[Reader-list] User interface on LiveJournal

[Kiran Jonnalagadda]

On May 1, 2005, at 9:51 PM, Kiran Jonnalagadda wrote:

> 3. LiveJournal provides a one-month notice period for deleted accounts 
> to be revived. In practice, however, deleted accounts are rarely 
> purged and may be recovered anytime. This results in cases of an owner 
> deleting their account when they want to *temporarily* go offline.

LiveJournal announced today that they have an account purging system in 
place finally:
http://www.livejournal.com/community/lj_maintenance/103893.html

> Warning: If you have a deleted LiveJournal account that's for years 
> been saying, "This will be deleted in 30 days" and you've gotten so 
> used to it never deleting that you assumed we never will ..... we 
> will.
>
> Tomorrow we'll start actually deleting deleted accounts. Warn any 
> friends of yours that have deleted accounts that you think they might 
> still want. (some people delete to hide their journals I hear.....)

Notice the last bit in parenthesis. I have seen this happen. One user 
(whom I cannot identify until I have obtained his permission) posted 
this March 1st, 2005:

> 10:40 am
> Starting tomorrow I have to delete my journal for a few weeks.
>
> A company is going to make me an offer for a job I interviewed for a 
> couple of weeks ago and they will be doing an extensive background 
> check on me. This includes retarded things like calling my friends and 
> family to see what kind of person I am. Stupid ass me put 
> [snipped]@gmail.com as my email address on my resume which could 
> potentially lead them to this journal, where they would read a full 
> account of what an immature, perverted, derelict fart-smith I am. 
> Naturally, we can't have that.
>
> I'll be back in a few weeks. Later.
>
> -[snipped]

He returned quickly. March 4th, 2005:

> 5:08 pm
> Hey all, I'm back.
>
> Got the new job which is cool, and by cool, I mean totally sweet. 
> We're open for business, drop me a line.

I have other examples, but sadly none with a quote I can reproduce here.

LiveJournal has always maintained that deleted accounts will be purged 
in 30 days. LiveJournal's policy was out of sync with reality. Notice 
how users build their experience around expected behaviour, not stated 
behaviour, and that the difference between these two is so well 
established that LiveJournal has to make a warning announcement that 
expected behaviour will henceforth match stated behaviour.

-- 
Kiran Jonnalagadda
http://www.pobox.com/~jace