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foxfirefeyThe latest announcement from IJ indicates that spam is choking the service to death:
This has been a long running problem. It's easy to see how much of a problem using the stats page: on almost every load, the majority or entirety of recently updated and recently created journals are SEO spam journals. They might have been trying different strategies up until now, but so far none have been all that effective.
However, IJ isn't about to roll over and die: they're working on a strategy to improve the issue. Facebook posts indicate a return to an invite code system, at least for a few months while the problem is cleared up.
As a service, IJ offers more icons for free accounts than either DW or LJ, and it still has comment subject lines, making it attractive for RP communities and journals. Permanent paid accounts with even more icons are routinely available for as little as $30 during sales. It's a bit up in the air whether or not that's the cause of funding troubles: IJ's strong RP-based clientele often create multiple journals for characters and games, so lots of permanent accounts doesn't necessarily mean cutting off all future revenue from a given user. There's also light ads on the site to help out with revenue.
It hasn't been enough to buy enough hardware to withstand the increasing spam onslaught, but that's a fool game: no matter how much hardware you buy, when you get at this point spammers will just use the power to fill your service up with more spam. Hopefully a combination of invite codes and a thorough scrubbing will return IJ to an even keel.
All in all, it's a sobering reminder that effective spam fighting efforts are vital to the health of any user content generating service.
The issue is we are getting overwhelmed with spam posts and don't have the funds to add the hardware needed to deal with it.
This has been a long running problem. It's easy to see how much of a problem using the stats page: on almost every load, the majority or entirety of recently updated and recently created journals are SEO spam journals. They might have been trying different strategies up until now, but so far none have been all that effective.
However, IJ isn't about to roll over and die: they're working on a strategy to improve the issue. Facebook posts indicate a return to an invite code system, at least for a few months while the problem is cleared up.
As a service, IJ offers more icons for free accounts than either DW or LJ, and it still has comment subject lines, making it attractive for RP communities and journals. Permanent paid accounts with even more icons are routinely available for as little as $30 during sales. It's a bit up in the air whether or not that's the cause of funding troubles: IJ's strong RP-based clientele often create multiple journals for characters and games, so lots of permanent accounts doesn't necessarily mean cutting off all future revenue from a given user. There's also light ads on the site to help out with revenue.
It hasn't been enough to buy enough hardware to withstand the increasing spam onslaught, but that's a fool game: no matter how much hardware you buy, when you get at this point spammers will just use the power to fill your service up with more spam. Hopefully a combination of invite codes and a thorough scrubbing will return IJ to an even keel.
All in all, it's a sobering reminder that effective spam fighting efforts are vital to the health of any user content generating service.
