You may have noticed that livejournal is holding elections. The winner will be given a seat on the livejournal advisory board. Users may submit themselves as candidates by posting to the community lj_election_en. That post must get at least 100 comments of support from other users before the candidacy becomes official.

The most interesting event so far? squeaky, founder and owner of insanejournal, has decided to run. On livejournal he is squeaky19 and his (very popular) nomination post is here.

Why is Squeaky so well-liked? The story begins last June while I was in Japan. Something was going down on livejournal and I had only the vaguest idea. I didn't get to use the internet very often during the trip, but I remember getting the disconcerting impression that something big was afoot. It was not until I got home that I realized the extent of the destruction.

From what I could gather, it seems livejournal parent company Six Apart had decided to clean house, possibly due to urging from a sketchy "pedophile hunting" group called Warriors For Innocence. Several hundred livejournal accounts were suspended. The original targets were supposed to have been journals promoting pedophilia, but it went rather spectacularly awry. Notable suspensions included at least two abuse survivors, a Spanish-language discussion community for the novel Lolita, and a lot of fanfiction writers and communities, including popular Harry Potter adult fanfiction community Pornish Pixies. Many of these accounts were later reinstated. A second round of deletions took down popular fan artist Ponderosa121, who was not reinstated. All of this can be googled under the name Strikethrough 2007, referring to the way in which suspended usernames appeared on friendslists with a line through them.

The fan community was, of course, furious and also terrified. Given that they generate a not-insignificant portion of livejournal content, things have been a little tense around here ever since. This is apparent in places such as the comments on the official news community. Nearly a year later the fallout is still coming down.

Some people jumped ship, most to either greatestjournal or insanejournal. Insanejournal owner Squeaky was quick to put up a welcome message and the site now prominently displays statements about freedom of expression and non-self-policing that explicitly include fanfiction. Since greatestjournal seems to have collapsed under the weight of its own icons, insanejournal has become the default alternative site. From what I can see, Squeaky has a reputation for being hardworking, easy to talk to, and concerned about the concerns of users. Apparently word of this has gotten back to the fans who elected not to leave livejournal, not to mention those who use both.

As for the election, a lot of people have expressed worries that this will be nothing but token position to mollify all the angry users, as livejournal is by no means obligated to follow the advice of the advisory board. (This was demonstrated dramatically in the recent decision to stop offering basic accounts, in which, of the four advisory board members, two were quoted as saying they had not been consulted and a third, livejournal creator Brad Fitzpatrick, said he had heard of it only as a rumor and had advised against it.)

Nevertheless, the election goes forward. Of particular note, IMO, is the community ljunited, who are concerned with getting livejournal to honor its original social contract, which has been broken in a number of places. They have ties with Squeaky, but they also have a strong official candidate of their own, rm. Her nomination post is here. I think she would also be a good choice. She seems like the kind of person who might be able to make herself heard even by people who did not originally intend to listen.

I know it's asking a lot, but I encourage everyone to at least have a look at the election.