a few thoughts on modding

[fiachairecht]

- Allowing participants who DNW a character to claim that a fandom tag that includes that character name is a DNW violation is extremely questionable. If you're going to do that, you better make damn clear in your rules that any use of a fandom tag implies that everything in that fandom is canon.

- In general, banning participants for tagging a specific fandom, when the content of the work does not include DNW'd characters, ships, or elements and the canon itself was not DNW'd, is bonkers, if not outright bad.

- If you request MCU Pepper/Natasha, DNW Tony Stark, and cannot handle your creator tagging their work 'Iron Man (Movies)', you have no business requesting MCU Pepper/Natasha. If you do request it anyway in one of my exchanges, and your gift is tagged 'Iron Man (Movies)', reject it and move on, I will not do anything about it.

- If you request MCU Pepper/Natasha and DNW your creator tagging their work 'Iron Man (Movies)' that is a bad-faith DNW and I will not enforce it in any exchange I mod.

- Misrepresenting your modding decisions in public or private, including removing specific language from your posts just because it supports banned participants, is bad.

Comments

[ermingarden]

That sounds completely bonkers – my sympathies!

[fiachairecht]

Thanks, it ... yeah. It really has just been exactly that.

[sholio]

100% agree on all counts.

[fiachairecht]

100% do not know how I would've managed this week without you!

[sholio]

<33333333

[shadaras]

Yeahhhhh, definitely agree with you on this.

[fiachairecht]

Yeah the uh. Sheer amount of 'what planet am I on' I've been feeling lately....!

[independence1776]

WTF?! Agree 100%.

[fiachairecht]

It wasn't my exchange but I feel like some things just Need To Be Said tbh.

[independence1776]

I knew it wasn't your exchange, but definitely agree some things need to be.

[elasticella]

What the absolute fuck is this? Yikes

[fiachairecht]

Watching a whole lot of people decide that the correct response to a questionable interpretation and questionable overreaction was, uh, silence, hiding feedback, and editing old posts has been, shall we say, A Fucking Trip.

[aphrodite_mine]

*boggles*

[fiachairecht]

Yeah! That's just. Still. Where I'm at.

[aphrodite_mine]

"Maybe you should address these needs with your therapist rather than the mod team."

>.>

[fiachairecht]

Or a friend who's not on the mod team! Or something! The sheer number of Choices that were made!

[aphrodite_mine]

Capital C Choices for sure.

*virtual hugs*

[fiachairecht]

*hugs* <3

[extrapenguin]

100% agreed. I caught the wank secondhand and was utterly baffled at the sheer amount of questionable decisions made. Like, what???

[fiachairecht]

Like at every single point it's just ... or you could not? Like? There is no need for any of this?? Gods.

[sonofgodzilla]

If you request MCU Pepper/Natasha, DNW Tony Stark, and cannot handle your creator tagging their work 'Iron Man (Movies)', you have no business requesting MCU Pepper/Natasha.

I had to read that twice to make sense of it. How can someone make that request and not expect the obvious outcome. That's like... shooting your foot off and being unhappy you don't have toes surely.

[tellitslant]

how... else... is it supposed to be tagged...

[fiachairecht]

With, apparently, just 'Marvel Cinematic Universe', so the recipient is not reminded that Tony Stark exists by seeing his name in the fandom tag.

[havocthecat]

That is utterly ridiculous and the individualization (coddling?) has been taken about ten steps too far. Maybe twenty.

[fiachairecht]

I would not do that nonsense for my partner, much less Exchange Participant I Am Lowkey Friends With!

....Then again my partner's mature enough it would never occur to them to ask for that, so.

[havocthecat]

No, I really don't think you would, and that's 1000% to your credit. And the fact that your partner is mature enough not to ask for that is also to their credit!

[havocthecat]

It would be so far from my preferred modding technique, I mean, for fuck's sake.

And tags. TAGS. That would be the outside of acceptable, and if someone were going to throw fits about seeing an unwanted media name tag, I'd probably just tell them to learn how to use greasemonkey and be done with it.

[fiachairecht]

Like, you definitely put a certain amount of your online experience in other people's hands when you do exchanges, but ... not that much.

[havocthecat]

Funny thing about the internet and fandom: You can curate a portion of your fandom experience, but you cannot curate all of it. You just can't!

[lucymonster]

I never thought I'd find myself coming down on a side that isn't 'chill out and let mods mod as they see fit', but ... yeah. Agreed. Been a bit of a dog's breakfast, hey?

[fiachairecht]

I feel like I can't even tell anyone to chill out here because ... everyone has been chill. Extremely baffled, and definitely blunt, but everything I've seen has been almost bewilderingly civil.

[acequeenking]

I've quite enjoyed working with some of the people in this dust-up so this one has been a real heartbreaker for me.

I agreed with the mods when I first heard about it (misrepresented, as it turns out). But having more information now, my opinion has shifted to it being a bad call, and, again, one that was all the more regrettable because I've had good experiences with some of the people involved and have had a lot of respect and love for them.

I feel like if you're going to run an exchange you have to make peace with the fact you can't please everyone. Sometimes you have to tell a friend no, even if you really like them. Sometimes someone finds a DNW you didn't remember to put in your list when you signed up, and it sucks, but - it happens! You put on the big pants and you DNW: any plot or mention from iron man next time. Sometimes you have to take it on the chin if the rules you put up lead to intentions that you don't foresee and just try to figure out how to make it better next year.

It's never a good look if you're deleting the information to try to make yourself look better; that's generally a pretty damn big sign you messed up. I hope the mod team recognizes the mistake and does some soul-searching about how to avoid this happening again next year.

But that said, I feel like all I can do as a mod (and a mod in an active exchange rn no less involving some of these people) is to try to keep the rules consistent and avoid any situations like this happening. Modding is sort of a thankless job -- no one remembers you if you do it well, but if you mess up people don't forget it.

[zdenka]

I completely agree. It's been such a weird and crazy situation.

[lassarina]

what in the tippity tap-dancing entire FUCK.

[fiachairecht]

So, like, I don't know either, but I DO know I'm stealing that phrase.

[lassarina]

Glad I could provide that, at least! XD

[mnemehoshiko]

That sounds utterly fucking bananas?!?! Like I'm sorry??!? But if the character you dnw is in the name of the series?!??? It's not disrespecting the dnw by stating THIS IS THE FANDOM TAG?? Disrespecting the dnw is including the dnw in the content 😐