TV Tropes called out by The Mary Sue

We should get a dialog going with these people. If we explain to them what our situation is, surely they'll retract their criicism. We need to message them.

I agree.

We're talking to them in the comments.

Oh cool!

And now we've made the front page of The Escapist.

And now we have another incident on our hands.

Oh, for goodness sake.

... Oh boy.

I know bad PR is awful, but this site reminds me of the social justice faction of tumblr, always looking to call something problematic.

Not to mention that this second post looks woefully badly-informed, cherry-picking certain discussions (for God's sake, they cite The Nunnery...), citing Something Awful and some blog posts and so on.

edited 27th Jun '12 9:57:01 AM by jkbeta

They just discovered the content/cleanup discussions? They also were led to this while sifting through the Google Incident talk. This feels like deja vu.

Though I do like that the author of the article has read the comments and spoke in response.

Stellar journalism, ladies and gentlemen. -_-

Something tells me that "anonymous tipper" was that recently banned person who said that the FBI was looking into the site.

They do need some controversial news to make...papers. But those are old news, I'm afraid.

Yeah, they're not doing enough research into these forums.

Can someone go check on their points? For example, "victims of pedophilic attacks on TV Tropes were banned for complaining about the attacks".

Hmm...the wording is confusing.

edited 27th Jun '12 10:02:36 AM by chihuahua0

....Seriously? Then we'd have to ban people from the mod team too. Some facts need to be straightened.

I've mentioned being a victim of child abuse in some discussions of "pedosh*t" (sorry, hate that word), and I never felt attacked. Uncomfortable sure, but I didn't have to be there.

edited 27th Jun '12 10:05:16 AM by emeriin

The problem here is essentially the same as anyone who's the victim of a smear campaign. If we protest, we look guilty. If we don't protest, we still look guilty.

edited 27th Jun '12 10:07:31 AM by ccoa

So, we're screwed no matter what we do. How disappointingly unsurprising.

Well, the thing to do is of course to have not bargained with pedophiles or attacked victims.

If they're just making up the claims or listening to disgruntled bannees, then the whole thing will resolve itself. If not, then we deserve it.

Looking at their "sources", the user banned "for being rude to pedophiles" was lolacat. I can speak with absolute certainty that lolacat was not banned for anything even resembling that. That's a rumor others, probably including herself, have been spreading. Lolacat was banned for instigating panic and being extremely unproductive and fearmongering during the early stages of the "no lewdness" clean up.

And as far as I'm aware, we have never knowingly bargained with pedophiles to allow them to return to the site.

But these things do not just blow over. Rumors spread and get uglier. That's how smear campaigns work.

edited 27th Jun '12 10:30:54 AM by ccoa

I thought it was the one from last year.

The other problem of course is that nobody bothers to do the research. They just take any smear campaign at face value.

What should we do, at this point?

Spread truths?

Blog about it?

Salvage bad publicity?

edited 27th Jun '12 10:28:15 AM by chihuahua0