think of it as a weird psa

So dramatic incident over the weekend. I'll link at the end of the post. I'm jumping straight to Saturday night.

Saturday, me and svmadelyn decided to do a dress rehearsal for the day we decide to break up dramatically. It was--intersting. After stripping each other of our communites, Madelyn hacked my lj (in that she has my password) and logged me out while changing my email. Sadly, I had just started changing her password when she changed hers and stopped me.

It was fun--but also chilling. The thing is, she has all my passwords, with the exception of two of my email and my webpage. While mulling creating a defensive sockpuppet (when she was trying to remember the password she gave my lj), it occurred to me--that was fucking scary. Mostly because I'm fairly sure that unless she told someone what she was doing, no one would figure it out unless she started posting fic, at which time probably a couple of people would mildly wonder about my sudden and inexplicable style change.

Granted, I trust Madelyn completely. (We also realized we co-run a disturbing number of communities.) Here's what gave me pause.

Egroups, yahoogroups, a creator in the end does have final say; yahoogroups doesn't really allow a coup (this could have changed since I was mod of wrbeta). Other mods can screw around, but they can't oust the creator and they can't throw them out. The creator can delete, can give the list to someone else, but there *is* a single authority, much like a ring if I were feeling pretentious, that rules them all.

Thing is, Livejournal doesn't have that kind of protection for the creator of the community. Some part of me knew that all along, but I was actually still shocked that it was possible; I'm not an active mod on a big community, so I don't come in daily or even weekly contact with many mod duties.

Here's why my Saturday was spent blinking slowly at lj in a kind of blank horror.

ckll and the dean_sam community coup - journalfen is being very robust, but just keep hitting refresh--totally worth it.

Short version: ckll gets thrown out of her own community. The full story on this is even better.

And believe it or not, this has happened before:

A Long Time Ago: Snarkstorm and the supernatural_tv coup

snarkstorm gets thrown out of her community, then banned. This one is a must-read. I also seriously have to admire marishna for posting all that.

Not my fandom, but if it hit me with a kind of shock that it was possible to steal communities--not to mention, hell, the latter of those two managed to keep it fairly under wraps--I wondered if anyone else would be surprised.

Read the caps in the last one as well. Fascinating reading.

Comments

[joesther.livejournal.com]

This kind of stuff always bugs me. Not that I care that much about the stealing of communities (it's just online stuff, it's not that big a deal to me, but I know it is to others), but the fact that people can treat other people like that - like crap - and not seem to care is just, well, bothersome to me. It's almost as though they forget that there are really human beings on the other end of the internet, that they're real human feelings that they're hurting, and you just have to know, on some level, that if they were doing this face to face, no way would they act this way. NO WAY. The anonymity of the internet, IMO, is what's letting them get away with treating each other like this, and I wish it would stop.

But you know it won't. :(

[seperis.livejournal.com]

*nods* "It's just the internet" is used as a catchphrase to cover many--less than decent behavior. Which is why I tend to avoid people who say that, because the ones who do? Tend to be the ones who pull crap like this.

This kind of stuff always bugs me. Not that I care that much about the stealing of communities (it's just online stuff, it's not that big a deal to me, but I know it is to others)

Er, not referring to this. I can totally understand.

[joesther.livejournal.com]

Yep, exactly. I just think, after many years of being online and going through a number of fandoms and my own personal experiences with similar kinds of things, that it's always better to err on the side of caution. And to abide by the Mutual Respect way of thinking. Even if you don't like it/think it/agree with it, you don't know what other people are thinking/liking/agreeing to, so just be as polite as you can.

And be careful who you trust, too. I've been stabbed in the back so many times, there was a period a few years ago (when I was more heavily involved with fandoms - interesting how this usually goes back to fandoms) I started to wonder if I needed a blood transfusion. Just sayin'. ;)

[that_mireille]

This is why I removed the ex-mod of the one community I run, when she quit as a mod. (I didn't ban her, just took away her mod privileges.) It upset her a lot that I would do that, but there's just no way I'm not keeping a tight handle on who has mod privileges there. I've seen that happen too often on LJ.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

*nods* Until now, I knew lj didn't have the creator privilege, but when I read this? Still a shock.

See, I've never seen this before. I mean, now it seems obvious and of course it has, but still a shock.

[that_mireille]

I've seen it (wankily) in HP fandom, and non-wankily elsewhere. I mean, it's nice, to some extent: if I get sick of a community I run, I can completely hand it over to someone else, and they have all the privileges they could possibly need.

But it does mean that people need to be very, very careful about who they give mod privileges to, and I don't think most people are.

Personally, after about 18 months lurking in SPN fandom, all I can say is, any jerks who make me feel bad for ckll are grade A #1 jackasses.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

No joke. I've--er, been linked to her posts before. It's very--something. Yes. Something. *nods firmly*

[ladycat777.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the clairvoyant link. I hadn't thought to check there and I'd seen little hints and teasers all day, but not a decent run-down of what actually went on. I'm still lacking that, but SPN is adept with the flock so it may never come out.

Either way... man. That is some bad juju going on. *idly wanders over to moderator consol to take a look*

[seperis.livejournal.com]

*grins* Pretty much. There's an older clarivoyant link to the 2006 mod thing, but that's pretty much the only thing around I'd seen before the most recent post.

It's very--making me stare at my communities with worried eyes, y'know?

[stillane.livejournal.com]

Holy crap. I... damn. How did I not know about any of this? That fact alone disturbs me rather mightily.

I don't know. I guess I always just assume people are out to do the right thing, and when someone turns up with a definition of 'the right thing' which includes 'stomp on anyone who gets in the way', I'm stunned. The idea that there's no question in their mind that they've been upright and honorable kills me. There's something very scary about folks who'll trot out the Greater Good whenever they need a handy justification.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that was very deeply special. I kind of boggled at that bit m'self.

Well, all of it, actually.

[dovil.livejournal.com]

It is indeed scary to think that years of work developing an on-line identity, not to mention all the work put into fannish ventures, can all be yoinked away with a flick of a mouse and the clicks of a keyboard. Html can be washed away so easily, there should be some kind of internet glue invented. :)

[seperis.livejournal.com]

I trust Madelyn with my life, and more than that, I trust her integrity--but man, even so? That was *freakishly* unsettling.

[out-there.livejournal.com]

And believe it or not, this has happened before:
A Long Time Ago: Snarkstorm and the supernatural_tv coup

Fucking hell. I almost can't believe that, except for the way that absolute *jerks* manage to show up everywhere, even fandom.

I can't believe the pure... assholery of it, you know? To think that because you don't agree with the way the comm's being run that you have the right, the entitlement to stamp all over someone else and take whatever you want.

And that they then talked about it as somehow being the right thing to do because the comm's "better" now.

Seriously, rationals like that? That completely ignore the idea of other people having any rights whatsoever? Frighten me a great deal more than LJ having a bad technicality on comm mods.

*blinks* It says somethign very sad about fandom people that I'm looking forward to driving home now and watching Heroes, because at least the dehumanising psycho on that show is hotly magnetising and creepy.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

I know, that convo was just unreal. I kept reading back, going, any second now, there will be an actual logical *reason* here? But not so much.

So--yeah. Granted, I don't know the whole story and all, but off the top of my head, I just can't think of a *good* reason to do that to the creator. Seriously, something's *wrong* there.

God, you and Madelyn on Sylar. I should probably watch this show, huh?

[out-there.livejournal.com]

God, you and Madelyn on Sylar. I should probably watch this show, huh?

You should. But having said that, I'm not even that big a Sylar fan.

You know me. It shouldn't be a surprise that I'm *really* watching the show for the incredibly slashy and domestic Matt/Mohinder vibe (they're raising a kid together! And living in a tiny NYC apartment together! And canon has yet to show me any proof of seperate beds.)

However, given that your love of John Sheppard and Brian Kinsey? I think you'd *adore* Sylar. (Fictional psychopaths need love too! And fandom's totally prepared to give it.)

[suzvoy.livejournal.com]

nel_ani and I could totally steal each other's LJs. And web sites. And e-mail accounts.

Hmm.

;)

[seperis.livejournal.com]

*grins*

I need Madelyn's email password.

One day....

[akacat]

Oh, don't be silly.

You and Madelyn are each other's sock puppets; we'd never notice if there was a coup because you share a brain. All that different writing style stuff? Pure flim-flammery, in a sad attempt to keep people from realizing the truth.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

HOW DID YOU KNOW??????

[akacat]

I ARE PSYCHIC!

[drlense.livejournal.com]

Interesting stuff. I was following this over the weekend when I finally got back online- on one hand I hand I think it's wrong to "take" a community- if you don't like the people there or the tone then go away and start your own. Duh. I'm not surprised it happens- nothing in fandom will after svmaria and msscribe will every surprise me ever again.

On the other hand it's hard for me to care, because both communities are just awful, awful places. I had supernatural_tv friended for a while this summer, and it just sucked any love and joy I had for the show right from me. As for ckll and dean_sam- the less said the better. Seriously.

Re: I told Erin Madelyn has magic powers

[dreamcatcher.livejournal.com]

*popping in from outside* I've had seperis friended forever though we rarely talk, but hopefully it's okay if I pop in? *wave*

I'm sort of like you, in that I'm not invested in the players. But, wow, what a situation. Personally, I couldn't imagine trying to get hundreds of people to move over to a whole new comm while maintaining the same (or relatively close to same) quality and quantity of posting that made the comm successful in the first place. What a... mess, I guess, is the word I'm looking for? There weren't many positive aspects of that thing any which way you looked at it. Sorry to hear your fandom is going through this and good luck.

I told Erin Madelyn has magic powers

[porntestpilot.livejournal.com]

when she was trying to remember the password she gave my lj

That cracked me up.

Wait, was the second thing under wraps? I knew that pretty much as soon as they did it. That's why I left SPN like 4 million years ago - as soon as I got the hint of which direction it was going, I fled back to SGA. Most of the BNFs have left/are starting to leave.

[Note: my bff [onetimeoffer] has the password to the website, since we share it, but I am pretty sure no one else knows how to get into my LJ, e-mail, or anything else. Maybe she can get into my gmail account and my itunes account. I'll have to ask her. We already have sockpuppets set up sadly- they sit there waiting to used for something fun.]

Re: I told Erin Madelyn has magic powers

[seperis.livejournal.com]

I think it wasn't generally centralized known, from what I've read so far.

Very freaky.

[vee-fic.livejournal.com]

Vee's Not-Quite-Law: Unfortunately, fandom is full of stupid and insane people, because fandom is full of people.

Fandom is full of the people who succumb to junk mail offers and click through on email spam and call the 900 number at 2am in their underwear, to say nothing of the people who steal out of their coworkers' office drawers and grope strangers on public transit. That the LJ setup makes it easier to be an asshole is kind of a surprise -- don't they asshole-test these things? -- but it doesn't surprise me at all that fannish assholery goes on.

(And, as others have noted, it's even gotten boring: the same crazies in Supernatural fandom keep perpetrating the same assholery, and after awhile it's like, "Haven't I seen this? A meelion times before?" I'm just grateful that they get F_W'ed regularly, because it allows me to construct a reasonably current Blacklist of Crazy, with whom I know not to correspond.)

[seperis.livejournal.com]

I hate to admit it, but I *do* use f-w sometimes to keep up on the people I really don't want to ever interact with, or at least add to a Warily Watch list. Because honestly? I have way too little fannish time to waste on that kind of thing.

[ltlj.livejournal.com]

This makes me glad that the only community I have to worry about is herc_iolaus, which I mod with marycrawford, and which is not exactly a hotbed of anything in particular. :knock on wood:

[seperis.livejournal.com]

No joke. SGA can be kind of freaky, but I'm (almost) sure we've avoided the entire stealing-communities-for-ego-and-profit.

*waves flag hopefully*

[aurora]

Woah! That is so fucked up.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

*nods* Oh yeah.

[burntcopper.livejournal.com]

only comms I mod are the main BBC's Robin Hood ones, robinhoodbbc and its iterations and that's a tiny (less than 1k) in comparison comm. Where it's genially accepted that I'm pouty and bitchy and power crazed (they've been known to rate my mod posts with points taken off for lack of style and obscure threats), partly because I stated it in the user info. We're talking a fandom of such smallness that someone did set up a rival comm early on, but it got so few posts that they got bored and deleted it - partly because everyone either belonged to the main one or had the newsletter friended, so not exactly any point to it. Mind you, I only set it up so I'd be able to keep a leash on possible wank - I don't even create any content aside from mod posts, and the only time I gave co-mod powers to jamjar was when I went away for the internet for a while, and she de-modded herself when she missed too many. Having someone take it away would be... weird.

I'm still not entirely sure that giving me maintainer powers on thedarkisrising was an entirely wise choice on the mod's part, because all I was expecting was to be given the co-mod position, on the exceedingly shaky foundation that I wanted to go through the memories and tag all the posts. That's all I've ever done, and the only thing she knew about me? long-term member of the fandom who writes once in a blue moon snarky fic who runs the main slash site for it, and posts occasionally in full snark mode. Gave me the shivers a bit, due to the 'er... you don't know me, why the hell did you give me that much power?' factor. I mean, admittedly she was probably looking for someone who's more active in the fandom than she seems to have been in a good couple of years to just keep an active eye on the comm, but *still*.

Does bring to mind the case of indeedsir (main Jeeves and Wooster comm), where one of the comm members sought the opinion of the rest of the comm and then successfully petitioned lj to turn over the maintainer rights. The original mod had been absent from lj (deleted account and everything) for a good while, and said user wanted a chance to do stuff with it - tags, memories, design, etc. They also petitioned lj using the (very valid) argument that a lot of the posts contained nc-17 content and thus the comm did need a mod, with links to the post where she'd canvassed opinion.