Yeah, I can tell it's May ...

[veronica_rich]

This makes the second troll my Will community has attracted from sparrabeth in the past month. (You've gotta scroll to the bottom of those pages for it.) Why do I think that? Oh, I don't know - just a hunch.

This wasn't a criticism of my writing style (which would be fair). It was simply an excuse to anonymously bitch in a minority forum and denounce anything that takes fan focus off Jack and/or Elizabeth.

And no, neither of these comments are particularly horrifying, but as it gets closer to May 23 and some J/E fans get meaner about not getting their way ... well, I haven't lived this long not to spot a problem a mile away. I don't want to have to resort to disabling anonymous commenting in a fan forum. Are there any community mods on my f-list who have dealt with this, with advice? I already made a short post asking "visitors" to the comm to be respectful of the members there, but I wonder if it'll work.

Geez o pete. I didn't realizing having a Will community would be like disagreeing with the Mafia! LOL


Seriously, I keep reading how J/E fans are so much older and more mature than us "13-year-old hormonal" Will/Orlando fans. Me no think so.

Comments

[philosophercat.livejournal.com]

I didn't see anything inflamatory about the latest comment. I was confused by what they were referring to as 'rude.' As to the first comment, it's sad when people have to disguise their identity for a comment such as that. More than anything, it shows that the poster knows that they are just being vindictive. My one and only troll played that game on ff.net, reading through tons of my work, bashing it with such creative jibes as 'you use too many commas!' etc. until I required sigs. Then I got cryptic comments in cyrillic. Surprise, surprise, putting it through babblefish, I got more mundane editorial comments cloaked in the language of an irate and vicious 13 year old. Anyway, that was a rant- but it sounds like there's a few people out there with axes to grind.

[veronica-rich.livejournal.com]

I didn't see anything inflamatory about the latest comment.

And, as I already noted, neither did I. But the fact is, I posted that same story on my LJ at the same time, and they could've easily come over and said the same thing to me there. What other point would there be to making a comment in a Will-centric community that pointedly excludes Will - other than making the point "You don't matter"? It wouldn't work on my personal LJ, because it's general commentary/blogging.

Anyway, I just want to throw up a roadblock that says "Whoa, watch how you behave" before it gets to a point where we've become a doormat. I've seen this happen on a couple of mailing lists before, when the mods had an open-door policy and were stomped all over by trolls - when, if they'd nipped it in the bud, it wouldn't have become the sort of problem that ended up disbanding the mailing list (which one of them did).

[philosophercat.livejournal.com]

I didn't know how to handle it when the same sort of over-zealous fans joined lero either. It was a cosy little place where my friends and I discussed our favourite fictional man... Until the new Jane Eyre came out. The flame hit the tinder as SOON as one of us wrote a totally ordinary review saying they didn't like it. "Well, everyone I know likes it!" (so, what's wrong with you?). It totally killed the atmosphere there... I also got demands from them to change the decorating- they wanted their new and improved sexy actor to be displayed instead of the more talented but less pretty ones we had up. Not much goes on there now... just icontests. It's kinda sad. Even I feel reluctant to burst the bubble and say, gals, admit it... it wasn't the most amazing thing on the planet... it wasn't... *gasp* perfect. I just hope that in time the rabidness will wear off...

[veronica-rich.livejournal.com]

The flame hit the tinder as SOON as one of us wrote a totally ordinary review saying they didn't like it. "Well, everyone I know likes it!" (so, what's wrong with you?).

You've SO struck the nail on the head for POTC after DMC.

[philosophercat.livejournal.com]

Some of us oldtimers have referred to this as 'having one's whiskers singed.'

[philosophercat.livejournal.com]

Whoops,, I meant l_e_r_o