My thoughts on this deleting drama
Jun. 3rd, 2012 07:47 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
alex-axle.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
ffdotnetrantsRemoving stories with cursing in the title/summary? Well, I don't agree, and I think they should be more fair about warning first (instead of trying "most users got a warning from other users first" bullshit), but, well, okay.
Removing stories with explicit sex and violence? Well, I disagree with that too, especially because the definitions are so arbitrary and inconsistently applied. As I mentioned on a previous post, they would probably take down the Hunger Games or Harry Potter books if they were fics on that site, despite the fact that both have teenagers as a/the primary audience. Not to mention that adult stuff is, for many people, the entire reason they use the site. But I guess I could see that too. Their site, their rules and all that.
But deleting entire accounts with no warning? Removing stories with "blood" or "kill" in the summaries? Really? Fanfiction, we need to have a talk. This is getting out of hand. There's a difference between cleaning the site up and taking the enjoyment out for everyone and alienating your users. At this rate, you are going to drive many of your users away from the site and thus lose advertising revenue. If you want to clean up your site, there are much better and smarter ways to do it.
If they had handled this whole thing better, I might not have minded so much. But this is beyond stupid.
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Date: 2012-06-04 03:16 am (UTC)Also:
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Date: 2012-06-04 03:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-04 03:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-04 03:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-04 03:22 am (UTC)And also "never enter a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent."
I'm sure they weren't original to her but still have a lot of wisdom to offer!
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Date: 2012-06-04 03:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-04 03:26 am (UTC)(Not specifically related but still fun!)
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Date: 2012-06-04 03:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-04 03:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-04 03:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-04 03:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-04 03:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-04 03:19 am (UTC)And I mean, there are so many things on that site that are broken, like their word counter. But instead of fixing it, they're going to waste time on this. Really? Sigh.
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Date: 2012-06-04 03:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-04 03:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-04 03:45 am (UTC)As for the mediocre part. As they say, one man's trash is another man's treasure. I constantly see fics/pictures (even published books/art) that are just terrible pieces, but lots of people tend to enjoy them. So you and I may think that most of the site has mediocre stuff, but many others prove that they enjoy it. I can't draw to save my life. But, I will admit that adding the ability to post pictures is a good idea. However, they're doing it wrong.
The site is constantly breaking and adding another feature that (to me at least) seems more complicated could completely ruin the site. Who knows how often it'll break now?
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Date: 2012-06-04 03:47 am (UTC)And yeah, I enjoy mediocre stuff too, I was just being humorous.
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Date: 2012-06-04 03:58 am (UTC)Honestly, I haven't read how this whole imaging thing is going to happen. But I can't help but imagine that it'll be easier to see which stories I know I won't want to read. Instead of wasting my time skimming through it.
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Date: 2012-06-04 04:07 am (UTC)And true. You can't judge a book by its cover, but... You can.
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Date: 2012-06-04 05:02 am (UTC)I don't hate Mary Sues, as I feel like they are a rite of passage, but I won't read them (intentionally). Looking back at my old fics (never published) all my OCs were Mary Sues. It's funny, now I literally cannot make one in my mind. I can't daydream a Mary Sue character interacting with any fandom character. Even for fun, knowing I won't write it.
My huge problem with Mary Sues is not that they're powerful or unique with a trillion names or drop dead gorgeous or everything comes easy to them. As I think just because you have an OC with any of those doesn't automatically make her a Sue. It's that they don't have a personality. For me, that's what a Sue is. No personality, yet the author wants you to love that character. It's why I can't stand Twilight.
Right now, I'm currently a beta for a writer who has a pretty close Mary Sue. She kind of walks in and everyone just welcomes her when they should be suspicious. And they were super quick integrating her into their group. Being a complete stranger, her character is super rude, yet the canon characters don't mind, despite the fact that they don't even know her. I've been pointing that stuff out to the author, but as she doesn't send her chapters back for a second read through I don't know if she fixes what I point out. I'm not going to go and read her final draft because I don't want to get upset if she doesn't take my advice as it is just advice. But her character is starting to get on my nerves. I promised myself that if the next chapter her character still annoys me then I'm going to have to tell her to get another beta. It's just not fair to her or to me. But she updates so rarely that I tend to forget how annoyed I get.
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Date: 2012-06-04 05:07 am (UTC)I agree that Mary Sues are often a rite of passage, though of me, by the time I started getting into OCs, I was already aware enough to know what not to do. My first fics were total disasters for other reasons. LOL.
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Date: 2012-06-04 05:24 am (UTC)For me and writing OCs. I've always been a fan of I guess "girl power!". Huge Sailor Moon and Tamora Pierce fan, because they had some strong female characters, especially Tamora Pierce. I find it very difficult to read stories that don't have a female as the center lead. So when I discovered the joy of writing I just started writing my own original stories with a mix of fanfic.
So in my fanfic stories I would turn the focus on an OC female character. She would be super powerful, but I never really focused on her being the beautiful thing in the world. Mainly, super strong and special either related to canon character or in love with. Seeing as how it's my own work, I would say they were more of a higher quality Mary Sue as they did have some problems, but still a Mary Sue none-the-less. Of course, all this was my private writing, so no one got the "pleasure" of reading it.
I don't even know HOW I discovered FFN. I know I had dial up internet till... 2003... 2004 I think. Around that time I used to post a lot in writing.com, but that was mainly original stories. I think I discovered FFN in 05, around the time I first discovered FFNrants on LJ. And I think at that time people were majorly ranting about Mary Sues and thus I learned what they were. lol.
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Date: 2012-06-04 05:30 am (UTC)Ah, I see. That makes sense. :)
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Date: 2012-06-04 06:40 am (UTC)Actually, at one point it used to be.
I'm one of the few Ffnet-still-active users with a four-digit user ID; I joined in the last millennium, when a lot of my fandom-specific archives were dying down. Back then, the biggest complaint about Ffnet was that it was unmoderated and thus had no quality control, even over such a thing as SPaG.
I can still remember weekly/monthly columns about writing, or general fannish interests that sparked on-site discussions and whatnot; also, we knew the name of the person who started it all/created the site.
When the 2002 purge of adult material happened, all those extra features had already disappeared; things have been going further downhill from there ever since. *sigh*
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Date: 2012-06-04 07:43 am (UTC)But remember when they switched over to the current chapter system? And that huge uproar? I remember authors were SO mad about having to upload chapters as part of an ongoing story instead of uploading every chapter individually, but that was one of the smartest things they've done. That, and sorting by update/post date... combing through the HP fan fic section in early 2000 was bad enough when there were 26 pages of 50 fics each, but now....*shudders*
They had that message board for awhile, I remember, and I used to enjoy those writing columns. Fact is, the site used to be decent. And I can understand that it's so massive now that it's hard to keep up with stuff, but... You can report a fic for bad grammar, which might not be as obvious, but it's pretty easy to check if a fic is in script format or has a chapter that is really an AN and not an actual chapter or has swearing in the title/summary (and that has been a rule for a long time, so I'm not sure why people are getting upset about it...).
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Date: 2012-06-04 08:25 am (UTC)A solid line break is often just -too much-, IMO; three asterisks or ~*~ just works better if you change POV or just wnt to imply a small shift in time or locale. *sigh*
As for the "no adult" rule, that's something I may regret, but can live with; after all, there are archives which don't allow slash, or only specific pairings. *shrugs* Their site, their rules -- I've taken my old NC-17 fics elsewhere, and rewritten newer stuff from MA to M so I could post to all archives. Bit of a pain, but doable.
Luckily, there now are archives out there that have similar ease for uploading, review alerts and whatnot as well; they're just not as well-known as Ffnet. Yet.
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Date: 2012-06-07 02:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-07 05:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-04 11:02 am (UTC)I'd just joined the site shortly before that downtime, and I always kind of wondering if it had anything to do with the features that disappeared during the next year.
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Date: 2012-06-04 11:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-04 05:14 pm (UTC)Those columns would be nice to have back.
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Date: 2012-06-04 06:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-04 07:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-06 06:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-04 03:39 am (UTC)If they want to control what's on there they need to moderate each submission.
A lot of what they have done is justified I have seen some appalling stuff in the past months. However it would not have hurt to have given people a warning. In three weeks time we are going to start a clean up of the site. We will be applying the following etc.
And on top of this we have to deal with petty little trolls who take enjoyment in seeing other peoples hard work destroyed...Dont get me started but I refuse to argue with anyone who is a sandwich short of a picnic.
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Date: 2012-06-06 10:36 am (UTC)Sincerely,
dbagert78
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Date: 2012-06-07 05:36 am (UTC)