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	elanor_durall 2004-01-26 03:34 am UTC (link)
	Wow. Will you look at that. She doesn't care yet again. Mickyfan, apparently, is limited to speaking only in run-on sentences. So are her "supporters." My favorite part of this wank was Mickyfan's parting shot: Well thats all for now. I have to get ready for work. Nicely anticlimactic. Ahahahah. (Reply to this)(Thread)

nevadafighter
2004-01-26 09:58 am UTC (link)

Mickyfan, apparently, is limited to speaking only in run-on sentences.

That is not at all uncommon. Wendy's been writing that way all the way back to her days as the Biggest Whiner in the Entire Monkees Fandom.

My favorite part of this wank was Mickyfan's parting shot:
Well thats all for now. I have to get ready for work.
Nicely anticlimactic. Ahahahah.

Not really, since she ends quite a few (or most) of her posts that way. *EG*

Her journal is one of the most depressing things I've ever seen--nothing but run-on whining about how crappy her life is and how much her job sucks, punctuated by non-cut posts with a ton of quizzes. Alternately boring and awful. ;)

Not that I'm biased by past run-ins, hell no.

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elanor_durall
2004-01-26 02:24 pm UTC (link)

That is not at all uncommon. Wendy's been writing that way all the way back to her days as the Biggest Whiner in the Entire Monkees Fandom.

Ahh. Good information. I wasn't terribly surprised, but I'm new here and the novelty hasn't worn off yet.

Not really, since she ends quite a few (or most) of her posts that way. *EG*

Since there wasn't a gun within threatening distance of my head, I decided not to read her other posts.

Not that I'm biased by past run-ins, hell no.

Good to see that you're keeping an open mind. ;)

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(Anonymous)
2004-01-26 05:21 pm UTC (link)

No, no. The *best* part was when she threatened the group with deletion. This girl has this amazing power to make Yahoo bend to her will! (even though she somehow can't get it to stop sending her group e-mails). And her will supercedes that of nearly six thousand other people! All hail!

On a slightly different note: Where does one *get* this mysterious deletion power and *why* has it been denied me?

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baskinglizard
2004-01-26 05:45 pm UTC (link)

Out of morbid, fear-to-look-yet-cannot-turn-away curiousity, I went and had a look at mickyfan's journal, and was heartily amused by this:

"That is my only request if Elgoose steps down as a moderator I will drop this entire thing. But if she doesn't and causes problems in the future I won't be able to keep my promise. That is a promise I will keep."

*head explodes*

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	kindest_demon 2004-01-26 07:05 pm UTC (link)
	I won't be able to keep my promise. That is a promise I will keep. ??? picks up the pieces of your head I suspect this person has never actually re-read anything she's typed. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	xturtle 2004-01-26 10:56 pm UTC (link)
	I suspest this person is president of the United States. whistles innocently goes back to lurking (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	Re: kindest_demon 2004-01-27 03:10 am UTC (link)
	Egads, it's BRILLIANT! ;) It really is rather like a Bushism. (I speak neither French nor Mexican...) (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	elanor_durall 2004-01-27 03:40 am UTC (link)
	That sounds very logicalistic. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	smo 2004-01-27 05:21 pm UTC (link)
	Don't misunderestimate the possimability! (Reply to this)(Parent)

	Re: baskinglizard 2004-01-26 11:26 pm UTC (link)
	Hey, thanks for picking up the pieces. I'm gonna need that later. :) I suspect you are correct about the rereading. The journal was like one giant, whiny, stream of consciousness. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	kijikun 2004-01-26 04:13 am UTC (link)
	Having been part of said wank, (I would be the person that suggested full screening of all messages), it is pretty stuipd. Part of it comes from the mods, letting off topic posts THEY liked go, while snarking at the everyone else. The list has been going down hill for awhile now. (Reply to this)(Thread)

cjk
2004-01-26 11:11 am UTC (link)

The list has been going down hill for awhile now.

Well, no. What happened it, it's grown bigger. From a tiny, elite list devoted to a largely unknown pairng, it's become "the" thing, with over 5000 members, populated by screaming teenies. It's almost impossible to control - which was one of the main reasons I ran away like the coward I am.

Of course, you could put the list on moderated and sift through each and every post to decide what goes and wha tstays. But wih the traffic generated, it would involve much more womanpower than we presently have. Plus, if we have to treat the list members like kindergarten kiddies and not like the mature adults they claim they are, is there a point in having the list any more?

The list was founded to give Snape/Hermione fans a place to discuss and write. When the memberbase grew, we founded WIKTTmisc, the place for all OT chatter. Since it's smaller, not as popular, and has an "unimportant" feel to it, of course barely anyone (of those who really should) uses it.

You could argue that the same thing happens to many once-elite fandoms. Look at pre-movie LotR, for example. No Legolas fangirls, no hysterical Barbieshippers, barely any flamrewars. And now we have things like this. Myself, I've no idea how to change things for the better. Either we turn into complete Nazis and practice total moderation (thus stifling all creativity and spooking away the last of the remaining good writers and clear mind - we lost most of those to one *cough*PtQ*cough* flamewar or the other already) or we allow everything and have people turn away because of spam and immaturity.

Or, perhaps, we go on as we do now, moderating some, and allowing most. It's bloody hard to find a solution with a list of over 5000 members, there's really no pleasing all.

CJK (list-founder and general scapegoat)
*stepping off her soapbox and preparing to be wanked to hell*

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	sagralisse 2004-01-26 04:48 pm UTC (link)
	Perhaps you should divide yourself up into smaller discussion groups, where a certain amount of chatter would not be that disruptive. [/sensible] (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

cjk
2004-01-26 05:21 pm UTC (link)

The idea has merit, but I'm envisioning the following problems: Assuming we start several discussion groups, wouldn't topics overspill into technical OT-ness when they reach the limits of another discussion group? Should those groups be moderated and stomped upon (seeing as even if only 10% out of 5000 members joined 'em - majority being static and lurkerish - it would genrate spamSPAMspam) or allowed to run free and degenerate into wank and flame? If going for moderated, wouldn't it basically become ten medium-sized lists instead of one big list, thereby greatly increasing the mod workload?

In my experience small things usually start out very cultured, tame and fluffy, but when they grow, become infested with ~~nargles~~ screaming immature fangirls and get totally out of control, earning themselves a well-deserved bad reputation everywhere. Problem is, the list was my doing, and I feel responsible.

W00t, was that an unnecessary load of run-on sentences, or what?

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long -- sorry :(

sagralisse
2004-01-26 07:18 pm UTC (link)

I just fail to see the usefulness of a discussion list with 5000 members. They've been explained to me as a Very Good Thing before, but I still don't get it.

You can sit around with 10 of your friends and discuss stuff without having any particular rules about who can speak. But if you had 300 people in a room you'd have to either break up into smaller groups or do some sort of formal question and answer thing. That's offline, of course. The mailing list format works for somewhat larger groups, but not for 5000. If only 10% of them post, and each of those people posted only once per week, that'd be 500 messages a week right there.

Plus, it's supposed to be a fandom thing. It's not like some small group should be dispensing wisdom from on high while everyone else sits quietly. So the average teenie fangirl thinks (using examples more familiar to me) that Legolas is OMG SO HAWT, while the average geeks try to figure out whether he's Sindarian or not. Given that Sindarians are canonically HAWTer than the dark Elves, they're basically talking about the same thing. Isn't fandom supposed to be... dunno... social? If it's about what the fans like and don't like, then why is your group set up so that, realistically, only a few people in the group can participate? (And yes, I know it didn't start out that way. It just grew.)

It just seems to me that people get this big ego boost from having their group grow so large. Yes, it is cool to start something and have it become wildly popular. But the best way to ruin it is to keep hanging on to the idea that the bigness and popularity of it makes it the best thing evah. In this case, one of the mods seems tired of dealing with the snotty plebes and threatens them. Someone else complains that said Mod isn't being respectful to the group, then starts in with the dumb threats. The response of the mod is (predictably) on the order of "Hahahaha! We're wildly popular and you're nothing so shut up." So which is it? Is moderating the group a big hassle, or is it a perk of inner circle membership?

Seriously, if it was me moderating I'd get my friends together, hand over the keys of the main group to my most energetic detractor and go colonize a new mailing list. Just because the group is too big and the powah isn't as much fun as hanging with friends. That solution would keep the main social group together, and it leaves the lurkers and complainers with the responsibility of jump-starting their own damned discussions.

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Re: long -- sorry :(

cjk
2004-01-26 08:31 pm UTC (link)

Well. The long and short of it is, you're right.

Way Back When, WIKTT was a place to talk about everything SS/HG, because general HP stuff and outside interests could be talked about in a dozen other places. Then many many many lots SS/HG fan~~girl~~s appeared, and we became mainstream. And obviously, SS/HG is only one of the things that we have in common and want to talk about, and there're countless others.

As you very rightly pointed out, it is impossible to have two-sided conversations with 5000 people at once. The list can either be a very strictly (tempted to invoke Godwin's law here) moderated place for announcements, or spammy chaos. Anything else is impossible at that size.

Unfortunately (unfortunately in my personal opinion, that is, it doesn't reflect anyone else's) we opted for the first option, maybe because it looked that both order and common sense would prevail. Hah. I, for once, was young, stupid, and didn't know how fandom worked back then.

I'm pretty sure that this wanky flamewar will fizzle out and die, followed by many others appearing and dying in turn. Eventually the list will have an even worse reputation that it does now, and people will stay out of sheer sluggishness and habit, not any real desire to belong to this bunch. More (smaller) SS/HG communities will (and already have) spring up, and may offer outstanding quality of both discussion and writing. I hope to Offler, the Crocodile-Headed god of Klatch (or was it Ephebe?) that they do.

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Re: long -- sorry :(

sagralisse
2004-01-26 10:01 pm UTC (link)

I'm pretty sure that this wanky flamewar will fizzle out and die, followed by many others appearing and dying in turn. Eventually the list will have an even worse reputation that it does now, and people will stay out of sheer sluggishness and habit, not any real desire to belong to this bunch. More (smaller) SS/HG communities will (and already have) spring up, and may offer outstanding quality of both discussion and writing.

Yeah, it'll happen. The amount of accompanying flameage, wailing, pseudocides, etc sort of depends on whether the participants recognize that it's a natural sort of process. It's like getting mad and shrieking at your kids because they grew out of their clothes.

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(Anonymous)
2004-01-27 04:41 am UTC (link)

Perhaps you should divide yourself up into smaller discussion groups, where a certain amount of chatter would not be that disruptive.

Actually... There ARE smaller, spin-off groups. There's WIKTTmisc, where WIKTT members can talk about OT things and there's WIKTTgrammar for story related stuff and finding lost stories. I'm sure there are more.

The problem with having more groups is that nobody is USING them. OT and help-I've-lost-a-fic posts run ramped on the main list.
Besides, part of the appeal of being on a list of 5000+ members is that there are more people to bounce ideas off of and more people to recommend fics and things like that.

There ARE benefits to being on a list with more people, but when those 5000 people act childish and don't follow the rules... well *shrugs* then we get great and hilarious wanks such as this *grin*.

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	kijikun 2004-01-26 08:09 pm UTC (link)
	By down hill I meant that the odds of finding of good converstion that if your not a regular poster you get ignored or yelled at if you post in it, and the stories lately..there haven't been alot of good ones. I've seen the same impalusibe senerio written so many times, I've stoped reading S/Hr fics simple becuase I can get better characteriztion in other pairings. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	delfeus 2004-01-26 03:12 pm UTC (link)
	Hmm. Maybe I should check yahoo more often... I belong to over 70 groups, so there must be lots of wank. I'm just too lazy... (Reply to this)(Thread)

	els_chan 2004-01-26 10:57 pm UTC (link)
	You know, I'm inclined to agree. And I'm almost set to actually start receiving emails from some of the larger groups, just to see what I can find. And a terrible, dark part of me is ridiculously tempted to start a flame war. I don't know why...I'm blaming lack-of-coffeeness. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	Re: delfeus 2004-01-27 03:00 am UTC (link)
	Heehee! Well, it shouldn't be too hard if you're inclined so... but not really worth the trouble. It's easier to just laugh at other people. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	mirabellawotr 2004-01-26 03:36 pm UTC (link)
	I love it when people threaten other people with Fandom Wank, because clearly we have nothing better to do than to be their Wank Enforcers. Would you like a new battery for that, elgoose? (Reply to this)(Thread)

	ahiru 2004-01-26 04:49 pm UTC (link)
	If we do become Wank Enforcers, do we get uniforms? I'm thinking something like a ninja outfit with the words "Wank Enforcer : Spooge this, bitch!" written on the back. And we each get to carry our own wank gun to hose people down with. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	sagralisse 2004-01-26 04:59 pm UTC (link)
	I thought we had a strict "bring your own splooge" policy. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	delfeus 2004-01-26 09:36 pm UTC (link)
	They better be black or really dark green! (Reply to this)(Parent)

musette
2004-01-26 10:53 pm UTC (link)

First off, the title of this post gave me a fabulous image of the students in Les Mis battling off the fangirls. Far too amusing.

And as for the wank, bitch /please/. If you want to natter on about things not relevant to the topic of the group, that's what private email, private IM and personal LJs are for. There's a group of girls on a message board I used to read a lot (I go there only for mocking purposes now because there is never any content) where one entire thread is nothing but this group planning their weekend outings together. Apparently the art of using email and not spamming the general public with your personal jabbering is one people can't get.

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zephiey
2004-01-29 03:29 pm UTC (link)

I have been a member of WIKTT for a year at least. The list does not take kindly to OT posts of any sort. They site the need to stay on topic because they have so many members. Other no-no's on WIKTT are no netspeak because many members are non-English speakers and proper English is a must. Proper punctuation, sentence structure, spelling and editing of posts are also a must. Challenges, story recs and art recs must follow a proper format.

WIKTT has a sister list for OT posts called WIKTTmisc which is supposed to be for OT posts, fic questions and anything that is not allowed on WIKTT proper.

There are so many rules for WIKTT that I almost never post to the list, simply because I find that it is not worth the hassle. I do though enjoy watching the drama unfold on the list, it's like an internet train wreck.

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