I'd planned the following as the stirring conclusion to my last entry, but -- as often happens -- then forgot about it until after I'd hit post. So if you've ever wondered why my longer posts tend to trail off....

I'd seen rydra_wong mention in the comments to fourth_rose's post that Dreamwidth is working on a feature that will allow you to batch screen all of your imported comments associated with your LJ OpenID. Which is great -- though my first thought was, if they felt that this was an option worth offering, why wasn't it coded before they moved into open beta, and only available after what's likely thousands of journals had already been imported? My guess is that either it hadn't occurred to them or been proposed/requested by someone else earlier, or that it wasn't considered important enough to be prioritized as an open-beta blocking bug.

In the meantime, comparing my cryptoxin OpenID profile on DW to my cryptoxin user profile on LJ, I see that 70% of my comments have been imported. IIRC, a few hundred had already been imported by the time I'd first logged in to DW via OpenID in mid-April. In theory, I already have control over those imported comments to the extent that I can manually track them all down individually and delete each one, but in practice that's completely unfeasible. In effect, then, I've accepted out of necessity the presence and display of my imported comments -- without any real possibility of exerting meaningful control, I default to resignation. So I'll have had at least a month and perhaps significantly longer to get used to my LJ comments' presence on DW by the time the site rolls out the "screen all of my imported comments" option. By which point it will feel to me like I'm making some kind of statement if I opt to screen all my imported comments.

At least, the choice to batch-screen imported comments will take on more weight and significance as an active choice, the act of opting out (and going against the pull of inertia and habituation) than if it had been available all along as a simple preference. And making that active choice could have potential social consequences; I'd suddenly be taking away something that many people had grown used to having and in fact placed significant value on. Not my comments specifically -- but rather the completeness of their import. For a lot of people, the ability to import their entire journals specifically including comments was Dreamwidth's killer app, the long-sought last mile of journal migration.

But here's a thought experiment: what if comment importing -- or more specifically, the display of imported comments -- had been designed as "opt-in" from the very beginning? Here's how I'd envision it working (disclaimer, I Am Not A Coder):

When you create your Dreamwidth account, you have the option of importing your LJ and can select which elements to import, with 'comments' as an option. But -- here's the hypothetical part -- imagine that all of the imported comments are automatically screened, and visible only to you and the original poster (logged in via OpenID). You can't unscreen the comments -- only the original poster via OpenID can do that. In other words, the person leaving the original imported comment has to opt in to unscreening them -- the default is opt out.

So I've left comments on your LJ that have been imported to your DW journal but remain screened. I log in to DW via OpenID, and I'm given a couple of options: I can blanket unscreen all of my imported comments, or I can unscreen only my imported comments for particular journals. Maybe I'll only want to unscreen comments for my friends' journals, maybe I want to unscreen for everyone except that person that I had an ugly falling out with or that stranger's journal where I'd made a fool of myself in the comments a couple of years ago. Maybe I'm still getting stray replies on LJ to that wanky or controversial comment thread in someone else's journal from a year ago for a widely-linked post, and I haven't deleted the original comments but I just don't want to deal with more of the same if/when people stumble across its mirror on DW. Maybe I don't want to unscreen comments where I can't even recognize the names of some of the DW journals which imported my comments -- either because their LJ user name is different, or I'd completely forgotten who the person is and why I'd commented there in the first place.

So when I first log in to DW via OpenID, I can go to 'Account Settings' and there's a tab for 'Imported Comments' which gives me those options, and a list of all the DW journals hosting my imported comments, perhaps listing how many imported comments appear in each journal, with ticky boxes and a "select all" option for bulk unscreening. Maybe it will give me the option of changing my mind later on, and going back and rescreening either by journal or en masse. And it would give me choices for how new journal imports containing my comments should be handled going forward -- automatically unscreen, ask me each time, or stick with the default "screen all of my imported comments." Perhaps I can opt in to be notified whenever a journal imports my comments, or at least the first time that a journal imports my comments (vs. journals where users post different content to LJ and DW periodically run imports on a regular basis).

(And perhaps this still wouln't be enough control for some people, who might an additional option to permanently bulk delete imported comments. Others might want to see a full list of links to all of their imported comments, perhaps with the post's subject line and date, to facilitate more granular screening options. But hey, that's a different thought experiment.)

If I'm a Dreamwidth user wanting a complete mirror of my LJ on my DW journal with imported comments displayed to all (or in line with each post's privacy settings), I can post a request that people unscreen their imported comments, and reciprocate myself. Many people would happily comply, some might decline for whatever reason, others would never quite get around to it, and a certain number would never see my request in the first place. Just from eyeballing my LJ Comment Stats, I'd estimate that at least 80% of my comments come from people who have my LJ friended and would see my request. On the other hand, roughly 80% of the people who have ever commented on my LJ don't have it friended and would not see my request -- including people who've abandoned their LJs and/or left fandom and may never even hear of Dreamwidth. And under the alternative "opt in to unscreen" schema, I'm not sure how the 26 imported comments attributed to 'Anonymous' would be handled, since they can't be automatically linked to an associated OpenID -- even though many of them were signed by people who don't have LJ accounts, while others were from people who accidentally commented while logged out. So the system may treat them as anonymous, but their posters in principle should have the same claims to control over the display of their imported comments as anyone who posted from an LJ account.

So an opt in system virtually guarantees that a significant proportion of imported comments will never be unscreened, though all of them would be viewable by the importer. This would arguably be a bug rather than a feature from the killer app/last mile POV -- at least, say, to the extent that your prospects of a full migration from LJ to DW are contingent on fully reproducing your entire LJ and leaving nothing behind (in the event that you delete your journal, or LJ suspends your account, or SUP goes bankrupt, or...). Conversely, it would be a feature rather than a bug for people who want to maximize the degree of control they can exercise over the display of their imported comments. And either way, it's a statement about Dreamwidth, about the site's beliefs and values and priorities.

As I said, I'm offering this as a thought experiment -- a hypothetical proposition about an alternative comment culture (or perhaps a social/technical fork of LJ's comment culture?). I'm not saying that my opt in schema is preferable, or that Dreamwidth should have gone this route, or should change course and implement this system. Frankly, I'm on the fence here myself, and you could make the case that this particular horse has long since left the barn (does that mean my stance could be called equipoise?). Maybe Dreamwidth already considered and rejected this option, for technical or philosophical or legal or business reasons ("forget the horse, that dog won't hunt"); maybe I'd agree with those reasons.

So my point -- and I do have one -- is that I do believe that people whose comments have been imported have a legitimate interest and stake here. Whether or not I personally find merit in any particular person's specific concerns or motives, and regardless of whether I share them myself, the fundamental question of how Dreamwidth balances the interests of DW users importing their journals and people (both users and non-users of DW) whose comments are being imported remains valid and, to my mind, unresolved as a cultural issue. The issue of control over one's comments is fundamental to comment ecologies. And my control over my imported comments -- even if I never choose to exercise it -- feels largely illusory, both presently for my nominal ability to individually delete and with the future "blanket screen all" planned feature. The former is too hyper-granular to be meaningful; conversely the latter sounds too all-or-nothing -- the nuclear option -- to afford more nuanced options. Surely other social and technical alternatives are possible.