This message, most likely my last, on this mailing list, is not going
to be an extremely `friendly' one. Those of you out there with sensitive
dispositions, or an aversion to out-and-out rage, may wish to discontinue
reading this self-professed rant at the conclusion of this paragraph.
This has been something that has been held within me for several months
now, and the time has come for it to be released.
I have sat on this list and read every message that has come through
for probably the last six or seven months. During that time, not only have
I been relatively inactive in my posting, but also have repressed a lot
of anger and sorrow over the actions of its sysops, especially `Ratman'.
My reasons for holding back my hate and venom are rather simple to trace,
really; since I did not want my close relationship with Bookshire to
be viewed by Ratman as a conspiracy against him, I chose not to endanger
Bookshire's fanfic archive or his graphics page by complaining about said
sysop's activities. But now, this hostile action toward the Sonic fanfic
community has forced me to react in a firm and unforgiving way, and for
me to present my case to the people to the best of my ability.
Some of you new to the list may be wondering what events and
statements made by said hominid rodent have brought me to make this
rather brash and probably inflammatory diatribe against him (as well
as a brief gripe about something Eric, the other sysop, had done).
Therefore, in the interests of presenting my complaints in an itemized
and logical form, I shall attempt to list the major offenses below.
Some other occurrances also led to my current anger, but they have
either been forgotten or have been of such a small consequence that
listing every one would be trivial.
The first event that turned me toward dislike of the management of
this list is one that could probably be concieved as a nearly inflammatory
move on the part of Eric, which was to utilize a posting of mine in order
to set down a new `list rule'. What transpired was that in the beginning
of my fanfic-writing career, I made it a habit to publish my stories
on the mailing list directly, and then have Bookshire grep them from his
mailspool and HTMLize it for fanfic-page consumption. I had not seen a
single post on said list about anyone disliking my practice of doing this,
and had, in fact, recieved a few positive comments. This not only
encouragedme to continue my writings, but it also gave me a mandate to
continue this practice further. Well, after I had sent one of my stories
to the list on one fateful afternoon, Eric decided to take the opportunity
to put down a new list rule. Can anyone tell me what it is? No?
Well, it was that no further stories were to be sent to the list. He used
the header of my posting, deleted all of the content of the message (even
the `On such-and-such day, X said:' line), and said in no uncertain terms that
no further fanfic was to be sent to the list. That's all. No `good
story, Joe', no `awful story, Joe', no `nice paragraphing, Joe', but
instead a subtle incrimination that it was -MY- fault that this new
policy was being instituted. Real fucking nice, man. Yet, I kept
my mouth closed, and instead did what I was instructed to. The deep-rooted
indignation that I possess now was absent in me then, so I meekly shut up
and obeyed.
However, my ire was rose when people CONTINUED, -TOTALLY- unflamed,
to post fanfic to the list (and multi-part fanfic, I might add) and were,
in fact, APPLAUDED by the admins!
The second incident that rose my bile to a frothing cauldron of rage
was a posting I had made that I thought was not only Sonic-related, but
dealt with the problem we had at the time with Sega's legal staff regarding
the `hentai' pics Bookshire had on the page at the time. A posting on
alt.slack caught my eye during that time period that dealt with a similar
case that Warner Brothers was placing against a similar collection of
porno pics of toons. Seeing that this would be a good morale-booster
for the depressed inhabitants on the list, I chose to grep the article
from my local NNTP server, edit it a little, and post it onto the list.
It seemed quite obvious to myself and my close friends that this was
a completely on-topic post, and it would be, in fact, appreciated by
all members of the list.
As expected, Ratman (with his utter mastery of the King's English,
not to mention his totally superior abilities in detecting -CONTEXT-)
*flamed* me for putting the article on the list, calling it one of the
most foul, odious, noxious, degrading, and generally Pink things that
one 'net surfer can call another 'net surfer's transmissions: `spam'.
Needless to say, it took a far larger expenditure of willpower to not
utterly blast Ratman off the face of the earth with my verbal gymnastics,
but I was able to again contain my rage.
The third slap in the face that I refused to allow my primal instincts
to attack was not even directed toward me, but rather toward the
inhabitantsof the list as a whole. This was an incident best outlined as a
general`policy' issue, but it was a very sensitive one for me. Now, I know
operators of mailing lists have the right to say whatever they want on
the list that they operate. I have no qualms about that right, nor would
I demand it be removed due to the interests of fair and free speech.
However, during an otherwise slow time for the list, an interesting,
but somewhat off-topic thread began; it dealt with the fanfic video game
(that is still under production, BTW), and the general roles people might
play in it. I thought it was amusing enough, and didn't feel it took up
too much of my mail spool with BS. After all, it is a simple thing to
delete 30 messages a day; any jackass with a decent mail-reader can do
that in one keystroke. Yet, after a while, Ratman started bitching about
it because he had obviously lost interest in it. There was a brief
verbal scuffle, which can be supported by said members of the discussion,
and I felt that neither side was totally in the right...in fact, if it
hadn't been for Ratman's creation of a video-game list, I bet this list
would have finally collapsed a long time ago. But it takes two to tango,
petit, and this therefore can be seen as yet another reason I am
unhappy with Ratman's performance.
Fourth was perpetrated by Ratman just hours ago, when he had the
sheer gonads to dare speak afoul of one of the most brilliant,
skilled, and generally superior human beings I have had the pleasure of
reviewing the work of, Dan Drazen. He is probably one of the nicest
people I have ever read the work of, and does more for Sonic fandom
in general than most people could ever concieve of. His writings about
the Sonic comic are insightful and fair, and his fanfic is probably
several million times better than anything I could ever dream of writing.
In fact, I'd dare say that he could write `Nanny nanny boo boo' a million
times, post it, and I'd -still- like the guy.
But, as Ratman was totally expected to do (I was tempted to start
a pool when I saw Drazen's alledgedly `irritating' post), he went off
on this great man like he was a common spammer, dissing him far too
strongly in front of the entire list for acknoledging a quite...interesting
comment written by an obvious nutcase. He should have been commended for
adding even a spittle of thought toward that individual, not crucified and
chastised by the hominid rodentia for making a minor `fluff' post. It's
not like the list was overloaded with spam at the time, anyway.
And now, the fifth reason is Ratman's actual shutting down of the
list for reasons that have allegedly stretched back into the past. He
says that the system load for him is too much (sure, pal...and I suppose
the ten billon Mortal Kombat wankers that hit your site every time another
edition of that blasted game is released doesn't put an infinitesimally
higher amount of strain on that ISP of yours than some < 50 K mail messages
that are in-and-out in less than 2 minutes), and that the signal-to-noise
ratio is too low (one jerk spams us with 5 messages, and two other people
are learning how to use their mail programs...meanwhile, meaningful
discussion continues unabated), or that alt.fan.sonic-hedgehog would
be a better place, anyway (and he -admits- it's more difficult than he
initially said to get your average po'bucker admin to add a newsgroup to
your local NNTP spool, especially if it's an alt.* group...also, Quozl
himself could tell you that the average sysop is probably already wary
of the alt.fan.sonic-hedgehog group because it was allegedly created by
Tom Servo-ish methods...you think getting alt.tv.k-t-e is hard to
cajole your sysop into, just wait until he sees your request for a
group that was allegedly made by Tom Servo!)
Now, in my opinion, this action was taken strictly as a tantrumish
lashing-out at those of us who may have offended his sensitive
sensibilities once too often, or that one was less articulate than he would
prefer, or even just because he'd stubbed his toe that morning. Who
frigging knows? All I know is that this action is totally uncalled for,
and that any human being with a sense of justice left within them would
stand up and -say- something about it. His current rationale does not
wash well with me, and I'm sure that I am not alone.
In closing, I will be sure to tell others about the actions of
Ratman, sysop of rat.org, throughout my various peer groups of furries,
cyberpunks, and Wired devotees; and also see to it that a new list is
createdon a different server to serve those of us still devoted to the Blue
Guy; with a more lenient sysadmin and fairer policies toward the fanfic
writer. Mark my words, fellow Freedom Fighters, I shall not rest until we
have a new list again. I refuse to allow such a hard-core group fall apart
at the seams due to the actions of one misguided individual.
Regards,
Joseph Alexander de LaCroix, Esq.
--
FurryMUCK: furry.org 8888 (Joe_Fox) | Joseph deLaCroix hk512_at_po.cwru.edu
SPR: svansmoj.ctrl-c.liu.se (Joe) | The CDA is bad.
http://www.eff.com/
FT: 198.211.131.13 9999 (Joe) | StH Fanfic --
http://rat.org/bookshire
FurryFuzz: yiff.azaccess.com 8888 | ObMedia:
http://www.suck.com/
Received on Mon Jun 03 1996 - 21:30:11 PDT