To help you avoid spoilers

[pegkerr]

I am re-posting this information to help all those who wish to remain spoiler-free to manage to do so:

(As for my own policy, I will not post any spoilers for either the book or the movie before the release. After the release, I will put everything even slightly spoilerish behind a cut-tag.)

To turn off communities on your friends page, add

?show=p

to the end of the URL, i.e., http://pegkerr.livejournal.com/friends/?show=p

Some good advice from commenters with further instructions on how to avoid spoilers:

From ceildh: If you are determined not to be spoiled, you may want to be careful if you are subscribed to LJ notices, and get notices when someone adds you as a friend - a troll with a spoilery username such as "ddore_dies" could friend you, which seemed to happen a lot last time. (Edited to add: This has happened this time around with harrypooter and wasteofpages) Also they could comment to you, which you'd get notification of, so you may want to temporarily enable commenting as friends-only or turn off receiving comments by e-mail. you can do this by going to http://www.livejournal.com/manage/subscriptions/ and unchecking the appropriate box.

You can avoid seeing your commenters' icons if you turn off icons and then read comments to your posts only on your Recent Comments page (you have to be logged in, and then go to http://www.livejournal.com/tools/recent_comments.bml and read them there).

Remember that if you have set up a spoil-free group among your friends list of people who have agreed not to post spoilers except under cut-tags, people can comment to them with spoilers, esp. if they haven't set their comments as friends-only. Think twice before attempting to read comments on any one else's journal.

[Edited to add: Note: bohemianspirit warns that you should SAVE A COPY OF YOUR CUSTOM ADJUSTMENTS before making any of the following suggested changes.]

From laurel: This is the page you want for turning off userpics in your LJ style/scheme (assuming you use a S2 style). 'Course that just applies to your theme so only works when viewing your f-list with your own journal style (not whatever the default LJ style is).

If you care about mood icons, you can adjust those settings from the look and feel tab and say that you want all mood icons anywhere to be the ones you set (rather than what others want in their LJ posts).

All this stuff should be under www.livejournal.com/customize/ (just in case my other links don't work).

Oh-- another simpler (maybe?) way is available from this page. You can have all icons replaced with a placeholder image. Took me a while to find that page, you think it'd be somewhere obvious!

(Yeah, yeah, this is all somewhat absurd, I'll admit. I am going to great lengths: Rob's going to be checking my e-mail for me this week. But I'm hoping it's going to work to keep me unspoiled.

Oh, and yeah--go ahead and laugh at me if you like, but anyone on my friends list who spoils me will be personally banned from my journal, any personal friendship, of course, will end immediately, and every available curse will be called down upon your head unto the seventh generation. Don't say that you weren't warned.

Comments

[rosefox]

At work, I use the Adblock extension for Firefox to block all images from LJ's userpic server. In my case it's because many of my friends' userpics aren't worksafe, but it would be good for this too. You can always unblock them later.

[weaselmom.livejournal.com]

Hmmm... neither of the options for replacing LJ icons is working for me. (Of course, I use an S1 style, not S2...) But the other page you link to, about replacing all icons with a placeholder image, actually seems to relate to replacing inline images (e.g., pics that people have embedded in an entry, like my few ferret pics) with a placeholder, not LJ icons. I really appreciate the time you've taken to share all this with us. Really I had no idea the lengths to which some people would go to be griefers and vandals.

It's going to be a long week, isn't it?

[bethynyc.livejournal.com]

Just so you know, my plan is to (a) finish the book sometime on Saturday, (b) collapse into a heap and sleep for a while, (c) not spoil my mother who is visiting on Sunday and (d) squee about it behind a cut tag on my journal.

It Will Be So Marked.

[kiwiria.livejournal.com]

Oh, and yeah--anyone on my friends list who spoils me will be personally banned from my journal, any personal friendship, of course, will end immediately, and every available curse will be called down upon your head unto the seventh generation. Don't say that you weren't warned.)
Yeah, I would have thought that was obvious too, yet it was somebody from my flist who spoiled me last time. He apologized very sincerly and I accepted it and kept him on my flist. Yet he had the audacity to reply to my recent post by saying "I feel judged." Oh, ya think?

Well... if the shoe fits...

[nwl.livejournal.com]

That might work for LJ, but what about the rest of the world? What kills me is that within a few days, what happened will be big news in newspapers and on TV shows. It will be discussed as if every person on the planet has gotten and read the book within 24 hours. I've only read up to Goblet of Fire and didn't know who died (well, I pretty must expected it, but still) until I saw it in the Kids' section of the paper.

There are those of us who buy the book used and read it after the movie comes out. I like doing it that way.

[amethistdolphin.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the great tips!!! I wont be able to read it till the 10th of august so I am at great risk of being spoiled.

[las.livejournal.com]

I couldn't tell you that the boat that Ron and Hermione are escaping in gets hit by an iceberg and sinks? Or that Dolores Umbridge was really a man? Or that Luna Lovegood turns out to have been dead all along?

*ducks flying cookware aimed at head*

I kid, I kid!

My plan really is to readreadreadread the book until completed, then collapse in a heap. And then be too exhausted to review it.

[gina-r-snape.livejournal.com]

That's really good advice. I am seriously considering not checking my fandom email address at all.

And your bolded warning at the end. OMG I wish I'd thought of posting that.

Have fun and see you on the other side of canon!

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

You haven't been spoiled, have you? Oh dear, I hope not!

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

I also love your icon, btw.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

I think I have discovered a new spectrum of human characteristics. You are at one end, and my younger daughter is at the other: the first thing she does when she starts to read a book (or when she is picking one to buy) is to read the ending. She will not read a book unless she first knows how it ends.

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

Yes. I saw a survey that said that 20% of people who buy book 7 intend to immediately turn to and read the last page. Then they will start reading the book.

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

And I certainly don't feel this way about all books (I must not know the ending), btw. But this one, definitely.

[bohemianspirit.livejournal.com]

I don't usually intend to read the ending, but it often happens that, about halfway through the book, I end up "skipping ahead" and find out how it ends; then I have to go back to where I left off and piece it all together.

I am damn double determined that I WILL NOT do that with Book 7.

[redbird]

Note: I screen comments from anonymous users, but not from LJ users who aren't on my friends list. So, well, I can offer no guarantees about comments to my journal (even if I felt I could make promises about the behavior of 150 or so people, not all of whom I know anything like well).

[aeditimi.livejournal.com]

You rock, lady.

That is all.

I think I'm gonna stay offline till sometime Sunday

[bohemianspirit.livejournal.com]

With other books, I've managed to remain spoiler-free until I got my hands on a borrowed copy. (I'm Saving Myself for the complete 7-book boxed set that will surely become available.) But with Book 7, even a recluse like me is in danger of getting spoiled before my time, so I am going to cave and pick up a discounted copy at Target. They are not selling them till 8 a.m. Saturday, so, being a night worker, I can easily be awake in time to sit at Target waiting for it to open and, hopefully, nab a copy and start reading ASAP. With luck, I'll be done by the time I work on Sunday night, though I might be a bit sleep deprived. ;-)

If I'm not able to get a copy at Target, jemby and I will be at the party at Evenstar Books on Friday night, and she plans to buy her copy there. I will borrow hers the minute she finishes, and meanwhile just stay away from teh internetz.

GOOD LUCK, PEG!!!

Problems with the userpic option

[bohemianspirit.livejournal.com]

O.K. I clicked on the link to change userpic settings, and saved it, and suddenly my whole journal layout went to the default (Generator) layout. I tried to set it back to the one I had, and I've got it (Component), but my custom colors just aren't "taking." And I've also lost the option to display my own LJ icons on the main entry page.

Probably just LJ on drugs, again, but FYI to anyone reading this. SAVE A COPY OF YOUR CUSTOM ADJUSTMENTS before anything like this happens to you! ;-)

Re: Problems with the userpic option

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

I'm so sorry! I will add that note to the original post.

Re: Problems with the userpic option

[bohemianspirit.livejournal.com]

Oh, no problem, it's not your fault! As one who used to work in IT, I have no one but myself to blame for forgetting to always backup everything. Anyway, it appears that Component itself is having issues, e.g., missing options in the configuration wizard, so I changed to a different layout scheme and all is well.

BTW, yours is one of the few journals I trust absolutely that I can read for the next few days, assuming I get anywhere near a computer. But I won't be reading f-list on my cell phone. And though I don't think it's fair to visit the sins of the parents on their innocent descendants, I do think your first two points are EMINENTLY reasonable. The subject line of my most recent journal entry sums up my view of people who spoil. ;-)

[pazlazuli.livejournal.com]

seven generations!!! go get 'em Peg!!