Now that there’s a forum, I’m thinking of dropping the chewables type threads on the blog as they are often copy pasted and I don’t add any extra original content to them most of the time. That said I wonder which is more preferable for the readers. Some of the core differences I can think of are:Blogs:Easier navigation and discovery - Posts are auto-tweeted. Don’t require posts to keep on top. Longer staying time - While both are free services I’m registered into and neither contents are backed up on my side, the blogs are more longer lasting because even if the comments fell from spamming the content and position of the post remains the same. Also since my Posterous is also auto-posted in Tumblr, it’s two baskets vs. one.Youtube embeds - While a member on the forum said it’s possible to add youtube tags, he didn’t show me how. Forum: Easier anonymous posting - The open forum doesn’t require providing your e-mail.Forum lay-out - Maybe this is just a biased sample but it seems more hikikomories are willing to comment and discuss things on a discussion board than if it’s on someone’s blog. That said, it’s still no anonymous imageboard though. I know some blogs often cross-post from a blog to a forum but I’ve always felt that it unnecessarily spreads the commentors apart. That said, I am guilty of separating Posterous and Tumblr copies of the blog but I felt that was more of a background and backup issue.
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First off, my apologies for the image quality.
I’m very newbish at image editing and it was only this year that I discovered what “cropping” does.
Anyways, on to the topic.
The short version:
Someone has recently been spamming the HikiPhpBB forum. (1st screenshot)
There’s strong evidence that it is the admin of another Hikikomori forum, HikiCulture.
Evidence #1 is the conversation in the 2nd screenshot.
If the text is blurry, here’s the conversation:
Chair:
Me and thirteen other people are talking about you in my IRC channel right now Foolness.Do you think we are saying positive, or negative things? You have a day to answer. If you don’t answer, I’ll beat you up.
Later on…
“…”:
Cut this bullshit out now. You two have a problem, keep it off this board.
Wut R U gonna do about it tuff guy?
Hi.
I’m Mr. Google, how R U?
Then 2 HikiCulture admin (1 new, 1 the founder and user “Chair”) brought up some unrelated accusations of my time in the HikiCulture forum which prompted me to address the issue in a separate blog post:
Reply to Chair/HikiCulture admin
Around this time, the events prompted me to make two topics. One in the AnonIB /hikikomori/ board which is now deleted per the request of a user and another here.
If you visit the two above links, you’ll see how the events got cleared up under the comments.
After my name was cleared up and it turned out the accusation was mistakenly directed at me by a new admin, I focused on other blog posts I was working on and became inactive from the HikiPhpBB forum.
In particular I was kept busy by my recent blog post because of all the problems I have with getting it to post correctly.
That was when all these happened.
For a copy of my reply and Chair’s original post, just look at the last comment underneath the “Reply to Chair/HikiCulture admin” topic.
If the formatting is hard to read though, here’s my reply: (Note that Chair’s reply is chopped up into quotes)
Chair:
Sorry for being somewhat rude in my reply Foolness, I just don’t enjoy people making wild assumptions about me. In the future, if you want to know what my intentions are in anything I do, please email me at {{{e-mail removed}}}
Me:
Problem is, if you understood the context of the blog, I’m not even sure it was you who was editing the wikipedia article so why would I contact you?
If it was you however, then similarly, why should you be trusted to not censor the conversation when you have already strongly removed someone else’s post from a site you don’t own?
Contacting you privately was just not an option and the actions of both you and your fellow admin under the comment section further made it hard to follow that approach.
Chair:
I’ll likely respond to your email within a day or two of receiving it. I ask you of one thing though - if I’m to send you an email, please do not quote anything that I am to say in any of your blogs or elsewhere. If you do not comply with this request, I will not respond to any further inquiries. People quoting personal messages/email messages without first receiving consent from the person you’re quoting is, in my opinion, more unethical than a person ‘advertising’ their website on Wikipedia. This is only my opinion though of course.
Me:
It was a necessary evil I had to consider quickly.
When you and Quasar start bringing up an un-related issue in a blog topic, especially one that attacks my personal character, events can quickly become “he said/he said” and it could start a flame war.
In those circumstances it’s almost impossible to verify anything objectively because the admins are the ones throwing out the accusations and not just some members.
It can also be hard to rely on members on said community because you’re not sure how much they care about a flame war starting out.
In those cases, there are a few things that can be done to quickly quell the smoke. One of them is for one side to give out all the information they knew from their perspective.
Chair:
For the record - I truly feel that adding the HikiCulture link on Wikipedia is not unethical at all considering that:
Me:
It’s not about ethics. It’s about their rules for notability. Especially when a discussion page comment has been removed around the same time.
Chair:
My forum’s subject matter is very much relevant to the Wikipedia article the link is being posted on (If I were to stick a link to my site on the Viagra Wikipedia article for example, then yes, I’d agree with you on the whole ‘spam forum’ thing. There is high relevancy though).
Me:
No, in general, forums and blogs are not notable enough for Wikipedia no matter how related they are to the topic.
Even when this forum was on there, it was highly suspect.
It could’ve been easily attributed to the lack of English links.
When this forum was removed for some reason and not returned, it cemented the fact that the Wikipedians monitoring the article have decided that the article had improved enough that the forum link could be dropped.
Unless the link to this forum was re-added and gained consensus for notability, any other forum link replacing it is equally non-notable.
Even then, the issue between re-adding a forum link and deleting a post in the discussion board is far from the same intentions.
End
It was then that Chair posted that threatening reply above.
At that point, I didn’t understand what he meant by “beat up” and I ignored the post thinking it was just a normal flame.
Before I left though, I did saw the SPAM account post some spam but I never associated the two. (At the time, it was just 1 or 2 posts)
Then a couple of people pmed me (not much, I’m not an important person in any of the Hikikomori boards) and alerted me to the issue.
At first, I was even being overtly cautious and didn’t link the two events together but it turns out this might not be the first time Chair has spammed.
There was talk of a spam attack in /hikikomori/ linked to Chair which resulted in a backlash against HikiCulture in that board. (An event I never saw but was talked about in pm)
Coupled with the other evidences above and there’s strong evidence that Chair is the spammer based on all this.
Please note that after the “Wikipedia” issue got clarified, I’ve never seen Chair spam the HikiCulture boards elsewhere so I’m not removing the HikiCulture link in this post just yet.
I will however put a warning that Chair is strongly suspected of being a spammer.
I will also try to post this link in several social media sites so for those who are reading this that are not Hikikomori or do not care for the English-speaking Hikikomori community, my apologies for blogspamming in your favorite sites. I just felt this issue was serious enough to “report” as to keep future Hikikomoris from (possibly) being associated with a spammer.
This is another placeholder topic but one slightly more serious:
First off, I’ve no doubt that - for members of this forum - this could easily come off as a HikiPhpBB vs. HikiCulture vs. AnonIB /hikikomori/ thread.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t help that coincidentally I’ve made a recent return post on HikiPhpBB.
This isn’t intentional but is a result of me just being frustrated and bored so I decided to re-check the Hikikomori boards I know of (except Sankaku and HikiCulture)
Sankaku because it’s a news site and I’m too busy to add further information overload unto myself and HikiCulture because I’ve been banned.
Another major blow to my bias but I’ll let you decide how much based on this incident:
From a recent revision of the Hikikomori wikipedia page discussion board:
I’ve been a member on a few Hikikomori and recluse forums and websites for a while now. “HikiCulture” keeps being linked to here, but it generally is not a good place for information and help. It’s still fairly new and the administrator has no idea on how to run a forum correctly and generally doesn’t understand that the site is for people who need help and information. He overreacts and abuses control without thinking about his actions, and he has Asperger’s Sydrome which hinders his decisive abilities, causing harsh and uncalled-for actions which may offend. He also bans people for things which are petty and do not require action. It’s generally a place to avoid due to this. The community itself is great, but the administrator known to some as “Chair” isn’t good for the community. I’ve heard of other Hikikomori sites opening soon for giving advice and help and they’ll be linked to here once they have been created.
Also, I am not meaning to cause offense, I have been asked to write this comment by a lot of members of the community at “HikiCulture”. The way it’s ran is unfair and the staff do not care about us with mental conditions, reclusiveness, depression and social anxiety. It’s not wise to link to “HikiCulture” any further.
I don’t participate much in Wikipedia but the argument while not verifying to me that it was accurate, did convince me that there was ample reason to remove the HikiCulture link from the main article so I decided to do so.
What’s worrying and why I am being harsh and calling it spam is that not only was the link restored but that the above quote was also removed.
…
Now I get that there’s no proof of any persistant trolling nor is this even a rare issue for most wikipedia articles but it is kind of worrying that the Hikikomori label may be starting to be used as a marketing tactic and that’s why I’m preserving these quotes in case it never gets restored.
(I’ve no patience for wikipedia edit wars.)
I also fully accept the responsibility that I may be accused of doing the same thing with this blog and this may come off as hypocritical mud-slinging by me but since I have no way to prove my integrity, I could only give my word that I don’t have an agenda against Hiki-Culture but it would be heart breaking if future Hikikomoris gather in the wrong place due to wikipedians’ neglect of protecting the Hikikomori article from such edits.
Therefore even if the word “spam” can be interpreted as sensationalism, this would have to stay to serve as linkbait in case the issue becomes more drastic in the future.
Currently testing whether Posterous is more convenient than Tumblr.
At first, I skipped this because I’m not much of an e-mail user but eventually hearing lots of other posterous user mention the service and since I was looking for a more convenient blog editor than Tumblr’s, I eventually caved in.
Basic pros (for newbie bloggers like me) are that the commenting system is more anonymous but e-mail centric.
Cons are that I don’t know how to import those Disqus comments on Tumblr into all the topics and the tags basically disappeared unless I put them in one by one.
On the plus side, posterous has auto-posting which hopefully can offset that issue even if the comments are now basically halved.
Oh btw the link is: http://hiki.posterous.com
