About LiveJournal
Livejournal.com (LJ, pronounced eljay, spelled eljay by those who are ludicrous) is the amazing journaling site that many UC Davis students waste their time on. It has been around since 1999. For a while, the site had growth-slowing measures in place: access was granted if you knew someone with an invite code. But lo! the admins saw fit to open the site up to everyone again. Lj-ers can update via an html page or through one of the many convenient eljay clients.
LiveJournal was started by a college student named Brad Fitzpatrick. In early 2005, Fitzpatrick sold LiveJournal (the project he proudly calls "his baby") to blogging company Six Apart, which also owns Movable Type, Typepad, and the newly launched Vox. That same year, LiveJournal hit a population of 8 million users with 2 million active journals.
Communities
Livejournal communities act like message boards for various interests. There are a number of Davis oriented LJ communities, with the UC Davis one being the most popular.
UC Davis Community
The UC Davis LJ community has gained notoriety amongst UC LJ communities and has appeared on ljdrama.org The climate of the community changes drastically each minute and can have as many as 42 posts in a day. Some consider it a very informative and social group, although also very caustic to certain types of posts and comments.
The UC Davis LJ community was started in Feburary of 2002 by Joe Conte when he was a junior at UC Davis. Some curmudgeons point to the UCD LJ community as a prime example of Sturgeon's Law.
A noteable in-joke on the UCD LJ is ending a post with the word "Discuss."
- This has been a 'joke' in various spoofs dating back to at least the 50s and possibly earlier. It lampoons the lazy way to write tests that some instructors take ("What is 3 +7? Discuss.").
The UCD LJ is notorious for being unmoderated, despite the fact there are several moderators. On 2002-05-22 LJ user charlatan posted a photo of his penis to the community, which caused much discussion and debate about the lack of community moderation. The penis photo is said to have been used in the 2002 California Aggie Spoof Edition, but it is hard to verify as the original photograph is now gone.
Another notable nude moment was May 26, 2006, when someone posted photos of a couple having sex (photo was later replaced with a picture of a rabbit, then the entry deleted) with a WoW mask covering the face of the gal and a copy of the General Catalog covering the face of the guy.
Davisites Community
More oriented toward the town itself, the Davisites LJ Community is much lower traffic and tends to have less "noise" posts than the UC Davis community. It is home to both students and townies. Historically active, it has stagnated to an almost standstill in 2005.
Davis Swap Meet Community
Fairly active, the Davis Swap Meet Community is devoted to buying and selling items locally.
Davis Events Community
The Davis Events feed is tied to the DavisWiki and publishes all of the events listed on the Wiki. If you have a LiveJournal, you can subscribe to the Events Board and get updates on your friends page!
Other Communities
There are many other serious and humorous communities either devoted to Davis or that include Davis in their scope.
- Communities with Davis as an interest
- Communities with UC Davis as an interest
- A community dedicated to giving and receiving free stuff within Davis
Blogs
Quite a few weblogs are kept on Livejournal. A majority are just meant to interact with friends, but a few blogs maintained by UCD students are meant for the whole blogosphere. EMOSNAIL is prominent among these, both as an ASUCD political blog and for entertainment value.
