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Wednesday, November 24th, 2010
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2:05 pm - I'm so angry I'm gonna do my job! Maybe.
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sepiamagpie
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This is pretty contained, because the person doing it (wisely?) cut off all modes of response from anyone. I'm not a community member, I had enough of French back when I was in immersion school.
The community: Learn_French@Livejournal
The posts featured: Post #1 and Post #2
The Person: Danaseilhan, full of Daffy Duck rage.
This is kind of a what not to do if you fuck up modding so much people decide to report you delinquent.
( Zer first post )
Kind of reasonable. I mean, she was just gone two weeks! That's no reason to report someone to lj abus--- hey, why is her community full of spam posts that are still up? Here's one. Everytime you see that icon, do not click any of the links.
So, I go to look at her journal like she suggested. I'm obedient like that.
( Second post! Ooh, she even ends it with a sassy 'Ta'. )
Okay. So. Let's review her modding.
1. Spam-filled community. Date checking reveals that spam pre-dates her vacation.
2. Angry screed about spiting the haters, along with rule reminder that amounts to: "I was unreachable. WHY DIDN'T YOU CONTACT ME?"
3. Cuts off all modes of communication (do not comment to her journal if you can, she will report you for spam, emails sent are deleted without reading)
4. This is just a rumour, but apparently she feasts on the flesh of newly born infant boys? Take what you will from that.
What confuses me about all this is, isn't French the language of love? Why all this anger? All this... hurt?
EDIT: Breaking news from our reporter ![[info]](http://www.journalfen.net/img/userinfo.gif) julian_black. Apparently she has a history, featuring such accomplishments as a Ginmar/Atanielle defending anti-fandom_wank community, as well as an intriguing theory as to why learn_french is full of spam:
She does not, in fact, speak French and has not realized the truth of those posts. Quelle surprise. Sorry, it was a bit of a surprise, I just wanted to toss some French in there. Spirit of things.
Plus, the origins of Rule Number 4, to whit: What happens in Learn_French, stays in Learn_French/Don't you mention our fuckups anywhere.
EDIT THE SECOND: She's been on otf_wank before, it turns out. I thought I'd found a new one :(
THIRD ETA: Comm's deleted. Read about her last post in here, courtesy of Dreamworld. Her words on the subject after deletion:
Don't bother contacting me to ask why [info]learn_french is gone. I'll offer a brief explanation and that's all you're getting:
1. Assholes running crying to LJ Abuse about me not being a good maintainer because after six years of 90 percent good community experience on your part and 9 percent troll-stomping on my part, I didn't respond quickly enough for your tastes for the 1 percent trolling I missed.
The sad part is, I believe I am overestimating the amount of troll-stomping I had to do.
2. My email acting up when I tried to notify LJ Abuse that I wanted to keep LF. I feared that if my email continued to be delayed that they'd just hand it over to one of the aforementioned assholes. I am a strong believer in NOT rewarding assholery. I don't know what Multiple Whoevers' problems were with me and I don't want to know.
They didn't get what they wanted.
Unfortunately over 1000 other people got punished along with them.
And you know what? It is not like I was getting paid for the job. I wonder how many of you have a 90 percent success rate, or better, at your jobs where you do get paid.
Something to think about as you're submitting me to the latest popular mock-the-drama community. Then again, likely most of you aren't employed after all, which is why you're there to begin with.
'Nuff said. Or as they say in the South, from whence I hail, "Fuck all y'all."
Note: If it starts in the other communities I maintain, they will go away too. I won't even wait to hear from LJ Abuse. Guess what? Life's not fair. At least you're not Haitian.
( For posterity, where she blames her email not working on lj abuse )
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(79 comments | comment on this)
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| Tuesday, November 16th, 2010
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11:59 pm - PTC clutches pearls; news at 11
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galateus
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Bleeped swear words: Threat or menace? Now with hilarious statistics!
Fish, barrel, I know, but it's the article comments that explode in wank proper, once bbbaldie opens the floodgates by siding with the PTC:
Not sure how many of you have actually raised children, but in my house in the 80's and 90's, I appreciated not having the foulest expletives on the TV shows my kids (and their parents) watched during primetime.
Ooh, sorry, you liberals, I know that our youngest kids shouldn't be shielded from the f-word, my apologies for offending you.
It's the typical "Exponential increase in swearing = DOWNFALL OF CIVILIZATION" wankery, mixed with the old chestnut "I don't want my kids to watch this, pervert" vs. "then change the channel, dumbass". But quite possibly the most concentrated source of WTF-ery in the whole thread is on page two from Harpua420:
This country will strangle itself on their "freedoms."
(This begs for some kind of '"scare quotes" make you more persuasive' tag.)
There's also some ouroboros-like reoccurring wank with atari030 when he refers back to his comments on last month's Ars article about the Parents Television Council (apparently this is His Thing - if you have an Ars account you can see through his profile that all but one of his posts are on the PTC articles); and an incredibly uncreative self-Godwinizing pro-PTC troll-sock created just for the occasion rears its ugly head at the end of page 4: selfrighteousliberalasshole (Joined: 16 Nov 2010 11:05 | Last visited: 16 Nov 2010 16:36 | Total posts: 1)
ETA: Finally reading atari030's older comments. My god, it's a lulz sundae with point-missing sprinkles smothered in NostalgiaVision sauce topped with a classic passive-aggressive flounce (which he immediately went back on as soon as another PTC article was posted, apparently):
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*Honestly, when one looks back in time in terms of overall generational 'well being' one tends to pick the 50's and possibly the 80's as very idealistic points in American life. Hmmmm, it also just so happens that those time periods were ones of very (50's) and fairly (80's) prudish standards compared to today. Outside of the knowledge-base gained and technological advancements, I can't say there have been any marked strides in our cultural development since then. In fact, I think we've taken a great many steps backwards and regressed.
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"Also, your fear of the youth of today showing a lack of discipline and morals is almost identical to the writings of Plato. Yes, we've been going to hell in a handbasket since 400 BC! "
If you want to compare my writings to that of Plato, I'll gladly accept that. Thanks, I appreciate the compliment.
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*in relative terms 80's MTV was like Howdy Doody. I think your parents will readily confirm my assertion.
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"And parents in the 80's were complaining about the exact same thing. Their parents did the same. And their parents before them, and so on. Somehow society has managed not to implode upon itself. Do you not see the same pattern? "
Sure I see the same pattern, but all that pattern tells me now that I'm older and that I have some perspective is that it's true. We're slowly getting worse and worse
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*If you lived through the 80's you'd see that there's no real comarison between what was on in the 80s and what is on now. It's foolish to even try and argue that they're somehow comparable. It's like night and day different.
I suspect that you didn't experience the 80's directly otherwise you wouldn't even question what I'm saying.
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*Well, I'm out folks. There's only so much negativity one can take. Enjoy further discussions on these forums as I won't be.
(....'Yay, the only guy that didn't agree with the rest of us left'....)
suggested tags: think of the children, sockpuppets, godwin's, censorship, language, parents taking shit too seriously
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(131 comments | comment on this)
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| Monday, November 15th, 2010
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1:06 pm - AnNaNoWaRe (Annual NaNo Wank Report)
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ladylauren
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It's been a relatively quiet month. Alan Holman has made his triumphant and frequently suppressed return as the user TrutherWriter, whose novel synopsis includes such gems as:
Tim is real, but Israel is a CIA/MOSSAD creation. Black helecoptors, paranoid dreams ... 9/11 was an inside job -- you know it, you feel it, you pump your fist, you're a champion of the truth! Vaccines cause autism whether Tim's teacher thinks different. Why the hell do the girls that chase Tim so violently get a couch in their bathrooms while non-violent Tim gets a not-chocolate surprise that takes some time to wash out the stink!
His regular posts don't make much more sense either, but sadly I cannot link to any of them as they've all been suppressed for being abusive towards others or using profanity.
But I know what you really want, OTFers; news on the infamous marienbadmylove. What's this? you ask. Surely he was banned last year for plagiarism? Well, apparently being banned twice didn't stop Alan Holman, and being banned a mere once hasn't stopped Mark Leach, whose surname is (almost) quite apropos. Thus far his one and only post is in the Extreme Accomplishments Shoutout thread, as follows:
Success! I just crossed the 500,000-word mark with “A Canadian Marienbad,” my Nano entry and literary tribute to the people of Canada. I created the manuscript over a couple of hours by using a do-it-yourself novel kit I read about in the letters section of the infamous Laura Miller story on Salon.com. Starting with the basic 50,000-word template, I repeatedly pressed the copy and paste button in order to push the manuscript past one million words. Then I used my computer’s find and replace editing functions to customize the text with Canadian concepts and themes, turning it into my own story. By the end of the month I expect to expand my manuscript to five million words. Shouldn’t be too hard. After all, it’s just a matter of repeatedly pressing CTRL-V, then adding in my own ideas. But I will need to be careful not to strain my index finger!
Well, at least we assume it's the same author. He's posting under the name bccomox, also on LiveJournal, and so far this is his only post. Time will tell if there is more wank yet to be mined from this source.
The prize for NaNoWanker of the Year, however, undoubtedly goes to Laura Miller, whose article on Salon.com, Better yet, DON'T write that novel drew the ire of a multitude of NaNo participants, who didn't appreciate being told their work was a waste of time, nor the implication that because they were writers, not readers, they were doing the publishing world a disservice. Word of advice to Ms. Miller: writers fairly often also happen to be readers. They also happen to be capable of reading your ill-informed article and taking umbrage.
It just makes this wanka wonder where Miller thinks professional writers come from. Here's a hint: they do not spring fully formed from the forehead of some fantastic literary deity. They start out small and end up big. And for some of them, that start is NaNoWriMo.
current mood: busy
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(200 comments | comment on this)
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| Thursday, November 4th, 2010
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11:13 am - Public domain... I don't think those words mean what you think they mean.
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thoms
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I came across this on twitter, thanks to John Scalzi.
Back in 2005, Monica Gaudio wrote an Ice Dragon (? I don't know what this is.) entry called A Tale of Two Tarts that appeared on the Godecookery website. It is copyrighted and on a web-domain that Monica herself owns.
Last week, a friend contacted her, asking her how she had gotten published! Monica's answer "I... didn't?"
Turns out, she had. The magazine Cooks Source (Facebook here, they are also a paper publication.) had lifted her article from the Godecookery site and put it in their magazine.
She contacts the magazine via phone and then through the "Contact Us" link on the website, and exchanges emails with them. Finally, they ask her "what she wants." She replies that she wants an apology on Facebook, a printed apology in the magazine, and $130 donated to the Columbia School of Journalism.
What she got in response was this (quoted from her post):
Yes Monica, I have been doing this for 3 decades, having been an editor at The Voice, Housitonic Home and Connecticut Woman Magazine. I do know about copyright laws. It was "my bad" indeed, and, as the magazine is put together in long sessions, tired eyes and minds somethings forget to do these things.
But honestly Monica, the web is considered "public domain" and you should be happy we just didn't "lift" your whole article and put someone else's name on it! It happens a lot, clearly more than you are aware of, especially on college campuses, and the workplace. If you took offence and are unhappy, I am sorry, but you as a professional should know that the article we used written by you was in very bad need of editing, and is much better now than was originally. Now it will work well for your portfolio. For that reason, I have a bit of a difficult time with your requests for monetary gain, albeit for such a fine (and very wealthy!) institution. We put some time into rewrites, you should compensate me! I never charge young writers for advice or rewriting poorly written pieces, and have many who write for me... ALWAYS for free!
Monica is rightfully mad.
nihilistic_kid on LJ has a post about it here as well. And Scalzi posted on his blog as well.
And John Scalzi linked to his recipe for Schadenfreude Pie on the Cooks Resource Facebook wall here, with a plea that they "don't steal it." Bwah!
EDIT: The Smart Bitches have picked it up.
Also, people are looking. And unshockingly, this isn't the first time this has happened. This Pancetta and Green Onion Tart? Is copyright to Giada deLaurentiis, and appears on the Food Network website under her name.
EDIT of "Oh Fuck, The Internet is Here" - The cookssource.com website is down. Dear Author and Gawker have both picked it up.
EDIT the Heidipology: This is the last one from me, anything else will have to go into the comments, cause I'm going out and having me a drink from a non-plagiarized source. Judith Griggs has "apologised" via the wall of the Facebook account. Facebook is linked up above. Marvel, will you? (Screencap here in case she takes it down.)
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(312 comments | comment on this)
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| Wednesday, November 3rd, 2010
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5:45 pm - Wikia changes layout; becomes the next LJ in userbase trust
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sarracenia
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Wikia, for those of you who don't know, is a wiki site that lets you start a wiki on any subject. It's used a lot for things like Wookieepedia, the biggest Star Wars wiki or WoWWiki, which'll play a starring role in the wank, down to wikis for individual RPs.
Recently, they've been working on a new skin, that will be used by all the wikis on their site. Since before, Wikia let people modify the format extensively, they weren't real happy about this. Especially since it apparently looked terrible for the most complicated pages, used, of course, mostly by the most popular wikis with boatloads of information to organize. People really don't like it.
In fact, they don't like it enough that some of them, especially the big ones who'll have their formatting jerked to hell, start moving their content to a new site. After all, it's their content to do with as they please, right? Wikia views this as vandalism, and stops people from deleting their content, and a whole bunch of people suddenly realize that Creative Commons licenses mean that the hosting site can continue to use your material even after you hate them. Whoops! Note: WoWWiki hates the new layout so much that they abandoned their old domain name as well as everything Wikia-specific. Now that's hating a layout. Wikia also stops wikis from sending messages to people about where all the editors went.
Today was the day they ceased to support the old layout. Unsurprisingly, people continue to wank.
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(51 comments | comment on this)
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| Friday, October 22nd, 2010
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9:30 pm - KnitCamp 2010
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kookaburra
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I'd say something about how who would have expected that such a genteel and respectable pastime as knitting could generate drama, but I think everyone knows what a crock that is by now.
Recently, there was a large event called "Knit Camp" that was held on Stirling Campus in Scotland. It failed hard. We're talking 6.5 on the TwiCon Fail Scale here. In the interest of full disclosure, I have only the vaguest idea of what went on because I joined Ravelry a week or so after the debacle, and the Cult of Nice is strong on there, so I'm sure I've only accumulated a very small amount of the information that's out there.
Much of the drama happened on the Ravelry.com forums, and you need to be a member to read them, but it has open membership. Links that go to Ravelry.com threads will be denoted by an asterisk. (*)
Anyone with more information/links/screenshots, please let me know, and I'll add it to the post.
( Who cares about my outstanding debts! I have BUNNIES to watch! )
current mood: In Denial
current music: Little Bunny Foo Foo
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(115 comments | comment on this)
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| Saturday, October 16th, 2010
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5:28 pm - Geocaching Wank - I NEVER THOUGHT I WOULD SEE IT
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sisterelwood
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When I saw this on ![[info]](http://www.journalfen.net/img/community.gif) wank_report my little heart just burst. This may have happened before but I've never seen it and I've certainly never reported on it. Hang on, kids - it's time to go on a treasure hunt! Much thanks goes to the mousey who originally reported this. I use the mouse's report and supplement it where I think necessary with my own words. Enjoy!
( explanations of geocaching )
Just-do-Somethin', a suspected sockpuppet account over on geocaching.com, lists a new cache hide that no-one can find. The comments go from curious to angered to enraged as cache seekers come up empty-handed and the cache owner refuses to change anything. Suspected sock-puppets show up to defend the cache owner and you can all guess how well that turns out.
And then a "found" log is posted on Thursday. It is at this point that all hell breaks loose leading some to believe that maybe a second cache has been placed at the coordinates instead. But before much else can be done the cache owner deletes the 'found' logs - it just keeps getting better.
The forums are abuzz with talk of this mystery and theories about what is going on. Some people are calling for the cache to be archived while others are calling them busybodies. And then, of course, we have the ever mature "you're just a crybaby" word slinging and comments on who is smarter - cachers from Illinois or cachers from New York.
Why, yes, those are all adults in the conversations - why do you ask?
Eventually the original hider shows up and is perfectly reasonable. Said owner posts pictures of the famed hide in an attempt to prove themselves. The final hoo-rah occurs though when the cache owner archives (meaning 'deactivates') the cache and flounces. Because that is what all innocent and truthful people do.
Wank continues on the forums and on the log page, as members try to out the sockpuppets and diagnose fake cache locations/cache placement timelines. Cachers from all over throw their two cents worth in and it just keeps going and going. There is even some white-knighting thrown in for good measure by Cach-N-Carry who doesn't seem to understand the concept of paragraphs -
http://forums.groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=261743&st=226#
In the end everyone looks like a wanker and 'GOF and Bacall' sums it up best-
Both sides of this argument are ridiculous. Can't find a cache and looking has stopped being fun? Ignore it and move on. And taking apart someones retaining wall to hide a needle in the haystack nano so that nobody can find it is not clever. It's vandalism.
FYI - geocaching.com is free and open to join but some of the user profiles cannot be viewed unless you are logged in. However, it is a public website. I've posted caps on here just for ease of access.
Explanations of Letters
DNF = did not find
TFTC = thanks for the cache
TNLN = took nothing, left nothing
CO = cache owner
FTF = first to find
EDIT: Just as a side-note - many cellphones now have apps available for geocaching so you don't have to spend the extra money on a separate GPS. Thanks da_angel729 for reminding me of this. I know for certain that the iPhone has a geocaching application in case any of you have an iPhone and want to give geocaching a try.
current mood: *sporfle!*
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(24 comments | comment on this)
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| Tuesday, October 5th, 2010
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2:32 pm - Your Button Is Bad and You Should Feel Bad
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| Saturday, September 18th, 2010
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12:28 pm - This feminist blog which depends on your donations is not here to educate you!
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waltraute
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Thanks to the anon at wank_report for the bulk of the writeup, with its singular virtues.
S.E. SMITH accuses Lady Gaga of appropriation:
It's been pointed out that she appropriates a lot of things from musical traditions created by people of colour and nonwhite people. That her work contains transmisogyny. That she appropriates the experiences of people with disabilities. These are all things that I don't think of as feminist acts—note that I am not saying that Lady Gaga is not feminist (because I don't think it's up to me to decide that), but rather that I am saying that her actions do not always mesh with the identity she has chosen to claim. The same could be said of many other people who identify as feminist, including myself, however. Let those in glass houses...
(bonus points for the excellent use of praeteritio here.)
A commenter asks for references and explanation. According to Snarky's Machine, late of the now-closed Shapely Prose, asking for sources is derailing and oppressive:
I can't be arsed to unpack and respond to your comment except to say you're trafficking in copious amounts of derailing for dummies. Your inability to "see" how Gaga misappropriates says everything about YOUR own privilege and inability to google "Grace Jones" and nothing else. If concepts are unfamiliar to you instead assuming the concepts themselves are wrong, you might want to hit up Professor Google. Because the argument, "you're wrong because I don't know what you're talking about." just does not cut it.
Comments defending that commenter get deleted (although some are reposted in the anon threads below). Mods claim to be "reviewing the situation" (i.e., pretending to do something about it). "Open thread" disappears after 20 minutes after irate commenters leave comments there. The current status is "please email the mods directly if you want to talk about comment policy", which couldn't possibly have a chilling effect--not at all.
Snarky's Machine has another reply to that initial commenter on Twitter:
Ha. I love how some weird ass creepy e-troll named whitney is stalking my feed and tattling cause I'm so mean. Who are these people.
People take refuge to complain in several threads in the sfd_anon community. (Which are now locked; possibly accessible if you're a member of the community.) Worth noting are the ones about how Bitch magazine aggressively solicits donations to support their journalism, which puts a special irony gloss on the "we're not here to educate you" rebuttal.
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(213 comments | comment on this)
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| Friday, September 17th, 2010
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12:47 pm - The revenge of Red Rose Publishing
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jkefka
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Previously, on OTF_wank...
Dear Author posts about Red Rose publishing, reproducing a report from Kat Holmes, a former RRP author, and the ridiculous response of the head of the publishing house. Wank ensues in the comments. In fact, more wank than was even included in the original post!
( Add one batshit teal deer and mix well )
Some additional background on RRP also emerged from the comments of the earlier report. It seems, in restrospect, that there were some warning signs about RRP. That absolute write thread has a lot of opinions one way or the other, but bottom line there were some flags up about RRP for a while, including one notable one from Piers Anthony (search for "Red Rose" on the page).
All well and good, but you didn't come here for a history lesson. No, this is for the new, juicy developments. How juicy? Empty legal threats juicy! A couple of choice quotes from the Dear Author post, made last Saturday:
On Friday, I received a phone call from a lawyer in Utica, New York who represents Red Rose Publishing. RRP is claiming that I defamed them in this post here wherein I summarized the reported complaints of RRP authors and posted the president and owner’s email regarding her displeasure with RRP authors. The lawyer wanted my address so he could send me some correspondence that “laypeople may call a cease and desist” letter. At the time of the phone call, I don’t believe the lawyer had read the post in question as he kept referring to “blog postings.” I urged him to read the post and explain to me where I had been defamatory. I reminded him that truth is always a defense to defamation.
I relayed to RRP’s attorney that I would not remove the post unless he could convince me I engaged in a legal wrong. As there is nothing defamatory in the post, I refused to take it down, gave my address, and told him I would await his correspondence.
I think this is what could be called in technical terms an "ice burn." A (former) RRP author makes an interesting comment on that entry about her Red Rose works suddenly vanishing from Amazon. Another, anonymous Red Rose author states that provides some info on the RRP NDA: The RRP NDA say that authors may not discuss RRP in a negative way on blogs, forums etc. It is pretty broad.
Yesterday, shit gets real, as Dear Author recieves an official-looking letter ...with no actual legal content to speak of.
( Text of the letter, and DA's succinct response )
The rest of the post is a point-by-point summary of exactly what was asserted in the DA post, and evidence supporting each statement. I won't bother copypasting the whole thing here, but it's worth reading if you like smart bloggers smacking down legal scare tactics.
Of course, a smackdown post is best accompanied by wanky comments, and we have a few wanky comments. Most of them are just written versions of the MJ popcorn GIF, but then we get this one comment by "Interested in Maintaining standards".
There’s something shifty here that no one seems to be catching. I find it hard to take any information seriously when writers or bloggers refuse to stand behind their real names. In journalism school a reporter’s name is his or her badge of honor.
Just saying…
Followed by at least a dozen smackdown comments. My favorite of the bunch is, quite simply: So what's your name?
So that's where things stand now. I'll be keeping an eye on DA and various other blogs to see where it goes from here (after Yom Kippur of course, l'shanah tovah to you all), but yeah, this could just be the beginning.
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(55 comments | comment on this)
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| Thursday, September 16th, 2010
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10:49 pm - Photography Wank!
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| Tuesday, September 14th, 2010
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2:14 am - Academics Gone Wild...
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major_fischer
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Smallish wank mostly because I had to put some of this together from context without the benefit screencaps...
College Misery is a (largely) anonymous blog for college professors, university adjuncts, and graduate students to discuss their professional problems, complain about their administrators, colleagues, and most especially students. It is a successor blog to the recently closed blog Rate Your Students which was much more closely moderated and didn't allow comments.
As anyone who’s ever been stuck in a hotel with a couple hundred academics knows, it's the comments that are going to kill you.
( The Strange and Sordid Tale of a Women from Kalamazoo )
ETA: Fixed HTML
ETA the 2nd:
From the comments about the deleted kindle post...
Katie has written some mighty goofy shit in RYS and CM, but her post started out with, "I'm not ready to marry my Kindle, but I let it go to second base." And she expects to be taken seriously, for her mind? I glanced at her post this morning, but didn't have time to add a comment that made much sense, that being a challenge with a post like hers: I was thinking along the lines of, "Between the cats and the Kindle, Katie really ought to get out more," or maybe just echo Beaker Ben, "There is no need for us to be this intimately acquainted."
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(23 comments | comment on this)
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| Friday, September 3rd, 2010
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3:10 pm - As wanky as a red, red rose.
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jkefka
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Publishing wank, fresh and delicious! Get yer publishing wank, get it while it's long and sticky!
(this wank courtesy of wank_report)
It starts on Dear Author, with a post about one Red Rose Publishing. Kat Holmes, an author I have no particular knowledge of, finally got out of an NDA and posted a blog about her experiences with the publishing house. The DA summary includes books being published either too early or too late without the authors being told and breaches of contract that, when the author asks for the rights to be reverted, are answered with bills for cover art and editing services, and notices from cover artists and editors quitting are ignored. Part of the horror story from Kat's blog is reproduced, go over and read it if you want a nice, healthy dose of paranoia about picking publishers.
In any case, the founder of Red Rose responds, in a totally, utterly, completely professional and sane manner.
( What I just said is a flagrant lie )
And on, and on, and on. But that's only half this beautiful piece of work.
( To the comments! )
It's a long one, but there's a lot of glorious batshit pagentry on display. Sprinkled throughout are anonymous authors, editors, and others chiming in with their experiences with RRP, most of which are distinctly negative. This is a wank I highly encourage clicking through, because there's way more that I just couldn't include.
And here come the ETAs: Writers Beware just picked it up. Courtesy of sistercoyote
ETA the second: Red Rose threatens to sue Dear Author! This could be interesting, and by "interesting" I mean "hilarious". Thanks rainkatt!
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(84 comments | comment on this)
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| Wednesday, August 25th, 2010
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2:09 pm - Vintage book wank exclamation mark
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cheryl_bites
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(Apologies for the age of this wank [2007] and the shortage of fights, but the strangeness mostly makes up for it.)
Once there was a man called Nathan Carnes. Nathan really liked exclamation marks and the word “whom”, and he wrote a book called Space Ark! so that he could use both frequently. He also liked rainbows and the Copperplate font, so he created a website to promote his opus, and found a vanity publisher who was prepared to realise his dream of the world’s most amateurish cover.
( The writing was bad. Really, really bad. )
But, of course, if he’d just stopped there, it wouldn’t be a wank. What’s more, he was getting restless. During its 15 years (!) of vanity publication, the book had managed to sell only 2,700 copies (er, he says). Accordingly, Nathan sent what I assume was intended to be a query letter to literary agent Miss Snark [blog is archival], and, further, promised to let her see sample pages for the low, low price of $35!
( As you can probably guess from Miss Snark’s name, this was not a wise move. )
Regrettably, I’ve been unable to find any more of Nathan’s public utterances. I am disappointed about this because I’m pretty sure every one of them is gold. Oh, well; I shall take comfort from his “reviews”, which feature an ENT specialist, one of the agents condemned by Preditors and Editors and someone who says, “Your vocabulary is one of the richest I have encountered. Wow!” (Hint: there are times when that’s not a good thing.)
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(157 comments | comment on this)
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| Wednesday, August 18th, 2010
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12:25 am - Mensans v Non-Mensans
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| Friday, August 13th, 2010
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2:06 am - Librarian Wank
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tehrin
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As we know from Harry Potter, children's books are serious business.
Dougal the Garbage Dump Bear is an award-winning Australian children’s book about the adventures of a teddy bear who gets "drunk" on ginger beer. A librarian submits the book to Awful Library Books because the bear falls asleep on a couch and "no one needs to sleep off a soda!" so it was weeded from the library she works at for fear of offending conservative parents despite having received no complaints, taking the book home for herself for her own collection.
( If you give a bear a drink, he will bring the wank )
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(99 comments | comment on this)
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| Sunday, August 1st, 2010
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6:02 pm - Aromaleigh drowns under wank
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sarracenia
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It probably says something about a company when I see them going out of business and my immediate reaction is to make popcorn and look for wank. Some of you might remember Aromaleigh from the last makeup wank. For those of you who don't, they're a small mineral cosmetics company whose founder, Miss K, was known to frequently be involved in wank, including:
-Founded Mineral Makeup Mutiny, a website founded to stop people from just repackaging wholesale minerals at giant markup, shortly after she got caught doing just that and had to discontinue a rather large line of eyeshadow.( Cut to spare your flists )
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(48 comments | comment on this)
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| Wednesday, July 21st, 2010
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9:17 am - A tiny, weeny WTF_Nature wank...
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napalmnacey
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I was unsure whether to post this here or iwank, but I posted twice, once to LOL and once to say, "Dude, you're being really annoying", so I figure it might go better here. Right.
WTF_Nature is a super fun community on LJ devoted to the crazy shit nature comes up with. Freak storms. Animals we didn't know existed. Animals that do exist but mutate. If it's in nature, and it makes you go "WTF", it's in the comm.
Yesterday, writerspleasure decided to post about a species of goby in South African waters that has turned on its natural predator, the jellyfish, and made those squishy suckers into their dinner. A really interesting subject, full of fascinating ramifications for the local ecosystem in that area. For some reason, he brought in an Ayn Rand reference.
markslj is tired of this political bullshit.
Wank is soon in the waters once the first blood is shed.
pazi_ashfeather makes a comment on writerspleasure's behaviour.
Thing degenerate and get mighty personal after that, all while the both of them argue about Ayn Rand. I don't know why, but people arguing about Ayn Rand always makes me laugh.
So anyway, one minute you think it's over, but those crazy kids start up the argument again in another thread. Are the Bearded Gobys Libertarians or Bolsheviks? A question for the ages!
Ahhh... Ayn Rand. *chuckle* Tiny, to be sure, but like the Bearded Goby, kind of cute as well.
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(165 comments | comment on this)
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| Wednesday, July 7th, 2010
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6:41 pm - AP vs. WOOt!; or platedlizard owes $100 to various blogs
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platedlizard
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Recently the CEO of WOOt! sent out what has to be the funniest 'We were purchased by Amazon' letter ever. Bloggers the world over quote from it extensively, and it was eventually picked up by the Associated Press. No big deal, right?
Well, there's a little problem. You see, the AP has started asking bloggers to pay them for taking quotes from their articles. This, needless to say, is not exactly popular in the bloggosphere. So of course WOOt! decided to poke a little fun at them.
The AP, we can’t thank you enough for looking our way. You see, when we showed off our good news on Wednesday afternoon, we expected we’d get a little bit of attention. But when we found your little newsy thing you do, we couldn’t help but notice something important. And that something is this: you printed our web content in your article! The web content that came from our blog! Why, isn’t that the very thing you’ve previously told nu-media bloggers they’re not supposed to do?
So, The AP, here we are. Just to be fair about this, we’ve used your very own pricing scheme to calculate how much you owe us. By looking through the link above, and comparing your post with our original letter, we’ve figured you owe us roughly $17.50 for the content you borrowed from our blog post, which, by the way, we worked very very hard to create. But, hey. We’re all friends here. And invoicing is such a hassle in today’s paperless society, are we right? How about this: instead of cutting us a check for the web content you liberated from our site, all you’ll need to do is show us your email receipt from today’s two pack of Sennheiser MX400 In-Ear Headphones, and we’ll call it even.
Now that's all bit of good fun, right? Anyone can see that it's a joke. Except maybe the AP.
This morning, Paul Colford, the Director of Media Relations for the AP sent emails to both me and Woot CEO Matt Rutledge. Here’s what we got:
MG Siegler:
Surely you’ll also want your readers to know that The Associated Press INTERVIEWED Mr. Rutledge, as this version of the “newsy little thing” you cite makes clear: http://bit.ly/cl8JlX
Meanwhile, AP staffers across the Gulf region and in Washington continue to provide comprehensive coverage of the oil spill.
You’ll find highlights of that coverage here: http://www.ap.org/oil_spill/
Cheers,
Paul Colford
That's right folks, he pulled the oil spill card. When asked for clarification Colford responded:
Root of this non-”story” ($17.50 for quotes) is 2 yrs old, as AP noted again in 2009: http://bit.ly/9ehJGZ
Thanks.
ORLY?
On final note, I am really not kidding about owing $100 for all the quotes according to the AP. See for yourself.
Edit: I apologize to the moderators for the attempted double post. My computer hit a pothole on the information superhighway.
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(28 comments | comment on this)
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| Thursday, July 1st, 2010
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6:30 pm - The government wants YOU to join in the great wankathon.
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grapefruitzzz
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The British government have just set up a website to enable people to discuss unnecessary laws they can get rid of because they think the last government made too many.
http://yourfreedom.hmg.gov.uk/
We're working to create a more open and less intrusive society through our Programme for Government. We want to restore Britain’s traditions of freedom and fairness, and free our society of unnecessary laws and regulations – both for individuals and businesses.
This site gives you the chance to submit, comment on, or vote for ideas about how we can do this. Your ideas will inform government policy and some of your proposals could end up making it into bills we bring before Parliament to change the law.
It has only been online for a day and has already turned into a giant wankfarm. They've already had to suspend new login creation because of servers being robust.
http://twitter.com/HMGwebstatus
Today the #yourfreedom site has had 1,600 users active per second at peak points.
So why not drop by and wank about drugs, smoking, hanging, dangerous dogs, parking fines or anything else you could possibly imagine?
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(38 comments | comment on this)
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