Regarding The Deletion of the TWE · 8:27am Dec 2nd, 2012
Quick background for those who may not know: the TWE (Train Wreck Explorers) was a controversial group of reviewers who reviewed en masse stories they deemed to be of subpar quality. Knighty announced today that in light of their attacking a story written by someone who was clearly of a quite young age, an event which has been detailed somewhat vaguely but still accurately in this blog post by Blueshift, he had deleted the group's page from this site, but had not banned any of its members. A quite lengthy debate/argument over the action ensued. I was going to write another long essay like the one I just posted somewhere on page 7 of that post's comments, but reading through the comments myself, I found that many other people stated most everything I would've said just as well as, or even better than, I might've done so myself. What follows are several that I believe stated my positions most effectively.
Achilles
Has it ever occurred to you that many of the people that post these stories don't want to be writers? Some people write for fun. Some people want to make a story about their favorite characters. Think about what it would be like for a kid that writes a story and then has it sent to a 'crap' folder in some group where people can downvote and mock it? For people that have yet to find passion in their work, I cannot think of a greater turn-off from it than to have something like that happen.
Turai
The site has a mature filter. Is it easy to remove? Yes it is, but it exist and it's the kid's parents job, not the site staffs job to see to it that it stays on. Nothing wrong with negative criticism and it wasn't the reason the group got removed. One can give negative criticism without being rude about it. And unlike porn, there's no filter for rude behavior.
LightPony
While they did offer advice, their advice was more often than not cruel. While their members may try to 'disguise' it as harsh criticism, the truth was that many of their members had fun in taking stories apart. They would more often than not share names of bad fanfics in their personal group, riff them and do other kind of things only for their personal pleasure. I will not go as far as saying that none of them wanted to help: many of them did. However their merits were quickly buried by their methods.
Zay-el
Where in the utter hell did you get this notion that every single person on the internet, who dares to submit any kind of art/writing etc should be subjected to the most thorough criticism available? People don't teach by repeatedly whacking you over the head with a book, or if they are, they're doing it wrong. People as young as 10-11 can easily stroll upon this site for whatever reason and post because they enjoy doing so. Sure, giving tips and pointers is nice, but unless you have context as to how bad the issue is or how old the writer is, there's really no point in approaching the issue with all the subtlety of a runaway bullet train.
Alexstrazsa
...this is the difference between content hosted on a website versus user comments towards the content. Moderating the content turns this from content aggregation into a spotlight websites, and that's not what fimfiction is. Fimfiction is literally a dumping ground for MLP fanfiction, with very few rules regarding what it can and cannot be. Moderating the user comments is pretty standard for websites of this nature. Look at deviantart, for instance. They have some rules regarding what can and can't be on their site, for instance, porn. They also have rules against harassment and abuse. Fimfiction works the same way, albeit with less strict content rules.
knighty
I can compare deleting the TWE group and their practices to a teacher smacking kids over the head to teach them. And I can compare the existence of clop stories as book shops stocking Fifty Shades of Grey. You are saying that it's hypocritical to disallow smacking kids over the head to teach when book shops stock Fifty Shades of Grey.
Fedora Mask
I'd just like to throw out there that critique on something that you put your heart into hurts even under the best of circumstances. If you say it doesn't, you're either extremely uncommonly tough, didn't really put your heart into the thing that's being criticized, or are lying. Even the nicest "you did this wrong" is disappointing, and doubly so if you thought what you did was working. It's disappointing because you are being told that you've failed in some way, and if you cared at all about success, then that stings. You can say "haha this is the internet, get used to it," but that's a weak justification for not trying to be better. Maybe it's helpful to some people to try and look at their own work from a completely objective viewpoint, but to expect that of people is silly. You should be emotionally invested in your work. You should also be able to listen to what others have to say about it, roll up your sleeves, and work to improve it. Not everyone is both of those things, and that's something to work on if you have any aspirations as a writer. But it's unreasonable to chastise someone for caring, when they wouldn't make art if they didn't care.
NTSTS
Fimfiction is a privately maintained content hosting site, and the principals of its administration are at the whim of its owner/moderators. Therefore, while you can argue that negative reinforcement is a better tool for teaching people to learn, if the site administration wishes to prevent vitriol to spare the feelings of some of its users, then that's their prerogative.
JapaneseTeeth
I'm not sure what the big fuss is over the group being deleted is when everyone who was in it can still comment and continue to leave feedback. It's an inconvenience, but it's not like all the members got permabanned or anything. If you truly have the goal of giving constructive criticism to low rated stories, there's nothing stopping anyone from continuing to do that.
And finally, the best and most succinct of all:
kagemao
It's hard to believe the group was formed with good intentions when you read the conversation they left in "the fic that started it all"... Just looked like a bunch of kids pretending to be the police and harassing people.
And that's all I have to say about that.
Apparently, I missed some shitstorming? Huh.
Criticism to criticize is hurtful and decidedly unhelpful. Constructive criticism is always welcome by those that want to improve, even if it stings. Some are too thin skinned even for the most well intended criticisms. With the internet being what is, we will always come across those that can't take it and those that have zero restraint. When they get together, shitstorms brew.
So bring an umbrella and moist towelettes, thar's fecal matter a' flyin'!.
My thoughts on that:
Who the fuck are these twats, and why the hell should I care that they're being all pissy? If they wanna downvote my fics, sure. Whatever. Let 'em at me. I got at least one fic that probably deserves to die.
But if you're going to be hurtful about shit like that... That's not cool, and why do you insist on calling yourself a brony? I only call myself a brony because I participate, I'm nice (until you piss me off), and I tolerate those who aren't the same as me. I also upvote pretty much anything, whether I read it or not. Might as well make someone happy if I can.
As for editing? If you would be offended by having Pinkie Pie berate you for spelling and grammar, I suggest you don't ask for my help. In the comments, I try to be as nice as possible, but when actually editing, I'm particularly focused on detailing. Geez, my head's getting wobbly. I need to sleep.
Yeah, thing about that is that everyone thinks we're the same group with the same values and intentions since the beginning. However, we evolved. That's one thing a lot of people are missing. Sure, at the start we posted train macros, would say why a story is shit and leave. But then we cracked down on that, purged the group of almost 300 members and over time set ourselves up as a group of respected critics on the site. (We stopped with the trains a long time ago. After a while we found it was a few people not even in the group posting them everywhere.)
I've found that with everything we do, how it starts off silly, negatively or whatever, it keeps evolving into something more. This is prevalent in everything we seem to do, including the group itself's conduct. Though you'd actually have to be watching us or be involved somehow to see it, I suppose.
Just came here to say that. Now imma show myself out.
563790
The reason people thought that was because that was the reputation the name had garnered, and that was the reputation the continued existence of threads named that way (as well as the name of the actual group) continued to support.
This, I believe, was knighty's real rationale for deleting the group: it wasn't that you were all collectively bullying scum, it's that everything you did under the name "Train Wreck Explorers" inherently seemed false and ill-meant no matter what anyone said or did to the contrary. It's also worth mentioning once more than your group's leaders are responsible for everything their members do and say, and an inability to control them is their problem, not knighty's.
Ahh, verbal abuse, the one that always spars with freedom of speech.
The basic concept of finding horriby flawed (both "I dun write gud" and "Fuck you I do what I want") stories and using blunt criticism to educate, correct, and encourage their authors, and if that fails, admonish them, is not something I disagree with.
Making fun of and insulting bad stories and the authors that write them is also not something I have a problem with.
However, combining the 2 to any degree whatsoever is a really really bad idea. And there was way too much of that in the TWE.
However.
Deleting the group was not the act of a moderator or the act of a "teacher". It was the act of an individual who became riteously enraged by something and abused their power to unfairly punish, via overkill, an entire thriving sub-community; which had it's flaws and bad apples, just like every community. Instead of a social solution involving reform and communication, Knighty managed to send the message that he will not tolerate negative and petty behavior toward site users by comitting an extremely negative and petty act against site users..
What happened to that girl was not right, but two wrongs don't make a right.