I didn't. I'd be more serious about it if this were a more tenable possibility. As it was, I made the initial post, and then there was an upswelling of angry reactions, and I got caught up in having to justify something I hadn't thought out.

If someone was of the opinion that The Black Heir for example was of similar quality as Whitman's Leaves of Grass, he'd be objectively wrong. Subjectivity is only allowable on a certain standard, otherwise there's nothing to prevent such a comparison in the first place, which is why no one can credibly compare Patrick Newcomb to J.R.R. Tolkien or Ke$ha to Bob Dylan.

I enumerated the reasons I'm against most Harry Potter slash, not gay literature, here: http://forums.darklordpotter.net/showpost.php?p=378985&postcount=61. There are a few wholesale AU stories where Harry's homosexuality has a basis, like in The Saving Connor series, which I acknowledged, but the vast majority dispense with any character development to make it convincing. Virtually no writer of slash has made that investment.

If certain mainstay plots hadn't influenced HP slash so much, like the Draco veela soul bond or Snape rescuing Harry from the Dursleys, or Harry enslaved by Lucius and Voldemort, then things may have turned out differently, and I wouldn't be making this post. But that isn't what happened, so that's what I feel about it.

Tehan: I'll give you that. Sorry everyone.

 

The kneejerk reaction of 'smug, short-sighted cockbite' seems to be proving watertight, though.

 

If this goes through and the explicit and "dick" and "pussy" stories get deleted, who will browse ff.net?

No, seriously. Based on the sheer amount of fics that are slash and just plain OOC buttsecks, losing those stories - as appealing as it may sound to some - will also lose the readers. That means less reviews, as someone else said, but it also means less traffic.

Less traffic = less money from publicity. No money means no server, and no server means we're fucked.

Quick, fags! Start copying those precious fics!

 

Thing is, if stories do start being deleted in droves and there's the slightest inkling of a chance that it'll start eating into FFN revenues, that dude and his reportbot will be blocked and banned in motherfucking seconds. It's a more or less proven fact that FFN don't give a fuck about the stories, so the only thing left for them to give a fuck about is the advertising revenue that this bastard's going to be eating into if he has his way.

Worst case scenario, good fics get deleted; best case, nothing happens. Fuck this guy.

 

I might have missed this, but does this Lord Faglin have permission from a site mod to pull this shit? From what I understand, he's just a mod in the forums.

Though if he managed to post that string of bullshit without being called on it, odds are this is 'legit'.

 

Kid's arrogant as all hell. He's basically promised to pull the program is someone can show him a false positive. Odds we can write a program that'll pop up as a false positive here at DLP? I'm putting them at 100%. Seems the simplest way to remove this issue is to call his bullshit out as bullshit. I know nobody thinks we should be having a bot police the English language in fiction. As such, I expect nobody here to be in support of Dark Lord Kenny and his Moral Guardians.

I imagine a phrase like "He petrified the rooster with the refracted gaze of a basilisk, then carefully sliced open the cat, which had been lying in a pool of water. After this, he slid the hard cock in the wet pussy, and began the ritual." I think that's technically a legal way of doing things. And if that doesn't get picked up by his program....well, I'm sure the combined forces of DLP can outdo my crappy writing skills.

 

Heh, I sent Lord Kelvin a PM earlier questioning his objectives and beliefs in pursuing this. He just replied.

In short, every rule violated must be reported with no exceptions, and he really hates author's notes because they aren't story.

And he's a dick.

 

Just had an interesting little thought.

It would be funny if this basically caused FFnet to collapse, or at least lose massive amounts of readers, which then increased the amount of traffic at PC.net and/or DLP.

That being said, I also believe that an idea this stupid won't go through.

 

It's a nice thought, but even if this idiocy goes full steam ahead and takes out some high profile fics, it'll probably barely register on FF's hit-o-meter. Isolated groups will protest and try to organize boycotts, but none of them will ever gain the needed momentum to get over the casual reader's ignorance on the issue.

The problem with this thing is that it relies upon FF.net's "who gives a shit" attitude to work. Fics will be reported, FF.net will delete at least some of them without actually weighing the merits of the complaint and the quality of the fic . . . because they don't give a shit. In other words, the same reason why there's so much crap on the site in the first place.

The only real solution is for FF.net to start giving a shit. Total pipe dream, I know.

 

You should reply back pointing out his hypocrisy. He doesn't have long author's notes, but he has them.

 

Not to mention that he's an Internet Tough Guy about following the fanfiction.net site's TOS rules, yet he's a writer of fanfiction, an activity that is of questionable legality (at best) in most jurisdictions.

 

I sent the following letter to this Lord Kelvin:

 

I received a reply to my message earlier. Quoting (with permission):

He went on to say in a follow-up note that the user would have access to diagnostics and story data to help with ambiguous cases.

In other words, automatic flagging and forwarding is not being done, though for technical and not philosophical reasons; moreover, it's not clear from the response that it's a policy decision that auto-flagging/forwarding will never be done, just that it won't be done in the present version of the script.

Whether application of this technology proves a problem in practice will boil down, at least in the near term, to whether script users are indeed conscientious enough to vet stories carefully. If applied in this capacity, as an automated tool to find stories that are potentially in violation of the TOS, followed by a real person's eyeballs and brain making the call on TOS violations, I don't have as much of a problem with it (at least as far as clear-cut things like A/N chapters, MST3K stories, LOLCAT-speech-stories, and script-stories are concerned).

I remain concerned about the grayer areas--the line between M and MA, e.g., is ambiguously stated in the TOS and a judgment call at best. I doubt even among the much smaller and more homogeneous (in tastes) DLP community that we'd find consensus on what constitutes "graphic." In the eyes of a prude, nearly every "M" rated story could be deemed adult material and thus inappropriate for minors. These people could, of course, lobby to have M rated stories removed now, script or not. The filter just facilitates matters.

 

Just out of curiosity...what about George Lucas? Don't recall hearing anything especially stupid from him recently.



As for the bot, whatever. Guy sounds a bit like a dick but there are many of those types out there. If it weren't him it'd be somebody else at some other time. As long as they have an actual human look over the stories first then I don't really care that much. You have to read through the FFN ToS/Guidelines before posting so in theory everybody that posts should know whether their story is in violation or not. Rules are rules, even if they're stupid.

 

I took a look at the complaint thread, this guy seems to be little more then a pompous nazi. Unfortunately, this nazi seems to have a fairly large gun. For those who know who he is, think Jack Thompson with the ability to actually DO what he believes should be done. This man doesn't care about the ability of the reader to decide for themselves if a story is appropriate for them or not, in fact he seems to be doing everything he can to remove that choice from the hands of the user.

The pros as I see them:
-Most slash stories will be deleted.
-Fics that butcher grammar will be deleted.
-The raped!Harry stories will mostly be deleted.
-PC will likely have an increase in readers, assuming most FF'ers can be fucked to find a new fanfiction site.

The cons as I see them:
-False positives will be very common.
-Fics that deal with rape/torture/dark rituals as a theme will likely be deleted.
-Stories featuring two authors, each have input per chapter, will be deleted.
-Fics that where written a long time ago, and who's author is no longer active will be deleted if they break this guy's rules.
-Fics in other fandoms will be deleted. These fandoms usually don't have sites like PC to go to, and if they do, they aren't large sites.
-Freedom of Speech is being threatened by an internet tough guy.

The side notes that should be taken into account:

-Guys like this rarely ACTUALLY care about the rules. It's about power. So far, he's content to delete anything not complying to FF's ToS. But for how long? How long until he tries to see how far he can push it? If he succeeds, further down the line we could be dealing with a FF that doesn't allow anything but Harry/Hedwig slash fics. Dark Arts? Oh noes, a child might think evil is cool and go rob a bank!

Alright, I'm out of excess rage. Anyone have a plan for dealing with this aside from 'wait and see'?

EDIT: Anyone send FF.net an email or a report about this guy yet? There's the off chance that they'll actually reply, and that could either solve the issue or at least tell us if they support the idea or just don't give a shit.

 

You can make a fake account if you want and report him for things that he hasn't committed. It wont be ethical but with the ff admins not giving a shit about anything, it may just work. For now let's just "wait and see".

EDIT: It seems that the people who are going to be going over the picks of this program are going to remain confidential...

 

Thought of that, also thought of making a freewebs site and posting all his stories on there, then coming back to FF and calling plagiarism. Sometimes you can't be a good guy while your kicking the shit out of an asshole, you've gotta use what works. But at the same time, I'm not sure either of those would work that well.

As for him keeping the people confidential, it's probably as safe as assumptions get that at least the mods on his forum are involved. Probably more details in his forum, if anyone wants to go Holmes for a bit. His favorite authors have about a 40/60 chance of being involved, as does any random poster in the forum. Unfortunately, you can evidently get the program from third parties, that not even HE knows all of. This will make hunting all the assholes down a pain in the ass... But could be very useful if anyone feels up to some reverse engineering. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if you could get a copy through google.

 

He has real grounds for violation (even if he is not strictly violating the TOS) so what is the fucking point of making something up to report him with? Petty revenge does not accomplish a damn thing and just makes you look like a douche.