Wiki gives further details on this -
http://en.wikipedia...._Shades_of_GreyI'm just trying to get a better understanding of what's pushing this
Purge, and between Critics United and this 'Shades of Grey' thing, I'm beginning to get a better picture. What FFnet should do is actually create a MA category, and then have age verification. Even if someone someone obviously lies about their age, FFnet would still be covered legally because they had the age-verification, and warnings that you need to be 18 and older to access the MA fics. But no, this is not what FFnet chooses to do. Instead they choose to hurt, piss off, and alienate the bread and butter of their entire site, the writers themselves.
I think there were many solutions FF.net could have chosen. But they went for the low-hanging fruit of having a vocal user group be in charge of policing the site.
I have a feeling there was some heat being brought on the owners of ff.net not moderating/enforcing the rules on their site. So they opted to let Critics Union do the work and be the bad guys.
I think the source of the pressure could have been the notoriety brought about Shades of Grey. A likely scenario could be that some people/groups read the smut in the book, then went to FF.net following all the publicity. Thus FF.net is be outed as having rampant erotic fic at a 13+ rating. Then these people/groups (church groups, family groups, political groups, etc.) could easily have sent them a nasty letter saying that they uld be in hot water if they didn't clean up. "Focus on the Family" type of groups. It's not hard to imagine.
So that would be my best guess of why this happened so suddenly. Fanfic and FF.net have gotten unprecedented publicity lately.
HOWEVER, the upgrades are being done by the admins. People with experience in web development. The language on the front page is weird: "we," "we," "we." Who is "we" and where have they been up until now? Makes me wonder if they've hired someone new to handle dev issues in the wake of the publicity.
But the upgrades are
not being managed by the idiots in Critics Union. That is a user group who functions as half police/ half bully. And NOT genuine critics.
In a nutshell, these people are nasty to other users in their own threads by taunting authors and boasting about what's being deleted, harrass other users by piling on reviews threatening to report stories that are outside
their rules, and regularly use terms like "sh*tfic" in the review telling the author to clean up their story. (It's in one of their latest threads with a mod braggin about it.)
What the mods at FF.net are allowing and encouraging is ridiculously unethical.
These are not transparent ombudsmen, fairly and respectfully enforcing the rules of FF.net. They are merely users, no different than any other high school or college user. They do not have experience or authority to do anything. They are not nominated by a governing unit...they are just users! Like you and me!
It would be like if a group of soccer moms in Michigan decided that half the photos on facebook were too slutty, too drunk and too stupid to be posted. And then they set about to have them all deleted.
The only reason they have the authority to do this is because FF.net lets them. Otherwise they have no right to act this way.
And more than that, they have no experience. They are not critics, and they offer no real critiques. The thread for deleting stories is pages and pages long, clocking in at nearly 2000 posts. The thread about good fics? 69 posts. The writer's help desk? 7 posts.
Their popularity lies in their bashing. And FF.net is wrong for letting it continue. But this group serves as their moderators, so the admins of FF.net don't have to do it.
Reading over my last posts, I want to clarify that I'm not hoping for ff.net's demise, even though I think events like these are nails in the coffin. I'm an advocate for user's rights, and I can't stand when sites like this just flush their users down the toilet.
We are that damn site's commodity. The authors and the content they bring. Without us, FF.net doesn't have a site. They should be protecting and promoting authors, and working to preserve the community that they profit from. Not taking the easy way out and letting a bullying user group dictate the rules and thereby destroy the trust of the authors.
Because relying exclusively on a user group for the policing is an arbitrary process, full of flaws. FF.net is deleting on the reccomendation of the group, without a second thought or without a means of recourse for the author. Sooo, if someone has a vendetta against you or your story, all they have to do is report. Critics Union has no reason to represent an author; they only look good if they delete. And they love to do it! The author is at a complete disadvantage. This process is a slippery slope into abuse. And Critic's Union is high on their power. And FF.net is wrong for encouraging them for their own convenience.
...sorry for the long post!
Edited by tricksie, 06 June 2012 - 12:35 AM.
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