Fandom and the internet in general being what they are, there will always be people who are really pleased to have found something to be yelling at, and there will always be people who are really pleased to have found someone to mock. I have been both of those people, and will be again! And sometimes, not always but sometimes, there's a valid point that gets overlooked between all the yelling and mocking.

I do take your point about the prior art of stuff like exporting XML and the WordPress import tool and coComment. But from my corner of LJ, none of them had yet made so much of a ripple in LJ's comment culture, much less a sea change. The existence of technical possibilities doesn't immediately or automatically steer or trump the social dimensions of comment norms and practices. /bad Bruno Latour impersonation