Yeah I know. That's why I'm not going to do it.

What grounds for violation does he have if his program's picks are checked over by people before being reported?

 

Going by the ridiculous volume of reports he's going to be sending to FFnet's admins if this gets off the ground, I imagine it's only a matter of time before they ban his ass for spamming, or simply delete all the reports, assuming them to be a phishing scam with a retardedly poor choice of targets.

 

A major thing: his program is going to piss of a hell of a lot of people. For a site that makes money off of readers, and the average reader being perfectly content to read stories that don't always strictly fit into the site's rules, something like this has a lot of potential to drive people away from the site - say if their favourite stories or their own stories get deleted.

It will never be explicit that this is the case, but when it's a matter of money being on the line I wouldn't be surprised if FF.net would come down with a verdict that using a bot does violate the TOS after all.

Even if this isn't the case, however, it really does skirt the line of 'acceptable use'. It's a grey area, as even with being checked by a human there is still a large margin for error (how much context comes with the violation, for example? - say a joke uses flagged words which when taken out of context looks completely inappropriate) and a massive potential for abuse (people reporting stories simply because they have author notes, etc.).

Edit: I think you're using 'phishing' in the wrong context, CO. Unless one has to manually type out a report of a story...?

 

Well author notes are allowed, you just can't put them in the middle of your story. What I'm most concerned about is the M and MA split here. That can lead to some good DLP stories being banned. If that ever happens I can only imagine what this site will do...

 

Fix MA stories so they are not MA?

 

I have a major problem with this guy's bot.

First of all, on purely philosophical grounds: I tolerate Harry/Draco slash fics, 1337 speak and all the rest of that shit being there because I want them to tolerate whatever crap I happen to want to read.

Next, it is not this guy's or any one else's responsibility except for the actual moderators of . And given that we call it FF.nazi because their mods are nazis enough already, we don't need more.

Even if this flags a bunch of fics and those fics really do get checked by real people, I don't trust those people to be fair and unbiased. Again, it's bad enough that that the admins and mods are unfair and biased. We don't need more nazis.

Finally, as stated earlier, these people clearly do not care about the rules, they just want power to lord over others. This is demonstrable in that of the very things that GayLord Faggot hates the most, author's notes, are IN HIS OWN FICS! I predict that there is an extremely high probability (100%) that his sycophants each have their own violations of the rules they purportedly care so much about, but that's okay because it's them doing it. It's only a TOS violation when other people do it.

Were I a betting man (I'm not), I'd put money on at least one of them having a pedo-slash story, several of them them having nigh-illegible 1337 speak stories, and several of them with stories written in script format (with some overlap between all three). Oh, AND THEY'RE RUNNING A BOT IN EXPLICIT CONTRADICTION OF THE TERMS OF SERVICE THEY CLAIM TO BE PROTECTING!

 

Why should authors bend to the whims of people who could remain quite happy by simply not reading it if their offended? I've read more then one story that would be completely ruined if that was changed, and even if they wouldn't be, it's at best morally suspect to make rules implying that authors can no longer choose what to place in the story they wrote in the first place.

If it was only unnecessary smut, I could see it possibly being alright for them to take it down. But an emotionally charged sex scene that adds a great deal of life to a story otherwise lacking? A rape or torture scene displaying the fear, terror, and hatred of the victim or the mercilessness of the attacker, displaying the reasons for the changes in the character that would otherwise leave a bunch of people wondering why they where acting so OOC? Why should the story be made into crap because someone is worried they might be offended? No one is making them read it. Why should the hard work of the author be destroyed merely because some jackass with a holier-then-thou attitude deems it to be immoral? Especially when they aren't being payed? When it would only be seen by someone who was either okay with it, or had ignored several warnings?

Furthermore, FF.net's definition on an M rating is ambiguous at best. This would pretty much leave what's M or MA entirely up to the guy that wrote the program. The only thing I remember being specifically stated as alright under an M rating is foul language, and since this bot will very likely be looking for the word 'cunt', that doesn't really leave anything that isn't already in half the T fics.

 

There is a difference between adult topics, and erotica, gore, porn, and whatnot. While I will agree that such topics such as rape are fine to have in stories, there is no need to go into the detail of the physical act of rape. The emotions and interactions make rape so powerful. Rape, and everything else that can be equally horrible can be written in a manner that is not mindless obscenity and still be powerful.

Also, don't like, don't read, is really stupid the way it used here. No one should have the right to hate on something due to the topics, but FF.net does have rules. If you go into FF.net knowing that these topics can get your story removed, saying, 'Don't like, don't read' when FF.net can go, 'Don't like our rules, get the hell out', you are going to loose. FF.net does have the right to have some rules on the maturity levels.

This follows onto the, "I know it when I see it." in regards if figuring out if a story is MA or not. The bot will be able to help the reporter see it. Mind you, I don't agree with this Lord Kelvin guy due on the grounds of what Rin said. I only defend the MA thing because it isn't as stupid as the rest of this stuff.

 

It CAN be, but it can't be done that way very well unless it's written by the best. Even if it was, some description of the actual act is to be expected. If the author describes a dark ritual involving cutting out someone's heart, yeah, that's gore. It's not even really necessary to the plot, but it certainly makes the story darker. Even a vague description seems to be against this guy's rules.

FF.net does has rules, and I agree entirely that they have every right to enforce those rules, should it choose to do so. If it was FF.net making this bot, it would annoy the hell out of me, but I would accept it. This isn't FF.net, though. This is some pompus asshole on a pedestal saying that he knows what's right for everyone else.

It would, assuming that someone will actually check. I seriously doubt anyone is going to check the context, even if they DO decide to actually go to the fic in the first place. Lord Kelvin claims that there are precautions in place to prevent that, but I trust people like him about as far as I can throw them, and since I can't reach through the internet...

In what way is the MA thing lass stupid then the other stuff? I could actually see the other stuff doing some good, though I am against that as well, on the vast amounts of spam you can find on FF.net. About a year ago I saw one guy with over five hundred stories he'd submitted each filled with the word 'troll'd' repeated over and over. It was suggested that he had multiple accounts. I'd have thought things like that would be a higher priority then MA fics...

 

When I say gore, I mean of the nasty stuff that FF.net doesn't really get. But yeah, he is going to go too far with the reporting.

I agree that Lord Kelvin is bad, but all I have said is that MA stories, if reported, shouldn't whine because they are MA. Complain due to the Lord Kelvin part. The part I have defended is the fact that MA stories should be fixed if they are getting reported anyways.

I need to make this clear. MA stories that are reported is the only thing I have been defending. I have not defended or talked about Lord Kelvin in my original post, the goal was only to clear up the fact that people seem to act that MA stories reported by this guy is not MA. Regardless of how Lord Kelvin acts, the stories should be fixed.

 

...Good grief. I have the word pussy in my fic...they'll delete it? It's rated M for a fucking reason.

And I use Author's Notes for answering Review Questions...so I'm just double fucked aren't I? Grand. NVM that I place them at either the beginning or the bottom of the fic. (Now I agree that ANs in the middle of a fic piss me off but who the hell is he to delete people's shit when he does the same thing?)

 

Answering review questions in your fic is just retarded wordcount-fluffing, and that's one of the few FFNazi rules I agree with. Nothing pisses me off like opening a 50k story and finding out that a third of every chapter is one-sided conversation with random reviewers.

 

LOL My chapters are usually 15K words without the answering reviews though. The review answering usually just pushes it up 2 or 3K. Not that much.

>_> Doesn't help it when you place fucking ANs and people don't read them and then bitch.

 

A sixth of your story being useless filler is still fucking retarded. Respond to the reviews directly instead of padding your wordcount.

 

Right, there are author forums on FFN for a reason.

 

Personally, unless the A/N takes up a large portion of the update (e.g., 1/3rd), I'm not too fussed; I just generally skip over that crap. I can live with a paragraph or two at the end of a long chapter.

It's the people who use up the majority of the space on the update for an author's note that piss me off.

 

/shrug. I don't actually give two shits about wordcount so...

 

Then what's the point? There's nobody obsessive enough to go through all your reviews to match up answers to questions, so the only person that's going to understand a given response is the person you're responding to. In which case, you can reply to the review directly.

The only point of answering reviews in your story is to pad your wordcount, which is why FFN banned it. Sometimes even the FFNazis get something right.

 

Makes me think that the DLP archive should be updated.