Mock. Mockmockmock. Mockity-mock-mock

12:03pm: The Wonderful Adventures of JessKitt!
I suppose the best way to preface this entry is to explain about the fursuiting aspect of the furry fandom for those unfamiliar. To put it simply, it's cosplaying. Only instead of pre-existing anime characters, one usually wears an animal costume based on an original character of their creation. Unlike cosplayers, the vast majority of fursuiters commission their suits from fursuit makers. As one would imagine, there is quite a bit of money to be made from this, as full suits of decent quality often cost over $1,000. As a result, there are bound to be some commissioners that try and get things done the cheapest they can so as to reap a large profit.

This brings us to the subject of this post, a fursuit maker known as Jesskitt. Now, while the inspiration for this post was new wank from this week, the fact is that Jesskitt's dramatic and sloppy ways have been making her the subject of furry drama communities for a couple years now. Some of the things she's infamous for include demanding someone return a suit she made them (with no refund) because it was reported the person did not wear it at Anthrocon. Said suit had pawpads made out of construction paper rather than felt or another fabric and was all around shoddy. This sets the tone for the quality of her work in general. There is also her habit of getting puppies, getting tired of them when they're grown up and giving them away only to obtain new puppies, but our focus today is on the fursuit making aspect.

This week, she appeared twice in the fursuitauctions community. The first was a post on the 6th to sell some suit parts. The interesting part here is her disclaimer:

"Warning this may affect your focus on this post, please do not let it mentally disrupt your train of thought:
For the record my name is Jess. My nickname is Kitt. It would be fabulously awesome if you people (aka everyone/anyone) could call me one or the other. JessKitt-08 (Jess Kitt Oh Eight) is a screen/pen-name, but is not something I should be called if you're addressing me personally. If you're looking to address me as an artist then it's JessKitt-08. Your silly and retarded sounding "JessKitt" craze is by far grammatically incorrect and makes you sound like you can't even call a person by their own name. Jess is a totally different character than Kitt. There has never been a combination of the two and will never be. (Jess- my husky/wolf hybrid *and also draft horse- I let them both have the same name* Kitt- my liger). You wanna know what my biggest pet-peeve in the world is? You keep hitting it right on the spot. Get it right! I don't call any of you by something I 'think' you should be called. Thank you."

When people respond to comment that the note is unprofessional, she replies to them with varying degrees of irritation:

"Then we didn't need you as a buyer and or customer. It is quite obvious that you let little things like someone correcting a group of people affect you. Your focus shifted from the products themselves to 'omg drama'. You should buy the product because you like IT- key word IT meaning the product itself. You should not let myself nor my 'boss' affect that in any way. We want people to buy our products based on the product itself- not the person who made it. I guess you are one of the many who buy products based on OMG I LOVE YOU MAN."

The second post was for something she calls 'The Fursuit Challenge', which basically boils down to her trading her own creations for those of others and then her selling what she's sent:

" Since 'so many' furries sit here and baww about our stuff when they haven't even seen it in person, nor held onto it, inspected it, and so on, we all thought that it would be a great idea to share a little challenge with you...."

As you might imagine, the responders find a few flaws in this plan. There's also the minor detail that the person who is listed as the 'neutral' party in judging which suit is better, mursa_artdragon, apparently never agreed this contest:

"Thats how I got all those page views! Take my fucking name off there god damn it I did not sign off on you posting my shit up. I said I'd take a look at some peoples stuff for you."

ETA: Also of interest, a post on her DA journal about the debt she's racked up. She explains she can't get a part-time job to make more money because she has too many fursuits to make. Think about that for a second.

12:36pm: Lost Tunnel of Fail
Lost: Tunnel of Fail: The Meetup Thread has been unlocked. Sit back for a tale of con wank, including drug induced comas, and an oranizer who single handedly pulled off doing all the electricity for the Superbowl:

Yanked from several wank reports:


Carrie, one of the assistant organizers of the NYC Lost meet up had "big plans" for the Lost series finale on May 23. A "huge event guaranteed to get worldwide press," and take all kinds of planning, as per the e-mails she sent the group's organizer.

The big huge event turns out to be a BYOB in the Atlantic Avenue tunnel in Brooklyn, an abandoned subway tunnel. $40.00 for regular people, and $60.00 for VIP access. There will be a red carpet and paparazzi. Tickets are sold quickly because Carrie convinces the group that these are going to go like a concert on ticketmaster, and the group is encouraged to buy tickets now, worry about the questions later. What kind of questions might people have? Um, who will the "paparazzi" be? How will she get electricity into the tunnel? Stream lost into the tunnel? Permits from the fire department?

Two inquire about this, and they are accused of of being "out of control," "EXTREMELY JEALOUS OF MY 100+ SUCCESSFUL EVENTS THAT I RAN LAST YEAR."She goes on to say that she will be talking to her "lawyer about getting restraining orders against both of them." And that they have to prove that they are fans of Lost by:

...writing a thesis on what their personal beliefs are regarding the show and all of it's main characters. The thesis will be run through my high-tech "plagarism" software that was developed at M.I.T. in which I am requested to use on my student's papers.

Bit of an over reaction don't you think? And would any attorney take this one on? Or would it get laughed out of court? If an organizer acts like this two months before the con, ( Imagine the Fun They are in For )

ETA Here is a screencap of the google cache of the NYC Lost Finale Webpage

ETA 2 Another Carrie Update:
This whole problem started because of two PSYCHO women that were fighting with other members in another group (which they had to get restraining orders against). I removed them and they retaliated by joing the group and causing trouble. Also the tunnel needs the money and the press, Mayor Bloomberg is involved! Guys the problem is not because this is implausible, it is because of two psycho women!

ETA 3: As per onyxnoir Obvious Sock is Obvious

10:25pm: Jimbo Wales vs. Fox News: The predictable result.

In Soviet Russia you hunt Fox, in Fascist America Fox hunt YOU!

--Wikipedia IRC channel comment.

Well, Wankas, it's time to wrap up this sorry mess. When last we left this probably-on-the-wrong-community-(oops!)-but-oh-so-wanky story - may as well finish it here, right? - Jimbo Wales had gone on a rampage deleting 19th-century art, and anything he thought was pornographic. There's a lot of wank, so I'm going to select some of the best juicy tidbits, and the rest can mainly be found on The foundation-l mailing list archive and the archive of Jimbo's talk page.

So, we begin with the big reveal: after edit warring to keep the images deleted, he finally stated why: Fox News was about to attack Wikipedia:

On the "Foundation-l" mailing list:

Much of the cleanup is done, although there was so much hardcore
pornography on commons that there's still some left in nooks and crannies.

I'm taking the day off from deleting, both today and tomorrow, but I do
encourage people to continue deleting the most extreme stuff.

But as the immediate crisis has passed (successfully!) there is not
nearly the time pressure that there was. I'm shifting into a slower mode.

We were about to be smeared in all media as hosting hardcore pornography
and doing nothing about it. Now, the correct storyline is that we are
cleaning up. I'm proud to have made sure that storyline broke the way
it did, and I'm sorry I had to step on some toes to make it happen.

Now, the key is: let's continue to move forward with a responsible
policy discussion.

( Juicy details, but a little long for on the front page )
Jimbo on what he chose to delete

...I deleted some things that I assumed would be undeleted after a
discussion. I wanted us to take an approach that involved first
deleting a lot of borderline things, and then bringing them back after
careful case by case discussions.

That proved to be quite unpopular, and I'm sorry about it.

and

I had thought that a good process would be to engage in a very strong series of deletions, including of some historical images, and then to have a careful discussion about rebuilding. That proved to be very unpopular and so I regret it. It also may have had the effect of confusing people about my own position on what to keep and what to get rid of.

However, that didn't mean he actually wanted things to be discussed now:

I have redeleted the image for the duration of the cleanup project. We will have a solid discussion about whether Commons should ever host pornography and under what circumstances at a later day - June 1st will be a fine time to start.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 17:31, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

But, hey, Wales is Wikipedia's Godking. He'll come out of this fine, right? Sure, there's a petition for his powers to be removed, but it'll never happen, right?

Jimbo Wales, May 9th

In the interest of encouraging this discussion to be about real
philosophical/content issues, rather than be about me and how quickly I
acted, I've just now removed virtually all permissions to actually do
things from the "Founder" flag. I even removed my ability to edit
semi-protected pages! (I've kept permissions related to 'viewing' things.)

I do not want to be a tyrant or dictator. I do not want us to fight
about that kind of thing, as it's really a distraction from our work.

What I'm interested in is this video:
http://www.vimeo.com/8709616

Please watch it - it's 8 minutes long, and well worth it. This video
moved me deeply - it shows what our real impact on the world is, and I
think if you watch it, you'll feel the way that I did.

That's right, wankas, Jimbo Wales had to give up practically all his administrative powers over this.

Results

But, hey, the crisis was averted by Jimbo's actions, right? He said so several times:

"There was a crisis situation and I took action which ended up averting the crisis..."

"...as the immediate crisis has passed (successfully!) [...] Now, the correct storyline is that we are
cleaning up. I'm proud to have made sure that storyline broke the way
it did..."

And so on! So, surely Fox News was happy that Jimbo made sure that they got what they wanted?

Despite Content Purge, Pornographic Images Remain on Wikimedia

By Jana Winter - FOXNews.com
( Quotes from the report )

...Nope. Didn't help at all. (I should point out that Fox's report bears little relation to reality - the number of images deleted has been enumerated, and was about 400, not the thousands they claim, and note they don't mention they're talking about 19th-century and early-20th-century artworks until around the third page - but, then, if you know FoxNews, would you be surprised?)

----
ETA 1: How badly did Jimbo mess up? Even after he voluntarily gave up his administrative rights, people were complaining he didn't give up enough, because he might be able to take them back in future. Laaknor and and Avi "helped" Jimbo by fixing this loophole and a bug fix has been stepped up in priority because one of the view-only rights he kept so he could do his job had some administrative rights attached. [Other posts: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8]

ETA 2: Fox News mentions one image in their article as being particularly horrible. They give enough description that I was able to find it. It's this French cartoon from the early 20th century. Judge for yourselves whether it's worth the conniptions they have over it. And, yes, they're by an artist who's famous for his decadent illustrations of this type - but how dare Wikipedia include famous French artist!

Also, for those interested, here's one of the images Jimbo deleted personally, and wanted to delay discussion of restoring the file for a month.

ETA 3: Oh my god: It all makes sense: Jimbo was trying to completely purge Commons of anything the least bit controversial to kill the story, figuring it could be brought back in a couple months! Consider:

( Evidence )
...He wanted to get Commons completely purged while attention was on it, then - and then only - allow the restoration of encyclopedic material when attention was off it.

...I'm stunned.