"Sebastian Palm" <sebastian.palm@myrealbox.com> wrote:

No, Kenko wasn't threatened with banning, just slammed with an "I  
can see where this is going and I'm not interested"... from an  
admin. Loudest of the fans to cry foul for that - and it *was*  
totally unneccessary - was Don Granberrry, who got booted for  
voicing *his* dissenting opinion with the moderation practices. If  
an Admin can spout inflammatory comments and then ban anyone  
replying in kind, the mod practices aren't healthy. And an admin is  
an admin, regardless of whether the tag is used.

I don't agree with your descriptions, but I at least think I see where you're
coming from with this.

To try to clarify, the list policy has always been the following:

1) You have free speech when you are talking about a fanfic; as long as it
doesn't cross over into personal abuse or obscenity, you can say what  
you like.

2) You do not have free speech when you are talking about an author  
rather than
something he or she has written, or when you are just off-topic.

3) List admins, when they aren't posting as list admins, have the same  
rights as
anyone else. This may create conflict of interest situations, but if  
you ask admins to give up their own posting rights then you aren't  
going to find a lot of people willing to be admins. We are also  
subject to the same restrictions and penalties as anybody else, as was  
evidenced just recently.

"I can see where this is going and I'm not interested" quite clearly  
addresses a
fanfic. It may not be particularly helpful or necessary, mind you, but  
neverthelsss it's within the bounds of free speech as defined above.  
On the other hand, Don Granberry's comments (the ones that got him  
tempbanned) were not about a fanfic, but rather about a personal beef  
he had with DB. He could've disagreed with DB's comments as strongly  
as he liked, but it's not okay to translate that into personal abuse  
against the commenter, just as personal abuse against an author is not  
okay.

As to the ideas of moving FFML to a web-based forum and/or broadening  
the categories of fanfiction that it deals with, I'll go along with  
what the majority decides.

I don't, however, think that these steps are going to solve our  
problems -- at least not by themselves.

Ultimately, we all get out of FFML what we all put into it. The list  
thrived years ago primarily because many of us put in the work to make  
that happen. My suggestion to anyone concerned about the lack of  
quality traffic on the list is the same as it's always been: Pick a  
story that's been on the list, and offer feedback on it. You don't  
need any special insight. You certainly don't need to be an expert on  
spelling and grammar -- this is just one of many aspects of a fanfic  
that you can comment on. If you can just share your own reaction to  
what you read, that'd be great, and you may find as you go that you  
have a lot more to say than you thought you'd had.


Gary Kleppe
http://www.garykleppe.org/comics.html

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