16 Oct 2009
Reply to Chair/HikiCulture Admin
I recently made a topic worrying about the actions being taken on the Hikikomori Wikipedia page with regards to HikiCulture over here and two of the admins responded.
I think they are two because one named himself the HikiCulture Admin and the other named himself Chair although when I was there, Chair was the only active admin I know of since he was the creator of the forum.
Anyways, the reason I decided to make a blog post out of this instead of a direct reply underneath the comments is because of the worrying tone of both commentors. Although I do plan to paste my reply to this quote:
That whole ‘incident’ on the Wikipedia page was typed up by a frustrated member who had been banned from the forum. I had every reason to ban that member, and had been considering it already a week before I finally placed it.
Maybe both admins didn’t know but to quote the recent Wikipedia revision page… Don’t delete stuff from talk pages!
This was a potential major issue because not only was the HikiCulture link restored but the talk page which gives reasons for why HikiCulture is not notable was removed also.
Now the link in itself when restored is no big issue. Lots of people can mistake Wikipedia as an advertising portal as opposed to an encyclopedia. In fact, for a long time, the HikiPhpBB forum was underneath the External Links.
(I have no idea why some users deleted it only to replace it with HikiCulture but most forum and blog links are frowned upon in Wikipedia so there is already some controversy with regards to why the forum link was in the page)
Now add the action of deleting unresolved discussions and now you have a possibility of a person trying to censor criticisms to a site….The admins in their reply though went further than that and posted some irrelevant accusations which justifies this separate blog post:
HikiCulture Admin:
#1
This user was banned from the site for excessive spam and general trolling. We also have reason to believe he was using a proxy for nefarious reasons. His username “foolness” is very accurate, as he acted like one at every opportunity he got, despite warnings from staff.
This was weird not so much due to the accusation.It was more of a question as to why this was brought up and how much of this was true. Username hijacking was a common worry of mine but at the same time, I do know that I’m not worth the time.
(In fact in the now defunct /hikki/ AnonIB board, someone even said that my way of speaking was distinct enough that it would be hard to pretend as me.)
Still…
Such comments often fall under a “You said, I said” model so one of the convenience of making a separate blog post for this was that I could post this topic in other Hikikomori boards and hopefully, current members of HikiCulture visiting there could verify what happened after I got banned.
Btw, my personal recollection of what happened is located here. …or for those who don’t want to click on the link:
Ok, I was banned for the second time in HikiCulture (I don’t know the reason why. It could have something to do with that announcement that something changed in their profiles but since I never put any data in there, I never bothered tweaking it but soon I saw my account/posts disappear despite remaining active. In fact, my account was deleted around the same time I wrote a reply. It wasn’t a controversial one and it was attributing the fact that despite the admin’s criticisms with the HikiPhpBB forum, the member base growth remained the same and in fact, the previous forum probably had more Hikikomori related topics although it wasn’t the fault of the forum design as there were certain key members that stopped being active at around the time the forum required these members to stay active. This is why I’m not attributing it to a case of breaking some obscure rule but treat this as a warning if you plan to join that forum.I normally don’t like re-joining forums so I won’t be signing up for another account there. I did sign up a 2nd time because at the time, my first trial was so short I wasn’t able to preview most of the forum’s contents.)
Also when my account was banned for the first time, in a private pm located in HikiPhpBB:
Yeah sorry, some members got pruned after I created new rules. You are welcome to join again, just be sure to be active to prevent automatic pruning.
Sent at: Wed Aug 19, 2009 6:35 pm
From: Chair
To: Foolness
Btw for those wondering why I would have a private conversation with Chair at another forum, the reason was because Chair originally invited me to HikiCulture via a PM in HikiPhpBB.
#2
And fyi, foolness: Many people is this world with AS has done great things. If you want to give yourself credibility, do not make fun of those with medical conditions, you just end up looking “foolish”. :P
This was another weird comment because I didn’t feel like I made any comment that is directed at anyone with Asperger Syndrome. (I am guessing that is what AS meant) Still, if anyone is willing to mediate, I would be open to anyone pointing out where I made fun of them in that thread.Obviously I’m biased to myself while I am wary of HikiCulture Admin’s motives so if anyone else would like to point out which section sent that wrong interpretation, I’m all ears and would edit that portion out.
#3
Please do me two favors: 1.) Do your research before childlessly laying down groundless claims, and 2.) Accept the fact that you were banned, grow up, and move on. All you have accomplished by writing this, is making the site appear higher in Google. You saved us some trouble, thanks a lot!
I really don’t know where I am laying down groundless claims and not accepting my banning, so again, if anyone can mediate I would appreciate the help.I would really like to assume that HikiCulture Admin’s words are based on something valid and not just mud slinging but frankly I can’t interpret it any other way.
Chair:
#1
I have not received any site complaints from anyone in the IRC channel (about a quarter of the forum’s users enter the IRC chatroom each day), nor have I received complaints through personal messages or emails.
This is actually the reverse. If any current HikiCulture member can mediate for me and point out how the topic had nothing to do with complaints by members, I would again appreciate the help. …The rest of the section didn’t seem related to me or the topic, so I just copy pasted it in the Wikipedia talk page over here:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Hikikomori#Linking_to_sites_which_aren.27t_much_help
Finally, I apologize if I thanked people generally too much in this thread. These kinds of replies are the kind that make me want to explode at a person because they seem so off-base and reek of insults for insult’s sake and yet there’s a strong possibility that there was only a misunderstanding so to counter and prevent any unnecessary flaming on my part, I am trying to be as polite as possible.
