By "notify-free zone" I meant the kind of thing that zvi said downthread, "I think the service should respect their attempt at security through obscurity, in this one specific instance where we're changing behavior they have come to rely on." I said it as "zone" rather than journal, because I think if somebody doesn't want to post everything locked (for whatever reason) but also doesn't want to show up in the latest things feed, that person also probably doesn't want any commenters able to readily draw people to eir posts. (Especially since this is entirely new behavior - nobody from another site would expect using desh to notify you, and I would rather somebody have to take the extra step to notify you than notify you when e's not expecting it.)

There could be an additional notice at the bottom of the comments box, so it'd say
"Notice: This account is set to log the IP addresses of everyone who comments.
This account does not send notifications when <user> tags are used in comments." or something.

The whole reason I want it to be an opt-in at time of use is because this isn't expected behavior. Yes, I could use the "use this code to link to this user from a non-Dreamwidth site" code from the profile, if I want to link without notifying, but it doesn't seem fair that someone who just wants the standard behavior should have to do more than someone who wants additional actions taken.