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#Post#: 29026--------------------------------------------------
Re: Icons as spoilers
By: Plagosus Date: May 27, 2024, 7:13 pm
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I do not recall having read what Flag said in the reviewer's
forum.* If I had I would never have started the thread on MMSA.
As I have said, I started the thread because I have a story on
the go where I would prefer the fantasy icon to be omitted and
in the belief (which turned out to be erroneous) that the
question had only been discussed in passing.
A quick Google reveals that it is indeed the case that some
people prefer to know how a story is going to pan out. It is of
course the case that one can read a novel or see a film twice
and still enjoy it the second time, but I for one do not want
the plot revealed the first time round. Anyone who does is
surely treating reading as some sort of intellectual exercise to
see how the author is working towards the resolution. That
surely diminishes the emotion, fun or surprise according what
sort of genre is involved.
*I expect DMK will tell me I contributed to the thread!
#Post#: 29030--------------------------------------------------
Re: Icons as spoilers
By: David M. Katz Date: May 27, 2024, 8:38 pm
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[quote author=Plagosus link=topic=3190.msg29026#msg29026
date=1716855220]
*I expect DMK will tell me I contributed to the thread!
[/quote]
;D ;D You did - 4 times.
So did Daniel, Johnno, Bobby W., PJ, and Flag.
#Post#: 29032--------------------------------------------------
Re: Icons as spoilers
By: Emlyn Morgan Date: May 28, 2024, 3:27 am
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[quote author=David M. Katz link=topic=3190.msg29024#msg29024
date=1716845883]
This discussion should be moot. Flag has addressed this.
[...]
It is his site so why do we continue to discuss these things?
[/quote]
Why not? Should we be afraid to?
But we can certainly discuss them here in Jack's friendly House,
where there is not a feeling of walking on eggshells. And there
is a feeling of us all being part of the site community.
#Post#: 29042--------------------------------------------------
Re: Icons as spoilers
By: db105 Date: May 28, 2024, 11:02 am
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Yes, certainly we can talk about it if we want to. We understand
that whatever we say will not change the MMSA policies, but then
again many people enjoy talking about politics and the world's
problems even though they have little possibility of influencing
them.
The thing is, I totally appreciate and sympathize with Plagosus'
point, but I also see that the point of the icons is to help
readers find the stories they want to read and avoid the ones
they don't.
So, let's say we have a story that seems to be a normal
father-son scenario. The father is scolding the son but at the
end they realize that whatever happened is actually the father's
fault, and it's the son the one who ends up spanking the father.
This would have a role-reversal icon, a family/other icon and an
adult spanked icon. But the writer rightfully says that he
intended the ending to be a surprise, and can they please not
spoil it with the icons.
Then, if the request is honored, the story would get a boy
spanked icon, a family/father icon and no role-reversal icon.
Then, a bunch of people who just love role-reversal stories
would never read the story, and a bunch of people who just hate
role-reversal stories would read the story and hate it.
On the other hand, if the request is not honored, then a bunch
of readers who hate spoilers will be bummed because the twist
was spoiled for them. However, these readers now think: OK, I
hate spoilers, is there a way to prevent this from happening
again? And they have a way: they can choose to navigate the site
without icons. Then they are protected from icon-spoilers at the
cost of losing the help of the icons when it comes to deciding
what to read.
Ideally, we would have three ways to navigate the site instead
of two: without icons, with regular icons, or with non-spoilery
icons. Then, for stories of this kind, the reviewer would mark
the regular icons and the non-spoilery ones, and the reader
would be able to choose what they prefer to see. However, it
seems to me too much work for something that is not such a big
deal, in my opinion.
To my reasoning, maybe Plagosus would say: OK, but you are
thinking about the rights of the readers, but what about the
rights of the author? Shouldn't the author get to choose how his
story is presented, regardless of what the readers may prefer?
And we also have the rights of the site-owners, who generously
offer the site for us to use without requiring us to pay for the
costs. Shouldn't the site owner have the right to choose the
rules for his own web site and how to present the stories in it?
Of course, for a story to be posted, both the site owner and the
author have to agree. The author has to agree that he wants his
story to be published in the site for free and has to accept the
site policies about how it is presented. And the site owner has
to agree that he wants to publish the story. So, if the site
owner is not flexible about what an author wants, it may happen
that the author may decide not to publish the story, which would
be a pity, but I don't think we have a huge problem with authors
disassociating themselves from the site for this reason.
Instead, if we are worried about disaffected authors, what we
should do is close the MMSA forums, because it's much more
likely that authors may decide to remove their stories, or not
to write more of them, because of some brush with Flagellant
there. While Flagellant is very generous with his efforts to
provide us with this archive, he is, to put it mildly, not the
most diplomatic person ever.
Back when I was a reviewer at MMSA, I used to do my best to
smooth things over when Flag offended some writer, but I have
given up, and accepted that there's nothing I can do. What will
be, will be, and I hope the archive will exist for many years,
that Flag won't get discouraged and close it, and that not too
many authors will drift away because of some forum flame war.
But the most important one of those is that the site will not be
closed. It would be a huge loss. To cut my losses, I have saved
copies of all the stories from the authors I like, but the
future stories that we'll never get when there's no MMSA are
still a huge loss.
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