Talk:The Magnus Archives/Identity Protection

Removal of content from "criticism"

I reverted the edit today that removed a paragraph from the https://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Magnus_Archives#Criticism section. Please discuss this removal on this talk page. --MPH (talk) 23:52, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

I am concerned that the "Quimcourse" section (under Criticism) is being used as part of a harassment campaign against the user in question. While the user herself has in fact behaved inappropriately, this does not excuse the level of harassment she has been facing (largely for being cringey and awkward and for having a drawn out public breakdown that people have been gawking at for entertainment; her actual inappropriate behavior is a footnote at best). They have posted about how likely various Mechanisms characters would be to "physically attack her" (https://oh-peacemaker.tumblr.com/post/643216935981580289/mechs-characters-ranked-by-how-likely-theyd-be-to). They have made merch of her trying to talk her way out of being bullied (https://pomegrandiose.tumblr.com/post/639770428011872256/redbubble-update).

It is a small-scale, petty feud between an adult women who is clearly unwell, easily goaded into fights, and prone to oversharing her mental health struggles and a bunch of teenagers who think it is funny to see her in pain. It is not a widespread controversy. It has absolutely no impact on the fandom at large. It is a personal feud, and including it in the fanlore page is inappropriate. --Woodchuckwould (talk) 01:44, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

While I don't think it was the intention of the author who added this paragraph, it does appear that this text might violate Fanlore's policies against harassment. Specifically Fanlore:Deceptive Practices (attacks & outing sections) may apply here. Because of the small number of fans involved, it is very easy to identify all the individuals and find call out posts related to this incident that include identifying information about the author. I do believe this is a case of a small group in the fandom harassing an author due to perceived wrong shipping. Although several editors have edited the paragraph in an attempt to make it more balanced, it could still be viewed as harassment of the author in its current form. For all these reasons, I do believe the paragraph should be removed. --Auntags (talk) 12:19, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

I agree - it is not difficult to find out the identity of the individuals involved, and strays into the territory of violating our policies on attack pages and outing. Accordingly, this has now been removed from the page.

--enchantedsleeper
Fanlore Policy & Admin

Thanks for the discussion and ensuing action. In the future, adding a note of explanation to page's talk page before removing quotes is best policy. Admin can always redact info from them if needed. --MPH (talk) 14:15, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

The user who wanted her beaten up has also admitted to being the one to add this to the wiki in the first place (https://oh-peacemaker.tumblr.com/post/645415632054173696/i-wasnt-going-to-say-anything-but-i-was-the-one), so yes, definitely an attempt at using the wiki to further harassment. I'm glad it's been removed.

-- Skylark