Abandoned Places

Hey SPAMbot!
I am banning you ( existencialismo ) from any community I moderate after posting that blattant commercial announcement in violation of the community rules. It's one thing to do a PSA for the elections, it's quite another to slime as many lists as you can. If I am elected to the LJ Advisor Board, these kind SPAM attacks will have repercussions.

I left it so other wanks can continue complaining. This was cut and pasted from the direct message sent to the jackass noted above. I deleted the massive 2 and a half page ad here moments after it appeared, then I had to leave my house to take care of real life issues. Deal with it people. If you want to be snarky or start a dramafest to support someone else (in the election) go elsewhere. That tactic has been tried in other communities and it won't fly here.

Moderator notes
Earlier this year, I wrote about how the US housing situation is affecting the increased number of abandoned and boarded up buildings. While this is a sad boon to exploration and photography efforts, is also illustrates an increased danger level. The homeless are also taking note of this situation and are showing increased willingness to break into and use these places. According to MSNBC and CNN, the increase in foreclosed homes is leading to more squatters and salvagers sneaking into boarded up sites. Ref: [http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23213246/]

Why mention this? Safety! Always scout the outside of a building before you enter it. Listen for noises inside and observe signs of activity outside before ever entering a site. While I've found that 70% of (homeless) folks one might find in abandoned sites are harmless and just want to be left alone, the 30% can be dangerous. Be careful out there.

On an additional follow-up note regarding the Helendale Bunker (Hawes Radio Relay Site) murders, the two suspects have been arraigned and charged with 'capital murder.' To refresh memories, what had been one of my favorite sites to photograph was the scene of a horrendous double murder last month. After a desert party at the site, a teenage couple was shot execution style by one of the two youths arrested. The other young man is cooperating with authorities and has been providing details on what happened. The authorities noted that catching these individuals was the result of hundreds of leads generated on-line (possibly even from this community). While I know that some folks do not agree with it, the death penalty may be very appropriate for the shooter in this instance. As for the site, officials at nearby Edwards Air Force Base confirm that they will proceed with plans to block entrance and subsequently demolish this bunker in the near future (as funding permits).

I have been taking a brief sabbatical from posting new material for a number of reasons. I have about 7 sets of photos from various locations waiting to be worked on; however, I have been trying to catch up on posting performance & burlesque photos from various shows I’ve attended over the last 6 months too. I will post another batch of exploration photos soon.

Moderator Note

Hello everyone. Today's been maintenance day for the list. I went through the membership list and removed over 50 dead accounts. That being said, if your account was removed by accident and you're wondering why, my apologies, but it wasn't listed as active by LJ. Likewise, if your posting privlages changed please shoot me a message to correct it.

This morning (Pacific Coast US time), I also nuked a post and probably the subsequent account. Moderators have this wonderful (and dangerous) new feature where if the community gets SPAM'd they can select the offending message and not only delete the message, but delte it, eject the poster and report them to LJ central where a team of Truck Monkeys will be dispatched to beat the person into submission. In this case, the post was for a photo contest. In fact the image was hot linked to a CC-Bill traffic site (bot) site. I purposely went looking for the poster during the list clean-up to remind them that the first rule of the community is no advertising. Just a word of caution (not ego), post an ad for a business and you may get off with a mere warning. Post an ad for a viral sales site and we'll nuke you from orbit ('cuz it's the only way to be sure we got em').

This being said, my compliments folks! The community is healthy, growing and continues to blow my mind with the amazing finds that keeps getting posted and shared. The civility and politeness is truly heart warming.

Folks it was recently brought to the moderators attention that a fox was lurking among us. Recently there have been several posts regarding the NEOPEX 2007 "convention" ...

The post started as:
Neopex 2007
This years neopex is going to be held in Massachusetts from September 21st -23rd. This is a great time to meet and explore with a bunch of new faces. some of the locations we're visiting include


DO NOT RESPOND this with any personal info or attempt to go. I was informed yesterday by rana_x that the person who posted this has tried to get numerous UEX and abandoned site explorers ARRESTED by tipping the police that they will be at the locations noted.

DO NOT GO TO:

Frank's Nursery & Crafts, Inc. - Middleton, ma
Franklin Mills - Franklin, MA
Cape ann tool company - Rockport, Ma
Rutland prison camp - rutland, ma
burlington nike launch site - burlington ma
fort banks - winthrop, ma
Medfield State Hospital - medfield, ma
Norwich state hospital - norwich, ct
Wildwood elementary school - burlington ma
bensons animal park - hudson, nh
fitchburg power plant - fitchburg, ma
general electric power plant - fitchburg, ma
iron horse park, -billerica, ma


I was informed that the original poster (yesterday) was actaully someone using a hacked LJ account. On behalf of the community, urge you to exercise extreme caution in dealing with this 'event.'

Moderator Note

Greetings everyone,

Given LJ's recent house cleaning of old accounts and suspension of others, I just completed a top to bottom purge of dead accounts from the community. After going through 46 pages of names, I removed any accounts that LJ listed as "Deleted and Purged." This came to around 35 accounts which were confirmed as invalid or no longer in use. To note, I did not delete accounts merely listed as "deleted" or "suspended" (more on those in a bit). People delete acounts on a whim and frequently reactivate them. As for the suspended accounts, I am withholding any action. There were about 10 suspended accounts caught up in the recent LJ purge of suspected predatory activities.

While on the subject of community mebership, following the blow-up last month (which we will NOT revisit), Two things occurred. Our total active membership in the community dropped by 8. Yes boys and girls, eight.. By the begining of this purge today, our membership was above the pre-"flamefest" numbers by 14. The other thing that several folks actually noticed was a slight modification to the profile and posting rules. Given all this, hopefully things will be calm and happy.

Moderator Note
Given the massive number of comments and posts to one gentleman's journal I believe it was time to make some clarifications so I don’t have to reply this same thing to every individual poster.

No-one has been making any effort to tell the Russian posters to leave. Where that idea got started is utterly beyond me. Furthermore, no one is trying to downplay or complain about the content of their posts, only the language comments are in.

Background
The fact of the matter is the English Only rule has been in effect since the forum was created and was in place here three years ago when I joined. The rule is a neutralizing factor on posts and comments because it is such a common language. It is appropriate as English is the international language of business, banking, aviation and so forth. This rule has been in effect when many folks joined this community is frustrating because these requests essentially say that "we joined your community, now can we make it into our image versus the one we agreed to..." It isn't fair to the thousands of people who watch the posts here in passing and would have to go to great lengths to adjust the likelihood of a multi-language mix here.

Technically speaking
Most translation websites (such as Google and “Babblefish” by Alta Vista) are designed specifically to change documents from language ‘X’ to English and back. As moderator, I have do desire to research and offer recommendation on which translator work best to go from Russian to French to Spanish to Mandarin to.. you hopefully get the picture.

Functionally speaking
If we make one exception, then everyone will be demanding an exception. Reading the posts will then be a exercise in trying to figure out what language a post is in, finding a translation site that works well for that language (not all work equally well) and using massive amounts of extra bandwidth to redownload translated pages or the added website. Folks I for one do not have the time, patience or flexibility to do this daily on half the posts I expect would go up. I’m willing to bet that if I joined ru_abandoned and posted nothing but English text posts it would not be appreciated either. See the point?

In terms of making everyone happy
I'm all for diversity in the nature of the posts, the locations and many nationalities represented here. Without a doubt, I'm awe-struck by how well we have gotten along, contributed the things of beauty we've seen in decay, and the means to share these images. I really have to fall back on the thought that the neutral language rule, equally enforced, is for the good of the community and should stay. I know some folks won't like it. I know some folks may believe I'm being pig-headed, stubborn, or discriminative. Sorry, but the community must have a common basis and set of rules to function well. It’s a baseline for everyone to work from and allows a bit of simplification to everyone’s benefit. Favoritism causes more troubles than uniformity.

Up to this point, I’ve seen no compelling, persuasive of overwhelming need to change the language rule. Sorry this isn’t about empowerment, this is about the simple function and use of this community to everyone.

As for the LJ-Cut requests
I was originally a proponent for using the cut first the first photo and I use it in all my posts here. Kristine and I have discussed it at great length over the last year or so. This is a photo community folks. We ask that users, new and old, use a degree of common sense and respect to others in what they put out for the world to see. I don’t believe either of your moderators want to get out rulers and measure out the size or count the pixels of each leading image of a post or the number of pictures in a post. We are trying very hard to keep this community as flexible, smart and mellow as it’s shown its members to be thus far. I certainly don’t want to be a policeman. Many old-timers here know that I typically try to keep the peace, protect the community and remind folks to be understanding of others (art). How many of you are aware that this is one of the top 100 blog (non-political) communities in on the web? It’s certainly one of the best behaved and most creative. We have nearly 8000 readers (subscribed or watching) and another 12000 to 14000 who watch it discretely (bookmarked pages). Your common interest, respect and understanding of others needs makes an enormous difference in the success of this group.

Moderator Commentary

Before I continue on this, I want to make two notes about the previous entry moderator commentary. First the comment of "any goob with a camera" is not meant to be derogatory (individually or as a group). It’s merely saying anyone with a cell phone camera or better can grab very basic pictures of any site. No problem - I challenge you to do more. It doesn’t take much to add to even those with a little background, description of your visit or commentary of what the pictures are. Adding a little color commentary doesn’t hurt. Even more, it offers your view of how, who, what, where, why you found it to begin with. People lived, worked and potentially died in these places.. Do them the honor of telling a little of the story you’ve found.

Second, this and the previous entry have gone into the memories section for the community as "educational material and points of record." It’s being done so that newcomers to this activity can be directed to it and read suggestions on what to do and not to do. For the past 3 years, I’ve seen at least 50 requests per year asking for info on finding sites, or on what is acceptable to get into sites. These entries were meant to offer some gentle guidance.

Equally important, it clearly states that the moderators have warned the readers of the risks of injury or criminal mischief. In posting it, it protects us and the community from lawsuits and criminal mayhem should anyone do something inherently silly and (next of kin) imply or suggest that we encouraged the dumb, dangerous or dubious behavior that landed you (injured, arrested or dead) in the situation to begin with :D.

( read on )

Moderator Commentary
Over the past few years, the common lament I've heard from many people has been, "how do you find abandoned sites?" People have asked for point-outs, websites and so forth. As I thought about it, I started considering not just the where’s, but the how’s and the why’s. There is a trick to searching for these places, and most of it involves how you approach the search and the planning for an exploration. It also involves the reasons in which you choose to explore these places. Is it because of the history, the thrill, the "what’s that" factor or the chance to capture that moment in time?
( Yes, it's worth reading :) )

This is a general ADMIN notice and a public warning to : iwanttohurtyou.

Don't SPAM this list with alternate community ads.

As the the Community profile notes, SPAM, selling or advertising other communities, is not tolerated. There's a fine line between announcing something on a personal LJ or even a website, and placing multi-link notices encouraging people to visit another community for potential commercial benefit. This is a no - no.

This is a warning. The entry has been deleted.

EDIT UPDATE: This fucker SPAM'd 146 other communities (everyone on their friend's list). They're being banned. I'm reporting their worthless arse to the LJ management and hopeful they will not trouble us again.