On Sun, 22 Sep 1996, Martin Bennett wrote:

WARNING! LARGE RANT AHEAD!

Danger, Will Robinson, Danger!

Right! I've had an utter gutful and I'm going to say my piece because it 
appears that everybody else is too fucking gutless to stand up for fear 
of making WW mad!

No, some of us think he's right.  The changes were made because many 
people didn't like the level of spam that was flying.  I know a lot of 
people who have been on this list and bailed out because they didn't want 
to have delete dozens of messages a day that had not much close 
relationship to fanfic, which is the mission of this list.

  

Frankly I don't give a flying shit! WW has decided that he's going to 
screw us all over simply because he can't handle a few whining complaints 
from the wowsers who don't like SPAM. 

The list does not exist for the sole benefit of people who want to spam.  
The purpose of the list is for people to read and comment on fanfiction.  
Anything else is secondary.

Not to mention, It's not White Wolf's DUTY to provide this list.  He's 
gone through a lot of trouble and work with NO reward in order for this 
list to exist.  Keep pissing on his head and he might remember that.  

This ML is supposed to be a place 
for discussion of anime fandom and other fanfiction. With this new 

No, it's a place for discussing fanfiction.  Other things also occur, but 
if you want to do anime fandom, you can go to rec.arts.anime.fandom.  
IT's not supposed to be the FOCUS of the list.

regime in place, it seem that a form of self censorship has overtaken 
the group. It bodes extremely poorly when people's freedom of expression 
is restricted because it impedes on a small minority's style. In the past, 
I have always felt that this ML was a real community where everybody was 
free to speak their piece on whatever topic was at hand. 

Guess what.  This isn't a democracy.  No one has any 'rights'.  It's a 
benevolent dictatorship.  This isn't a league for the promotion of SPAM.
WW has been saying from the start that he didn't start this place for the 
purpose of spam.

Nor have I seen much evidence that anyone is being censored, except in 
the form of what they're saying ought to be relevant to what we are 
supposedly doing here, ie, reading fanfics and commenting on them.
 

These days, most people are just too damned scared of what WW will do them 
if they stray off topic. The net result of this will be even less C&C than 

What, you took a poll of the entire mailing list?  THere's hundreds of 
people on here, I haven't exactly seen hundreds of complaints...of 
course, the vast majority of this list doesn't ever post anything now OR 
in the past.

Nor have I seen any particular decline in the amount of C and C.

Basically, I think you have no evidence backing you up.

before, less fanfics ('cause these's no point), less members and, eventually 
_NO_ML_! 

Maybe this is WW real agenda? If it is, he should just say so and find 
someone else to take over running the show. If he doesn't want to do it 
properly, he should just get out of the way and let someone else take 
the reins. There is no room in administration for precious sensibilities!

Oh please.  Get a life.
If he wanted this list to die, he'd just shut it off.  It's not like this 
is a self-sustaining entity.  It exists because he wants it to exist.  If 
he didn't, he'd just pull the plug so to speak.

 

This used to be a fun ML where everybody considered each others opinions 
and feelings. These days, there's an air of dispair and fear around here,

What air of despair and fear?  Other than a few people whining because 
they're being asked to think before posting and not just spam at will, I 
haven't seen much of a difference.

and all of a sudden, things don't seem to rosey any more. In the end, the 
blame has to fall at WW's feet. He runs the ML, it's his responsiblity.

Oh, it's his fault you can't deal with the concept of not spamming 
mindlessly. 

He is fooling himself if he really thinks that killing the SPAM is going 
to improve the group, its not. The SPAM is what made the ML so friendly. 

It's also what drove off a lot of fanfic authors I know (Steven Gagne, 
Paul Gallegos, David Tai, myself over the summer, and other people)

Not everyone wants to delete doznes of messages a day, or has time, or 
has mailbox space.

Spam may keep some here, but it drives others away.  

People were free to let discussion roam freely and a lot of good fanfic 
ideas came out of this. In a lot of cases, people used the ML as a 
sounding board for and idea they were not sure about. In almost every 
case, someone said it was good and the story got written. If SPAM 
produces new fanfiction, then it is worth more than it's weight in gold. 

Numbers please.  If you're going to make statements like "almost every 
case," I'd  like to see some statistical proof.  I've seen plenty of spam 
on this list that didn't ever amount to producing jack shit as far as I 
can tell.  (And plenty of spam that did...but then it's not quite spam if 
something useful comes out of it.)

 

Once agin, we have a situation where WW has recieved complaints from those 
who dislike SPAM and can't handle it. The fact is that the SPAM is what 
makes this ML what it was. Sometimes, change for changes sake is more 
detrimental than helpful...

And sometimes it's an effort to return to the purpose of the list.

On every occasion when something has changed around here, it has been 
because WW has caved into the whining of the minority and overreacted like a 
politician in an election year. If things don't return to the old (and true) 
way, I fear for the future of the ML.

Well, actually, the voice of the majority is NEVER heard here, because a 
majority of the people here only lurk.  But that's another story. The 
fact that we haven't heard complaints from the majority of the list 
inhabitants (or anything else for that matter), ought to say something.

Frankly, I think we're better off with a higher fanfic to spam ratio.  
 

I don't blame WW really, but I think he's made a terrible mistake and 
we're all suffering for it. This letter is going to piss him off mightily, 
but I don't care. When the system is wrong, someone has to stand up... 
It might as well be me...

Well, if it bugs the hell out of you, start your own mailing list.

PS: This will probably be my last post as I have a feeling WW is going to 
show me the door within about 5.2 miliseconds of reading this... Good 
luck all!

Your last post?  I don't recall ever seeing you post ANYTHING before.  
Not even spam.


John Walter Biles :  MA-History, Ph.D Wannabe at U. Kansas         
ranma@falcon.cc.ukans.edu      bailesu@komodo.hacks.arizona.edu  
http://www.hacks.arizona.edu/~bailesu/falcon.html 
http://www.dhp.com/~wraven/john/index.html
"If Phillip II possessed a single virtue, it has eluded the 
conscientious research of the writer of these pages.  If there are 
vices--as possibly there are--from which he was exempt, it is because 
it is not permitted to human nature to attain perfection even in 
evil." --William Lothrop Motley