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Trolling, The HMN Crew, and You


Zander

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So, something I've noticed ever since I've joined is that there is, quite often, "troll" attacks that come in waves here on the site. For the most part, it's harmless and humorous, but naturally tends to derail whatever thread it takes place in. On rare occasion I have participated in these, more out of curiosity and getting swept up in the moment rather than any malicious intent. Today, I noticed that it happened again and a few of the culprits were banned and had their posts deleted.

However, something I've noticed is that there isn't much communication between bystanders and these attackers. I am curious what the members of Fuwanovel think about this phenomenon - i.e, whether they think it is a funny diversion and something they're okay with on Fuwanovel or if they want it gone completely, leaving room only for serious discussions [outside of the Coliseum, I suppose].

Note I in no way mean to discuss the moderation team or anything related to them - that is, after all, a violation of the rules. 

So, what do you think?

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6 minutes ago, DarkZedge said:

Quite the can of worms to open dearie, there are wrong doings on all sides.

It is, but at the same time I think it is important to hold an open discussion that accounts for the community as a whole; after all, the direction and sustainability of any forum is determined by its members. Also, my own personal curiosity persists.

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Considering that all the "attacks" come from a clique of bored old-timers that either always did it or can't be bothered to post seriously anymore, it's at least very easily controllable as long as there are admins present on the Forums from time to time. I really disliked when a few months ago the site was literally dominated by shitposts and barely anything posted was worth reading. I'm pretty sure it also looked terrible from the outside, when guests and newcomers tried to see what's going on around here or to evaluate the site. It was exceeding any reasonable limits. And yes, the spamming crew mostly had fun in their own little circle while everyone else seemed to observe it with annoyance or apathy. Thank God (or maybe rather Kaguya) that we're past that era. 

And with shitposts in general... I shipost/derail stuff somewhat regularly, but didn't even get a warning so far. This means that either there's some horrible bias involved, or there are some common-sense distinctions between having fun from time to time and making a total mess. Forum without shitposts is boring. Forum with mostly shiposts is unproductive and unreadable for anyone not intimately involved with the "meta" side of things. And I rather like where the line is drawn right now. 

Edited by Plk_Lesiak
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Ninja's by Plk_Lesiak. Yeah, for people actually trying to have a discussion only to have that discussion drowned out by those who are bored and want to just be disruptive, it's incredibly annoying. That's why there's a chatter forum made specifically to fuck around (go at it, not judging) in.

But again like Plk_Lesiak said there's an element of mucking around in every discussion, and it's all about where the line is drawn. I'm very happy with where the mods currently have the line, to be honest :) 

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Tsk I always miss the fun.

I don't care much about it, but these young spammers nowadays they go too far! Too far!

Or at least I guess they do.  I've been spamming since 09 and rarely have I ever gotten in trouble for it. I think the worst that ever happened was a mod or two asked me to tone down my fucking cursing when I was stationed at Minitokyo. The bastards.:maple:

But I'm an indisputable pedigree with plenty of notches under my belt.

It's all where you draw the line I guess.

 

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it is annoying especially with my pal umw earlier. i dont want to get to into but unlimitedmoeworks has been dealing with a lot and we've dealt with a lot from him, not in a necessarily bad kind of way but we're trying to help him overcome his social anxiety and to have discussions just go off the rails for the sake of it is annoying. this is just one example and i know people reading this who think im being malicious towards because of past clashing but it took a lot for umw to come clean to everyone. i know you guys see it as being harmless and it is but really derailing a convo for the sake of... whatever is off putting to other users who want to have a discussion. 

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1 hour ago, Darklord Rooke said:

Ninja's by Plk_Lesiak.

Same here and I would say pretty much the same. The forum is a nice place to show up on and in order to keep it that way, it is important to be able to have serious topics. At the same time it is boring if it's too strict with stay on topic. For instance the other day somebody made a typo while writing meet and it came out "protagonist meats heroine". I mentioned something about turning into a H scene or whatever, got a laughing reaction and that's it. It was funny, yet no replied to that and as such no topic derailment. The main topic of the tread was about some technical problem and it ended up being solved. In fact the other part of my post was on to the problem with an explanation to what went wrong. I consider this a decent example of a good balance between "shitposting" and staying on topic.

1 hour ago, Plk_Lesiak said:

And with shitposts in general... I shipost/derail stuff somewhat regularly, but didn't even get a warning so far. This means the either there's some horrible biases involved, or there are some common-sense distinctions between having fun from time to time and making a total mess.

According to my own view, I never shitpost, but I suspect some people would claim otherwise. I never got a warning either, but I suspect it's due to careful consideration of what I post. When I have written a post, I read it prior to posting to make sure it came out as I planned. It happens once in a while that I abandon posting because it didn't come out right and would be more annoying than fun or informative. If it's supposed to be fun, the goal should be to laugh with somebody, not laugh at somebody. It's particularly if I feel I got that one wrong that I decide not to post anyway. I also evaluate the seriousness of a topic before posting something, which could involve a risk of derailing the thread.

 

The self filtering is working great and the fact that I have never been warned is proof of that.

 

46 minutes ago, mitchhamilton said:

it is annoying especially with my pal umw earlier. i dont want to get to into but unlimitedmoeworks has been dealing with a lot and we've dealt with a lot from him, not in a necessarily bad kind of way but we're trying to help him overcome his social anxiety and to have discussions just go off the rails for the sake of it is annoying. this is just one example and i know people reading this who think im being malicious towards because of past clashing but it took a lot for umw to come clean to everyone. i know you guys see it as being harmless and it is but really derailing a convo for the sake of... whatever is off putting to other users who want to have a discussion. 

I'm with you completely with this statement. Reading what unlimitedmoeworks wrote, I decided the correct action for me was to open up and say "I completely understand you. I tried something like that too". I have been in the VN community since 2011 and what I wrote is something I never mentioned before and actually didn't plan to mention. I left it behind me, yet I wrote a long post because I sensed it was the right thing to do. While I wrote, the trolling took place and completely derailed the thread. Since I didn't read the new posts, I didn't notice and wrote about how it's my impression that behavior like that isn't a problem on Fuwa because I almost never encounter it.

Once posted, I got upset because first of all I looked like a fool for posting "trolling is not an issue" after a bunch of troll posts. However that's not the worst. It wasn't easy for me to write and I spent ages writing and now I feel like it would be better if I didn't because the trolling took focus away from the topic and my post seems completely ignored. I feels horrible to open up about something and then "we are having fun. Screw you". I wonder if unlimitedmoeworks feels the same way. Because of the topic, I suspect it could be the worst case of trolling in fuwa history. Actually I would go as far as to say this is past trolling and enters the domain of bullying. I suspect it's due to ignorance, but for the victims it does cause damage just as much as if they did it intentionally.

 

I would have to add that I actually had planned to use the time right now for (internal tasks not published) for the Musumaker translation project. Now I'm not in a good mood and will likely end up not getting anything done today at all because of this.

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9 minutes ago, tymmur said:

I would have to add that I actually had planned to use the time right now for (internal tasks not published) for the Musumaker translation project. Now I'm not in a good mood and will likely end up not getting anything done today at all because of this

Sorry about that, when making this thread my intention certainly wasn't to put anyone in a bad mood! I hope you can get some stuff done regardless. And if it's any consolation, I read your post, so it wasn't fully ignored ;)

39 minutes ago, mitchhamilton said:

 i know you guys see it as being harmless and it is but really derailing a convo for the sake of... whatever is off putting to other users who want to have a discussion. 

I certainly see what you're saying, but I don't believe that anyone has the intent of attacking the individual / targeted bullying. He did seem like he was okay with it and was joking around a bit too, and perhaps that might be why those people thought it was OK to continue.  Of course, that's no excuse to take it so far. 

1 hour ago, Plk_Lesiak said:

[snip-snip] This means that either there's some horrible bias involved, or there are some common-sense distinctions between having fun from time to time and making a total mess.

I would imagine some people would try to convince you of the former, but I haven't been around long enough to know. I hope it's not the case. Admittedly, I have trouble making the distinction sometime, because, well, I enjoy shitposting and having fun. It's partially why I haven't posted so much, because I don't want to be bothersome in that regard.

Thank you all for sharing in any case, And, you know, for not derailing my thread with shitposts :Kappa:

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7 minutes ago, Zander said:

Sorry about that, when making this thread my intention certainly wasn't to put anyone in a bad mood!

I'm not in a bad mood due to this thread. I just stated that I am due to a different thread and how people behaved there. I have no problem with this thread. In fact I'm happy that you did start it because it's an important topic and it's interesting to read what other people have to say about it.

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If they kept the shitposting to where it was appropriate, there wouldn't be any trouble.  I won't say 'keep it in the coliseum' (because that isn't going to happen), but I would like to think they would at least know that there is a time and place for everything...  and places where inappropriate behavior both should and will be punished, regardless of how 'harmless' they see their actions as being.

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DISCLAIMER: I didn't see the trolling that happened today, it was long gone by the time I came here, so I'm just speaking about past trollings.

As someone who jumps into the shitposting once in a while, I can't really say that I have a problem with it... when it's not out of hand that is. Just keep the serious threads and boards serious (and do some serious threads once in a while) and let's us all have fun everywhere else! :sachi:  As Lesiak said, a forum with no shitposting at all is not fun, just don't forget we're supposed to talk about VNs too. Maybe everything will be fine if we shitpost about VNs, hmmm...

And poor boy HMN, his crew have all kinds of rumors and legends around Fuwa, but he's one nice troll.

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I'm puzzled by the number of people claiming to shitpost and decided to look up the word.

Quote

“Shitposting” is an Internet slang term describing a range of user misbehaviors and rhetoric on forums and message boards that are intended to derail a conversation off-topic, including thread jacking, circlejerking and non-commercial spamming.

Wikipedia goes as far as to say "intended to derail discussions or otherwise make the site unusable to its regular visitors".

 

Somehow I believe a number of people claiming to be shitposting aren't really shitposting. Quoting somebody to point out they said something unintended or funny is not shitposting even if it is off topic. Shitposting is when a group of people show up and make post after post unrelated to the topic and unrelated to what other people said and it's only funny for those doing the shitposting.

The shitposting today was.. well I'm not sure. It was a bunch of people writing multiple posts in a very short timespan. Even though I read it I can't tell you what they wrote about because I didn't get it and I suspect the answer is nothing. It was just a bunch of sentences without any real contents.

39 minutes ago, MaggieROBOT said:

Maybe everything will be fine if we shitpost about VNs, hmmm...

No, it would be horrible and downright blasphemy towards the goddess of VNs. You are however allowed to make fun posts about VNs and VN themes.

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Our shitposts were in a thread that was kinda about people backstabbing, and we warned about the people mentioned in it to be bad backstabbing trolls kinda as a joke. Note that the thread OP also liked our comments. 2 people got banned for those posts and 2-3 other got nothing so idk. You can think about it guys.

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2 hours ago, UnlimitedMoeWorks said:

Ok, so why is the shitposting and troll talk focused more on my thread in general? Did something happen? Because I was offline for most of the day.

I always figured they use a random number engine to decide which thread to disrupt...

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As long as jokes and "shitposts" are kept in moderation, and posted in the appropriate boards / threads, we don't mind. There is of course a possibility that continued derailing can lead to certain posts being hidden/ a staff member stepping in to ask the discussion to be brought back on topic, but we're of course not opposed to users having fun.

We simply ask that people post with the forum rules in mind. They are there for a reason. (If you haven't read through them, please do so, as it is not our job to tell you what the rules are after the fact.)

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Now the very same thread got trolled again. Solidbatman posted a post with no text, but only an animated gif, which vibrates heavily. This instantly gave me a headache and I have been lying down for the 40 minutes. I'm feeling a bit better, but I'm still far from how I felt before seeing that post and I have no idea when I will have fully recovered. In a worst case scenario it won't be until tomorrow.

This has got to stop. It's the second day in a row trolls in that thread has hurt my productivity (translation project and otherwise) and the thread is not even 24 hours old yet. Even worse it makes me feel bad, both physically and mentally. I have never tried anything like this on Fuwa before.

This time for the first time ever I felt like I had no choice but to report a post on Fuwa.

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3 minutes ago, UnlimitedMoeWorks said:

I honestly didn't find @solidbatman's post offensive. In fact, I got a good laugh from it because I made a joke about him earlier, so it's all good.

Perhaps it is funny if you can sit and laugh at it. For me I effectively was set back an hour in what I was doing prior to reading that post and that's no fun at all.

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1 hour ago, tymmur said:

Now the very same thread got trolled again. Solidbatman posted a post with no text, but only an animated gif, which vibrates heavily. This instantly gave me a headache and I have been lying down for the 40 minutes. I'm feeling a bit better, but I'm still far from how I felt before seeing that post and I have no idea when I will have fully recovered. In a worst case scenario it won't be until tomorrow.

This has got to stop. It's the second day in a row trolls in that thread has hurt my productivity (translation project and otherwise) and the thread is not even 24 hours old yet. Even worse it makes me feel bad, both physically and mentally. I have never tried anything like this on Fuwa before.

This time for the first time ever I felt like I had no choice but to report a post on Fuwa.

Have you considered blocking certain users. We have that function available at Fuwo

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1 hour ago, tymmur said:

Now the very same thread got trolled again. Solidbatman posted a post with no text, but only an animated gif, which vibrates heavily. This instantly gave me a headache and I have been lying down for the 40 minutes. I'm feeling a bit better, but I'm still far from how I felt before seeing that post and I have no idea when I will have fully recovered. In a worst case scenario it won't be until tomorrow.

This has got to stop. It's the second day in a row trolls in that thread has hurt my productivity (translation project and otherwise) and the thread is not even 24 hours old yet. Even worse it makes me feel bad, both physically and mentally. I have never tried anything like this on Fuwa before.

This time for the first time ever I felt like I had no choice but to report a post on Fuwa.

if that bothered you, go see a doctor my dude. That isn't normal. 

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