she who is -

From: snacky Date: August 15th, 2006 01:56 pm (UTC) (Link)

I disagree with your assesment of what happened, but then we all have different POVS.

However, she does control her community, and her reaction, and it looks like she's saying that if she sees, anywhere, someone from bad_penny stating that they used the info from bad_penny in a manner she considers trolling or unacceptable, she's going to preemptively ban them.

The biggest problem with this, as I pointed out to pyratejenni, is that during the Charlotte Lennox/Msscribe affair, people were inspired by the information on bad_penny to contact the police. They posted about it, and gave the information to Charlotte Lennox and it was incorporated into the report. These people were neither banned nor reprimanded.

So, understandably, some people might be confused by this. Behavior that was applauded during the first bad_penny scandal reveal is now suddenly forbidden. I can see why some people think contacting CC's publisher is a good thing.

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From: naienko Date: August 15th, 2006 02:31 pm (UTC) (Link)

I think I'm perceiving a few fine differences in the two actions -- I'm splitting hairs here, because you have a valid point.

1) I had been under the impression that the folks contacting the police re: MsScribe were folk who had been involved from the start, and therefore actually knew more about the situation than was even revealed by Charlotte -- i.e. /what/ police to contact, what names to use. Charlotte was very careful about not giving real details at all. So there's that -- CC has made no secret, and since using her fandom name /can/ make no secret of certain real details in her situation.

2) I'd also been under the impression that calling the police to check the validity of the MsScribe thing was acceptable as being both germane to the actual events under discussion and not specifically intended to cause trouble for MsScribe. I also don't remember it being an exodus of folk doing so, then returning to the comm to report/brag about it.

3) The thing that tweaked me about people calling CC's publisher, and about what Darksilla was saying about it, was this: the attitude seems to be that /because/ CC plagiarsed before, and it's been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt, she /will/ do it again, and therefore it's some kind of moral duty to call up her publishers. Basically, people are contacting her publisher in an apparent effort to derail her writing career based on, as of right now, a hypothetical plagiarism charge. The b_p posts have already had a noticable repercussion, if you look at the amazon listing for City of Bones -- "What do customers ultimately buy after viewing items like this? 32% buy The Secret Country (The Secret Country Trilogy, Vol. 1) by Pamela Dean".
And it read to me very much like Darkrose, Telesilla, and actually some others, were defending people's right to go and do that sort of thing.

I'm mentally drawing a motivation distinction here -- in MsScribe's case, the real-world calling was occuring in an effort simply to provide more proof for a fairly outrageous story; in CC's case, the proof was already there. Calling her publisher wasn't going to provide any more proof; all it was going to do, all it could possibly to do, is cause trouble for CC -- trouble which, if she has plagiarised again, she's already courting, and I suspect that /if true/ she will be caught much like KV was.

In some ways it also goes back to my earlier post -- I'm thinking people are calling the publisher to 'get' CC, and not out of any kind of pure motivation. That's not what b_p is for, it's not what any *_wank comm on jf is for, and I had always understood that to be the most stringent rule of the comms here -- you don't use what you learned on jf to make trouble elsewhere. At all.

I talk too much.

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From: snacky Date: August 15th, 2006 02:57 pm (UTC) (Link)

I had been under the impression that the folks contacting the police re: MsScribe were folk who had been involved from the start, and therefore actually knew more about the situation than was even revealed by Charlotte -- i.e. /what/ police to contact, what names to use.

Er, no. That argument can be made for Angua, but not Oulangi, though. And they got the information from Ari_O, who was the one who had the police contact numbers in the first place. It wasn't something they were involved in *until they read about it on b_p.*

I'd also been under the impression that calling the police to check the validity of the MsScribe thing was acceptable as being both germane to the actual events under discussion and not specifically intended to cause trouble for MsScribe.

If the argument being put forth is "In b_p, we don't (troll) take things offline and get involved in people's real lives", which is how I am interpreting it, then that doesn't stand up either.

The thing that tweaked me about people calling CC's publisher, and about what Darksilla was saying about it, was this: the attitude seems to be that /because/ CC plagiarsed before, and it's been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt, she /will/ do it again, and therefore it's some kind of moral duty to call up her publishers.

Obviously, this is where differing POVs come in. I don't see darkrose and telesilla saying, "It's the moral duty of people to report CC's plagiarism to her publishers" at all, and I just looked at the screencaps one more time. All they are saying (and really, it's telesilla, mostly) is that once the information is out there, it's not up to pyratejenni and the bad_penny mods to tell people what they can do with it. If people read it and decide they want to contact CC's publishers, that's up to them. If they say they did it at b_p, sure the b_p mods can ban them, although as I pointed out already, I can see why people would be confused, as that behavior was lauded during the last go-round.

If people are saying, "B_P told me to write to CC's publishers!" that's another thing, and untrue, and I can see why that would bother people. However, I agree with telesilla and darkrose: once the information is out there, it's ridiculous to think you can tell people what they can do with it. And since you misinterpreted what they were saying, let me make it clear: *I* don't think people should contact CC's publisher. I think it's stupid and I think it makes all of fandom look like a bunch of shrieking loonies. But people are going to do what they want, and for bad_penny to think they can stop that? Unbelievable. And to ban them because they said they did something? Well, that's their choice. Banning telesilla and darkrose for saying, "Wow, that's a dumb rule"? Again, their choice.

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From: naienko Date: August 15th, 2006 05:07 pm (UTC) (Link)

*nodsnodsnods* Okay. I didn't think of a lot of those things, nor did I know about the MsScribe stuff.

Somehow, possibly not based on any evidence at all (my brain is diseased), I feel like darkrose and telesilla were basically going "You can't DO that!" to pyratejenni -- which just seems like a silly thing to say to a mod. Now I feel like I need to go look at the 'caps again. @.@

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From: apoplexia Date: August 15th, 2006 05:14 pm (UTC) (Link)

I can see your point (and obviously I only intend to continue this conversation with one comment in any given thread), but it seems to me that it's still appropriate to draw a distinction between what people can do (whatever they want, wherever they want, whenever they want) on the basis of something they read online, and what they should do. The problem, as I see it, is that if we don't care what people do, then why do we bother with our no trolling rules on F_W? Or are we just concerned with online trolling, and RL trolling is okay? Does this mean we'd ban someone for linking the subject of a wank back to F_W, but we wouldn't ban them for contacting their school/employers/parents/priest? That just seems a) very inconsistent and b) to show a slightly warped sense of priorities.

Me, and I think we certainly agree on this, I think taking anything online into RL is tacky. But I agree with your point that b_p is not consistent in its actions. Frankly, I was under the impression that the whole raison d'etre of b_p was muckracking, so contacting the police was not out of the question. But if you're going to publish information in an open community, then it is unrealistic to think that you can police what people do with that information. But if you accept that, then why bother having rules?

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From: snacky Date: August 15th, 2006 07:04 pm (UTC) (Link)

I can see your point (and obviously I only intend to continue this conversation with one comment in any given thread)

:-D

The problem, as I see it, is that if we don't care what people do, then why do we bother with our no trolling rules on F_W?

I'm not sure where I said that we don't care what people do, just that we can't control it. We have the rules because we care. We warn/ban people because they break the rules, because we can't make them not troll. They do what they want, and we have repercussions for that.

Or are we just concerned with online trolling, and RL trolling is okay? Does this mean we'd ban someone for linking the subject of a wank back to F_W, but we wouldn't ban them for contacting their school/employers/parents/priest?

Well, yes, I have a problem with RL trolling - *over stupid fandom grudges*. If you (generic you, of course) decide you need to contact someone's employer because you hate them since they never rec your stories and they say mean things about your OTP, yeah, that's ridiculous and way over the line, and if you're a fandom_wank member and you come onto fandom_wank and start bragging about how you did that, there will certainly be repercussions (although technically the f_w rules don't say anything about taking things offline, we'd have to figure it falls under "do not troll"). However, if you mention you did that in your own LJ but didn't talk about it on f_w, how could we ban you for it? We might mock and wank you, but can we ban you for something you did outside of the comm? *That*, I think, is what telesilla and darkrose were trying to say to pyratejenni.

Okay, now, the other thing is this: say, in your real-life you were an editor at a publishing house. And say, after reading the whole CC thing on b_p, you decided to talk to your friend, another editor who works at CC's publishing house. And perhaps you mention it in your LJ, and on b_p, just to give people a heads up. You might be thinking, "Well, last time someone called the police and reported it, so I should let them know what I've done." And you get banned for it. I really don't see how that's trolling, though.

But if you're going to publish information in an open community, then it is unrealistic to think that you can police what people do with that information. But if you accept that, then why bother having rules?

The rules are there to stop the f_w members from going to the wanks and trolling. But if f_w members go back to their LJs and start discussing the wank, we can't (and shouldn't) stop them, and that's not trolling. I guess that's what I see as the distinction in all this.

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From: apoplexia Date: August 15th, 2006 08:21 pm (UTC) (Link)

Okay, this makes things a lot clearer. I may have just been having one of my dense moments (I have been feeling oddly maudlin today), because I couldn't see how my interpretation of this could possibly have been vastly at odds with yours.

If that's what telesilla and darkrose were trying to say, then that makes a lot more sense than me reading them as saying "free for all!" which didn't really sound like them. Obviously people should be free to discuss things among themselves. I mean, that's not what mockitymock is for, isn't it?

The publishing example works well, I think, because if you're actually involved in (whatever it is) in RL, then I think you have a right to get involved in RL. But if you're just a demented HP fan with a grudge? Well, is there any other kind?

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From: ymfaery Date: August 16th, 2006 02:11 am (UTC) (Link)

. But if you're just a demented HP fan with a grudge? Well, is there any other kind?

Well, there's different forms of demented after all... ;D Almost said dementia but I think that's something else...?

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From: naienko Date: August 16th, 2006 12:03 pm (UTC) (Link)

They can't /all/ be like vanceone, can they?

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From: naienko Date: August 15th, 2006 05:20 pm (UTC) (Link)

Okay, I'm looking at the threads. telesilla says "are you threatening to ban people from BP ... for things said elsewhere?" and pyratejenni replies "yes" under these specific circumstances but no under these kinds of circumstances and telesilla responds "wow are you stupid"

... and I'm really confused as to why such an attitude is considered stupid. Yes, I agree that what people do with the info from b_p et. al. is their choice, pyratejenni/mods cannot say "no, you cannot do this!" But I'm understanding pyratejenni to say "sure, you can do whatever you like, but if you do bad in the name of b_p I'm banning you however I find out about it." And it's like darksilla went "NO YOU CAN'T DO THAT" -- and after a fairly short round of "what crack are /you/ on?" from ashenmote, pyratejenni just banned them rather than take chances.

If pyratejenni was banning people or threatening to ban people on the basis of "maybe they were trolling" or "they're gonna troll" I could see telesilla having a point. But I don't see pyratejenni doing that.

Then again, literally all I have to go by is the caps princessdot has, so I don't even know what the hell the original post was on about. So for all I know pyratejenni did do that. Based solely on the screencaps, though, I think pyratejenni's stance is right, and in fact she had every right to tell telesilla to stuff it back to her own space. I'd've banned them too, though I don't know that I'd be holding the "once banned forever banned" position that's being taken now.

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From: snacky Date: August 15th, 2006 07:17 pm (UTC) (Link)

Okay, I've been tl;dr all over your journal, so I'll try not to go on too much here.

If by "rather than take chances" you mean that pyratejenni banned them because she thought they were saying they were going to troll, then, I think she was reading them wrong, and so are you.

If pyratejenni banned them on the grounds of a "don't be stupid" rule, again, I think that was wrong. First, I don't see "don't be stupid" in the bad_penny rules in the user info, and second, I don't think arguing or disagreeing with the mod is being stupid. I have seen that many people disagree with me on this one. But if the rule goes, "Don't argue with the mod or you'll be banned" then that's why they were banned. Of course, that's not listed in the rules either.

Basically, I don't think you should ban people for arguing unless there's some rule against that. That's all.

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From: naienko Date: August 15th, 2006 08:13 pm (UTC) (Link)

I can get behind that.

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