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sekiharatae) wrote2010-10-07 04:37 am
Taking my toys and going away...
I don't know how many, if any, of you are aware of the whole RedBootton uproar on fanfiction.net, but I've been encountering rumblings here and there and finally did some digging.
What I decided, after reading what info I could find that came direct from the author, is that I don't like it. Not because of the MA scare that has so many people upset, but rather the failure of the ff.net admins to address the rampant concerns of its members. Not because of the current searching the program is reported to do -- although I think the details of what criteria it uses are far too sketchy for comfort -- but rather because I worry what it will be searching for in three months time. When these self-appointed policemen have reported every MA story, every story in script format, every story that has a 'trollish' percent of grammar/spelling errors, what will they go after next? I've checked the sort of stories the 'Literate Union' consider to be 'shit' (as it was put by one of their members), and they have far fewer errors than what they are, currently, looking to have removed from the site. Will that change? Given the self-righteous nature of the program's author, I suspect the answer is yes.
I could be wrong -- I hope I'm wrong -- but I don't want to be there if or when the escalation happens. I also don't want to post anywhere that I feel I have to constantly worry about a false positive getting my stories deleted -- and I do feel that way. I feel that way, and I don't think I should have to. I feel like... Big Brother is watching, and even if he's not watching me, it's not comfortable to know he's there.
For the record, I acknowledge that the admins are not required to make a statement or acknowledge member concerns; but it is still something I feel they should do. In addition, I acknowledge that ff.net is a public site, and 'Lord Kelvin' and the 'Literate Union' have every right to report stories that are in violation of the TOS. Anyone in violation of the TOS has no room to whine if they get caught: you can think the rules are silly, and you can even decide to break them, but you do so willfully and have to be willing to accept the consequences. Admittedly, the chances of facing those consequences were far more slim before the 'Literate Union' decided to police the site. They grew exponentially with the release of RedBootton. But, the risk was always there. Complaining that it's unfair now is both foolish and overly self-entitled.
However, I also I think this move by Kelvin and the LU is a mistake, and can't imagine what they think they're going to accomplish in the long run. To use an analogy, ff.net is our little suburb, and instead of creating a neighborhood watch, these people have decided to become vigilantes. While super heroes are cool, nobody really wants one patrolling their neighborhood with his xray vision, reporting every minor infraction -- and if one did, it wouldn't really improve our quality of life. People would move away, property values would drop, and the last man out would be left holding the keys to a house he couldn't sell. To top it off, it really wouldn't matter that the vigilante had been obeying the letter of the law, because he'd completely failed to uphold the spirit. He's supposed to protect us, not make us feel persecuted, contantly needing to look over our shoulder for our own good. I don't know about anyone else, but I didn't feel (and still don't feel) threatened by the existence of poorly written fic on ff.net, but I do feel threatened by someone who apparently has a 100% success rate getting stories banned, and seems to have an axe to grind.
Even if he's not waving his axe at me, I don't like his attitude.
So: I will be posting my stories on AO3 over the next few days, and deleting them off ff.net as I go.
ETA: Here's a link to my home on AO3.
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Oh, and for you and anyone else who's reading this, Valentine'sNinja and I, ObsessiveCompulsiveValkyrie, started a community here on lj to post our fics on. Feel free to watch!
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Technically, they are using the fic guidelines to make their determinations of what has to go: with the exception of the 'abysmal English' check, everything else is called out in the guidelines. The poor grammar/spelling thing is called out as well, but exactly what that means (how many errors) isn't stated, so this is actually the part of their scanning that upsets me. I don't understand why someone would want to be an ff.net vigilante, but except for the ambiguity in the English requirement, everything else they report is against the TOS.
As for Lord Kelvin, that's the penname of the author of RedBootton.
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Valk already answered some of this, but I'll try to give you my take.
In the words of one of the founders: The LU -- The Literate Union -- is a society that helps to improve the quality of stories on FanFiction that either break the rules or are poorly written. In the case of the latter, we try to help the author, bringing their piece up to standard. Difficult cases are reported to the admins.
That doesn't sound too bad, but in practice it's considerably less friendly than it sounds.
In the first place, it means they've appointed themselves the policemen on fanfiction.net. Any infringement of the TOS (that's terms of service, and anyone who joins has to agree to them) they come across -- and they seem to be actively looking -- is reported. On the one hand, they have every right to do this. On the other, it seems unnecessarily aggressive, and it rubs lots of people the wrong way on principle. The LU treats all infractions as equal and equally reportable, whereas many others (myself included) see shades of gray. If they wanted to go thru the archive and get rid of any instances of kiddie porn, I'd say: more power to you. Wanting to go thru the archive and find every instance that contains a few lines of script formatted text? Not so much.
Secondly, it means that they look for stories they feel are below par, and every Saturday they pick one story to descend upon en mass to leave reviews. Each review is supposed to contain constructive criticism, but they also openly admit they include flamers in their numbers, and that many members aren't there out of the kindness of their hearts, but for the lulz. I therefore suspect there are people who are targeted who don't feel that they are being 'helped' in any way. Personally, I think anyone with a brain would realize that receiving multiple reviews, in succession, that tell an author all the ways they suck isn't likely to be taken in a positive fashion.
In any event, that's the LU. An author calling himself 'Lord Kelvin' is a member of this group, and deciding that sifting through the stories 'by hand', so to speak, was too time consuming, he wrote a program to do it for him. That program is RedBootton.
There are several things RedBootton is designed to look for, but the one that has people on ff.net scared are stories that contain sex. LU describe these as 'MA' stories masquerading as straight 'M'... and there are a lot of them on ff.net, and all of them are an infringement of the TOS.
For myself, the MA thing isn't the issue. I think if you break the rules you have to be prepared to get caught. For me the issue is the checks the program does for bad English. Exactly how it does this hasn't been detailed, but I've been using word processors for far too long to trust a program to get that right. No word processor in the world has a default dictionary that's sufficient, or a grammar checker that doesn't report far more false errors than it does correct ones. I don't believe this amateur policeman has gotten it right when Microsoft and Corel, haven't. Sooner or later, it's going to report someone who hasn't done anything wrong. I firmly believe that, and the fact that it hasn't yet doesn't reassure me. Especially since I used to test software for a living! =) And I don't believe the onus of proving this is a concern should be on the writers who haven't done anything wrong. Kelvin should have the sense to stop checking this particular aspect, since it's the one that has the well-behaved authors upset. Instead, he's convinced his program can do no wrong.
I also think the criteria for good/bad English will change, given time. When they no longer can find any of these 200 errors in 1000 word stories, they'll look for 100 errors in 1000 words. I just... think that's what the trend will be. I can't prove it, I can just say I'm suspicious. I hope I'll be wrong.
Lastly, AO3 is a newer fanfiction archive that's been setup in the last year. They allow MA stories, and have quite a number of interesting ways for people to search. The number of stories there is far smaller than what's at ff.net, but hopefully it'll gain popularity. I'll include a link in my post above.
*HUGS*
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Um... I mentioned I worked in software QA, right? ^^; I'm good at thinking up ways software will fail.
So, in short, if they ever start wandering through the FFVII fandom, yes, your spice will most likely be affected. I am certain there are chapters of Behind Closed Doors that would have resulted in reports, for example.
It's worse than that, though. Apparently some authors have used chapters to ask for input from their readers, which then ups their review numbers when readers reply. Therefore, using chapters for anything other than story content is now forbidden on ff.net. (Exactly how else you're supposed to tell everyone who reads one of your stories that, for example, you're taking a hiatus for a year, has not been addressed. I've had up on my profile that I'm leaving for days now, and yet I'm still having stories favorited. >.<) Anyway... you and I both know and love at least one author who has broken this rule for very good reason. Even though nothing in her stories themselves should get her flagged, those chapters will, should this group go looking. And the fact that she hasn't broken the reason behind the rule will have no impact on her getting reported.
All that aside, you should friend me here on LJ, MC! Then you'll be able to see everything I post on your friends page. =)