LJ's Failboat Cruises merrily on.

[feng_shui_house]

There are currently 105 pages of NOOOO (6890 comments) on the LJ comment page redesign.

Of course this wasn't mentioned on the LJ NEWS community, but the LJ-releases community. If it was anyone other than LJ I'd say, well, with this many people pointing out how HORRIBLE it is that they've taken away the subject line on comments, forced us to load ALL of the userpics to choose one, and actually BLOATED the comment box with USELESS blue and white space despite having removed functionality, etc. etc. FAIL FAIL TOTAL FAIL... well, with anyone else I'd say, surely they will quickly revert to the system that people actually LIKED.

http://lj-releases.livejournal.com/71858.html?style=mine#comments

I'm not holding my breath waiting for a fix.

EDIT: Dreamwidth is currently allowing you to sign up without an invite. Don't know how much longer the offer will be good. GO here if you want to get one. https://www.dreamwidth.org/create

Now more than 110 pages/7402 comments and I since I was totally unable to load any LJ pages just now & went to down right now & found LOTS of people feel LJ is down, I suspect a lot more people would have complained, if they could.

Other complaints involve excessive amount of time expanding comments and inability of some COMMON and UP TO DATE browsers to work with this new mess. No comment previewing!

I NOW have options for delete/freeze/edit/track/screen etc. appear when I hover over my comment. That is STUPID. It saves no time and no space and if the hover doesn't work (as it WASN'T doing for me earlier) you can't use them at all.

EDIT A FEW SECONDS LATER: NEWS community FINALLY acknowledged that GEE, there seems to be some less than thrilled reaction to our latest mess. We are really listening to you now. Really we are. And we MIGHT even MAYBE if you are LUCKY fix some of the things. Still not holding my breath.

http://news.livejournal.com/140511.html

Comments

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I don't think I'll add my comments there, but WTH were they thinking? I sort of like being able to enter part of a keyword so show, say, all my Avon icons and what they look like but I hate, hate, hate not having a comment subject. OK, I don't usually use it but in comms like picowrimo and naarmamo it's just so useful to sort out replies to my contribution from all the replies to my comments on others' work. Ah, man. Why fix what isn't broken?

[entropy-house.livejournal.com]

The comment subject is EXTREMELY useful for RPGing and for long threads of all sorts, and for organizing email notifications and many other things.

GRRR.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

They had heaps of objections when they said they'd do it and they still went ahead, the bastards.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Ooh! I got pissed off with the lack of margins when commenting so I turned on my custom comment layout--and it has subjects and the old drop-down icon selection!

[entropy-house.livejournal.com]

*nods* I'd read in the complaints that SOME custom layouts will still work the old way-- for a while. They said they would eventually make ALL the layouts work this way, until they get around to designing ONE S2 layout to work the old way. I'm not betting that they'll actually even do that.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Only one style? But I don't want to change layouts. They should offer custom styles, the old one, and the new one for the guy who designed it.

[entropy-house.livejournal.com]

The guy who designed it is HEAD of Russian LJ and apparently has decided that what pleases him is the only thing that should be offered.

He stuck a tiny addendum in English on one of his Russian posts (I've seen a translated version, all the Russians are screaming NO, We HATE THIS,too, so it's not as if he's trying to please the Russian LJers at the expense of other LJers.)

This is his addendum which seems to say 'If there's still a MASSIVE uproar a YEAR from now, we'll think about offering subject line options and if you BEG us, we'll allow you to request the priviledge of using it.'

"A note to users of RP, Meme and other communities, where subject line is crucial for operation: for the moment we are developing only standard commenting representation, well know in LiveJournal as S1 styles, but we will keep subject lines, both in terms of form and representation, in advanced — S2 — styles, and provide an ability to keep it forever for certain communities, as well as, by request, will develop an extra functionality for such communities thru OpensSocial applications going public next year."

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

He can have what he bloody likes but why the FUCK didn't they give us an opt-in or out option?

[entropy-house.livejournal.com]

Apparently the opt-out is to move to Dreamwidth.

LJ has been aiming towards becoming a badly-run, bloated, imitation of Facebook for some years now. Why they think it's better to kick out the userbase they can rely on in hopes of stealing FB's users with a crappy copy (and without the social links people have on FB) is beyond me.

[entropy-house.livejournal.com]

Oh, this is really getting worse. I see now it's collapsed a thread with only 9! comments on it.

[miwahni.livejournal.com]

I hope they get this sorted soon. I've had to open Comment pages in a new tab, because if I try to back-button to my Friends page after leaving a comment somewhere I get stuck in an endless loop of empty/ full comment box.

... and help!! How do I now pick an icon at all? My default icon is there but I don't get any option to change it.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Click on the down arrow under it and type in a keyword (or part thereof). But yeah, really unfriendly design.

[entropy-house.livejournal.com]

It's so unfriendly I could barely SEE the down arrow without my eyeglasses.

[miwahni.livejournal.com]

Thank you... that still wasn't working, and in fact,when I first went to respond to this comment, I discovered that I had lost the ability to comment at all! But I've since found how to circumvent the changes and so far so good.

[miwahni.livejournal.com]

Hell-o! I've put my settings back to the way they were, and at the same time disabled Greasemonkey - and I can comment again AND pick a user icon! Woo-hoo! In order to post my previous response I'd had to change my settings to "view all journals in own style" or whatever they call it. How boring is that.... all good now!

[entropy-house.livejournal.com]

I don't know if it will work for you- what you can get to work seems to vary a LOT. But for me I can change icons by clicking on post a new comment and then click on the default icon and then scroll down to see the one I want and click on it.

WHAT A PAIN IN THE TUCKUS. Not to mention possibly a deal-breaker for people with poor connections or weak computers (but then when I had problems caused by LJ changing the whole layout when I had an old computer their whole advice boiled down to 'if you can't afford a new computer, that's your fault, not ours, we won't give ANY simple layout options')