alexpgp | My own take... (Reply)

Actually, my own translation of a part of the Nossik interview published on izbrannoe.info:

When might such a decision be made?

Well, there's the rub. Given the threat of intimidation, the company's hands are tied.

Why?

Well, let's assume that I politely tell you, a journalist, "It appears to me that you've inserted an extra comma over here." Your natural reaction will be, "Yes, you're right..." or "Let's go ask the editor..." But if I come and say "Get rid of this comma or I'll punch you in the mouth!" are you going to verify the proper placement of the comma?

In a situation where people are trying to intimidate and scare us, and threatening to destroy our business, there are business reasons not to reward such behavior. This is not just human psychology, which increasingly resists in response to greater pressure. The point is that never in the history of any successful business has success been achieved by caving in to aggression and hostility. No decision - not even the most correct - must be made under compulsion.

It would probably be appropriate to review the decision of March 12th in the days ahead, but from the perspective of a prudent corporate policy, we must wait until the boycott. Let it pass, so that the books can be closed on the subject of public resentment, threats, and fear. And then the substance of the problem can be examined.

Apropos of which, this is not the first call to boycott LJ that I've heard of over the last few years.

How effective have those calls been?

So effective that during LJ's first year of operation (between October 2006 and the end of 2007), the size of its audience (which had been exhorted to stop using LJ because the "Kremlin" and "blood-drenched KGBers" were involved) has doubled, from 700 thousand to just about 1.5 million users.

Basically, the LiveJournal audience can be divided into three groups. There is a silent majority, which uses LJ for its own needs and is absolutely indifferent to who created, developed, and supports this resource, or where, or why, or with what money. There is a "positive minority" (7-10% in the Russian segment). These people like LJ, they consider it useful and want it to grow. They help us with, among other things, constructive criticism, thanks to which we, by the way, correct our errors. And there is a third category of people who, over LiveJournal's entire existence, have repeatedly come out with loud initiatives whose purpose is to hurt LJ and its creators, to put it out of business, railroad it, and detract from its reputation. Basically such people are motivated by a desire to attract attention, and they succeed every time.

Their rhetoric is practically identical, regarless of whether they're posting in English from California or in Russian from Moscow. These people once called on Brad Fitzpatrick to resign when he was the sole head of LJ. They wanted to call each LJ advertiser and threaten their reputation unless they canceled their advertising. They demanded the cancellation of each innovation in LF. They called on users to quit and migrate to competing platforms first for one reason, then another.

It's understandable that journalists look for page-one stories. And a scandal in LJ is a page-one story. The fact that many fixes have been made to LJ, and that a lot of time and effort have gone into improvements, well, nobody wants to write about that.

The management has reversed or revised its decisions, published apologies, restored accounts that were blocked due to folly, and revised the terms of service... Anything can be changed on the level of constructive dialog with LJ users.

Without trying to be judgmental, I find this an amazingly solid blend of Western spin and, for lack of a better term, the "Russian negotiating mentality."

Why I'm doing this instead of a paying translation? To better understand the ongoing debate, believe it or not.

(Midday status: 12 pages done of 22.)

Cheers...