I had become dissatisfied with LiveJournal. My discontent was not because of any technical incompetent on their part. In fact, they have done an excellent job in maintaining the site and its blog servers. No: I am dissatisfied because of their managerial blunders.
The biggest folly was that, right after I bought a permanent account with LiveJournal, it sold itself to some Russian company just because a sizable number of the blogs it manages happen to be Russian. Not only did the managerial missteps continue, but the new company's motto turned out to be retaliate against users rather than bowing to their pressure
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Then came about the Russo-Cartvelian War, which has antagonized the United States towards Russia. How can a Russian company manage a blogging service with mostly American blogs in a climate like that?
Russia's plea for understanding is undermined by its various punitive actions over recent years against nearly all of its neighbours to its west, from cutting the flow of gas to Ukraine [and hence to Western Europe] to alleged cyber-attacks against Estonia [an EU member state].
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By its actions [Russia] has put at risk its privileged position within the G8, and earned the clear condemnation of Europe's two major international institutions devoted to building democracy and peace — the Council of Europe and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
I joined LiveJournal in June 2007 on my sister's recommendation. She, in turn, has been on LiveJournal almost since its creation in the late 1990's, and has long been a permanent member. At the time last year I liked LiveJournal so much that I was willing to overlook its follies, buying a Permanent Account when they became available in July. I admit now that I was a fool to have done so, as the foundation of the blogging service is revealed to be figuratively rigged with explosives.
It is time to bail out. It will hurt financially. But I am to blame only because I could not predict such folly on LiveJournal's part six months after I bought into it.
And that is why I have forsaken LiveJournal for the WordPress-based blogging service provided by Hostway, my Web hosting company, as part of my Web site through its SiteBlog interface. I had some trouble at first with the controls, and even had to contact Hostway technical support to unstick the dysmey name out of the gears when it got stuck. But now that I have gotten to work and look the way I want it, I can quietly forsake LiveJournal and leave the uncertainty behind.
The threat on paragraph two, which was part of a much longer rant against LiveJournal users, was made by a certain Anton Nossik, an employee at the Russian company, SUP Fabrik, that bought LiveJournal. Evidently he has been made to bear the sin of the company.
In September 2008 Anton Nossik resigned from SUP and from his role as their social media evangelist. He had been one of the first bloggers on LiveJournal in Russia and played an early important role in suppporting its development.
That means nothing, for SUP still owns LiveJournal, so there may be others there who have a mind like Nossik but do not have as big a mouth. Therefore, while the status quo is in effect, I will stay out of LiveJournal. I will declare in a blog entry that The Dysmey Blog on LiveJournal is now dormant.
Oh, and visit the new Dysmey Blog at http://dysmey.andywest.org, now that the helpful folks at Hostway have pulled the dysmey name out of the WordPress gears.
Two more things to add. One, I have requested deletion of my account on Janary 2009. After thirty days, the account and its contents have been purged. I am now free. Two, the president of Russia now has a blog on LiveJournal. The rot is complete.