Dreamwidth Q&A Session

[denise]

I realized this morning that it has been quite some time, so I figured it would be a good time for another Dreamwidth Q&A session!

Got a question on how the business end of DW works? Curious about the progress on a particular feature? (Although I can probably answer that for you by saying: we're working on paying down our technical debt so that we can move forward on a lot of the planned features; it got to the point where we couldn't progress further without making some aggressive modernization of the existing codebase.) Wondering what an average day in the life of a DW employee is? Got that one question that you've been vaguely wondering about for ages, but never felt like it was "important" enough to make a support request to get the answer on? Want to know if it really is that cool being able to work from home without wearing any pants? (Answer: yes, especially when it's 85 degrees F in my office and the air conditioners won't be delivered and installed for at least another day or two.)

Comment here, and we will answer!

(Just a reminder: you may receive comments or replies from people who know the answer to your question, but aren't officially DW staff. If the person who answers you doesn't have the official "staff" userhead -- -- they are not DW staff. They may be correct -- if they aren't, I will be sure to answer and clear up any misconceptions -- but they are not speaking ex cathedra Dreamwidth, so to speak!)

No question too big, no question too small. There's also previous Q&A sessions and the Business FAQs to browse through!

(Answers may be a bit slow depending on computer woes and additional stuff going on, but we will answer!)

Comments

[chris]

Thank you for your response.

It's been almost a year since the last ToS update, which is testament to just how low-volume ToS complaints have been. How does Dreamwidth's current volume compare with that of LJ in your earlier days in LJ's abuse team, if it is known? Is it possible to say that the Dreamwidth client base causes far fewer ToS complaints relative to its volume than LJ did - or, perhaps, relative to LJ at different points in LJ's history? If so, are there specific policy reasons why this might be the case or is it just that DW users have been around the block more often?

[denise]

There weren't stats on volume for the first two years of LJ abuse -- it was handled in private email and nothing was written up in the LJ abuse community -- so comparison isn't really possible. I know that volume is far lower than I'd predict it to be for an active userbase of this size -- we have about 2% of LJ's active usage, and way way way way way below 2% of LJ's abuse volume. (Well, LJ's abuse volume at the last point I had active knowledge of same, but I seriously doubt volume has gone down.) Part of the difference is that the invite code system seriously curtails spam, which was always a reasonable chunk of LJ's abuse complaints (and i'm sure has only gone up as LJ's spam problem has worsened), but I really do think part of it is just that DW's userbase is just that awesome.

[azurelunatic]

And we already have a functioning antispam system, and antispam has been mostly separated from ToS, such that most of the spam volume can be handled without bothering ToS. Which I think would count as a specific policy reason why things are lower -- I'm in antispam, and we have a reasonable volume, but it's still small enough that the first round of recruiting plus one more later-added person is reasonably on top of it. (Spam volume has increased since the beginning, but there have been improvements to the system so that it is no longer *quite* the same "Brad, in his dorm room, with BML" system that we inherited. (It's due a revamp, but we can sail on for a while as-is. My counterpart and I are going over antispam applications, but there's low enough volume that it's not been our first priority.) The vast majority of spam is anonymous comment spam, mostly from a few rotating specific recognizable campaigns or methodologies, with a handful of one-offs, some non-spam (mostly obnoxiousness in a few specific anonymous comment communities), and some OpenID spammers.

There have been a very few registered users reported: a mix of legitimate content reported accidentally, legitimate content reported maliciously, legitimate content reported after an apparent loss of friendship, legitimate but mean/dodgy content reported indignantly, legitimate actual users making poor outreach choices, and a handful of gen-u-ine registered-user spammers.

The real spammers are reported to ToS for termination. The poor outreach choices are also referred to ToS in case there are associated complaints, or so that someone can tell them to make better choices in the future. Isolated meanness and other forms for legitimate content are closed without action. There has so far been one case (albeit multipart) of Assorted Dodginess, which was referred to ToS. ToS has courtesy access to the antispam reports in case they need it for any of the things reported to them.

I have previously described LJ's spam problem as "enterprise-level"; I think that a single person could probably handle DW's spam by themselves at this point, if not for the burnout.