2202633

2201218 The Incredibly Epic Wins of (le) (epic) Winbow Dash
Ahem.

extremely good pieces

Lies.

2204250

joke
/jōk/

noun

1. a thing that someone says to cause amusement or laughter, esp. a story with a funny punchline.
"she was in a mood to tell jokes"
synonyms: funny story, jest, witticism, quip;

verb

1.make jokes; talk humorously or flippantly.
"she could laugh and joke with her colleagues"
synonyms: tell jokes, crack jokes;

2204269

Twas not April 1st.

2204292
I don't see anywhere in that definition where a joke has to be made on April 1st.

2204318 Just saying. EqD wants to be the New York Times of pony news. Great design, lots of readers, sourced information, etc.

While their columnists may do a sort of "Featured Column of the Week" (EqD equivalent: fanfics) They remain professional, really making sure it's a credible decision and a good-quality work. Now, on a day like April 1st, they may have a bit of fun. Hypothetically, they write silly stories that aren't really serious news, things like that.

But the rest of the time, they're professionals.

So, I go to EqD, which I know for having very strict and sometimes controversial story submission and reviewing. Still, I can expect that almost any fic that shows up there managed to make it through the gauntlet and get featured. Must be good.

Then I see that some pre-reader has abused his power to feature his own story, a mediocre Winningverse fic (aren't sidefics to a 'verse supposed to be put in compilation posts like Fallout Equestria or Conversion Bureau?), given heaps of praise by all the other pre-readers, and given a [GODLIKE] tag.

Yes, I get that you were trying to be funny. But you abused the official story submissions process in order to do so.

Authors realize that their fics are going to be judged entirely by the pre-readers.So what message does it send when a fic gets rejected for very minor punctuation errors, and this rejected author sees the same pre-readers behaving like this?

It's on par with the editors of the NYT instantly approving a mediocre column that explains why the human race needs to eat fat people as a method of population control and food management. "It was a joke, so it's all okay" would not cut it. People would get fired, people would stop reading, and its credibility would be seriously hurt.

So either ACT like you people want to maintain the quality you claim to have, or just drop the facade.

2213886
I've never seen us claim that we were the new york times, or that we have to ALWAYS be professional. We do non-fic joke posts all the time, but you don't seem very bothered about those.

We've posted a few joke fics before, but they're not the norm, and claiming that outliers define the norm is not how things work. Their humor and style has different purposes; one is earnest and one is ironic. Besides, it isn't a winningverse fic. Did you read it? Doesn't sound like it.

2198151

It's not racist as French and British are not races, it's actually racist to declare them as being such.

2201099

"The only difference is that they're usually well written."

Obviously, because you are the ones who define what "well written" means, the EQD does not match what most literary critics think. That being said, the statement is still true as there is a mininum bar on the quality of the stuff prereaders write as all the complete and other crap would be written by people who wouldn't qualify as prereaders.

2215671
I understand what you are saying. However, you need to remember that a large portion of bronydom looks up to EQD, so it is important you keep yourselves professional. That said, being professional does not exclude having humorous or lighthearted attitudes. It's all about knowing when and when not to horse around. (No pun-intended)

I have no idea if I'm making sense, perhaps not. Either way, God bless.

2213886

You do realize the [GODLIKE] tag is only used for joke posts like Spiderses? Even Fallou Equestria only got a legendary tag.

2218464>>2215671>>2218742

obake pretty much said it.

You set all these strict guidelines about what you will feature when it comes to stories and artwork. You want cited sources for information. That's the behavior of a professional "organization", that wants to deliver a quality experience to its followers.

If EqD is not that, then are they simply a website that likes to be really exclusive just for the hell of it?

2237336 2218464

Something I also forgot to address before: we all approved that pre-reader's story. He didn't abuse his power to post it; we all let him because we wanted to post it. Spiderses, something you'd probably also have issue with, was posted by a non pre-reader, going through the same submission process at the time.

First off, when is it not appropriate to horse around? We can't post one silly fic every... what, like 6 months? That's too often? We do not post these all the time. So saying that you disagree and that we have to "learn when not to horse around" when you give no connotative definition for me to work with halts discussion.

Winter, you ask a loaded question. We have a desire to spotlight good fanfiction, and our exclusivity is based on what we [a group of human beings who are good writers or reviewers, but still normal people] consider high skill of execution, whether that be an earnest, heart-wrenching tragedy, or something that plays on your expectations and irony to be funny. A joke fic isn't a fic we think is actually bad, but one we think achieves it's level of quality by other means than traditional writing skill to be funny. If you don't think Spiderses or Le Epic were funny, then that is your opinion, but many people do find them funny. If you don't find them funny, don't read them. Much like how there are many stories I dislike on the blog, but I do not immediately question the validity of the people reviewing stories, and instead scroll to the next post. I trust they are of quality, even if I don't like them. Heck, i've approved stories that I personally disliked, but found no issues in the writing quality per se, and deemed it good enough to post. Pretty much every pre-reader does this, and it isn't unique; it's generally how most things are approved. It's very rare for us to approve something that we personally like a whole lot.

And anything you both said has ignored my main point I made: outliers are just that. They are not the norm, and can be ignored when deciding generally any-information-ever. If we post 500 "regular" stories, then one "godlike" story, that godlike one doesn't signify anything in how we operate.

2237538 Spiderses was written years ago, when there weren't the same restrictions on story submissions as there are now. Don't see how that can really be used as a comparison to a fic recently published.

I suppose you could say it was HOW the story was presented that irked me. It had this praise lavished on it, lacked any sort of notifier that this was a "joke", etc.

I get it. But, were the average person to submit that fic, it would have been rejected. My point is, EqD pre-readers are under a lot of scrutiny on sites like this. People are GOING to notice when a site known for the strict pre-readers suddenly features a fic written by a pre-reader and lavishes more praise on it than evangelical Christians to the Bible.

It doesn't matter if it's an outlier or not. The President can make 500 good decisions, but the nation will call him out on that 1 bad one. People are seemingly incapable of ignoring that 1 bad thing. An author on this site could have 1000 upvotes, but will always wonder what prompted that single downvote.

Outliers get noticed. You guys don't do that sort of thing often...

We can't post one silly fic every... what, like 6 months?

So when you do, it looks like all sorts of bad behavior.

Edit: I did read Spiderses. Pretty mellow compared to other things I've read.

2237706
Your comparison contradicts itself. If a fic has 1000 up votes and 1 or 5 or 10 downvotes, no one cares about the downvotes. There is very few (probably no) fics on this site with multiple of hundreds of likes, and literally zero dislikes. Regarding the president, people will always call out the president on one or two things regardless of it being right or wrong thing. Something isn't good or bad just because a lot of people think so. We all know about Twilight, right? You put a lot of value into the bandwagon idea in this post, and that probably isn't what you intend or actually think (mostly because it's glaringly wrong).

Spiderses was submitted when we were more lineant, but that doesn't mean we weren't striving for the same thing as back then. Our standards grow with time, but things aren't different otherwise. We still rejected tons and tons of fics back then, and we put Spiderses up. If you want to look at all outliers as the prevailing image of Equestria Daily, why wouldn't you look at the old ones?

Also, if http://i.imgur.com/IBgEu7y.png didn't tell you to take the fic not seriously, then literally nothing will. So this discussion is rather pointless because you can't actually understand jokes.

2237706

Spiderses was written years ago, when there weren't the same restrictions on story submissions as there are now. Don't see how that can really be used as a comparison to a fic recently published.

It was a story posted under the exact same circumstances and for the exact same reason: namely, that we thought it was funny and we wanted to have some lighthearted fun.

I suppose you could say it was HOW the story was presented that irked me. It had this praise lavished on it, lacked any sort of notifier that this was a "joke", etc.

The story was titled "The Incredibly Epic Wins of (le) (epic) Winbow Dash", had a rainbow-colored [GODLIKE] tag on its EqD post, and the "praise" was intentionally exaggerated far past the point of rationality. Short of paste "THIS IS A JOKE" in 128-size font over the cover image, I can't imagine what else we could've done to make that plainly obvious.

I get it. But, were the average person to submit that fic, it would have been rejected.

The fact that NTSTS happened to be a friendly face among the pre-readers at the time was entirely coincidental. We posted the story because we thought it was funny and because we thought the joke was incredibly obvious. Evidently, we were incorrect on the latter account.

My point is, EqD pre-readers are under a lot of scrutiny on sites like this. People are GOING to notice when a site known for the strict pre-readers suddenly features a fic written by a pre-reader and lavishes more praise on it than evangelical Christians to the Bible.

Again, I'm really struggling to understand how you didn't pick up on the sarcasm in that praise. Also, no, we're really not. We try to hold ourselves to a fairly consistent, "professional" standard because we want to provide satisfactory service to our readers, many of whom are not writers themselves and most of them, oddly enough, can take a joke.

It doesn't matter if it's an outlier or not. The President can make 500 good decisions, but the nation will call him out on that 1 bad one. People are seemingly incapable of ignoring that 1 bad thing. An author on this site could have 1000 upvotes, but will always wonder what prompted that single downvote.

And the people who would remain fixated on that one error and refuse to accept any other explanation are usually the type that those rational voters among us tend to become incredibly annoyed with for their inability to see the forest for a single tree. Anyone here who considers themselves liberal and loves to badger Fox News about their ignorance and bias should be very familiar with that type of people.

Outliers get noticed. You guys don't do that sort of thing often... So when you do, it looks like all sorts of bad behavior.

No, actually, it looks like we did it as a joke and it didn't actually hurt anybody aside from a few people who just can't let their one proverbial downvote go.

2204250
Storm, you're smarter than this. I'm disappointed in you.

2238689 I already acknowledged that it was a joke.

In my opinion, it just wasn't in very good taste.

Shall we discuss the concept of people being banned on different websites for behavior on this site?

2255771 I Suppose it would be an issue of someone from the U.S. committing a crime towards some visiting Canadians, but the Canadians are the ones that want to punish him and ban him from Canada for his actions in the United States.

2198076 Just checked out the story. Just a parody in poor British accents of episodes one and two. He does have a point about the racial stereotyping on the show, and AJ if AJ got typecasted any harder in s1 it'd make the hardest texan cowboy cringe.

Did he attack EQD on their site? Did the prereaders get nasty mail glogging up their inboxes from random strangers? Was it his motivation to instigate said attacks? While he did go out of his way to vent on his blog, his personal blog, a blog viewable by those who click on his name or already follow him but for the most part updates his followers of his blogs, it was still venting. While he's certainly in the wrong for not really talking things out more, this is just one of many instances that people have ranted and complain about a story.

Are you saying anyone who vents their frustrations over someone who can say anything they want because they are anonymous for all intents and purposes thus creating a sort of disconnect between the two that give some pre-readers in the past, and even now, say some or come up with rather harsh things that may or may not be true as being OKAY?

I certainly have gotten some honest reception in the past, but they sure as heck could of been less douchebaggery about how it was said. I might have the letter still, but that is years old. But Yukito has a rather valid point of how some pre-readers, who don't even respond back when you reach out to them regardless of good intentions, even attempting to understand what they may have meant by some vague points, still keep silent.

I think the way they do things now, and thanks to people who HAVE shared their rather poor experiences, and no not just the ones who were simply butthurt but were genuinely ridiculed by the anonymous prereader, have at least made what EQD pre-readers at least think twice before they mercilessly and anonymously make fun or reject a story on little less than personal opinion when they can't poke at grammar.

2198775 So, because some pre-readers on this site who volunteer on EQD... get butthurt when someone on this site gets really really upset and does something like share their pent up frustrations on a blog, the staff at EQD hunt this person down and ban them on a site that technically has nothing to do with Fimfic aside from being a more convenient place for fanfic writers to congregate?

I think you need to reevalute your math there buddy. 95%? I recall most used fanfiction and DA along with Gdocs more than they ever did Fimfic. Maybe now a days it's what most use since it's a great place for authors and readers to hang out. But EQD as people love to state is NOT a fanfiction oriented website and they *only* select what *they* think should be posted on the front page.

So, why extend a ban from here to an unrelated site? That is petty and really if someone noted him to cease these aggressions or he'd be ban from ever submitting stories to the site, and he persisted, that'd be understandable. But am I to believe he has been banned from EQD entirely? That part is a bit vague.

In any case, I believe a blog, that was provided by Knighty for people to blog about anything they feel like sharing, including venting frustrations, is a personal thing. It isn't like it was published to every user on Fimfic somehow. Sure, there is a group I've thought to be the silliest thing ever, but after seeing many authors post up some complaints, some had rather good proof of some levels of dickery. That much can't be denied, and if public image is such a concern, I'd advise having a chat with the pre-reader staff to be more professional. Like now a days. Though no system is perfect and we'll always have human bias.

I'll be that person and simply say the butthurt was too high on this. Reject his fics if that's what you want to do, but over a blog post? I'd understand if SS&E or whats his face from Past Sins made a scathing blog, having huge followers, but it's still mighty petty to go to someone's blog you aren't even following and lash out in childish ways by straight up banning him from EQD. They don't even post many stories outside of who we've been following for years already or haven't already read by the time it's been approved.

Were you guys actually harassed since his blog post? Hell, I'm still waiting on a response for clarification on what that (/ \) meant on one of his bullet points. Lack of communication? Or bias?

Personally, I can care less either way. Far as I know he hasn't contacted me or Yukito. But the fact remains is that banning someone for venting on a *personal* blog is really petty and immature.

Not that I'd a personally approved it since all this story does is make the ponies sound silly in those accents. I can't say I found it anymore racist than most episodes with Zecora and AJ in them. But certainly not something I'd recommend to anyone, sorry if that offends anyone.

Yeah, mainly joined just to toss in my two cents on those two comments. Ciao

2359565

Let's say you run a website about hats. You post news about hats, stories about hats, artwork about hats, etc. Sometimes you have to reject people's content because it's not good enough. After all, you want the best hat website ever, right? Let's say you call the site "Hat Central."

One day, though, you find out about a group called "I Hate Hat Central" located on hatstories.net. People don't like how things are run. Fair enough, they probably have a right to be angry. After all, you wouldn't post their work because it didn't meet your quality standard. That's fine.

A particular person, though, keeps submitting stories to Hat Central, and they keep getting rejected. Eventually, you go over and look at I Hate Hat Central and find something peculiar. He wants to be rejected! In fact, he wants to be rejected just so he can use your reasoning to incite other users of I Hate Hat Central. He doesn't earnestly want to get his work on Hat Central anymore, he just wants to keep pointing at his rejections and saying "Look at how awful Hat Central is!"

Knowing this, do you still keep taking this user's submissions? Probably not.

2360745

I'll say it for everyone else.

#Rekt.

2360745 That makes more sense. So essentially he got rejected but continued to submit the same one over and over and over again despite reasons? Thought it was somehow a site wide ban and not just limited to stories.

If he was harassing the prereaders on EQD and took that to harassing them on this site, why not report the individual? Is it because there is no name attached to the letter she shows off? I would consider that a form of harassment by Knighty's FAQ. Maybe I'm mistaken.

While I have no issues with ihatehats.com and stuff on this site such as blogs and ranting like this, is technically fine. Honestly maybe if pre-readers attached a face to those letters people wouldn't feel as slighted or vindictive by an anonymous response, especially those that give vague responses that give people a false sense of "Ok if I fix this I'll get on!" only to be repeatedly led on (though it seems you've changed policies to not reply these days and only give out those one set of bullet points?) or show no signs of improving due to not mentioning whatever else they actually disliked about the story.

This one guy may be spiteful, but that certainly doesn't excuse the fact that there are places the staff can improve. Frankly all this should just be more cut and dry and avoid all the drama. Mainly since many things are said and rejections are handed out, only for the next moment for a contradiction to be posted by other people 'because a friend of a friend' writes a story with similar, if not more blatant faults of the issues pointed out on the story that got rejected for 'violating' the world of Equestria' with TV's? Canon in comics. Been acceptable for years in fanworks. But suddenly cherry picking excuses for rejection? I can't wait to see how some react to Power Ponies.

Just, say you don't like the story or just don't meet your standards and keep it at that. They'll be pissed, but at least they won't have stuff to flaunt about publicly, and to many who see it kinda justifiably, showing off letters. In fact, I'm pretty sure it's probably why you guys prefer the shorter responses, aside from being quicker to get stories through, is so their would be less of some of the stuff that keeps getting mentioned throughout *all* of fimfic from time to time. Would perma banning anyone who posts a letter of rejection on a blog solve anything?

So, not that anything can ever really fix how people who can't see what is wrong with their stories or lashes out on those who give help on their stories, so too are there pre-readers that simply have very stubborn views on things that have done some very vague or contrived things.

Run the site as you all please, but whether this guy's an asshole or an asshole is besides the point. There are people who honestly can't make sense of some things said by pre-readers even when grammar is corrected. How about Green? That author did EVERYTHING to the extent of what pre-reader told him to fix. He was even given an extra chance with all the work he put into trying to find and fix the issues. In the end, it really felt like he was being led on. Even pre-readers with good intentions can cause heartaches and troubles for some.

EQD has gotten a bad rep over the years, hell there was a year where virtually no fics were even being posted on the site. Slackers. . Still, short of being harassed, I see no wrong in people sharing stories of their experiences with EQD. Not all the stuff is bad, one pre-reader claims to read this place to see if there are places they can improve on. So, yeah, let them bitch. Let them post their letters. Why? Hell, because people are limited by what THEY know. So by pointing out letters you can end up with people pointing out valid points and why they should be heeded. Anything that can bring up a discussion and have people look at the source of complaint and prove the claims true or false can only be a good thing overall. Not that I think *this* group is up to that task, I don't think, I haven't bothered to look through it or care to. Honestly, a group for sharing letters and dissecting stories would sound sorta fun... hmm.

So if ihatehats.com was bitching about ilovehats.com on its own site and garnering sympathy from customers of ilovehats.com because of supposedly bad customer experiences, then ilovehats.com should just thrive to improve or maybe consider stricter rules and maybe involving customer feedback more.
(I still say we need more Grimdarks... I miss those. What? I like scary stories. Do people just do meaningless gore fics now? Feels like it...)

In any case, EQD prereaders are like the salvation army of fiction. They rely on volunteers. Some are exceptional, others are sneaking away money or clothes they like to take home. Not all of them are going to perform at the same level. But they do their best to take in donated goods, but not all of them are usable. Some stuff will be thrown out. I and many others do understand this. Just do what you can and don't let the smelly stuff get to you so much, that's what the burner is for.

If I recall, we had some person who shall remain nameless, used to enjoy ridiculing others with videos from a Magic School bus and other things that were a bit mocking. Funny for you pre-readers, but certainly a dick move for some who wouldn't see it as humorous. So it isn't like there aren't those don't abuse their anonymity. I'd vote for making each prereader be responsible by using their site handle. The staff would know who they mean, and others would know who to contact for followups. Not that it'll ever happen, but at least it'll make things feel less impersonal.

I probably typed a lot of stuff, but I guess the short of it is: Are they harassing people directly? Yes? Ban. Are they sticking to their little caves and having cult meetings that are not harming anyone directly and off the site in question? Well, case by case basis for me, but for on the whole no it shouldn't affect how and should not be used against, ihatehats.com.

It's still petty if the *only* reason for a ban was because they posted a rejection letter and their reply back to a bunch of people who don't even like hats to begin with. It's like a "No hats or orange apple loving ponies allowed" club. I'd simply advise the manning up and pulling up of the jimmies and telling them to stop and if they do it again expect a ban. Too many people do passive-aggressive things.

2361492 Anything below that line break is stream of consciousness. Read at own risk of mental health.

2360745

This sounds like the convoluted, and awesome plot to a crime film!

In all seriousness, you bring up excellent points. Well said.

2360745

Eventually, you go over and look at I Hate Hat Central and find something peculiar. He wants to be rejected! In fact, he wants to be rejected just so he can use your reasoning to incite other users of I Hate Hat Central. He doesn't earnestly want to get his work on Hat Central anymore, he just wants to keep pointing at his rejections and saying "Look at how awful Hat Central is!"

2360761
2491591

Yes, you're right! I submitted my stories to EQD because I knew you would reject them, because apparently I'm either psychic or intentionally writing garbage that I know won't pass muster, and this was all part of my master plan to expose the flawed logic and biased double-standards in your rejection letters to the world, which I knew would be in your rejection letters because, again, I'm psychic. Also, 9/11 was planned and executed by the federal government so that we could invade Iraq and take their oil. And the Jews own all of the banks and Hollywood and are part of a global Zionist movement dedicating to devaluing the currency through the Federal Reserve.[/sarcasm]

Come on, Alex. You're a smart guy; I expect better from you. Cut the conspiracy theory crap and tell everyone why I was really banned: because I questioned EQD's deeply flawed, systematically-biased system and was right, and if you didn't ban me, you knew that I would keep submitting stories and one of your prereaders would fuck up a rejection even worse than before and do something like reject my story because it conflicts with his headcanon or because of grammar errors that aren't actually errors at all, and you knew I would post that letter and completely discredit EQD across the entire internet.[/sarcasm]

Hey, I can come up with conspiracy theories, too.

2566720
It's probably just easier to agree with you.

2566720

You responded to something after 4 weeks. Your mental retardation obviously bugs you more than it bugs me.

2570787
In fact, it's probably just easier to agree with all of you!

Yes, EQD is horribly biased and we don't post your stuff because we don't like you. That's the truth of the matter! It's not based on quality of writing at all, it's based on how many of us are your friends. You heard it here first.

- Alexstrazsa, Pre-Reader since 2011.

2576736
Narcissism is a hell of a drug.

2576736
2577128

Sorry, I won a trip up to the international space station and not only is it kind of hard to type in zero gravity, their wireless isn't that great either. I'll try to respond to this thread more effectively in the future, preferably within thirty minutes or less like Dominoes, in the template of a true narcissist retard.

2578506
Sarcasm doesn't suit you.

I really should've broken that to you before now, honestly. My bad.

2578551 I'm sorry, I only respond to "Doctor CartsBeforeHorses." I may only have a ph.D in underwater basketweaving, but I didn't go to eight years of college to be called "you."

Somehow, this feels relevant.

2576754
Oh good, finally we can admit it.

2577647

>bringing up a discussion from 6 weeks ago

Don't even try to stir up shit today.

2585920 HAHAAHAHAAHAHAAHAAHAHAHAHA

Needed that laugh.