At 08:07 PM 11/3/99 -0500, Rebeka Thomas wrote:
Just one minute.
Had it been anyone else, you would have let this run its course and if there
were indeed "volumes" of spam relating to it, THEN you would deal with it.
No. Had it been anyone else, I also would have banned the challenge as
completely off-topic, the same way I would treat any attempt to make people
post off-topic subject matter to the list.
and I don't want any denials of the above paragraph.
Unfortunately, you're going to get one anyway.
However, explanations
of just WHY you are holding a grudge against me are welcome and expected.
While to say you're my favourite person to deal with on the list would be
untrue, I have no deep grudge against you. As long as you obey the rules
of the list (laid out in the short and eminently readable FFML FAQ), you're
free to do what you want.
However, when you post a challenge that would fill the list with off-topic
messages for an entire year if even a small amount of people decided to
actively participate, it is the best interests of the list that I make it
clear from the start that the FFML is not the proper forum for such a
challenge.
certainly it's [at least what I had in mind] no sillier than One-syllable
fanfics, or So-and-so writes a fanfic.
Those are fanfics. This is not. As far as I could ascertain by your
original message, your intention was to use the FFML as a forum for people
to conduct ad campaigns for various anime candidates. For an entire year.
That is not what the FFML is for.
Not only that, but past precedent has been set for banning challenges that
produce excessive amounts of spam--even if said spam nominally consisted of
fanfic-related material. Older listmembers may remember the Adfic
challenge of about a year back; this produced a huge amount of "fanfic",
generally less than 10k in length. For about a week, anime-themed ads
engulfed the FFML. Dozens of them. Eventually, a ban was placed on
posting adfics for a while, so that the fervour created by the challenge
would die down.
The impression I got from your original message was that it would produce
exactly the same thing. Only for an entire year, and it would be even less
relevant than the adfics were.
What I had in mind was that each campaigner would post a well-thought out
advertisement, about fanfic length, and involving several other characters.
Whether or not you had this is mind, you made no mention of this in your
original post. As I cannot read your mind, or anyone else's, I must base
my responses solely upon the contents of your posts.
Your challenge said nothing about the format of campaigning or otherwise.
All it contained in regards to that was the following:
"you are permitted to run your campaign anywhere you want to, but make sure
that you run it primarily on the FFML or your character will probably not
appear on the ballot"
Your proposed time-length for this campaign was one year. This is longer
than any real-life election campaign I have ever encountered. The well of
creativity is not endless; while there might be some creative and
interesting campaigning for the first week or so, any election campaign
lasting an entire year would inevitably degenerate into a succession of
"Vote <x>" messages, annoyingly posted to the FFML daily or weekly by the
various people running their campaigns.
Beyond even that, it is a question of appropriateness. This list is not
intended for general anime/manga discussion. It's specific mandate is the
posting and discussion of anime/manga fanfiction. Not the conduction of
virtual election campaigns, whether or not anime characters are involved.
Then the most major two candidates for the largest positions would be put in
a debate situation, and I would send the debate out to the ML, and have it
on my voting site as well. The debate, as well as summaries of each
character's stand on the issues and their political platform would be
posted, along with selected ads, in stages starting anywhere from 3 days to
a week before election day. Polls would open on midnight the night of
November 2nd [morning of Nov-3rd] and would be announced two hours
beforehand [you do allow WWW announcements i think. if not, just tell me]
WWW announcements are allowable, as long as they're not excessively
frequent. Should you wish to run this campaign, debate and voting solely
from a website--with a message board and a voting script, for example--you
are absolutely welcome to post the results to the FFML. It wouldn't even
be objectionable for you to post occasional updates about the progress of
the campaign to the FFML; say, every month or so.
However, the ML is not the appropriate forum to conduct your imaginary
campaign.
That is all I have to say on the matter.
-Alan Harnum, FFML Moderation Team