The Banhammer comming down on the TWE · 4:52am Dec 2nd, 2012
By now, many of you will have heard that the Train Wreck Explorers has been disbanded by Knighty.
I've deleted the train wreck explorer's group today. Any further groups set up in the same vein will see a similar fate, and anyone attacking authors under a thin guise of fake criticism will not be further tolerated.
Not everyone on the site is 20 years old and deserving of some of the harsher criticism. Attacking younger people's work does not help them, it just makes you a bully, so stop being shits.
The Explorers were a group that were supposed to be dedicated to writing reviews for fics that were recieving more down votes than ups, offering ways in which the story might be improved.
A number of members were abusing the groups name, using it as a shield to protect themselves as they made personal attacks on authors or engaged in blatant abuse and trolling.
To combat this, the TWE admins had implemented new application methods requiring a user to be accepted as part of the review team before being allowed to use the TWE name. They would have to prove that they could write a fair and unbiased review that did not attack an author personally, though unfortunately, some still did.
Regardless of if you agree with the ban or not, the important thing to note here is how it occured. Knighty disbanded the group earlier today with no warning or discussion with the group admins, and now a flame war of proportions unseen on this site before has arisen in its wake. A number of posters have noted that Knighty has allowed several other groups that also exist solely to attack other groups or authors to remain in good standing.
The TWE was taken down on a whim with no warning and no process of appeal. No users were banned personally, so the actual trolls doing to damage are still free to roam. The members who actually tried to provide constructive reviews are the ones who have had to suffer the most.
I had joined the review team recently in the hopes of being able to both improve my abilities to review my own work and to assist new authors in editing stories that were not quite up to scratch. If anyone reading this got one of my reviews and felt that it was uncalled for or seemed overly harsh, I am sorry.
What do you think? Did Knighty go too far in resorting to total disbanding as a first response?
They were warned to clean up their act and from what I have read on this blog alone the TWE didn't fix the problem completely. While I agree that a second chance to go over the reviewers with a fine toothed comb to rid the bad seeds that slipped through would be in better taste. But I think this should serve as a huge red flag that Knighty and other Mods of this site are going to crack down on groups who dedicate themselves to unfairly call other authors crap. Just from this alone I think the TWE should be given another shot but they should be very choosy on who they let in.
He did good, that group recived A LOT of of warning before shutting it down, not all deserve it but its true, some were real faggots
563254 Part of the problem is that group admins don't have the ability and authority to effectively police their own groups. As an admin, I can throw you out of my group, but I have no way to prevent you from joining again. A feature like 'block from group' would be very useful in weeding out the bad seeds
I don't deny that the group had an unsavory rep, but there were plenty of people working hard to change that. Knighty gave no warning that he was going to break the group up, he simply did without even so much as a courtesy message to the group admins.
Ouchie...TWE got hurt. I have met nice TWE members like Alex something (sorry I don't remember your name!) but most of them are plots.
now I'm a sad panda
I followed the TWE, specifically because they (for the most part) would try to offer constructive criticism and help while also being funny in an internet trolling fashion. To me at least, they had done to comment reviews what The Daily Show did to tv news.
Also, considering the ridiculously large amount of garbage fics that get posted on here (even in direct violation of the rules) I felt a group which was willing to help, but also to knock the pompous but bad writers down, was a good thing. There are numerous bad writers who release new horrible fics, and the mods (understandably) don't stop them, but there should be someone to make sure they know they suck, and let them know they can get help if they want it.
R.I.P. TWE, I for one will miss you.
"Choo Choo"
582478 The Group consisted of two major camps - those interested in doing constructive reviews and those just looking to troll and insult others. The overall lack of group administration powers meant that those in the first catagory couldn't do anything about the latter
Given the groups objectives of finding the worst rated fics the site had of offer, it wasn't suprising that people took offence at them eventually. If your job was to wade through a stinking swamp everyday, you would likely complain more than normal as well.
Most of the members who were actually interested in doing constructive reviews have migrated over to other groups like the Impartial Investigation Ensemble or the Proofreaders. The trolls are still just lurking in the wings
A lot of them, myself included when it is appropriate are still flying the TWE's colours on the reviews, though I'm now working for the Impartial Investigators. The group itself may be gone, but its legacy will live on for a long time.