Davis Square?

[miss-chance.livejournal.com]

I think I'm going to start turning into that cranky old Kids Get Off My Lawn lady, but Davis Square LJ is in the news lately. So lately everyone who is hosting anything is posting it here.

We've got yard sales in Watertown, random fora in Boston that have nothing to do with S'ville, let alone Davis. People who market events have added this to their list, and it's making me sad for the community aspect of the community LJ.

Personally, I'd be happy for moderators to pull down postings like these pretty quickly before we lose any sense of being a Davis Square LJ and not just a place to announce all events. I mean, even if it's at least S'ville related, Magoun, Teele, even Union Sq. are connected in a real direct community way, but lately the random stuff seems to be getting out of hand, and I imagine it's going to escalate quickly as the lawsuit news puts DSLJ in front of people's eyes.


thoughts?

Comments

[keithn.livejournal.com]

I see the post about forums, which was just posted this morning, but I don't see anything about a yard sale in Watertown. Am I missing it, or are you seeing a trend in one data point?

[rmd.livejournal.com]

I, too, am annoyed that these damned kids won't get off my lawn.
whenever anything is posted that's not specific to somerville and davis or areas within short distance thereof, it makes me ever so slightly grumpy. I don't bother bitching at the moderators because I figure they can nuke it if they think it's inappropriate.

[miss-chance.livejournal.com]

The Watertown yardsale was, I think, taken down by the moderators after some discussion.
I referred to it because it existed.

[anomie666.livejournal.com]

Ever since b0st0n took a nosedive, this is the one really active local place left. I don't fault people for wanting to post here (lots of followers to this community live in other places besides Somerville) but it isn't really relevant.

[ron_newman]

I did not delete it. It's possible that another moderator deleted it, or that the original poster did after reading the discussion.

[laura47.livejournal.com]

i agree, i'm fine with things in the rest of somerville, cause nothing in somerville is really far, but i don't care about watertown (sorry watertown!)

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

I did not touch the original post nor comment there, but when the OP posted a SECOND one on Saturday to remind people, using the justification that "a couple of people from Somerville" had come by and therefore it was clearly relevant, I confess I immediately deleted it without a word. Well, not entirely true -- I briefly ranted out loud to the other person in the room, who supported my decision.

I'm sorry I didn't say anything. It just didn't seem worth anyone's time or screen space to bother.

[frotz.livejournal.com]

I think of this as what davis-meta is for, if you felt like you wanted to note the deletion someplace.

That said, I don't know that it actually needs to be noted for these clearly-out-of-area postings, of which there seem to have been a bunch lately. (...or maybe, for some odd reason, I've been reading davis-square more closely lately and have seen them pop up before deletion. Go figure.)

[ron_newman]

We've had a bunch of spammers from China repost irrelevant content from elsewhere, with a broken embedded video link. I've been banning and deleting these as soon as I see them.

I have no idea what the purpose of these posts is. People spam because they want to advertise something, but there is no discernable advertising in these posts.

[frotz.livejournal.com]

In some cases I think they're trying to game heuristics that lj (or sometimes just people) use to evaluate the legitimacy of an account. Some of the ones that I've seen are written to be completely bland (if slightly inane) commentary that could be (auto-)inserted into almost any conversation. I expect there's a posting and comment count after which it starts looking like a more real account (with a lower chance of getting automatically flagged), at which point it's probably used to splatter a bunch of commercial spam all over which will stay up for that much longer before getting nuked.

Not so sure about that midwest library sale, though. (Perhaps the spammers have learned to report legit-looking content? Who knows, maybe the spambots could build legitimacy by posting content people actually wanted to read before cutting loose!)

[squirrelitude]

Spammers will often post content they've taken from legit sources. As you suggest, this is to give their own accounts the appearance of legitimacy.

[squirrelitude]

I'd definitely like to see more geographic control over the posts in here.

[samcoren.livejournal.com]

I don't mind the occasional Cambridge, Arlington, or Medford event related post (I've definitely found out about cool stuff in neighboring towns through here), but a garage sale in Watertown is kind of overkill. At least touch a border with us. Maybe the solution is if it's an out-of-Somerville/Cambridge-related thing they should get mod-approval first?

[keithn.livejournal.com]

I would also like to see the end of "I'm giving away a 12 pack of soda" and "I'm giving away a bottle of laundry detergent" posts.

[keithn.livejournal.com]

And "I'm giving away flea spray."

[sparr0.livejournal.com]

I wish I could send a collective message to everyone on every internet forum everywhere that gives away free stuff... "If it's the kind of thing that you could put on the sidewalk with a Free sign and have it disappear in less than an hour, don't spam ten thousand people with a notice about it"

Furniture and other things that require a special trip in a truck or van to get? Sure

Things like artwork that would be valuable to a few people but would likely sit on the curb and rot? OK, that's not too bad either.

A box of cookies, or a ream of paper? Seriously, just stick a note on it and toss it out the front door.

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

Maybe there could be a single post for Posting Comments Listing Free Stuff Being Given Away, which people interested in free stuff could track, kind of like a kink meme but for giveaways instead of fanfic.

[cos]

Hmm, perhaps we could direct people to post in b0st0n, which might also direct people to read there.

I think http://boston.reddit.com/ took over b0st0n's niche, really.

[tulipe-noire.livejournal.com]

The Somerville Freecycle group is really active for this purpose: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FreeCycle-Somerville-MA/

[prunesnprisms.livejournal.com]

speaking as just one of the moderators, I have no problem deleting it if its off topic, but my schedule is not always good for being active on the "pretty quickly" part.

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

If I'd deleted the original (as opposed to the reminder), I would have posted it, since it was several days after the post itself. But from where I stood, I wasn't actually removing any content, since it was all still there, just not duplicated anymore. (I also deleted pretty shortly after the post happened.)

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

I for one have no problem with summary deletion of posts about anything more than a couple miles from Davis. (I can imagine such posts having a clear, obvious connection to the Square and its people and thus being okay, but they rarely seem to.)

[ron_newman]

My personal feeling is that the community now covers all of Somerville, as well as neighboring parts of Cambridge, Medford, and Arlington. I think posts promoting events such as Union Square Fluff Festival, Arlington Town Day, West Medford Open Studios, and North Cambridge Family Opera make sense here. Further away than these, less so.

It's not easy to walk the fine line between under- and over-moderating the community.

[ron_newman]

Looking over everything that has been posted since I got served with the lawsuit, I don't see much that I'd really consider off-topic.

The Ford Hall Forum is questionable, and I left a mod comment on that post, pointing over to this discussion.

Redbones opening a second location is on-topic, even if the second location is in Malden, because Redbones is a Davis Square institution.

We've had free stuff posts in this community for over a decade now.

[keithn.livejournal.com]

As for free stuff: IMHO there's a difference between something like furniture and a 12 pack of caffeine free Dr. Pepper (http://davis-square.livejournal.com/3185939.html) or Chiptole coupons that had been mass-mailed to nearly everyone in the area. (http://davis-square.livejournal.com/3161079.html) Or flea spray. Or laundry detergent.

[ron_newman]

That second link was posted by another mod ;-)

[thespian.livejournal.com]

it's funny; last fall there were complaints because I was looking for a couple roommates where I am (by Clarendon, .8 miles from Davis - I walk it if the bus is going to be more than 15 minutes, because I will get there faster, and I am a slow walker). "Not in Davis!" (all the moderators, who live about the same distance from DS, were fine with it).

I think anything in Somerville is really acceptable - Davis is the heart of S'ville, but everyone who does things in Davis tends to be pretty involved elsewhere, and frequently events that are DS centred have planning meetings near Porter, in Union or Teele, etc.We're not exactly a huge city - it's exactly 4 miles from the SavMor at the Medford/Somerville border to the SavMor at the Somerville/Cambridge border, which is pretty much the biggest distance you can get away from people here.

[thespian.livejournal.com]

fwiw, up by Teele/Clarendon, I didn't get the Chipotle coupons.

[somervillesnow.livejournal.com]

I disagree with the idea that giving away things shouldn't be done on the internet. However I agree with doing them on Davis Square Live Journal is probably not the best, though I don't think we are overrun with them. Craigslist free section or freecycle mailing list are good for that.