Migrants to IJ, 2007

re: unwanted friending. i'm not exactly sure what you mean by "How can you stop someone from friending you without banning them?" but as far as i know you can't stop anyone from friending you on LJ. banning just removes their ability to comment on your journal with that LJ account.

if you're interested in examples of unwanted friending, i can provide a few that i've witnessed:

"unwanted friending" seems to aggravate the heck out of LJers who have real life restraining orders against the unwanted friend.

it also tends to bother ex-fiancees whose previously intended other follows their posts even after they break up [horrifically].

just seeing the unwanted friend's LJ name on the userinfo page can make even the most resilient person nauseous at the memory of persistent RL abusive behavior.

LJ has not demonstrated a good history of acknowledging RL interactions in their "tos abuse" evaluations.