204 replies to this topic

[KnS]

I requested an invite at AO3. Estimate says I'll receive it ~October 23. SCORE!

In the meantime, maybe reality will dawn over at FF.net and they'll open a MA section. It's not that difficult. (The HP archive I mod manages a "Restricted Section" that requires proof of age.)

[SkiesEagle]

I don't what to say but who are Critics United? Why the reason they do this?
Why they remove MA rating back 2002? I wasn't join that site 10 years ago. What happen back there?
Sorry if I didn't meant it right.

[Nate River]

I don't what to say but who are Critics United? Why the reason they do this?
Why they remove MA rating back 2002? I wasn't join that site 10 years ago. What happen back there?
Sorry if I didn't meant it right.

Officially: A group of ff.net users who are dedicated to improving the site through constructive criticism and enforce the rules of cite by reporting obvious offenders.

Practically: A group of ff.net users who use the guise of constructive criticism to insult fics they hate and who spend most of their time making said insults or laughing at those who complain about their behavior. Their "worst of" threads get a lot more activity than the actual constructive criticism threads, which speaks for itself.

As much as I hate to say it I have known of three concrit groups who operate there since I got into fanfiction: A group centered around a user called Flame Rising (who apparently was an editor with Random House and left the site some time ago), the fanfiction forum, and these guys. All of them had the same MO. Yeah, the offer concrit, but mostly to each other and large chunks of time are spent dumping on fics they hate and insulting author or those who complain about them. The fanfiction forum had whole sections dedicated to trashing fics, if I remember correctly. It's always smelled badly of elitism.

Anyway, this had been bugging me....what proof does anyone have they are behind this, motivated, or that most of the purges came from their lists? The link provided in this thread proves nothing of the sort and I did drop by their area, but didn't see alot that would prove they are this great power player in the move. I agree with your characterization of them trixsie and I wouldn't be sorry to see them go, but do you have any direct evidence that they are heavily involved?

I think AchikuMiyu's explanation seems plausable because any user can access any fic on that site, including the smut they should have been purging since the institution of that rule ten years ago. It's problematic for them because it means minors can access what basically amounts to literary porn. It's even worse in popular sections like HP and Naruto where much of the main cast are minors themselves and people write lemons with them doing such thing with adults...in Part 1. Yeah, when Team Seven and Company were 13. And their teachers were in their 30's. Yeah....

With something like 50 Shades being on that site and easily accessible to 13 year olds, I could totally see them catching hell for that. And if those people happened to also find a story (easily accessible to kids) of Kakashi doing part 1 Sakura or Snape going after Book 1 Harry...they'll be lucky if negative publicity is all they get.

I believe the site has long outgrown their own ability to police it so get situations where plainly stated rules are poorly enforced and when they get in situations like this they take the lazy man's way out which would be to delete everything that's been reported. If they really are catching heat because of 50 Shades then I'd bet they'd want to ditch that in a hurry.

The oldest Critics United post I saw was about 2010 so they seem relative new, but I know the fanfiction forum was around at least as far back as 2006.

[Codus N]

Well, one thing that the new sites I'm shifting to have that FF.net doesn't is tags... and thats one thing that I'm really interested in. FINALLY I CAN SET IT TO IGNORE YAOI!

*cries manly tears*

LOL, I feel ya....

Nate, I'd like to ask you regarding some legal issues that FF.net could've taken. Graven said that by having an age verification setting, even if some lied about their age, FF.net would've been off the hook. Is this true? or do you have a better alternative??

[Konoha'sCrimsonFox]

I haven't had any of my fics purge so far. The majority of authors such as myself having terrible grammar and lacking writing skills does play a factor in survival.

[tricksie]

Officially: A group of ff.net users who are dedicated to improving the site through constructive criticism and enforce the rules of cite by reporting obvious offenders.

Practically: A group of ff.net users who use the guise of constructive criticism to insult fics they hate and who spend most of their time making said insults or laughing at those who complain about their behavior. Their "worst of" threads get a lot more activity than the actual constructive criticism threads, which speaks for itself.

As much as I hate to say it I have known of three concrit groups who operate there since I got into fanfiction: A group centered around a user called Flame Rising (who apparently was an editor with Random House and left the site some time ago), the fanfiction forum, and these guys. All of them had the same MO. Yeah, the offer concrit, but mostly to each other and large chunks of time are spent dumping on fics they hate and insulting author or those who complain about them. The fanfiction forum had whole sections dedicated to trashing fics, if I remember correctly. It's always smelled badly of elitism.

Anyway, this had been bugging me....what proof does anyone have they are behind this, motivated, or that most of the purges came from their lists? The link provided in this thread proves nothing of the sort and I did drop by their area, but didn't see alot that would prove they are this great power player in the move. I agree with your characterization of them trixsie and I wouldn't be sorry to see them go, but do you have any direct evidence that they are heavily involved?

I think AchikuMiyu's explanation seems plausable because any user can access any fic on that site, including the smut they should have been purging since the institution of that rule ten years ago. It's problematic for them because it means minors can access what basically amounts to literary porn. It's even worse in popular sections like HP and Naruto where much of the main cast are minors themselves and people write lemons with them doing such thing with adults...in Part 1. Yeah, when Team Seven and Company were 13. And their teachers were in their 30's. Yeah....

With something like 50 Shades being on that site and easily accessible to 13 year olds, I could totally see them catching hell for that. And if those people happened to also find a story (easily accessible to kids) of Kakashi doing part 1 Sakura or Snape going after Book 1 Harry...they'll be lucky if negative publicity is all they get.

I believe the site has long outgrown their own ability to police it so get situations where plainly stated rules are poorly enforced and when they get in situations like this they take the lazy man's way out which would be to delete everything that's been reported. If they really are catching heat because of 50 Shades then I'd bet they'd want to ditch that in a hurry.

The oldest Critics United post I saw was about 2010 so they seem relative new, but I know the fanfiction forum was around at least as far back as 2006.

So this is where it's strange.... Critics Union is loudly boasting that they are behind the purge. Big, non-committal statements like "Here comes the firestorm," "They didn't like that did they," "It's only going to be getting worse," etc. They reference all the hate mail, a big tumblr post pointing to them at the source, and a few others. And in no place do they ever refute it. Ever. Not once. Still the same vitriol and namecalling as always. In fact now they seem even giddier about it.

So I don't believe they are behind it — I don't believe they have not been given special access to enforce their recommendations. But I do think they are the ones reporting/deleting the most stories, and making the most noise about it. (They have a thread listing stories to be targeted. Most get deleted.) So I think they are happy to take the lion's share of the blame, while FF.net is happy to let them function as psuedo-mods.

I noticed too that their posts only go back two years. I thought they'd been around longer than that.

The other reason I believe the FF.net admins are wiping out stories based on recommendations only is that there are plenty of highly erotic stories still out there. If they were using a filter to find certain terms, or frequency of terms within a single page, then they would have wiped out a lot more.

Which is also why I think there might be more deletions to come. As erotic stories get updated, they can still be reported and then deleted.

I think the unusual amount of updates (more in the past few weeks than in the past two years) might reflect bigger changes in how their managing the stories and the site. So yeah, I'm kind of expecting more deletions to come. Just without such a big splash as at first.

And yeah, I agree about the 50 Shades popularity/publicity shining a spotlight on the erotic fic so easily accessible on ff.net. I would think they could land in hot water, since this site is so predominantly trafficked by minors/teens. Which makes me think that perhaps by having a restricted-access MA area, FF.net might be held more accountable than by just having a log-in M area.

I don't know. It makes no sense why they wouldn't just have a MA, age-verified area. I don't know enough about the back end of adult-access sites (heh heh), but it has to be more than just their tendency to do the least to keep the site running.

edit: looked up a few of the other groups mentioned: Literate Union and the user Flame Rising among them. None of them seem as jubilant about squashing bad fics as CU. However lots of posts did mention what an a$$ Flame Rising was. That his goal was not to improve poor writing but to persuade the writers to quit altogether. Nice.

I would disagree with calling them elitist...I wouldn't give them that much praise! And the guy being from Random House...well, I've known lots of professionals who were jerks. Big titles, rotten coworkers. And if he's come to FF.net to grind his axe, and telling everyone where he's from, instead of letting his actions stand on their own merit, then he probably falls into that not-very-professional professional category.

As for the rest of them, they are only there to bash and hurl insults. Critiquing requires them to be an expert on that topic. And none of those forum mods are experts on anything. Well...except reporting stories and gloating about it. They've got that covered.

(Don't ever mistake those forums for critique threads, no matter what they call themselves. They are police groups. Nothing more.)

Edited by tricksie, 06 June 2012 - 02:11 PM.

[Nate River]

LOL, I feel ya....

Nate, I'd like to ask you regarding some legal issues that FF.net could've taken. Graven said that by having an age verification setting, even if some lied about their age, FF.net would've been off the hook. Is this true? or do you have a better alternative??

Honestly, I don't know.

Several years ago I had to do research for this site when we got threatened by an angry parent (the threat had nothing to do with adult material) and I remember coming across federal laws dealing with it, but that research was lost in a server move. I'd have to do it again. If I have time I will try, but real life is interfering so, I don't know.

I vaguely remember one law saying, yes, you could have it, but that it had to effectively be sequestered from the main site to help ensure underage people could not access it. Obviously, ff.net does nothing of the sort. Officially it is banned, but their enforcement has typically been so lax then people post those largely with impunity. It's bad enough that "mainstream" smut is easily accessible there by people under 18, but fanfiction writers do have this occasional habit of not paying attention to the ages of the characters involved when writing explicit material. So not only is mainstream smut easily accessible there, but things that would probably qualify as kiddy porn are too.

There used to be a law in the US that outlawed "virtual" child pornography. I think this was primarily aimed at simulated porno, but it may have included literary stuff too, I don't recall. I do know the name of the case (Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition), so if I have time tonight I will pull it. Anyway, that law outlawed that stuff, but was struck down. I don't have time to explain in detail why, but if you know anything about why child pornography is not considered protected speech (yes, regular porno is generally considered protected--I know there is a long stand joke that it gets more protection than political speech) then you know why they struck it down. It's a rather interesting area of first amendment law because some of the behavior people engaged in the 1960's and 70's because of Supreme Court rulings related to it. They actually spent a hours sitting in the basement of the building watching porno to see if it passed muster. I strongly suspect the standard of review changed during this period because they hated doing this.

Still, despite porno being protected speech, laws that restrict minors from accessing it (as well as zoning laws related to where they can locate) are considered appropriate restrictions. If ff.net is facing any type liability exposure or legal threats at the moment, I suspect it comes from those type of laws, but like I said, I am not intimately familiar with their details (what is considered prohibited material and what are the lengths you have to go through to limit access) and I'll have to look it up.

From what I remember, he probably is, but "age verification" can be done in multiple ways. A long time ago when ff.net did allow them, when you clicked on such a fic a little icon came up warning about the contents. All you had to do was click yes or okay. I doubt this would be good enough.

Adult fanfiction actually makes people put in a e-signature and essentially makes you swear to the fact that you are 18. It contains multiple citations to federal law. I once did a search on the laws they sight, and if they are still the same sections, the site is essentially telling you that by signing the e-signature you are affirming, under oath, that you are of legal age to view the material. So, if you lie, you're committing perjury (they site to that law too if I remember correctly). I don't know if it would work or if a U.S. Attorney's Office would ever touch it, but then again, that's not about setting up criminal prosecution (and as a user you have know way of knowing if they will or won't) and it's ultimately not their call if one goes forward. It's about liability protection.

I understand the anger over method, but I don't think people are giving enough consideration to the potential level of deep trouble they could be in. I don't feel for them myself because they should have been enforcing this better from the beginning or finding a different way to handle it when they instituted the rule. At the same time, if they really are feeling heat from 50 Shades of Grey and I was faced with the choice off negative publicity over something like that or possibility legal liability with the prospect of angry users over deletions, I'd take my chances with pissing off the user.

The obvious caveat here is that I am assuming this is what is behind the purge. I do not know what is behind it, I just find the explanation a plausible one.

edit: looked up a few of the other groups mentioned: Literate Union and the user Flame Rising among them. None of them seem as jubilant about squashing bad fics as CU. However lots of posts did mention what an a$$ Flame Rising was. That his goal was not to improve poor writing but to persuade the writers to quit altogether. Nice.

I would disagree with calling them elitist...I wouldn't give them that much praise! And the guy being from Random House...well, I've known lots of professionals who were jerks. Big titles, rotten coworkers. And if he's come to FF.net to grind his axe, and telling everyone where he's from, instead of letting his actions stand on their own merit, then he probably falls into that not-very-professional professional category.

As for the rest of them, they are only there to bash and hurl insults. Critiquing requires them to be an expert on that topic. And none of those forum mods are experts on anything. Well...except reporting stories and gloating about it. They've got that covered.

I didn't see any mentions of it when I looked in their forum, so that was why I was unsure they had much to do with. From the sound of it, it could be as simple as ff.net taking the lazy way out or they are simply in a pure panic about it.

Other than that, I completely agree with your characterizations of them.

Flame Rising's group actually created a "form" review they spammed on fics they hated. It's how I came across his stuff. I posted a fic in a section that they had set their sites on at the time and I came across his review. Their forum even held a "contest" about coming up with the language. I only mention his origin for background, nothing more. I agree lots of professionals are jerks.

He didn't say much about it, but when people complained about the reviews his friends were fond of mentioning it when people would respond that he hadn't posted any stories to the site.

As far as using elitist, I didn't know what else to say. Some of them are genuinely talented authors, but ultimately, flaming a**holes who intent was to brow beat authors into leaving or conforming to their standards of good.

Oh, and from the reviews I saw, they didn't do any critiquing. They basically said it's "kittenfic," I'm reporting you. They might identify the rule violation, but that was it.

EDIT: Critics United mentioned the Literary Union, are they the same type of group as Critics? My experience tells me probably so. I've not yet come across a critics group associated with that site that was genuinely interested in critiquing. Yeah, they would do some, but really, it was just a method of retribution against the fics they hated.

I don't know. It makes no sense why they wouldn't just have a MA, age-verified area. I don't know enough about the back end of adult-access sites (heh heh), but it has to be more than just their tendency to do the least to keep the site running.

Honestly, I don't particularly like having it here either because I have no effective way to truly identify those who lie about their age. I have to take the word of an anonymous internet user when I ask. I like what aff does more than anything else I have seen.

[Nick Soapdish]

I think that elitist sounds about right. It doesn't mean that they are elite, just that they have pretensions of it. And in my own experience, people that act elitist often don't know what they're talking about anyway.

[Sakura Blossoms]

I'm not sure how I feel about the new 'images beside story summaries, and at the top of story pages' thing FFnet has done. As of right now my main feeling is that it's very distracting, and feels almost cluttered now. Also you can no longer be 'anonymous'. Now I have to find and upload a good looking pic, because it just looks odd now to have all these nice pics to represent the authors, then yours is just this blank face-less head image. Humans are superficial. Readers may think to themselves, "well, this author is too lazy to put up a pic, so I'm not even going to bother reading their fic". There *are* people who will think like that <.<
So, all these random new changes including the Purge is just...disconcerting, and I'm not particularly happy with what FFnet is doing right now...at all -.-

[kirabook]

I feel they should have had an plain book like template for all the stories rather than using the author's picture as a default.

[KnS]

I understand the anger over method, but I don't think people are giving enough consideration to the potential level of deep trouble they could be in. I don't feel for them myself because they should have been enforcing this better from the beginning or finding a different way to handle it when they instituted the rule. At the same time, if they really are feeling heat from 50 Shades of Grey and I was faced with the choice off negative publicity over something like that or possibility legal liability with the prospect of angry users over deletions, I'd take my chances with pissing off the user.

Yes, I agree. It's easy for users to focus on their feelings of entitlement and freedom on the internet (I know I do when I'm strictly a user), but for site owners it's a big deal.

The Harry Potter fan fiction archive I co-mod solved the adult material issue by having an access request process. Users request elevated access by affirming that they are 18 years of age or older and specifying their birthdate. Then their request is entered into an administrative queue. Our staff goes through each access request and we attempt to verify the user's age (performing searches against the email address, username, etc.) and grant access if we find nothing suspicious about the request. An email is then sent to the user granting access, and stating their legal responsibility for claiming to be 18 or older. It's not foolproof, but any user found to be lying about their age (either at the time of the request or later) is banned from the site, so are any subsequent attempts by that user to gain access (by IP matching, etc.) It's time-consuming and a PITA, but it's easier to catch people than you might imagine.

Our archive currently has just under 89,000 registered users (not counting the forums, which has its own adult, special access sub-forum) and 53K of those are registered for adult access. It's been a lot of work for us, but we take our responsibility as mods seriously. Not only is keeping adult material out of the hands of underaged children the right thing to do, it was JK Rowling's request. We figured if she was cool enough to encourage fan fiction based on her characters -- as long as kids couldn't stumble across the smutty stuff -- the least we could do was meet her expectation.

Even in the restricted section of the forum we had to delete stuff occasionally -- such as the threads that deteriorated into leering/graphic comments about what sort of s3x acts our adult users wanted to perform on the underage actors in the HP movies. We would have preferred not to censor anyone, but it was beyond the pale and our on-staff lawyer said that stuff had to go. To this day, our admin team is hated by some of those users who had their inappropriate comments deleted -- you know, because when they wouldn't follow the posted rules we took action.

Edited by KnS, 06 June 2012 - 05:33 PM.

[Konohakitten]

I'm not sure how I feel about the new 'images beside story summaries, and at the top of story pages' thing FFnet has done. As of right now my main feeling is that it's very distracting, and feels almost cluttered now. Also you can no longer be 'anonymous'. Now I have to find and upload a good looking pic, because it just looks odd now to have all these nice pics to represent the authors, then yours is just this blank face-less head image. Humans are superficial. Readers may think to themselves, "well, this author is too lazy to put up a pic, so I'm not even going to bother reading their fic". There *are* people who will think like that <.<
So, all these random new changes including the Purge is just...disconcerting, and I'm not particularly happy with what FFnet is doing right now...at all -.-

I agree the pictures are really distracting and the look of the page itself really does look cluttered, I dont like it. Even when you login your image at the top of the page is just blah! I feel it makes everything else harder to focus on, or is that just me? I find it annoying that and I cant stand how they do this along with the purge. Its like hey we're totally going to just deleted all your hard work, oh but not to worry you can now have a new image by your story...that we just deleted.

[Lid]

Boy I'm late to this, but might as well say what's on my mind. First of all, I'm wondering why they couldn't just add an age verification to rated "M" fics. What really bothers me is how they are just deleting fics that have extreme violence and/or sexual content. I've been reviewing films now for nearly four years and I have seen plenty of movies that have used extreme violence and/or sexual content to entertain or tell a story. The fact that FF.net is basically deleting fics that are doing things that have been in films as well as everywhere else in the media is ridiculous.

[SkiesEagle]

Just how many Naruto stories from FFnet have lost? When the last times that Naruto stories were total?
I look up now it has over 303,063 of Naruto. I only saw the crossover Naruto were down by bit past several days. I remember it was over 13,000 crossover and now it has over 12,947.

[Sakura Blossoms]

Just how many Naruto stories from FFnet have lost? When the last times that Naruto stories were total?
I look up now it has over 303,063 of Naruto. I only saw the crossover Naruto were down by bit past several days. I remember it was over 13,000 crossover and now it has over 12,947.

Ouch. So many stories pointlessly lost...

[ultranx]

am i one of the only people that never lies about age on the internet now(and never lies about age period)? another reason why i think society is going downhill. some crazy naruto fan, i think it was an nh fan, even thought just because hinata is in the war that she knows about kurama( which she doesn't) and thinks anyone who thinks otherwise is just a stupid teenager, which makes me angry since i'm 21. this was on youtube. but i agree, it's suddenly wrong to have naruto stories like that when naruto has perverted stuff a lot? not to mention just about all anime/manga.

Edited by ultranx, 06 June 2012 - 10:15 PM.

[ultranx]

Mmm Come and think of it...I notice that in Naruto has for NaruSaku have over 1,367...
For NaruHina have over 3,016....
I was 18 at that time when I joon that site but anyway
Most for NaruHina seem to have a bit overbroad when I read some of the story. Not that I blame them but it seem too much. I like some of them but I find it a little too much. However the authors have a right to write whatever they want to write their stories...Sorry if I sound rude.
NaruSaku seem to be fine it not much overbroad in most stories. I find it some of them are very interseting to read and enjoy love reading stories lol

Ehh...yeah

what do you mean, i wasn't saying anything about them not having the rights to write stories they want, i'm just saying this: how is it right to delete all the perverted naruto fics when naruto itself has pervertedness?this isn't writers deleting fics, it's ff.net and all these critics unions and basically deleting fics without giving authors a chance to negotiate. and i was saying how i don't get why so many people lie about their age online (or anywhere at all) and i was saying how some people can be crazy on youtube sometimes. i mean seriously, accusing someone of lying about their age because you are a hinata/naruhina fan and think if someone thinks she doesn't know about kurama inside naruto( which is true, she doesn't)that they are stupid teenagers? that is so wrong.

Edited by ultranx, 07 June 2012 - 07:39 AM.

[SkiesEagle]

Ah I misunderstood. Never mind what I had said. Sorry, ultranx.
I delete my post now.

[ultranx]

no worries, i'm not mad. but yeah, i think what fanfiction.net is doing is wrong. there is gonna be pervertedness when dealing with anime/manga. anyone that has watched dbz and naruto would know about it, especially with the pervert characters, roshi oolong, kakashi, and jiraya.

Edited by ultranx, 07 June 2012 - 07:45 AM.

[SkiesEagle]

no worries, i'm not mad. but yeah, i think what fanfiction.net is doing is wrong. there is gonna be pervertedness when dealing with anime/manga. anyone that has watched dbz and naruto would know about it, especially with the pervert characters, roshi oolong, kakashi, and jiraya.

Yeah, I have read Naruto in manga so many times. It can happens when any characters like Jiraya (I wish he wouldn't died) and Kakashi. Even some other mangas or anime are like this similar. No matter if there are some pervert or violence like Inuyasha I had watch it before.

By the way, can someone giving me a simple meaning of the word "Critics" is? >__<'
I went to look up in dictionary word, so I don't even get it.

I always thought FFnet it suppose to be fun for all readers and authors to encourage to write. Not to give a author to discourage their writing. I am starting to lost respect to the owners of FFnet. Now I move into YFF. Just in case if something happen to my stories or a message, I will show it you. I don't know if I being target by those guys.