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farlaI was asked if I'd fought with the sporker before, how I'd found out, and what the precisely the sexism complaints were over. Luckily I had all the pages saved and could actually answer the last one.
The result of it? A post and a PM.
So, as I am sure everybody is aware by now, there was a pretty big wank that occurred over a spork. The author of the fic in question came to the community and began to raise a fuss. I was pleased to receive multiple PMs about it, because that’s what helps keep the community in check—you guys all help pitch in and keep an eye on the posts and comments and immediately inform a mod when something bad starts to happen.
But not all of you did that. Some of you ignored the community rules and decided it would be better to just jump right in and start arguing—and they weren’t thought-out arguments, either. Sometimes, it seemed like people were jumping on the author simply on the basis that she was the author of the sporked fic and so had to be wrong. Basically, nobody in this mess came out looking good. Pretty much anyone who got involved was an asshat—EVERYONE. I am not happy with the way things turned out. You all behaved shamefully. I thank everyone who merely messaged me and stayed out of it, but this is not how we behave. We do not act like this. When things like this start up, you are always supposed to come to the mods; you do not just dive in like that and let it turn into a massive shitstorm.
While I get the PM:
Thank you very much for the extensive information. I’ve forwarded it to the rest of the moderators, and we have reached a consensus on how to proceed.
I would like to extend my most sincere apologies for the dog-piling you received, along with some of the nastier comments directed at you; the comm knows better than to do that, and believe me when I say I am very disappointed in their behavior. At least one official warning has been issued by Ket Makura. The comm recently opened up at the first of the year, and we had a very sudden explosion of new members and commenters, and as a result, it’s been somewhat chaotic. We’ve been waiting for the sporkers to get their free-for-all out of their systems before we restored order again, and this unfortunate situation has forced our hands.
As for the spork itself, I have requested the sporker cease the riffing simply because the spork is not up to standards. Said sporker normally produces quality material, but this one was not one of them. Sporkers may only take on fics if they provide thought-out arguments against the material, and it was agreed that she simply wasn’t doing that.
However, your own behavior was not necessarily the best, either. You engaged in several pointless comment wars with the members instead of bringing it to the moderators, and became angry when a moderator stepped in and ended a conversation that was going nowhere. Ket was not silencing you; she was putting a stop to unsavory behavior from everyone involved. That was more for your benefit than anybody else’s; she put a stop to it so everybody would stop attacking each other, and froze the thread until all of the mods could see what was going on and decide how to proceed. Also, you leveled a rather hypocritical accusation towards the comm as a whole—I do not find you telling us that we are wrong for hiding in our community and saying all of these things about stories behind the authors’ backs instead of to their faces amusing at all. You are a sporker. Unless you are personally telling Suzanne Collins and Stephenie Meyer and Margaret Stohl and Veronica Roth what you think of their works to THEIR faces, you are guilty of the exact same thing you are trying to lambast my sporkers for, to say nothing of your offensive and tasteless comments regarding Sith Droideka’s religious and political leanings behind his back on your personal journal.
In conclusion, I am very, very sorry this happened, and I am sorry on behalf of the entire comm, but nobody here behaved in an appropriate fashion. However, you have my guarantee that we are all going to do our best to ensure that these incidents are kept to a minimum.
Sincerely,
Das Mervin and Co.
So in conclusion, the problem is authors commenting on the sporks. But it's okay, they're really just protecting me from the mean people and I should have come to them immediately. You can tell by how very concerned the mod was that I needed to shut up and stop picking a fight and how very concerned they are now that everyone remember an author is a troll and you should report to a mod rather than respond ever. Presumably deleting everything that happened while saying it was a huge fight where everyone looked like an asshat is also done because they really, really want to protect me. And Act, I guess, since she's me again.
As you can see in the comments on the linked post, everything has been resolved in a happy and satisfactory way!
The result of it? A post and a PM.
So, as I am sure everybody is aware by now, there was a pretty big wank that occurred over a spork. The author of the fic in question came to the community and began to raise a fuss. I was pleased to receive multiple PMs about it, because that’s what helps keep the community in check—you guys all help pitch in and keep an eye on the posts and comments and immediately inform a mod when something bad starts to happen.
But not all of you did that. Some of you ignored the community rules and decided it would be better to just jump right in and start arguing—and they weren’t thought-out arguments, either. Sometimes, it seemed like people were jumping on the author simply on the basis that she was the author of the sporked fic and so had to be wrong. Basically, nobody in this mess came out looking good. Pretty much anyone who got involved was an asshat—EVERYONE. I am not happy with the way things turned out. You all behaved shamefully. I thank everyone who merely messaged me and stayed out of it, but this is not how we behave. We do not act like this. When things like this start up, you are always supposed to come to the mods; you do not just dive in like that and let it turn into a massive shitstorm.
While I get the PM:
Thank you very much for the extensive information. I’ve forwarded it to the rest of the moderators, and we have reached a consensus on how to proceed.
I would like to extend my most sincere apologies for the dog-piling you received, along with some of the nastier comments directed at you; the comm knows better than to do that, and believe me when I say I am very disappointed in their behavior. At least one official warning has been issued by Ket Makura. The comm recently opened up at the first of the year, and we had a very sudden explosion of new members and commenters, and as a result, it’s been somewhat chaotic. We’ve been waiting for the sporkers to get their free-for-all out of their systems before we restored order again, and this unfortunate situation has forced our hands.
As for the spork itself, I have requested the sporker cease the riffing simply because the spork is not up to standards. Said sporker normally produces quality material, but this one was not one of them. Sporkers may only take on fics if they provide thought-out arguments against the material, and it was agreed that she simply wasn’t doing that.
However, your own behavior was not necessarily the best, either. You engaged in several pointless comment wars with the members instead of bringing it to the moderators, and became angry when a moderator stepped in and ended a conversation that was going nowhere. Ket was not silencing you; she was putting a stop to unsavory behavior from everyone involved. That was more for your benefit than anybody else’s; she put a stop to it so everybody would stop attacking each other, and froze the thread until all of the mods could see what was going on and decide how to proceed. Also, you leveled a rather hypocritical accusation towards the comm as a whole—I do not find you telling us that we are wrong for hiding in our community and saying all of these things about stories behind the authors’ backs instead of to their faces amusing at all. You are a sporker. Unless you are personally telling Suzanne Collins and Stephenie Meyer and Margaret Stohl and Veronica Roth what you think of their works to THEIR faces, you are guilty of the exact same thing you are trying to lambast my sporkers for, to say nothing of your offensive and tasteless comments regarding Sith Droideka’s religious and political leanings behind his back on your personal journal.
In conclusion, I am very, very sorry this happened, and I am sorry on behalf of the entire comm, but nobody here behaved in an appropriate fashion. However, you have my guarantee that we are all going to do our best to ensure that these incidents are kept to a minimum.
Sincerely,
Das Mervin and Co.
So in conclusion, the problem is authors commenting on the sporks. But it's okay, they're really just protecting me from the mean people and I should have come to them immediately. You can tell by how very concerned the mod was that I needed to shut up and stop picking a fight and how very concerned they are now that everyone remember an author is a troll and you should report to a mod rather than respond ever. Presumably deleting everything that happened while saying it was a huge fight where everyone looked like an asshat is also done because they really, really want to protect me. And Act, I guess, since she's me again.
As you can see in the comments on the linked post, everything has been resolved in a happy and satisfactory way!
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no subject
Date: 2014-02-21 10:08 pm (UTC)I think you have half of it here, but as someone who is culturally Catholic and identifies as Christian, I really empathize with her on the other half.
I think the reasoning behind the seeming " unwillingness to be criticised" is more that on the Interwebz, identifying yourself as a theist tends to set you up for really vicious ad-hominum attacks ("So why do you hate gay people?"), and I totally understand her just not wanting to deal with that because it's really exhausting and demoralizing. I get that IRL on a macro level the dominant group can't be opressed, but on micro level and ESPECIALLY on the internet (here's looking at you, Reddit), there's a lot of bullying. I've been a victim of it and I'm sure she has as well, and frankly she's a braver person about it than I am: I pretty much erased as much evidence of my religious background as I could; she still talks about it openly.
I think where she went wrong was overgeneralization of the rule: It went from "Let's be nice to everyone and let them feel safe," to "No one is the comm can be wrong ever because that makes people sad." And as we know, sometimes people are just wrong. For example, the guy who essentially told me to stop being hysterical about supposedly "sexist" things. He and I were not equally culpable in that situation.
no subject
Date: 2014-02-21 10:43 pm (UTC)That said, when I see, for example, Mervin saying something like "As a Catholic, Stephenie Meyer's portrayal of the Volturi pisses me off. But don't talk about religion here I warned you!" (obviously not a direct quote but you know what I mean) I find it difficult to see anything except hypocrisy. I remember a similar thing that came up in discussion of Bella's pregnancy in Twilight, where she went into detail teasing out what the text was trying to say (or not say) about abortion and then said "don't argue about abortion in the comments, or I will ban you", it seems a bit off to me. "I can talk about this thing but you aren't allowed to".
Maintaining safe spaces is complicated and difficult and can be incredibly emotionally draining; I did a brief stint as a forum moderator myself and the stress was too much for me, so I can understand that. But I don't think that's a valid excuse for doing it poorly, or for going into "positive feedback only, all opinions must be held as equally valid" or similar bullshit reasoning. As you say, when a nasty argument breaks out it does not automatically mean both parties are culpable.
That said, it's her space and she has the right to moderate it however she likes.
-MCB
no subject
Date: 2014-02-21 10:53 pm (UTC)I've actually never thought about the "As a Catholic, Stephenie Meyer's portrayal of the Volturi pisses me off. But don't talk about religion here I warned you!" thing in that way before. It actually makes me wonder what would really happen is someone tried to engage in a discussion of, say, whether the Volturi are meant to represent the Papacy. I missed out on the Great Mormon Debacle of yesteryear (and I was so sad about this), but I kind of wonder now if perhaps all that happened was someone dared to say, "X part of Mormon doctrine is offensive to me."
I also think, and take this how you will, the it was the same person who set off both that shebang and the whole sexism thing.
no subject
Date: 2014-02-21 11:01 pm (UTC)That is a very interesting question; I'd love to know what would happen but I'm not qualified to start that argument myself :P I don't really remember the Mormon debacle either (I'm a chronic lurker everywhere and very rarely comment, so I wasn't paying much attention; for some reason this particular kerfluffle has made me want to speak out), but you may very well be right.
It's entirely possible, but I wouldn't make that bet myself, because I'm pretty sure zie is not the only Mormon-identified-person who comments there... that said, I wouldn't be surprised.
-MCB
no subject
Date: 2014-02-21 11:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-02-22 12:55 am (UTC)I think it gets into the public/private problem of the internet. Just because you're saying something doesn't mean you want to argue about it, even when what you're doing is itself an argument.
I know in various blogging communities, LJ sometimes included, they've had times when arguing with the blog poster is against norms. Instead, you make your own post. But that doesn't work if the community is supposed to be a hidden one and no one can talk about it except on the posts itself.
no subject
Date: 2014-02-22 12:35 am (UTC)I think that the internet really is a great leveler in this. If you have information about yourself, someone will attack you over it.
For example, the guy who essentially told me to stop being hysterical about supposedly "sexist" things. He and I were not equally culpable in that situation.
That's a particularly dismal example given how upset they were about what you said here, presumably because he was complaining about it. It's like it's based on who can throw the biggest temper tantrum, probably because they're the one you have to appease to end the drama.
no subject
Date: 2014-02-22 12:55 am (UTC)1) The implication that I somehow was asking for being gaslight-zergswarmed is fucking disgusting.
2) The idea that they can somehow police conversations I have with other people is fucking idiotic.
no subject
Date: 2014-02-22 01:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-02-22 02:05 am (UTC)edit: And I mean, I accept it was a dick thing to say to a person, but that's exactly why I didn't say it to him! I knew I was too pissed to conduct a cordial conversation so I didn't. UGH.
no subject
Date: 2014-02-22 09:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-02-22 10:33 pm (UTC)Also, someone really want people to know he is a "cis white male".
Socordya
no subject
Date: 2014-02-28 01:32 am (UTC)And yeah, that's tumblr for you.
no subject
Date: 2014-02-22 11:17 pm (UTC)http://prettyflyforaciswhitemale.tumblr.com/post/77314452451/aireyverkhovensky-noooo-not-disaagreeing
http://prettyflyforaciswhitemale.tumblr.com/post/77187091482/runningrepublican-shybloggr-ok-whether-or
no subject
Date: 2014-02-23 04:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-02-28 01:35 am (UTC)I'm still sad this means no one will spork the new thing when I finally post it. So many things they could've ranted about...