Oh, Cfud

[basilmemories]

You know how I like fandom wank right? You all also probably know how much I hate when cfud gets a writeup on there or rpsecrets because it only brings out the rabid anons without... really discussing the problems that the game has in a way that would actually fucking change anything. However, for once I'm almost wishing that someone had done a writeup/screencap of the recent wank that's going around because it's put the community into two groups. No, not "people who agree with X" and "People who don't agree with X", but "people who know what's going on" and "people who don't know what's going on and could be walking into a minefield".

Seriously, even though I know what I'm supposed to be looking for, it's hard to find anything other passive-aggressive comments that don't really tell people anything. Yes, the person who wrote the post that started the wank has a right to keep her journal flocked. BUT, when so many people in the game are involved there should really be a mod post or a general heads-up post about recent events.

Yes, you'll notice that I'm not giving away any clues about what happened either, but that's because so far I only have hearsay, aaaaaand even if I wasn't sitting on my hands about this (other then my opinion of "If Spain comes back from his hiatus to this shit and has to deal with the wankstorm unprepared, I will seriously cut some bitches. Because dude, not cool."), I'd want to see the post myself and read the comments before making a comment. As it is my official opinion about this wank is to facepalm endlessly and say the vicious bullshit that I'm hearing about should not be fucking happening (if it's as bad as it sounds). Seriously, if hearing about this wank reminds me of this sketch, I'm pretty sure someone's failing at debate:

-And for those who're going to mention it, SOB yes I just got home and out of the shower. Gg busses who don't like to stop for paying customers. Now I'm going to go back to bed.

Comments

[megido]

As far as I'm aware, the so-called "viciousness" was mostly resolved between the parties involved. People have a right to express being upset in their own journals, especially when they feel offended about something. And they have a right to f-lock it as they see fit.

[basilmemories]

They do have that right, as I said before. However a problem arises for the people who are on the outside fringes and can see what's happening, and when it affects a large part of the community involved in the game.

However to people on the outside or people who are thinking of joining this game/following the players, it presents a problem. If I had just seen the posts/comments about the wank and not heard anything from one of the people who read the post (and even she only finished half the post before deciding to stay the hell away from the wank as much as possible) then I'd still have looked around and found the following:

• More then one player are upset, and at least one was at one point close to tears.


• A player tried to lighten things up and got jumped on, yes it was resolved, but it shows how tense things were at one point and how even rational people were getting upset.


• Biz wanted to make a comment about passive-aggressive behavior but stopped. If this is about the wank I don't really know, but if it isn't then it's really unfortunate timing.


• A lot of people made twitter posts and fewer lj posts about it, showing how widespread it got.

As someone going in blind I would not have assumed that things were really resolved. And frankly if I was a new player considering apping, the lack of some sort of mod post saying "okay guys, you're free to have a opinion obviously, but please don't take it out on the players" or something... would really make me worry about apping from that canon. Moreover I would start to wonder what other canons would get that reaction.

Case in point: I did have an app planned for that canon, but now I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place. There's enough interest in the character that someone might take them if I waited a round for things to cool down, but if I app them this round then I'm afraid that a lot of people are going to abstain or be harder on the app because of either a conscious or unconscious bias. And yes, this is something I have seen in the past few months, I don't like naming characters, but if you really want to know I'll elaborate.

In the end I'm not saying that the people involved should unflock their posts, but a notice by the mods in the ooc comm would be nice and relieve some of my worries about the situation and how it might affect me. There's other points I want to say, but I'm going to continue on them in Sera's reply since she has a lot of the same points.

[megido]

Whether or not people will abstain on voting on an app isn't something you have control over-- voters shouldn't be vilified for abstentions. I believe the people who would not be voting on it if the discussion had not happened would still be abstaining regardless. (note that I'm not using the word 'wank' because for the most part, people have been pretty civil or tried to be in resolving problems with upset parties; I'll also note that the player who was close to tears said that the reason was because of Gandhi getting banned, though I think that was rescinded?) It isn't as though a hivemind has taken over and we're all following one single person who says we should be abstaining on all future apps from this canon; that's just not happening. Multiple people have come to the same opinion in regards to the canon all on their own, and I don't think it's fair to demand that they be responsible for an entire community's reaction/gif posts/tweets/what have you. We've had controversial canons apped into CFUD before, but it's been pretty clear that it's not okay to vote 'out' on a canon just because you don't like the canon in question. If you have a problem with it, you abstain-- and that's okay, and people shouldn't be criticized for that decision.

Also, it's entirely possible that the mods are still discussing this and trying to come up with a polite way to approach it. There are six of them, after all, and I don't have so little faith in the modteam to think there hasn't been communication, even if it hasn't all been public or as timely as we'd like. We will probably still be feeling tense about this until someone broaches the subject, but until then it just isn't fair to be blaming either the people who began the discussion, the players in question, or the mods for what could potentially happen in regards to apping/voting.

[basilmemories]

First off I'd like to ask: where did I say that the game was becoming a hivemind? In a lot of ways the voting/abstaining tendencies of the people can be similar sometimes, but they come to those conclusions on their own, much like how some people may feel about the series. There is an issue with canonblind people folowing whatever the majority vote is at the moment, but that issue doesn't pertain to the wank.

You'll note that I AM using the word wank (and kerfuffle and so on) as I've heard from one person who read the wank and felt it was pretty damn bad, and another one who was in the same boat with her. At the moment I don't know what was really said, and your opinion is your opinion, but right now I'm more likely to agree with the person who told me some of the actual comments. I could be entirely wrong here, but a) I don't have access to it myself to judge properly and b) I'm going with the majority/most complete knowledge I've got of the matter.

I have no problem with people abstaining with controversial series, it's a hell of a lot better then voting out and then coming up with a BS reason for doing it. But it can sometimes lead to a problem with an obscure or controversial series. In more then one case I've seen an obscure/controversial app be the only one that ends up being the one that keeps the round from closing. In that case you get people who vote just to get the damn batch closed and may or may not give the app the attention it deserves... or may go with popular opinion in the votes/comments. (here's also my problem with some of the concrit-that-isn't-really-concrit comments that happens sometimes, but again that's another issue). It's an amazingly tricky issue and it leaves me feeling very uneasy about apping/not apping from that series either way.

And I don't want to rush the mods, that's why I suggested a "we're still looking at this issue, but we just wanted to give you a heads' up" post. I know there's been communication because one of the players mentioned that a mod had talked to/reassured them. Trust me when I say that if I had a problem with how mods do things, I would have called them on it in a chicken soup post long ago. But a little gesture would make me feel less tense as well. The people on the inside aren't the only ones who are stressed/affected by what's going on.

After all that I feel it's... a bit of a cop out to say "OMG EVERYONE'S INNOCENT GAIZ" because. well. Everyone is responsible for how they may act. I don't really blame the mods, I think there's something more they could be doing, but they've got such a good track record that a few mistakes can slide. As for blaming the person who began the discussion, whatever they said was incendiary enough to get people riled up, but seeing as I haven't read it I'm reserving my opinion. However saying that she may be completely innocent is like me saying that any wank that could have occurred from my Hetalia essay isn't my fault. I wrote it, I opened that can of worms, and other people were free to comment on it, and I responded to people that may/may not have egged them on. They may not be responsible for what happens in voting, but they may have been partially responsible for causing the wank in the first place.

[basilmemories]

Aaaand personally this conversation might just seem to be going in circles. You very obviously have your opinions, a few that I don't agree with, and you're getting a bit emotional-sounding about them. I'm pretty much fail at trying to explain my points without sounding like an asshat and I can tell that even as I'm posting the comment. I'm perfectly fine with continuing this discussion, but if you want to settle it on "we both have opinions about this and can't really see eye-to-eye on the matter right now" I'd be fine with leaving it that way.

[megido]

I'd prefer you continue reserving your judgment in regards to my "emotional-sounding" opinions, in that case.

I'm not saying everyone's "innocent". I'm not saying people shouldn't be responsible for what they say. I'm saying that whatever happened in that locked post was discussed thoughtfully and resolved civilly. It wasn't pleasant, and not all of it started out as civil-- but we are all adults here, and communication happened. I can tell you for certain, as someone who saw the post, that people were having a discussion that did not end in a shitstorm. It is frustrating for people who don't have access to it, I agree with that, but from my point of view this is what happened. I'm fine with leaving this as is.

[basilmemories]

Awesome then! You're a good friend and I wouldn't want something like a bit of wank that may/may not have been worked out to cause an argument between us.

[unicorn]

Gotta agree with Christi here. The stuff that was mod business, the mods were contacted about, and I'm sure they'll present their considered opinions at their leisure. The stuff that wasn't really isn't any business of the game at large, and just because some of the mods might be friends with players and on their friendslists doesn't mean they should give a play-by-play whenever their players have a disagreement; it'd be intrusive, likely to get tons of people taking sides, and unfair to them to require them to spend all their time doing that.

We're much more a community than we are a game, but I don't think the friends in some kind of authority publically gossiping about other friends disagreeing is going to help anything.

[basilmemories]

Like I mentioned to Christi, I don't think anybody should be unlocking anything (and a play-by-play post would be too much and infringing on people's privacy), but like I also said to her there are some issues the locked comments situation creates. Besides what I mentioned before, other complications happen.

First problem with the mods taking their time to post is... well sort of like how livejournal takes it's time to post until they think they've got the problem resolved. It only builds tension for the people who aren't in on the flock, and it makes them look like they're not doing anything to make sure that unfair voting or player conflicts aren't being resolved. And that's a big break from how the mods normally treat things because they're awesome and on top of things. Even if they don't have an answer yet about the whole kerfuffle, a simple "We've gotten reports about this and we just want you to know we're really thinking over the problem." would help to deflate any sort of "you're not doing anything about it" feelings that players/possible players might have. As it is I'm not sure if I should contact the mods myself. Would it be okay for me to app that character? Should I put a disclaimer in my app? I'm really worried that the kurfuffle will affect the app but I don't want to wait a round and have someone else get that character excexc.

The other, more pessimistic reason I'd like to see a mod post is to beat others to the punch. Even though there's a good chance there won't be a F_W post about it, I can see there being a rpsecrets post about it, and that's only going to make things worse. Then NOBODY'S going to come out of this looking clean, and I'd rather we solve our own problems then have the roleplaying community jump on us and start saying that we're not only elitist, but we're also all drama queens and likely to hit below the belt too. If anything even though we've got a bad reputation for our app system, at least we're the fluffy, nice kind of elitists.

tl;dr it's a tough call either way. On one hand the mods HAVE said something about wank when it happened in the main irc chan, but this is a more private affair. I think there's a compromise available between "reveal everything" and "don't say anything", but it'll require the mods to balance a fine line and I only send my deepest sympathy for being stuck in a position like this. Seriously if I could give fruit baskets over the internet, I would.

[sarraceniaceae.livejournal.com]

There is nothing more frustrating for other people in a community than half-locked wank where I can see that things're going down and generally what's involved, but have no idea who or where or how extensive it is or anything. Seriously, I hate it so much.

[basilmemories]

I do too. More importantly it's put me (and another person/hopeful freshmeat who was interested in apping from that series) into a very uncomfortable spot with our apps.