a splendid duck-billed platypus

My friends, acquaintances, and readers: I have nothing against you for moving to Dreamwidth, it's just that I know all of you normally write much more interesting posts: I am so looking forward to the day when you start writing those posts again, and thank you to those who continue to want to receive my comments.

Beyond the plain and obvious cynical reasons for not moving to DW until it's clear it's going to survive: Denise Paolucci ran LJ Abuse from 2003-2008, and - among a bunch of other horrible things - is responsible for the decision not to pursue people who were posting obscene pictures of women being tortured on my journal, because I had a default icon that showed a few pixels of areola on a nipple in a baby's mouth. (There are of course a bunch of other decisions made by Denise that appalled me - but that's my own personal Ick with her.) I gather via various posts on Insanejournal that she claims to be unable to discuss or to explain her conduct due to signing a non-disclosure agreement: I disagree with the people who have asserted that for this reason she should be forgiven unconditionally for the bad things she did because she was being paid to do them.

That Denise Paolucci was running LJ Abuse for years - and it was unethical and untransparent well before Livejournal was bought by Six Apart - is now part of her professional record: anyone is fully entitled to judge someone's capacity to do a job by their previous professional record.

This non-disclosure agreement that Denise claims to have signed is extremely useful for her: whether it exists or not, she would certainly have had to invent it. It means she can avoid completely any discussion about which of the policies she implemented and enforced she agrees with, disagrees with, disagreed with then, agreed with then but has since come to think were stupid/wrong. She can also avoid apologising to anyone she harmed or attacked, excusing her behavior, or even acknowledging it: and people who want to can assume she was an utter innocent who ought to be forgiven. But I don't see any reason to make that assumption: there's no evidence for it beyond the plain fact that Denise would very much like people who she harmed because she was paid to do it, to please stop thinking about what she did to them and just move on.

And yes, actually: I received e-mails about this directly from Denise Paolucci at the time. (I was just checking back.) Not from one of her anonymous LJ abuse volunteers.

Plain business transactions with people who have behaved badly in the past are probably unavoidable, but nothing would induce me to help Denise Paolucci develop another journaling site, so I will not be getting any account there or commenting there at least until DW is out of beta.