Well, that went better than it could!

[farla]

Managed oddly reasonable discussion on the spork for a surprising while before someone summoned a mod who froze the whole thing because I was picking a fight by being there. Edit: link fixed. Dammit, me.

Edit the second:

It's not against the rules for you to comment here, unless you are picking fights or send people do to so for you. I'm not sure if you linking the spork back in your own journal is technically breaking the rules, so I will let Merv decide on that.

Jesus christ, this is just sad now.

Edit the third:

Yep, the only problem is whatever terrible, terrible person who told me, curse their evil troll heart and their hatred for all that is good. Even though I was already aware of the comm and would've found out no matter what.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Wrong link?

[(Anonymous)]

Also, it's too bad you couldn't get the last word on hatter reloaded before the thread was frozen

Socordya

[farla.livejournal.com]

Truly nothing says a healthy culture of criticism like saying I'M NOT GOING TO ARGUE BUT I AM BUT NOW WE NEED TO STOP TALKING.

I'm surprised the mod didn't just say they were freezing it to prevent escalation. That's modding basics, if no one knows who they blame no one can complain.

[(Anonymous)]

Seriously what's up with people focusing on the "someone telling you" thing? That's not the problem!
It's not even a good rule.

Socordya

[farla.livejournal.com]

Having looked back through the mod posts, it looks like they're really invested in no one knowing about Fight Club. It doesn't matter what they say, just that no one else knows about it, because as long as no one else knows they don't have to deal with it.

[actonthat.livejournal.com]

Does no one realize how much overlap there is between das and DQ? At least one of the mods, zelda_queen, frequents both, so that you may peek in on das should surprise absolutely no one.

This is why posts should be moderated; someone should have immediately caught that.

[farla.livejournal.com]

I'm really starting to wonder what exactly is going on.

The problem wasn't sporking my work. It wasn't even especially that it was getting sporked badly. Even intervening over the way the spork was crawling up its own ass about what the magic eight ball said my thoughts were didn't go terribly - the worst behavior so far is the mod blaming me, saying they'll graciously hold off banning me unilaterally and wait for an okay from a co-mod, saying they'll consult to see if they can ban me on the "technical rulebreaking" of me putting a link about me in my journal and thus linking sporkee to spork, then the official post of "shit everybody play dead Quirrel brought a troll into Hogwarts, mods discussing how to handle this this terrible turn of affairs".

[actonthat.livejournal.com]

The most bizarre thing was the insistence that they can tell you what you are and aren't allowed to link to in your own LJ. I just... don't even.

[farla.livejournal.com]

THE THIRD RULE OF FIGHT CLUB IS STILL THAT YOU DON'T TALK ABOUT FIGHT CLUB!

It seems like the rule isn't about not trolling the authors but not letting anyone at all outside the approved circle even find out about this stuff. Which is looking an awful lot like locked fic comms to prevent the haters from saying anything, only they are the haters, so wtf?

[actonthat.livejournal.com]

Well, that's what it's turned into, hasn't it? With no quality control and an environment in which quality has never before been an issue, the idea that a spork could be as badly done as a fic has become just as taboo as the idea that you can spork a fic. All we're seeing play out is fanbrat wank on a meta level. It's even hitting all the same bingo points: you're the borg queen, I'm your sockpuppet, you're just a troll there to stir up trouble, you only want the internet to conform to your standards, etc.

edit: Ah, Mervin's response to you was reassuringly sane. Faith restored for the time being.

[(Anonymous)]

I think it's dead?

Socordya

[wintersheir]

It looks like the entry was made private while the mods finish wittering.

[farla.livejournal.com]

Wank sensing powers go! I have the sporks forever and ever already.

[wintersheir]

This is an astoundingly strange interpretation of the rule. Like not deliberately going to the author with a link is a good rule-- while it is lulzy, it can be a headache for mods and might (?) be able to get a comm in trouble. But banning the author for seeing it themselves and engaging in non-wanky discussion? Woooooow.

[farla.livejournal.com]

Hopefully this is all just a matter of no one having time to look at it originally and now they're playing catchup.

[(Anonymous)]

I didn't think they would pull down the whole thing so I just saved the last post.

Socordya

[(Anonymous)]

If you don't mind me asking, what is DQ? Another spork site? If so, what's it's exact name?

[farla.livejournal.com]

Dragon Quill. (http://dragon-quill.blogspot.com/)

[farla.livejournal.com]

Always save everything beautiful on the internet!

[(Anonymous)]

Ohhhh... Gosh, I feel like an idiot.

I love the read-throughs you and Act do on Dragon Quill. Apologies for not realizing right away that its acronyms are DQ. For some damn reason, my mind was on Dairy Queen.

Maybe it's just me, but in regards to this entire dilemma, wouldn't it prove educational to converse with authors if they discovered sporkings of their work?

[farla.livejournal.com]

That's what it means to me too! But I know Act and I don't work together at a literary minded Dairy Queen, so I realize it's got to be the other DQ.

Maybe it's just me, but in regards to this entire dilemma, wouldn't it prove educational to converse with authors if they discovered sporkings of their work?

Noooot if you're adverse to conflict. I'm not entirely clear on if even this was too stressful for them or if they acted in fear it'd get worse, but clearly the people involved at least took issue with how mean I was in my comments to the sporker, and it's really unlikely most authors would be more polite unless they show up to just say that wow the sporker is so right and great.

And I can sympathize with that - there's a certain amount of acclimation required before you can handle conflict, and even then it's not going to be a fun affair. The problem is that kind of temperament isn't suited to either modding or sporking, let alone modding a spork comm. With fanfic especially, you can't keep a clear divide between how you talk to people to their face and how you talk about people behind their back, so it ends up being us/them - this person is a sporker, don't say anything that'll hurt their feelings. This person isn't, so they're an okay target for criticism.

The fact some of the sporkers are now rending their hair at the idea of their sporks being judged at all shows this is not viable. You can't run something based on the idea of criticizing bad writing and say your members are exempt from it, but it's obvious a lot of the community members wouldn't be able to handle it and it'll just be the same sort of eggshell criticism wrapped in a million layers of praise you get in closed fic communities where the most important thing is how friendly and nice everyone is.

[actonthat.livejournal.com]

But I know Act and I don't work together at a literary minded Dairy Queen

New life goal acquired.