MOD POST

[sophistry]

Good evening, chickadees. By now, most of you have probably discovered the delightful, steaming heap of a Yule gift bestowed upon us by LJ in the form of redesigned comment pages, which are not only badly designed to the point of inducing headaches, but also make long threads almost entirely unnavigable. Hurrah! Seasonally-appropriate joy for all!

We've waited just under 24 hours since the changeover, to see if LJ suddenly manifested enough sense to do an emergency rollback to the old design, but the latest news post seems to indicate that that, unfortunately, is not gonna be happening (or at least not yet).

What does this mean for Milliways?

There are a number of workarounds and hacks popping up around LJ; as soon as I finish making this post, I will get to work on applying the Minimalism custom comments workaround to both milliways_bar and ways_back_room. This will restore subject lines and (hopefully) proper expand/collapse functions, and provide a rough visual approximation of the old default comment page.

However!

1) This is going to change the main page layouts of both communities. They'll still be perfectly usable, they'll just look different, so... FYI. Either this will be a stopgap measure until LJ comes to its senses, or there will be plenty of time to refine the look later; either way, comment pages and functionality are the #1 priority right now, so please bear with us as we futz around with things.

2) Custom comment pages currently require that the account employing them be either a Paid or Plus account. Since I am not particularly interested in giving LJ any more of my money at this time - and I urge all of you to refrain from doing so as well - that means Plus accounts, which means advertisements on the bar and back room comms. *cough*Adblock*cough*

There are also a number of tweaks and extensions that individual users can use to make their current LJ experience a little less painful - stay tuned for a round-up post once the community layouts are sorted.

If you're having any problems with the Minimalism layouts, or something isn't working as it should, or you've spotted a workaround you think should be included in the round-up, please leave them in the comments here!

ETA: List of workarounds is now here; if you have any tips or tricks, please leave them in the comments over there!

MOD POST 2: The Hackening

[sophistry]

Okay! The layouts for milliways_bar and ways_back_room have been changed, and commenting should be more-or-less functional again. The workaround does have some bugs, though, so if you're having any issues, please leave a comment on this mod post over here.

With that sorted for the moment, read on for a list of all the current workarounds and hacks I've been able to find.

( This way! )

This is pretty hodgepodge, and for that I apologise; I've got tabs open every which way trying to figure out what works, what doesn't, and for what account levels.

If you have any other tips or tricks, leave them in the comments here! If possible, please also state what account levels (i.e. Basic/Plus/Paid) they work for.

Thanks for your patience, guys!

Daily Entertainment.

[muji]

Sorry I've missed the past couple of days, guys - this is my last day of work in the office for 2011, so I've been running around a lot.

To that end - Anyone have any exciting vacation plans and the like? I have exciting rollerskating adventures this weekend. :D

re: slowtimes

[leeshajoy.livejournal.com]

I wanted to apologize to everyone I'm threading with for not picking up slowtimes yesterday. Between RL obligations and LiveJournal's fuckery, I was Not In The Mood to do any RP yesterday. Today... well, I'm still pissed off at LJ, but I'll do my best to push through it and play.




Also, I'm on Dreamwidth now. Just sayin'.

If you have a custom comment page set up for your journal...

[leeshajoy.livejournal.com]

...you'd better go into Journal Settings and set it up again, because as of a few minutes ago it was turned off on EVERY SINGLE JOURNAL THAT HAD IT.

This includes the Bar and the Back Room.

LiveJournal, you have set a new bar for "epic fail."

ETA: CHECK YOUR PAID ACCOUNTS. There are reports in the comments for Release 88 that automatic payments have been enabled on some paid accounts without the account-holder's permission or knowledge.

The final straw.

[leeshajoy.livejournal.com]

I could learn to live with the new comment pages. I could learn to live with the hoops we have to jump through to make LiveJournal usable.

But turning on automatic payments without the account holder's knowledge or consent? That is the last straw. If it's not deliberate fraud, it might as well be, and I'm not going to be a party to any business that would allow that to happen.

As of right now, I am done with LiveJournal. I'm porting all my accounts over to Dreamwidth, and as soon as they're finished importing I'm closing them down for good.

This was not an easy decision to make. I hate to leave Milliways; it's been a wonderful game and a wonderful circle of friends to be a part of. But based on what's happened to LiveJournal in the past two days, and how little upper management appears to care about the concerns of the userbase? The community I've loved for the past five years is already gone.

Goodbye, Milliwaysers. May we meet again in greener pastures.