You have no idea how elated I am at the news of these changes. Oh, how my soul vibrates with joy at the text before me. Your words have left me jiggly, and full of juice.
Why, you might ask? (Or simply, WTF?)
Because I suddenly have yet another opportunity to bitch, piss, and moan - scream at the precipus of my lungs - recoil in horror and spring forward in attack.(Again, WTF?)
I'm referring to this new search engine of NG's designed to eliminate and deter would-be assholes spamming the site with outwar links and the like.
I'm also referring to the continued corruption of a once beautiful concept; The steady downward trajectory of purity lost in beaurocracy; And the death of all things good and true. (Perhaps a slight exageration.)
You see, kids, every two or three months we here at newgrounds like to fuck with a good thing. We encounter some small and easily surmountable problem and proceed in eliminating it by going completely overboard. First, we fix the problem. Then we initiate at least two new changes and/or useless features to the site which do little more then punish the majority for the actions of the few.
We have seen this before just months ago. A continuing problem with blammers at the portal leads to an ingenius lilJim coding effort to hide current vote score and track abusive blammers. This fixed the problem... However, (and of coarse) this was also accompanied with the hiding of current reviews - a needless addition which disenchanted the users and disassociated them from each other. This "solution" created a problem in that users could nolonger warn each other of malicious submissions.
So, does our admin team simply remove the code blocking acces to the review system, allowing the users to communicate with each other as before? Wha? Hell no. Let's create yet another needless feature - Blow the Whistle! Which, of coarse, was and is to this day, abused.
Let's review:
Problem - Blammers in the portal.
Solution - Block view of the current vote.
Solution - Track suspicous blam usage.
Solution - Block access to reviews until blammed/protected.
Solution - Blow the whistle on not only malicious code but also anything that you personally feel is inappropriate.
Solution - Track overuse use of blow the whistle.
(the list could go on, and has... see my previous BBS posts)
It seems to me that the first two solutions were the only necessary ones. Those that followed were solutions to problems created by solutions. And in the process of implementing all these nifty little features the users lost a lot in the way of our freedom to communicate with each other and to choose for ourselves what is and is not appropriate.
Today, I see a new pitfall looming just ahead. NG's administration is dealing with a sudden flood of (primarily outwar) links showing up in the forums and the reviews. Personally, I'm glad to see them working at kicking these little bastard spammers in the nuts. (crush a testical or two for me, Wade!)
But I also see that we're quickly going to find ourselves right back in the old 'problem-solution' game again, and no doubt the users will suffer the loss of freedom and democracy once more.
The proposed solution to the problem of spam is a server side tool that will either log or search for three specific instances of abuse to the review system.
1. Link spamming
2. Text flooding
3. Gratuitous Insults toward Authors
First, let us take note that although the primary problem that initiated the implementation of this change has been link spamming we are seeing two extranious additions as well. Further evidence of the 'overkill' method of problem solving here at NG.
As I've stated, you can sodomize the link spammers for all I care and you have my full support. As for banning the text flooding...
I don't really see why it matters in the least. The text limit on reviews limits how much kb any text flood is going to steal from the database and we users simply pass over a passage of "DDDDDDDDDDK" without it making much of an impact on our lives.
But - what the hell - If you must... Go ahead, cut out the text flooders.
Finally...we've reached the meat and potatoes of my unsurpassed rage.(Perhaps a slight exaggeration)
The last condition is that you may now be banned for insulting an author..!?. 'Scuze me? Did I hear that right?
Once again the administration has proposed a "solution" to a problem that isn't really a problem. Once again a new "feature" is enabled to protect us from ourselves. And once again, I see the democracy and the freedoms afforded by a site created by the users, for the users, and of the users slipping quickly away.
Here is a website who's most famed works involve school shootings, the anal rape of pokemon, and proposed assisination of damn near every pop culture icon ever!!! And you're going to tell us not to use naughty language? Not to insult one another? To... ahem... play nice???!
Personally, I got enough hipocracy out of the public education system, so if you don't mind -- take that shit down the street. On a more important note; despite societies constant reitteration of the concept that you should never fight... never hit anyone... I've found that sometimes, people need to be hit. Sometimes, people need a good beating to snap them out of their own stupidity.
Unfortunately the internet does not allow us the ability to physically render pain unto those deserving. (At least not yet.) However, those few of us blessed with a sharply spiked tongue are able to deliver an equal if not more powerful berage of blows simply with our words.
And now you stand before me proposing to take even that simple power away from us. Pardon? To even imply such a thing requires that I unsheath my sword and beat you with the blunt edge.
Half the fun of seeing a hideous flash is bashing the moron who made it and reading how others have similarly smited the author.
As it stands now you've already sucked the fun out of reading portal reviews by making us wait until ~120 votes to see any of them... Now the ones that are most interesting and most entertaining will get you banned???
HA! You guys really want to drive this site into the ground, huh? I never could have guessed that Newgrounds would opt for being happy, shiny, non-abrasive and politically correct over..... GOOD.
In conclusion, I would like to say this:
You suck! You should die!
