Talk:Fawnlings

Odd Situation

So, an interesting occurrence in this group has recently happened that has me wondering where this page may need to go in the future. The staff of this ARPG recently have been in contact with the seven-years-silent original admin. She had revealed to them that she has taken information that she made open source in the ARPG (as is the nature of ARPGs, with their similarities to homebrew DND games) and decided to make it into a novel which she intends to send to publishers. However, in doing so she has requested that the ARPG staff remove all mention of the original lore she seeded the group with. She wants it purged and in the future, group members are expected to never mention any past lore within the canon of their characters. For example, if a character was born in Blackwood (a place in game), in the future the character cannot remember the name of their birth home. It will be against the rules.

But this leads me to an interesting question, but it may still be too early to say what will happen. Because she wants all info purged due to intentions to publish a novel... what does that mean for this Fanlore page? It seems like she wants to remove all mentions of the lore she made from the Internet. But this Fanlore page would make her attempts unhelpful, as all that lore would still be listed here. It seems like a tricky situation. All that information was public, and a portion of it remains on Wayback Machine (I'm unsure of her intentions to request it be taken down from wayback or not). So it is public information that it did indeed exist, even if content is removed from DA. But if she begins making the ARPG staff remove all content, and there is no longer any official mention of the old way the lore was, would housing that content here be a violation of any policy? One of the current bullets on the policy page as it stands now is "In general, when linking to content at a particular forum you should follow the stated guidelines of the site and the expectations of that forum's user community." And if the community of Fawnlings changes to where community members are disallowed to mention the past lore, and all of it has been purged from the DA group, would that count as violation to still house such info here?

Another great question (which may or may not happen, idk).. if the creator comes to Fanlore and asks us to remove all mentions of her old public ARPG lore, would we be able to accommodate the request? Again, I may be jumping the gun a bit. But it is such a strange and highly specific situation. Patchlamb (talk) 22:16, 25 April 2021 (UTC)

Info Removed From This Page

Is there a reason so much content and info has been removed from the page? MeeDee (talk) 05:11, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

Looks like the majority of what was removed was about the situation with the admin a while back. I reverted the edit since that was a large chunk of the article. LaBelph, if you have concerns about PPOV or are trying to remove something regarding identity, it’s best to discuss it on the talk page or reach out to Fanlore staff directly, so that we can help address your concerns. Otherwise, removing large pieces of articles without discussion may alarm others. I’ve reverted the edits. If there is something specific in the article you have concerns about, please let us know. Patchlamb (talk) 06:21, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

About the Edits

Hello! I am herbalwolf, one of the former moderators for Fawnlings, back when it was... well, still around. While I am all for documenting things, I must add that I do not particularly appreciate the "Twitter Response" section of the Fanlore page. The wording around it feels accusatory towards Aliiwa and adds nothing to the article itself. I was around and witnessed the bandwagon hate towards Rae, and it was extremely nasty. I ask that you please remove the section itself as it adds nothing but a one-sided perspective on the drama. There were many responses on both sides, not just Aliiwa's.

--Herbalwolf (talk) 01:19, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

Welcome to Fanlore, Herbalwolf! Yes, the page and section can be reviewed for PPOV and have its language revisited. If there was a wider range of Twitter responses to the situation, perhaps adding them amid the two current ones would help expand that. At the time the section was added it was very near to the game’s closure, so it’s likely there just weren’t many responses at that time since it was fresh. I don’t have time to look into it right now (bed time for me and I’m on mobile), but when I do, do you have any specific concerns about certain language that you feel is accusatory for me to consider? We do try to capture all perspectives, even ones that are negative, but if there is specific language that seems particularly hostile it can be reviewed and changed to sound more neutral.

On another note, I personally do think the Twitter responses are a necessary section that adds more into the situation, particularly being that Aliiwa looks to be one of the members who was supportive of Rae and was close to her, which offers a much needed perspective on Rae’s side. And ARPG, especially HARPG, discourse ending up on Twitter seems relevant to me as well, as that isn’t something I’ve seen happen very often. That’s why I feel a section on the Twitter response is acceptable and needed. Others are of course encouraged to give their opinion on that; it could be that the section could still be shortened. Patchlamb (talk) 05:07, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

Much of the entire article is told from the POV of an upset member with a clear bias. Points of view are not necessary on a page about the lore of an RP, a recount of the drama is not necessary, and pointing out specific names is extremely unnecessary. You can say that yes, there were high emotions on both sides of the matter, but little else is really needed to be said. Just because Aliiwa’s reaction is the only twitter response still up does not mean it’s the only one that happened. Several people made emotional tweets during that time and have since taken them down, so clearly not really necessary either. Also language like “And, given that coupled with Rae's sudden and short timeframe for closing the group, they didn't understand how this response wasn't more expected.” is biased and opinionated.

The main section talking about the journal puts specific focus on Rae’s reaction to the sheer hostility and mockery people were saying while reducing their nastiness to “suggestions and questions” like they were all being civil. The entire next paragraph could be shortened to “Although a voting journal was put up, the staff ultimately decided the best way forward was to restart fresh with a new group completely separated from the original lore. With the group stripped of code and content, the staff left at mid-day of Eastern hemisphere time and Rae announced she’d be closing the group entirely.

I do mean this all with respect, and I just want there to be a more concrete and neutral approach to the situation, even though it has been a few months since the closure and drama. --Herbalwolf (talk) 19:33, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

Herbalwolf, controversies within fandom communities do often get documented on their fandom pages, as ignoring them can lead to just as much bias. We do not remove the negative or positive opinions of others even when a situation may be uncomfortable to a reader, instead ways to balance the opinions are found. Fawnlings has had little controversy in it's roughly decade long run. I do feel documenting the one large controversy it did have is necessary and gives a much more full view of it's community. I included a full quotation from Rae herself to help balance criticisms of her with her own thoughts, but if you feel too much emphasis is placed on a single upset member with a bias, I would be happy for you to assist me in reviewing the Wayback Machine captures of the original commentary to help me find the "sheer hostility and mockery." If it's there it should likely be documented; most of the negative comments as they're presented on the page now are watered down with the exception of a direct quote I included from SfwGenuflect. Though, during the initial documentation, I was under the impression that the more hostile comments may have been in DMs or somewhere on the original Discord, so the WBM captures may not be a viable source of hostility. Unfortunately the original Fawnlings Discord was deleted by Rae, so I have no source for who it was that made targeted remarks about her. I do remember staff reminding players to not do that, though.

I haven't touched the Twitter section yet. I needed to update the page overall for present-past language as a lot of it still used present language though it's been closed. The Twitter section will be next, and I'll be using the suggestion by EnchantedSleeper of quoting more fully to allow the Twitter responses to speak from themselves, rather than being summarized and possibly out of context.

Quick edit: However, I do wonder if the closure of Fawnlings section is getting too long... Would it be better suited to it's own page maybe, as some controversy does end up getting their own pages? Patchlamb (talk) 20:46, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

While I very much don't "go here" and don't know the fandom background, could the Twitter section include more direct quotes of what was said by fans? I notice that the section only quotes fans in part and otherwise paraphrases or describes the situation, and I think the best way to represent the words of fans accurately is to quote them in full. That way, there's nothing inferred, simply the fan's own words - some summarising of the situation is probably still needed to put the quotes in context, but my instinct would be to quote as fully as is practical so as to let the fans' accounts speak for themselves. --enchantedsleeper (talk) 16:04, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

Yes good idea, I get the feeling I didn’t quote them directly using the code because I probably thought the quotes in the section above were enough and had probably been worried about making it longer. But since several months have passed and it seems like direct quotes are more desired, I’ll work on changing them to make sure they’re quoted more in full, both Aliiwa and Pool’s reply. I think they both offer pretty good perspectives with Aillwa being a friend of Rae and Pool being an ex-mod from the early days when Rae was around and when Rae left. I’m also going to check if there are any new Twitter responses or conversations about it since it’s been a while. I will say I was around when the event occurred, and I have heard others (including aillwa’s tweet used here) say that Rae was “harassed” and had lots of people saying bad things at her. I didn’t see a lot of that personally (limited to devianatart and public discord channels), but it’s possible there may have been worse things said behind closed doors, such as DMs or DA notes. I won’t be able to quote anything that isn’t public, but if Rae or someone else privy to any of these harassing comments ever wants to talk about them, they could also be a welcome perspective. Otherwise all I can do is quote others about the negative feedback she received, like in Aillwa’s Tweet. I’ll have to work on the page in a bit, though. Patchlamb (talk) 16:50, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

Twitter Response

As the author of those tweets, I have taken them down for my own privacy's sake and not with hostile intent. I'm pretty sure I have the right to withdraw my own opinions from this page. If you'd like to discuss the timeline mentioned in the original tweets, I suggest referring to the January 28 2020 edit where most of that timeline existed but was removed. With that information already present in this page's archive, I believe calling attention to my recount of the events is no longer necessary and at this point would be rude and disrespectful to bring them up yet again. Let me be clear. Do not use my Twitter, DeviantArt, Discord, or any other conversations for this page without my consent again.

Hi HooliaDEE,

Removing large amounts of content from Fanlore without prior agreement is considered hostile editing. You can read more about our policy on these types of edits on our Hostile Editing page.

As the tweets removed had been public for many months, quoting them as they appear in archive captures falls within our citation policy. You can read more about our citation policy on our Citation page, and for our policy on public content that has later been deleted, you can find that within the Exceptions sub-section of the Citations article.

It's Fanlore's mission to give every perspective a voice in order to balance and acknowledge a wide range of fan opinions. This is our plural point of view policy, and you can read about this policy on our Plural Point of View page. We believe it is important to document all voices fairly and accurately for posterity, and in a way that does not make any judgements, but instead offers a wider scope of opinions on a topic.

The Tweets that were quoted, including the replies by @thatspool, were included in full due to concerns about plural point of view that were brought to editor attention here on the Talk page. The quotations used were changed from summaries to full quotations to avoid possibly being taken out of context. Though we understand that their inclusion may make you uncomfortable, these Tweets were quoted with our plural point of view and citation policies in mind.

We take privacy seriously at Fanlore; however, quoting public Tweets is not in violation of our identity protection policy, as it does not link your online username with a secondary username nor your real life name. If you still have concerns or questions about identity protection, you can read more about this on our Identity Protection policy page.

At this time we have decided to revert the edits to continue including the removed quotations, and due to repeated vandalism the page has been frozen for editing only by Fanlore administrators. However, we encourage you to continue utilising this Talk page with any further solutions or suggestions you may have regarding the page's overall content. There have already been a few suggestions made on the page, such as assisting in reviewing references, which may be a good place for you to continue the discussion.

enchantedsleeper

Fanlore Policy & Admin

History Page

There was some discussion about moving the bulk of the Fawnlings history/closure off onto the already made Fawnlings History page, but I had taken a bit of a step back for a while before coming back to mention it again. Right now, the history page might be functioning as an index, as I made it very early into being an editor. I think it would be better suited if I took the content of the history page and pasted it off-site and used the history page instead to offload the more detailed aspects of Fawnling's history and closure there. Would anyone have any objection to that? Are there any preferences to whether we keep it here or move it over? Patchlamb (talk) 03:15, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

Since seems like there's no objection, I'll go ahead and start moving the bulk of the more detailed info off-page onto the history page, then. Patchlamb (talk) 18:17, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

Excluded from the Wayback Machine - Broken Links

Upon reviewing archival links, it seems that the Wayback Machine now excludes archives of the old Fawnlings group. That means all of the archival links leading to the group are now broken links and the group's existence is completely lost sans the screenshot on the page. Unfortunate and a shame. I am wondering if this development is worth mentioning anywhere on the page, if it might be better to just remove the archived section all together, or if we should add the broken link tag to all of the now broken links. I know that we don't usually remove broken links since the URL itself is good to have even if broken, so I'm leaning towards mentioning the exclusion and just marking the links as broken rather than removing anything. I'll do that and if anyone has any other thoughts let me know. Patchlamb (talk) 19:19, 17 March 2024 (UTC)