nice, and alllll the Suits at SUP. So they're really in a jam.

I like that she tells me! It helps me think rationally when things go wrong. And even when I can't say anything, I try to nudge people in directions that will work. This is a pretty recent thing though - hopefully she'll count me as a friend one day and not just a nosy user, lol!

(Reply to this) (Parent)

	sivullinen 2008-03-23 07:56 am UTC (link)
	Actually, Easter moves around a lot, and last year it was in APRIL. Good Friday was April 6th. So, I don't know. Those numbers up there tell a lot, too, but if you want to be really thorough... I would check for myself, but I'm too t00by for that :D (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

tsukinofaerii
2008-03-24 12:54 am UTC (link)

XD I actually ended up being recced a site that records Easter back for a few centuries, so I got the proper dates. (I'm so clueless - the math for figuring out Easter just went straight over my head lol) The only problem I can see is that LJ's stats are dropping annually, so someone would have to figure out what difference we should have seen, opposed to what difference we did see. At this point, it's sort of like dumping a bucket of water in a pond. There's a difference, but no one can tell just by looking! x.x Here's what I've got now.

This Year: 167,900
Last Year: 210,104

I keep saying this, but it's kind of interesting... *sigh* The arguments on both sides (strike did/didn't have an impact) are going to take someone with full stats and a good bit of training to decipher. I think it did, because there was still a 30,000 post difference between Thursday and Friday, but (for example, since those stats are on the Raw Stats page) 2000-2002 didn't show much difference between Friday and Thursday. I'm getting horribly sick of people going "no result! no result!" like demented parrots.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

doingsoso
2008-03-23 10:49 pm UTC (link)

Were the Russian users added to this year's total? That would probably skew the numbers for this year by increasing them.

And you have to take into account jerks like this one:

http://community.livejournal.com/statements/

There are many trolls who posted as many posts as they could just to skew the numbers. But this is the only person I have confirmed and checked myself.

I don't have a problem with people who didn't participate posting as they usually do. But I have a problem with people deliberately trying to sabatage the boycott by posting millions of little posts like that to make the posting numbers seem higher.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

tsukinofaerii
2008-03-24 12:58 am UTC (link)

As far as I can tell, the Russian users are included. And, neatly enough, these numbers are actually for updated communities. So if someone posted a thousand times in a single community, it would still only count once.

I can understand people protesting our protest. They have that right. But a lot of people were simply trolling to troll, and being jerks about it, which isn't cool.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

	flauschwolke 2008-03-22 02:16 pm UTC (link)
	Yeah, we have done it. We had an impact .D 2) Is pretty cool. Yes, hacking is serious. (-: (Reply to this) (Thread)

	tsukinofaerii 2008-03-22 10:46 pm UTC (link)
	A much more serious impact than I'd thought! LJ has shrunk since last year, so our little percentage is a BIG deal. (cheers) (Reply to this) (Parent)

shadowgardens
2008-03-23 01:10 am UTC (link)

Yay thanks for posting this!

Many people are jerks of a high degree

I wonder if there's any way to tell if the people who were pulling this shit have paid accounts. It doesn't seem like they would. If you pay money for a service generally you want to know if any big changes are being made.

If SUP pulls this shit again(which they will) I think if we do a strike we need to have more time beforehand to explain why we're doing it and pick a good day to do it. Most people assumed it was JUST about getting rid of free basic accounts which they have the right to do.

And I so agree with the hacking thing. They already think we're crazy let's not have them thinking we're criminals or we really won't get taken seriously.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

tsukinofaerii
2008-03-23 01:21 am UTC (link)

I'm betting they're mostly the true freeloaders - get a free account, screw around, never join a comm or become a real member... then lose interest and leave. *snort* I wouldn't even dignify people like that by calling them LJers.

I think next time (which I hope there won't be one), we need to start organizing ASAP. We wasted several days protesting in News before we finally got together. The strike had to be done fast, because word was that the decision was coming fast, and we have to beat them to it. When they heard of the strike, they put off the decision until we cool down and forget. Which isn't going to be happening, really.

Exactly! We wouldn't have done it if we didn't love LJ. LJ needs to make money to survive - we accept that. But it won't make money if it keeps acting like this!

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	shadowgardens 2008-03-23 01:30 am UTC (link)
	I agree. And I don't think anyone will be forgetting this anytime soon. Asshatery is one thing but homophobia is another. I'm so confused as to why bisexuality was excluded and not glbta or something. It's kind of the last straw for me. I'm not going to renew my account when it comes up again unless things change. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

tsukinofaerii
2008-03-23 01:48 am UTC (link)

(chews lip) This is awkward, but all I can say on the Interests is that it really makes perfect sense, and it really wasn't LJ's fault. More than that, I can't say. But I don't want people blaming/leaving LJ because of it. I do want people to keep demanding answers, because it NEEDS to be announced for the sake of the community. And I'll shut up now, because I'm dancing that line of honor a little to close. (zips lips)

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	shadowgardens 2008-03-23 02:14 am UTC (link)
	I understand you can't say anything. They're going to have to explain it though, because as a queer woman I find it really offensive. (Reply to this) (Parent)