It's a girl's world

I get to explain away my failure to update often with an ostensibly lame excuse: I'm a boy. And it seems to carry truth when you compare the journals of a normal guy versus that of a girl.

I'll share my findings with you and admit that most of the material is in the LiveJournal spectrum. Indeed, if you look at my friends page, you won't find too many updates by men like us, and when they do, they're concise and abbreviated. soanevalcke's journal is a good example aside from mine; his updates are far and few between and the latest post at time of writing suggests that the practice has become boring for him, which is backed up by the statement in writing and the length of time it took to come up with what's called a 'meme' (which I assume to be a diminutive of 'memory', a tool available on LiveJournal that I've never had the patience to experiment with).

Now look at a post by any of the women and compare. Here is a public entry made by the blogger mentioned before:

Walked in the park today. And then, as a bit of side time to burn off, Lucas (my dog, might I remind most of you), Vincent and I decided to jump across the river. Vincent said that I wouldn't make it, and I did. Lucas swam across, eager to get back to me. He got his toes wet.On the second try, I wasn't so lucky. One leg of mine made it across, the other slipped into the smelly creek. My shoe's currently out to dry, and I quickly ran home to wash my right leg. Lucas got drenched all over. D:

Then look at a post that otherwise would have a similar mood, this being by lightningchan:

Right, so skipping over early morning stuff since it's just whining about cramps and no one cares. So. School.

I got there around eight and only read one of the signs on the door, and even then only half of it. XD I thought all the homerooms were posted in front of the caf, so I had to shove my way through a MASSIVE wall of people to try to see, since god forbid the kids go to their frigging classrooms, or move out of the way, or even INTO the caf so that people can see the lists, or even move around in that huge hallway. Anyway, I figured it out a moment later and went to the gym where I figured it would be anyway. XD It was there and I got my room number and headed off.

Dude, I know almost EVERYONE in my homeroom. There are only...5 people I've never seen before? And even then, I think I've seen them, just not had any classes with them. It's insane. o_o Of course, best part is how Dean, Lisa, Mara and Alyssa are all in the class, too. :D Yay. Our lockers are RIGHT there too. Mine's a palindrome and third-closest to our class. XD; I'm not upset about them moving the lockers around now. I have no classes on the side of the school that Physics is at, so it'd just be annoying to still have my locker there. Anyway, we really didn't do very much in Philosophy. Just looked at quotes and then wrote down what we think Philosophy is and what we want to get out of the course. I copied Dean's second answer: "a 90." XDD; Then I drew Axel and Marluxia on his paper. Which evolved into all the Obvilion Orgy members. That was fun.

Next was Discrete with my old Calculus teacher. WHAT FUN. And...it actually wasn't bad. It really is just my Physics class over again with less people. XD; There are only two or three people who weren't in it. The teacher handed out a review sheet that was just a lot of simple trig. The hardest thing we had to do was rearrange the formula for the cosine law to find an angle. The other side was pretty much the same, but with graphing, so we didn't do that. Overall it was pretty good though, and the only question on the front that we didn't know, we actually got a lesson on. o_o; And I understood it after he taught it, too! If he actually teaches like that every single day, I may do well in this course. How exciting. XD;

After this class was English. In a portable. DX I managed to ask someone in my Calculus class where P7 was, though. Didn't have to though, since I was right in assuming the seventh one was one of the newer ones, right out one of the nearest doors. XD So I went there and saw Ann sitting at a group of desks in the corner. I don't know her amazingly well, but we sat next to each other in Grade 10 Science so yeah. I sat with that group. Sharon's there too so at least I know people. We didn't do very much in that class. Just took papers, she explained our CPT and wants us to choose our books by Monday (wtf! so early!) and then we did some brainstorming on the word "fragmentation." XDD We ended up talking about asexual reproduction since, technically, it could be a type of fragmentation. :[ It involves cells splitting apart or whatever.

English teacher let us out early, so I went to the caf and bought food. It was good, and we've all got the same lunch again, so this semester should be fun. :D I've missed having lunch with the whole group, even though not everyone was there today for some reason or another, including a bunch of guidance visits which for Dean's we took the liberty of eating his pizza so it wouldn't get cold. XD

Last but not least as Calculus. Fomg, I zoomed through the worksheet she gave us. :B I didn't finish, but damn I remembered everything. So proud of myself, even if it was just simple things like evaluating functions, expanding, factoring, and finding roots. XD; Ann's in that class too so I sat beside her and Mitch sits in the two-desk row beside us. So yay, I know people. I got 75 last year (or was it 74? I dunno.), but I want higher. Hopefully I'll get a much better mark this time. We're doing review today and tomorrow and then we start the course. :D It's sad that Calculus is probably going to be my favourite class this time around. Philosophy will be fun, but I miss being good at math and having already taken this course, I'll probably be good at it.

Now I'm home. Gonna wait for Bryan to come home so I can open the door for him, considering he's too lazy to take out his key, then go get changed and then...start on my homework, I guess. Two math worksheets to finish up, got to pull together a few binders and organize them for my classes and then...get mom and dad to write out cheques for my textbooks.

Hey, I can use my school:calculus tag again! XD

Blimey. I admit I don't make it a point to detail the school day, given that I'm pretty much restricted as it is as far as classes go and not much goes around socially since the school is so remote. And even if scenes were made every day and the school I attended was in a more urban area, I probably wouldn't find it in me to record it.

The conclusion then comes from my stepmother: It's a matter of them being more vocal. Now you wonder why there are so many books in the library written in the point of view of girls — seventh-grade Bebo users, ninth- and tenth-grade MySpace users and clubbers, all ignominiously leaving out the boys in such roles, except perhaps as hot crushes or concerned relatives. I know that there are some boys out there who probably love to document their outings, and many of them have pictures that generally take the place of words, but when it comes to the Internet, a vision I have been seeing seems to have credit: In the Internet, it's simply a girl's world. It's a world where cute animated backgrounds, pink and black stripes, fluorescent colours, and stars are accepted fixtures. It's also a world where, whenever the aforementioned is absent, animé characters, Photoshop images and icons, and text smilies dominate. And a lot of it can be attributed to the impact women have had on the Internet. And that's being masculinely conservative about it.

So what can be said in conclusion about the men? I really don't know. I believe we should leave it to the women to say that.

Sky Temple IRC Down

Forever.

Apparently the forums failed to generate any activity while the chat existed, so the licence will not be renewed. Shame.

Blazing comments

It's a disappointment to Blaze, evidently, that the Community failed to collapse after the hacking, but he had hopes for Shinou.com to surpass PC in some time due to either a lack of funding for the server or lack of general linterest. His aspirations have gone so far as to create a blog — one that now has the Community Staff kicking up a fuss.

Blaze's blog has contributions from many members of Shinou.com, including BGTFamily, who owns the back end site Total Pokémon. In his post 'Guest Blogger', he allows BGT to post what seems to be evidence of Shinou.com steadily overtaking the Pokémon Community and provides numbers courtesy of 'some fellow fans', while the numbers prove, on further examination, to be completely fabricated. BGT rates the Pokémon Community to have 3,344 members against Shinou's 2,060 at the time of writing, but a quick look at the PC boards will tell you that the number of registered users — not active users, since the article doesn't say that — is currently 20,839, the day after publication of the article.

Another piece of information contributed by kind Blaze is a review of Paul's PokéJungle project. Upon hearing that the domain is 'Spinarak', he jumps and yells that Spinarak is a trademark of Nintendo, which it is, and warns against removal of the domain. It may seem like a shrewd warning, but wasn't it Blaze himself who took the domain Shinou.com, another trademark of Nintendo? Any sane person will know that copyright laws don't extend to the use of these domain names for fan sites, which Shinou.com and the Spinarak domain are.

Then there's a quip below that article: 'While we were at this once amazing forum, we were in talks with Kwesi (the humble and quite rad owner of PC) to co-pay for a server for PC/TotalPokemon.com. Approximently about Five Days after Kwesi paid for the Server in full, did we pull out of the agreement due to the arrogant PC Staff who did not like the idea of us having control . . . [and] decided that they rather pay for the Server, then have us have anything to do with it. Apparently they didn't keep their word, because about a few days ago PC once again has ads featured all over the forum.' They broke the word when the agreement was broken, so they had no choice. This post is effectively bull.

Most unfortunately, I'm not the first to report on the sleight of hand and otherwise plain and simple tosh that this blog offers. Remember FandomObserver? While he refuses to reveal his identity (and there have been calls for him to do so), he's become a good contemporary of mine. While he maintains the idea of just reviewing the fandom as a whole, he's gone in and criticised Blaze, something I should have done long ago, closing the first part of his latest review with a title, 'Misguided Webmaster With A Big Ego'. All I can say in addition to that specifically is that Joe's eating his heart out right now.

So what is Blaze? Does he have an ego? Yes. Does he remain true to his contemporaries, especially Erica, whom he said would be the only one out of PC's staff administrators to get any staff holding? No. Does BGT? No, he relied on ridiculously inaccurate statistics (Alexa, which is generated by users using the site's toolbar) after three months of quibbling with the rest of the PC staff.

It's a good thing Nicola's not including Total Pokémon in her collaborative 'Autumn Always'.

Popular. Yeah. I guess so.

Popular Girls

I'll assume that this is not a mock site like one I was once showed that was made by Democrats that tried to insult Radical Republicans by creating an anti-Pokémon page with supposed evidence of demonic affiliation. If there's one thing I hate, it's a girl that tries to delude others by establishing a code of conduct that promises to make you popular but requires acts that will more likely drive people away from you.

First we have clothing and bag brands. Last year I had to do a project in my health class (this came before the baby, thank you very much) in which we were to evaluate the expenses for raising a baby in its first year of life. Although we know the cost is quite high and should prove prohibitive for teens, the figure — nearly $91,000 — was offset by designer labels such as Gucci for clothes to even diaper bags. The very same label makes a cameo here, along with other labels and their respective websites. (It can be argued, though, that Aéropostale is so commonly worn that it's basically cheap by now.)

It then goes on to mention pearls, earrings, and torn jeans if you want the Gothic look — I'm afraid that's all too common and detractive. For one thing, it doesn't make a great impression when you're taking a job interview or attending school for that matter, as most dress codes will want you to not have holes in the jeans. Unfortunately, the dress code at my school, which disallows revelation of the leg past the ankle except in cases of skirts or gym shorts, has been flouted so many times that I've just accepted it as a fact of life, but it's gotten considerably better since measures were stepped up in my sophomore year. And for another, the British have a name for people, especially girls, who deck themselves in excessive amounts of jewellery and vivid clothing — they're called chavs.

Next, what populars do. They go to the mall, have five way conversations, post provocative pictures on MySpace — check. It's all the same, thanks in part to shows on Nickelodeon, the Disney Channel, and ABC Family — we're at prep schools, tapping away at our keyboards and spitting out dialogue on AIM or chatting up the corridors by shopping at the mall. There's a store called Hot Topic in a mall near to me, but the clothing there is extremely expensive and many people know it; in fact, not many people from my area shop there at all.

They read the teenage tabloids such as J14 — that fails to extend into high school. If you want the material you can get in that magazine, go pick up the National Enquirer. I guarantee that fifty percent or more of what you read in J14 or Tiger Beat is fake and directed right at the girls. I feel terribly sorry for Jesse McCartney.

As for hygiene, I'm glad it looks out for clean hair and teeth as well as healthy skin. It also advises that you allow for better grades, so that's about the only kudos I'll give it there. It took me some time to find something positive to back up the 'don't be stupid' calls throughout some of the site's pages, but dang it, I managed it.

Believe me, being popular is nothing you want. Popularity, in a sense, is wanting to be somebody from the scope of power, influence, and ability. I was popular in middle school because I could use big words and seem as if I knew what they all meant. True, I did know what some of them meant, but usage was generally lackadaisical — I realise now that it takes far less pressure to say what you want in simpler terms or, if it's a big word, check the dictionary before you proceed. Unfortunately, this led many to believe that I could be tripped up, and even today I have friends stop me on the street and ask, 'What does supercalifragilisticexpialidocious mean? Who was the fifth president?' I sometimes answer lightheartedly, but when it comes to math problems, especially when they begin with the line 'I'm having problems with my work', not only am I annoyed, but my confidence back then comes back to bite me in the ass. Of course, it then raises the question whether it was actually thickly veiled personal resentment.

In effect, the very word 'popular' is undermined. The word is supposed to suggest few role models, but as soon as people follow suit, whatever is done becomes a standard. It's like being in a rave full of shouting moshers and a heavy metal band blaring onstage, and you're convinced as much as the next person that your shouting will somehow get you noticed. Now when someone does something differently, they're referred to as deviants, at term otherwise reserved for the 'popular' girl.

Now I just let people see my maps, especially handwriting samples. Now that I know better, I don't randomly spew out trivia and lift my head to assert its authenticity. I'm already paying my dues for all that, especially when I see the consequences levied on girls that try to fit in the crowd.

Livejournal again

Again, I screwed up.

I decided to keep a parallel LiveJournal blog to relect the school flow and save this for reall issues. I'll cross links between the two on occasion. I've added a link to the top so you can read.

Next project will be designing a skin for it.

LiveJournal

Okay, I screwed up. MySpace (or Hi5) evidently isn't proficient enough at providing blogging services for a majority of the population that takes the time to record a diary online. At least I knew that for a while.

Rather, the primary generator of creative writing, sordid blogging, and conveyance of emotion seems to be LiveJournal. This blog service, started in 1999 and now a subsidiary of Six Apart (which also produces Movable Type, which is like WordPress), now has become the standard for juveniles on the Pokémon Community and areas around me for producing the kind of text that you'd find in a girl's diary or one of those 'slam books' that cropped up at my school when I was in the sixth grade. It's become so popular that Mad crafts its regular 'Galaxy O' Blogs' section based on a typical LiveJournal page. (Don't thell them I told you.)

Yet is it too popular? As with MySpace, I certainly think so. As proof, I refer you to Erica (Demyx) on PC, who, in response to a blog survey I created, said, 'LiveJournal owns my soul.' (It sure does.) And the resemblances it has to MySpace, when the latter is stripped of the social networking daguerreotype, are quite uncanny. When you post on LiveJournal, you have the option of assigning a mood to it as well as a nifty sprite that renders that mood just to accentuate the tone of voice. On MySpace, where it's normal to type as if you were text-messaging on your Nokia or Sidekick, a post written with correct spelling and grammar and accompanied with conservatism in photos and text content automatically rips you out of the fold as it fails to effectively convey any mood. And here's something that's been passed down the line for years: friend lists, created on MySpace to gain all access to a profile and those that have added the owner of the profile as a friend, and created on LiveJournal to assemble a separate page dedicated to updates from friends and grant access to journals that are closed to the public.

I'm not going to say that I find that wholly negative. One, I have an account (surprise, surprise, it's crystalwalrein) that I use to keep track of updates from journals I read often and, in the case of those closed to the public, throw content into the open should it relate to me. (Which reminds me, I need to have a word with Virtual Headache about links coming from her blog.) I don't post, but I'm seeing if I can have the Atom feed from this blog pressed into my page there so that I can have a legitimate reason for being there. Two, I find that people that post on LiveJournal have a lot more sense when it comes to spelling, grammar, and emotion — and such traits follow them to any Xanga or MySpace pages they may have. One PC moderator has a decently laid out LiveJournal page and adapted to this style of writing both on her Xanga and MySpace pages, which are laid out in lavender Georgia font on a black background (although it's a colour scheme that I'm not particularly a fan of, the style of writing, especially when put next to her first posts on PC, makes up for it).

Even though it's more likely that you'll find controlled writing on LiveJournal, a few grievous habits go unchecked. They're a common sight on forum posts, but on a blog created with Blogger these things would look severely out of place. The first one is the use of the tilde. Barring its standard orthographic use in the IPA and the Portuguese language as a nasalisation indicator, in Vietnamese it's used to represent a rapid cycle of tone for the vowel; this has obviously carried on to the point where a standalone tilde, which is now a swung dash, is placed at the end of a sentence to indicate a trailing off of voice ('days go by~'). It sounds pretty, but when you're blogging, it's a lot better to use an ellipsis, even if your tone is swinging; strictly speaking, the swung dash is never to be used as a punctuation mark. The second is emoticon usage. I tolerate smilies in chats and forum posts, albeit the only non-graphic smilies I'll ever use are 'O.o' (shock, and semicolons can represent sweat, which augments the level of shock) and, very rarely, 'XD' (breathless laughter; the amount of D's is extended as per the length or intensity of the person's reaction to the response). However, you are not to use them when you're blogging; the people at the typography house or printing company making books hate to see glyphs being used to create makeshift faces, and time has proven that it's never going to make it to the printed page or, for that matter, a correct blog.

So what does this make LiveJournal out to be? Forum posts. You have the use of smilies and swung dashes, although posts are a lot more educated that the stuff you see on the typical MySpace page. And I happen to like forums; otherwise, I wouldn't be moderating two major ones. So I say keep LiveJournal and blog away as much as you like on it; after all, it's a lot better than a web page that usually is made with horrible colour choices and littered with ostentatious photographs. And it's been around four years longer than that particular collection of photographs and horrible colour choices has.

The Board of Biffo

I suppose those that are close to James are aware of his blog and a circle of friends that he evidently is part of, The Board of Biffo. (Paul, the leader of this circle, has a blog here.) As usual, James usually gets the word out about my blog and usually is quick to comment on it for 'Office-type humour', but this time, in a thread that started as asking for the link to a blog and eventually culminated in the contest to see who can come up with the worst blog, he entered mine. The board requires you to log in, so for the pleasure of your viewing I give you the posts in response to James' entry:

James: This blog [link to my blog]. [quotes from Tales of the Arcade I, Interrogation, Yet Another Youth Summit, and Another Youth Summit] It's all real.
[posts follow]
Wayward: Jesus, that's terrifying. [two quotes from Yet Another Youth Summit] Has anyone read the book 'A Confederacy of Dunces'? It really reminds me of that.
Ssslithe: . . . So far, Psythor [James] is winning.

The added infamy of being possibly the worst blog ever — attacks on SPP notwithstanding — has nevertheless garnered a few more hits as you can see from the Extreme Tracking reports. It may seem harsh, but the fact that I'm being recognised for bad posts but have not been regarded as someone at the level of Jerry Springer (remember, they haven't read the SPP posts yet) is at least a comfort. Fortunately, they'll probably appreciate my effort to thank them for giving me such a noble award.

Update: They have — they read this post and deemed it enough for James to win the competition.

Saving the dub

Not too long ago, 4Kids declared that it was backing out of producing the Pokémon animé series, instead leaving it all to Pokémon USA. At first this was greeted with exuberance because of the changes to the storyboard and dialogue that 4Kids tried to make in order to Americanise the dub — which was partly the reason, when I finally realised it, why my interest in the animé itself dropped away. But if there were to be any improvements to the rendition of the animé outside Japan, it would have come at an arguably great cost: When 4Kids left, it wanted to take Veronica Taylor, Eric Stuart, Addie Blaustein, and some other voice actors with them.

According to Animé News Network, the old actors, save for Erica Schroeder, were wiped off the board. Ikue Ootani, off for maternity leave from what I heard, had to turn the Pikachu voice over to Shinichiro Miki but will probably return for the voice if Pokémon USA allows. Veronica Taylor, the voice of Ash, was replaced with Jamie Peacock. Exit Eric Stuart, the voice of Brock and James, enter Bill Rogers. Rachael Lillis — Misty, Jessie, and May — had to give way to Michelle Knotz. Addie Blaustein (Meowth) had to give up her seat to Jimmy Zoppi. Compared with the original actors, from reports I read, the new actors were wanting, even with attempts to emulate the original actors, but since I haven't seen the movie in which this change was introduced, Mastermind of Mirage Pokémon, I can't really say whether I like them.

So when it became clear that the removal of 4Kids would cost them most of the original voice actors, all of which (except Erica Schroeder and Ikue Ootani) were signed under the 4Kids contract and could not be transferred, the campaign to 'save the dub' started. Now, I admit that when I first saw the topic on PKMN.NET, I put my signature down for a rudimentary petition before I realised why the change was taking place. Since then, I've pretty much regarded the subsequent campaigns on the Pokémon Community, Pokébeach, and Serebii.net with little more than disgust — to put it short, everyone wanted to have the cake and eat it too. Apart from the fact that most of the protests were occuring on the Internet and few responses actually got to the offices of Pokémon USA and 4Kids, I was able to determine that the campaign was both ill-fated and bound to last no more than a few months. Some still have banners in their former signatures, echoing their call of sedition.

Why there was no point in having this whole hootenanny with the voice actors comes down to a few good reasons.

1. As I mentioned before, the protests were conducted over the Internet more than via snail mail. And as for the snail mail, chances were high that such letters, due to paratactical reasons, would never get to the people responsible for the actor changes.
2. The only indicators of progress apart from updates on respectable websites were emails claiming to be from the old and new voice actors, the former sort congratulating everyone for their solidarity against the change and the latter sort discouraging others from going any further. Exceptions to this rule were present, though; in one email Addie Blaustein claimed to have been pleased with Jimmy Zoppi's characterisation of Meowth.
3. The fact that Taylor and company were under a contract that prevented them from defecting to another contract was largely ignored. It was technically impossible to keep the voice actors because there would have been legal reprehension that might have cost both parties more than just adapting to the change.
4. There are other examples that demonstrate how such changes could be beneficial for the franchise. One is Scooby-Doo. The first episodic series, Scooby Doo, Where Are You?, The New Scooby-Doo Movies, and Scooby-Doo (featuring Scooby-Dum, the white-coloured relative of Scooby) had 89 episodes between them all, compared to more than 400 for Pokémon prior to the voice-actor change, when they ran from 1969 to 1979 and still remain popular as the cornerstone of the surviving Scooby-Doo franchise. Then popularity fell when the next seasons gradually omitted Fred, Daphne, and Velma, leaving Shaggy and Scooby with Scooby's cousin Scrappy-Doo, and popularity resumed only when the older episdes containing the original characters were re-aired. Using this as an analogy to the Pokémon voice actors, Pokémon USA will agree to re-broadcast the episodes using the older voice actors once popularity fades enough due to the quality of the new actors, just as the quality of Scooby-Doo episodes diminished when characters were removed. In other words, the voice actor change could turn older episodes into classics and inherently be better for everyone!

Now, I realise that this is bound to touch a major nerve in the world of Pokémon and am publishing this rant in the fear of receiving hate mail in response. However, as James had said about politics, you have to take a side knowing that you're ready to give your all to defend it. Here, though, it was a matter of people being so stubborn that they missed the details altogether and overall refused to take the good with the bad.

Site review 2

Pathetic Motorways

I may not be British, but from looking at the reviews of small, disused, outdated, and demolished motorways in Britain may seem at first to be something inane, but it comes out gold when you delve deeper into it.

The site is part of a larger group of sites, the Society for All British Road Enthusiasts, whose focus is to convey the history and habit behind roads running across the world, but primarily the ones in Britain. Several of the sites are photo galleries and sites that focus on one specific area of the UK, but this one is generally universal in that respect and full of comedy value to boot. Steven Jukes, the owner of the site, is also the current President at SABRE's forums and is usually revered as an expert on highways.

A lot of what he says is brutally honest. Firstly, we have the M271 in Southampton. It starts at the A3059, crosses the M27 through an inconvenient rotary interchange, and remains in poor condition up until the sharp bend at the Redbridge Towers complex. Then we see the unfinished Glasgow Inner Ring Road, which kind of reminds us of 1970 Boston with the protest against the I95. And then we see a large map, the Might Have Been Map, tht compares the existing motorway system in the UK against the original schemes — we see roads that failed to come to fruition, such as the M64, and the motorways in London that once were up until an independent agency took control of them all. Amidst it all we have the occasional 'Truly pathetic!' that indicates laziness or inefficacy in the road's planning, and the dismay at having to stop for a traffic signal whilst charging down at 70 miles per hour (115 km/h).

Beyond providing a vivid insight into the transport system in the UK and its flaws, it's a good reserve of laughter induction by means of dry humour, which I expect you to take account of.

PC and Wikipedia

A few weeks ago members of PKMN.NET tried to get the site posted to Wikipedia. In doing so, unfortunately, they received a remark from the staff that it disgraced them to have an article about them written poorly and with emphasis on partial commentator opinion. The page was removed within a few days.

Later I have seen that the Pokémon Community is going through something similar in fashion. As was seen in the Pokémon Community's Daily Chit-Chat, Digital Phoenix, a banned member, had created the article from the get-go and filled it with content that attacked the administration. Immediately others came in and added their leftist views, and soon afterward the page was open to deletion. (One moderator I contacted, who has requested anonymity, was able to determine him as the original author of the article and the author of the comment to my rant about the Community, partly due to his trademark contempt and his having been a moderator in the past.)

At first I thought the marquee was enough to bring this out, but now I see that this extends well beyond the fact that the forum has received unwarranted space on Wikipedia. I have seen Paul try to be banned once more by agreeing with the revisions of the article (thanks to Chibi-chan for clarifying that) that the moderators' judgement was to blame for a bad reputation. Unfortunately, this has only caused the moderators to show their more respectable side as people that exist to keep the Community glued together. Yet, unlike the PKMN.NET admins have (yes, I still believe this, even after seven months of clemency), they haven't ever had the intentions of making themselves targets because of political affinities. That's where the spam traffic going between both forums start to divide; we have Richard Mansfield trying to recruit Blue Mew into spamming on PKMN.NET, whereas spam (the DCC notwithstanding) on the Pokémon Community is not as prominent.

It's strange to see that one member, whom James would say resembles me in the respect, will go out of his way to try to unmask the forum for bias. Wikipedia entries are definitely not the way to do it; posting such would only cause a far worse reputation for theposter than any decrease in reputation for the afflicted forum. I wonder if a similar attempt has been made for SPP?

Update: Below is the inquiry into the matter:

Blue says:
There
Crystal Walrein — Now a blood donor (and a SuperCheats administrator)! says:
Eh?
Who would David be?
Blue says:
Axel
Crystal Walrein — Now a blood donor (and a SuperCheats administrator)! says:
Oh....Hello there.
Let me guess, you decided to introduce me?
(-David Eddy- New bus: 18S-) - Moving tomorrow says:
I'm a ghost >o
Sorry bout that, I'm a little exhausted. It's kinda getting to me
Anyways, hey
Crystal Walrein — Now a blood donor (and a SuperCheats administrator)! says:
Oh, so why did you want to speak to me? Is this about Wikipedia?
(-David Eddy- New bus: 18S-) - Moving tomorrow says:
Not really, I'm trying not to worry too much about it. You just seem like an interesting person to talk to
Crystal Walrein — Now a blood donor (and a SuperCheats administrator)! says:
Ah.
Well, I have to say that you lot have the right idea once again....
But to be honest, I never expected the article to be this hot....
(-David Eddy- New bus: 18S-) - Moving tomorrow says:
I just can't stand banned members, of all people, critisizing us. XD
Crystal Walrein — Now a blood donor (and a SuperCheats administrator)! says:
So Jorge, you haven't registered your opinion on the matter yourself....And you were around for the article being spawned....
Blue says:
To be honest, I don't really care about their opinion if that's how they're going to act on the matter. So I see no reason for me to waste time replying to childish insults.
Crystal Walrein — Now a blood donor (and a SuperCheats administrator)! says:
Ah, I see.
(-David Eddy- New bus: 18S-) - Moving tomorrow says:
Oh sure, make me sound irrational >>
Blue says:
Can do
Crystal Walrein — Now a blood donor (and a SuperCheats administrator)! says:
Well, I have his assurance that he agrees with me, at the very least.
(-David Eddy- New bus: 18S-) - Moving tomorrow says:
I'd like to ignore them, but it's just come to the point where It's hard
Crystal Walrein — Now a blood donor (and a SuperCheats administrator)! says:
I even discussed with another mod the possibility of having an inquiry into possible bias.
Blue says:
It was easy for me not to ignore them when I first became staff and it happened all the time. After a while though, you learn that a lot of these people really are just bitter.
(-David Eddy- New bus: 18S-) - Moving tomorrow says:
I owe too much to the community in its members to let it take insults like that
and its*
I guess in some sense, we're being bias ourselves, since we're being attacked by them
Blue says:
Not really
If you can look at it from an unbiased POV, then you can admit your own faults, but a lot of what they're saying isn't true.
Crystal Walrein — Now a blood donor (and a SuperCheats administrator)! says:
That's why I was thinking of an inquiry. get to the bottom of the matter and see what drove them to believe that you lot were biased.
(-David Eddy- New bus: 18S-) - Moving tomorrow says:
A lot of the members in their group are banned members who got themselves on the bad side of the staff. However, they break obvious rules and then claim we ban them because we dislike the,
them*
Crystal Walrein — Now a blood donor (and a SuperCheats administrator)! says:
Still, I need to know what the initial offences were before I make a judgement.
(-David Eddy- New bus: 18S-) - Moving tomorrow says:
It'd be hard to track down every single thing again
Plus we aren't aware exactly who is on their side
Crystal Walrein — Now a blood donor (and a SuperCheats administrator)! says:
We can at least start with Shinin, Saniigo, and Dakota.
(-David Eddy- New bus: 18S-) - Moving tomorrow says:
Shinin was a loooong looong time ago. I dont know if his offences are even recorded. Oo
Saniigo just asked to be demoted and started spamming everywhere
As for the reason, we are still unaware
Blue says:
Dakota's is a loooong story
(-David Eddy- New bus: 18S-) - Moving tomorrow says:
I'm still not even sure what'd up with Dakota. Oo
what's* I am having a horrible typo night
Blue says:
Basically
It started about a year ago
He was become too inactive and when he was on, he wasn't modding, and hardly posted. When he did post, it was really on the spammy side. Eventually he was warned for messing with the user titles in the admin CP. He kept saying he messed up and didn't mean for it to effect all the members, but it did and the fact still stands that he shouldn't have done it. Then he was warned by a former admin, Claire, for general spamming. Then the nail in the coffin for him as a staff member came when it was decided that he was far too inactive and wasn't contributing enough to PC.
(-David Eddy- New bus: 18S-) - Moving tomorrow says:
was becoming*
Blue says:
Yeah
After that, he flamed Claire a lot because the two used to be paired and something happened to him that made him think nothing that happens online matters at all. He was warned again for that, but for some reason he thought he could work himself back up to the S-Mod rank. All the higher staff said no to his remodding, so he got mad and said that we backstabbed him and should have at least told him he was up for demotion. Someone said that he needed no warning and that someone who's been at PC for nearly four years should know by now what should and shouldn't be posted. So then he flamed some more, got himself banned. Said the banning was unjust, when he was unbanned...he got himself rebanned pretty fast. He evaded which lead to him getting his original ban time of two months doubled to four months. A bit before his ban was to be lifted, he was saying that the moment he got back to PC, he was going to mass spam. He didn't, but he flamed and that was basically it for him.
Crystal Walrein — Now a blood donor (and a SuperCheats administrator)! says:
So we're never seeing him again.
I never liked him myself. Ignorant ass.
(-David Eddy- New bus: 18S-) - Moving tomorrow says:
Chances are, no. I'm pretty sure if he didn't learn his lesson after 2 bans, he certainly wont change
Yeah, he was quite ignorant
Anything else you'd like to know?
Crystal Walrein — Now a blood donor (and a SuperCheats administrator)! says:
Do you believe he could have coaxed the other people into making these remarks?
(-David Eddy- New bus: 18S-) - Moving tomorrow says:
No, he doesn't talk with many people. These ideas came from a totally different source
Crystal Walrein — Now a blood donor (and a SuperCheats administrator)! says:
I just thought that he would be the only one to trip across the blog, since I have a huge link to it in the sig.
Blue says:
Ty's already said why he did what he did. Paul's just bitter about being banned.
(-David Eddy- New bus: 18S-) - Moving tomorrow says:
Ty gave reasons?
Crystal Walrein — Now a blood donor (and a SuperCheats administrator)! says:
Second time for Paul, isn't it?
Well, I think it was Signomi that told me that Ty was the culprit.
(-David Eddy- New bus: 18S-) - Moving tomorrow says:
He created the originally wiki thing, yes
Blue says:
David, yeah. He basically said that a lot of his friends were making fun of him for being banned from PC and stopped talking to him for that reason
(-David Eddy- New bus: 18S-) - Moving tomorrow says:
...so?
Blue says:
So...he was kinda pissed
Crystal Walrein — Now a blood donor (and a SuperCheats administrator)! says:
And tripped over into the hole again.
Blue says:
Basically

Sothe「サザ」 was added to this conversation. Handwriting is no longer supported because not all participants can view handwritten messages. Handwritten messages will be sent as text.

Crystal Walrein — Now a blood donor (and a SuperCheats administrator)! says:
All right, Jake wants his say.
Blue says:
Though the way he said it did make me feel bad for him
(-David Eddy- New bus: 18S-) - Moving tomorrow says:
Yo, Jake
Crystal Walrein — Now a blood donor (and a SuperCheats administrator)! says:
We got into the Dakota incident.
(-David Eddy- New bus: 18S-) - Moving tomorrow says:
He's pretty... silent
Crystal Walrein — Now a blood donor (and a SuperCheats administrator)! says:
That's odd....
(-David Eddy- New bus: 18S-) - Moving tomorrow says:
Maybe australia sink into the ocean...
sunk*
Sothe「サザ」 says:
Sorry. XD
Dakota incident?
(-David Eddy- New bus: 18S-) - Moving tomorrow says:
There goes another theory of mine out the window...
Sothe「サザ」 says:
I want America, or at least Washington D.C. to sink. D:
(-David Eddy- New bus: 18S-) - Moving tomorrow says:
...washington is pretty far inland to sink... XD
Sothe「サザ」 says:
I know. D:
Blue says:
Hey! I live in America!
(-David Eddy- New bus: 18S-) - Moving tomorrow says:
But me and Jake don't =D
Crystal Walrein — Now a blood donor (and a SuperCheats administrator)! says:
So do I, and I should be concerned due to the fact that I'm on an island.
Blue says:
Can't wait for people to bomb Australia and Canada...
Sothe「サザ」 says:
o_O
Jorge! D:
So "what" about Dakota?
Blue says:
Canada's easy, all you need is two water guns and you've doubled their military power
(-David Eddy- New bus: 18S-) - Moving tomorrow says:
Who would bomb Canada? We're worthless, other than the oil in Alberta D=
Which America will probably tap...
Blue says:
...that sounded so wrong
(-David Eddy- New bus: 18S-) - Moving tomorrow says:
...
Sothe「サザ」 says:
Jorge, you have a dirty mind. D:
Blue says:
Yes, yes I do
(-David Eddy- New bus: 18S-) - Moving tomorrow says:
Only you could make a conversation about oil sound wrong
Blue says:
You said tap!
(-David Eddy- New bus: 18S-) - Moving tomorrow says:
...
Sothe「サザ」 says:
And living on an island is evil, Crystal Walrein.
Blue says:
I need sleep
Sothe「サザ」 says:
Jorge, you find all the excuses in the world. XD
(-David Eddy- New bus: 18S-) - Moving tomorrow says:
No, he's always either tired or sick when he screws up. XD
Sothe「サザ」 says:
First saying that one said "tap", then saying you need sleep. D:
Blue says:
I screwed up? XD
Even if I had sleep, I'd still say what I said XD
(-David Eddy- New bus: 18S-) - Moving tomorrow says:
Anyways, back on topic
Love how that just killed the conversation...
Sothe「サザ」 says:
What were we talking about?
Because I'm unclear.
So, I decided to be quiet.
(-David Eddy- New bus: 18S-) - Moving tomorrow says:
Crystal Walrein is inquiring as to why the anti-staff may think us to be bias
Sothe「サザ」 says:
Ah.
Well, most of them are banned.
Blue says:
...
And that's basically all you ever need to know.
Sothe「サザ」 says:
Our policies are less strict to accommodate such opinion holders, but they still take it too far anyway.
(-David Eddy- New bus: 18S-) - Moving tomorrow says:
It's the more obvious reason, but there are probably others we aren't aware of
Crystal Walrein — Now a blood donor (and a SuperCheats administrator)! says:
Which is what concerns me.
I think this staff can pat themselves for a job well done, but I still need to see what went on behind these members being removed....
Because all I see is that the banned members are accusing the mods of hypocrisy and people like Paul and Dakota being banned....
(-David Eddy- New bus: 18S-) - Moving tomorrow says:
well, the wiki page was finally deleted
Sothe「サザ」 says:
Members are banned for reasons. Most of them like to call us **** for small moves and such.
Crystal Walrein — Now a blood donor (and a SuperCheats administrator)! says:
It was?
/me checks
(-David Eddy- New bus: 18S-) - Moving tomorrow says:
yup
Sothe「サザ」 says:
It should've ended in a week.
Ah well.
Crystal Walrein — Now a blood donor (and a SuperCheats administrator)! says:
So Steve finally did something for once....Or maybe the dissidence was too great....
Sothe「サザ」 says:
I guess ending it early was okay.
(-David Eddy- New bus: 18S-) - Moving tomorrow says:
It was 98% Delete anyways
Sothe「サザ」 says:
There was doubt the two days would accommodate more againsts than that?
Guys, remember to "search for PokeCommunity" to stumble across any revenge articles.
(-David Eddy- New bus: 18S-) - Moving tomorrow says:
I still don't understand why they accuse us of hypocrisy...
Crystal Walrein — Now a blood donor (and a SuperCheats administrator)! says:
I had a word with Steve when he was planning to revise the article to make it less biased, but I think I convinced him to turn his back on it.
Sothe「サザ」 says:
[. . .]
Articles on PC have been deleted 3 times. Inclusive of the recent one.
Ironically, none of them have PC's proper name.
(-David Eddy- New bus: 18S-) - Moving tomorrow says:
XD
Sothe「サザ」 says:
"PokéCommunity", not "PokeCommunity".
*poke*community? XD
Crystal Walrein — Now a blood donor (and a SuperCheats administrator)! says:
Haha, you'd think that they'd try to disguise the article as such.
(-David Eddy- New bus: 18S-) - Moving tomorrow says:
I'm just going to grab a snack
Sothe「サザ」 says:
I don't think people even know how to type the darn é.

Update: As stated accordingly above, Chibi-chan has told me that Paul himself was not involved in the creation of the article and that his ban was attributed to his defence of the statement only. I regret the error.

Interrogation

Ugh, looks like I've been unheard.

At school, all of the information-technology students were called out of class to appear individually with the principal and a policeman about the sites they created as part of a final examination. It turned out that many of the sites created by the students were constructed in a manner à la MySpace. The hosting site was created with money from the school itself, and the last thing that the instructor, and the administration for that manner, wanted was a resource for paedophiles that had given up the game on MySpace to look for easier prey. (On a lighter note, the officer that sat with me when I was interrogated was reported to be impressed with the mock transport site I did.)

This is sickening to me. Even though MySpace access was restricted, it didn't stop the students from putting information on their projects. It's one thing when, according to the Dateline interview I linked to when I discussed pairings, people say they feel safe and secure on MySpace, but another thing is using a project to be posted on a school website to give the information that would be given on a MySpace page but with less of the security promised by MySpace (which is still rather bare), making a de facto completed bingo. At least our old instructor didn't have us put our pages on a server when she required us to create a page based on ourselves and job opportunities for web designers that didn't get proper instruction under her regime.

On a lighter note, I figured out how to handle the influx of radio jockeys asking for you to participate in a monetary giveaway. When the people at a Top 40 radio station called up to ask for the youth group leader to recite a phrase in order to win $1,000 — 'I listen to [radio station frequency and call letters], now give me my money!' — the leader barked at the phone: 'I listen to [rival radio station], now get lost!'

Site review 1

Suta-Raito.com

Taking advantage of the need for many aspiring graphic artists to obtain images to integrate into banners and avatars, Suta-Raito.com has become one of the most popular venues for Neopets and Pokémon drawings, among caricatures and likenesses of other animé subjects as well. The FAQ tells us that the site is a transliteration (which I recognised right away as katakana) of 'starlight'.

Kuitsuku, the mascot for Suta-Raito. The FAQ states that it was a primary concept design for the Nutrinopets section of Neopets. Photo provided by Suta-Raito.com

Looking along the side of the page we are greeted with a link to the splash page (which is becoming a convention for sites formed by people like the webmaster of this site, probably because 'splashes' are just foretastes of what's to come and, in the case of art sites, an effective vehicle for the product), links to affiliate information (surprisingly, there's no PPN topsite link in sight), a tag board (which both contradicts the disclaimer that there's no interactive material on the site as stated in the FAQ and somehow resizes the main browser to the size of the tag board itself!), images and caricatures (the main product), and comedy material such as 'They'd Never Say', 'Oops!', and 'Wall of Shame'.

The Wall of Shame is a result of the images strictly being kept out of the public domain. Because there have been so many offences, it's become practice for the actual Neopets website to blacklist beauty contest entries that contain pictures taken from Suta-Raito or made with images from the site. Alongside those are blatant claims to the pictures, with some so raw that a link to Suta-Raito remains. And alongside those are pictures edited so poorly that it's rather easy to tell that they were taken from the site and redone in Paint. And alongside those are drawings that imitate Suta-Raito poses! The Wall of Shame blurs out the names of offenders due to a report that requested it, yet the webmaster adds comedy value by adding innuendo from her own red pen to screenshots of the offences.

Another item on the list to look at is 'Ask Piccolo'. It isn't real-time, so users will have to mail in their questions, but those that do have their questions answered alongside small caricatures of Piccolo (one is a result of him turning into a green Pikachu). Alongside this you'll find other animé elements, including outtakes and concocted interviews.

Finally we have the other site departments, which include the Oekaki (which, for some of you that have recently heard, is like a hybrid of Paint and mIRC) and a separate site called Sutaro (another katakana rendering!) in which you can commission art. Proceeds from commissions eventually fuel Suta-Raito's hosting.

Looking away from each individual page and focusing on the template, the blue skin (apparently one of many revises) definitely fits; it matches the drawings very well and coincides with the style of writing found throughout the site (in which you'll often find emoticons and a bit of over-emphasis). Despite the lack of interactive material, you'll keep going through it because of the upbeat environment and the comedy humour that you'll find in few other places.

The proxies

When I came to my school everyone was talking about the Novell BorderManager proxy that everyone had to go through in order to access the Internet. Back then the filter blocked on general subject and often denied access to sites that were part of the curriculum, so the filter had to be adjusted. At the end of freshman year it had been programmed to return false on certain URLs, and it stayed that way until recently.

The reason for the inefficacy of the filter then was how easy bypassing it was. The filter was set in place only when the Internet Options (whose window wasn't blocked!) had the proxy checkboxes ticked and the proxy pointed to 10.10.1.2:8080. On certain computers (including six in the library), the checkboxes could just be unticked and the filter would be lifted, since there was an unintentionally planted LAN in the school. It became a pasttime to look for computers that were connected to the forbidden LAN — until Christmas break ended. When we returned, the school was in the process of changing all of the computers, and from how they were all formatted the 'forbidden LAN' now encompassed the entire campus.

This was until today, when a scrap of paper landed on my table at lunch. Inscribed on it were several arrangements that I recognised as numbers and ports — and from what the passer told me, they were proxy directions that he used to get around the filter that replaced BorderManager two weeks before. Because the new blocker was in the way of most of the network, the passer had to look at home for public pointers; at school many of them worked but the administration had quickly caught on to the scheme and cut off the proxies. Such methods exercised by the students, however, were signs that the king-must-die perseverance of the student body to get to MySpace was not about to let up.

Recently I read in an article in the Press of Atlantic City about the Vineland district's blocking method and the cause for blocking certain sites such as MySpace. Apparently there has been a rash in attacks that resulted as a result of what was posted on the site, which has led to an expulsion hearing in California for someone that outlined a death plan on their profile page as well as increased sex attacks.

For these reasons — and the fact that the site was vestigial in administrators' eyes, referring to its devolution from one of the dating sites that eHarmony and Match.com are now — and the students' clamour to the site to arrange online meetings or, in the cases of those with social impediments, outlets of communication, MySpace will continue to be blocked. Each proxy will be blocked. And when it comes to the fact that people are using that site to communicate with others whenever they can scavenge for free time, they should consider forums, many of which are mercifully unblocked and offer experiences similar to those found on MySpace chatrooms.

And pooh pooh to those on PKMN.NET that go there!

Karma again

Ever since PKMN.NET implemented karma back in January, the new wave of complaints had swamped signature queries and threats to the Name Rater — negative karma and the gap between the people that solicited Forum Games and the administrators as far as the figures went. So, in an olive-branch bid, everyone's karma has been reset and now people that have the power to do so can only applaud people.

It amazes me that I hadn't thought of restricting the controls to just applaud people. However, when it comes down to it, it'll only soften the complaining. Now that the option to reduce karma has been revoked, people are going to see 0 as the brink of doom now. When negative figures were possible, zero was nirvana (no pun intended); now it'll be an outlet for complaining about why it hasn't been raised and, if it has, why it's only done so sporadically.

I may be overreacting to this, I'm sure. Eliminating negative figures will definitely reduce the complaining in spite of the drastic figure shift incurred. It also brings to a close the chapter that cost us respected member Invader Zim and etched scars of inequality in PKMN.NET. I'm slightly elated, I have to admit, but there is still idle to deny that people are going to see a negative end of this. And of course, the administrators, being interdependent as they are, can only expect more karma for themselves — deservedly so!

How to manage a profile page

After seeing what Channel One did on MySpace concerning Seth Doane's experimental search on a member of that site and their eventual interview, I can say that my suspicions have been confirmed. As a result, I've thought up a bit about how the privacy of members could be bettered on such sites. Some of these measures aren't in place, but some are. Without further ado, I present a guide to keeping secure whilst showing yourself on the Internet.

1. Use a site with a secure friend network. By default, profiles on MySpace and Xanga are wide open to people that are not included in their list or network of friends. This means that the holder of the profile is susceptible to approach from people with the intention of abusing them. To prevent this, you should restrict viewing of your profile to people on your friend list. Hi5 has this restriction set for all profiles.
2. Dress conservatively and speak plainly. The most common mistake made by people with profile pages is setting up their profile page to exhibit flirtatiousness in the case of a female or brawn in the case of a male. The attitude harboured by the holder is evident in both the CSS of the page and the text pattern of the personal information. For example, a girl that formats her page in vibrant pink and writes in her blog in text such as 'omgz i like boyz' gives the viewer the impression that the girl is single and looking for any type of male mate irrespective of the nature or age of that mate. On the other hand, if the person refrains from using artsy text and restricts his or her CSS colour choices to soft, cohesive tones, there's less liability of that person falling prey to a predator simply because he or she seems smart.
3. Do not use cartoons or imported images for use in your photo gallery. Not only is this against the terms of service for many social network sites, but it also brings the impression upon you that you may be a predator yourself. Posting a bona fide photo of yourself helps — but does not directly — certify that you are not a predator.
4. Be wary of deviation or inconsistency in conversational style. Although news stories and journals suggest otherwise, it is very difficult for a predator to maintain the guise of the person that they want you to imagine them to be. Track all of their information carefully and be suspicious if their references elsewhere or in later dialogue contrast with what they told you before. For example, a person that claims to live in Liverpool, England in a conversation with you but is said elsewhere to be in a town near you may be a predator.
5. Whenever possible, conduct a video conversation. A good way to verify the identity of a chat partner is to view them on webcam. Be sure that all participants in a video conversation have started their webcams, however.
6. Choose your friends wisely. Anyone in your friend network that repeatedly harasses you to the extent of trying to pry open the door to more personal information than you've seen fit to reveal should be removed immediately. Similarly, anyone that tries to recruit you for illegal acts such as child pornography, cult formation, or the conveying of selective hatred should be removed from the list and, if possible, reported to authorities.
7. Follow all directions from the terms of service. COPPA regulations state that sites with servers based in the United States — under which Hi5, Xanga, LiveJournal, and MySpace fall — are not permitted to collect personal information from children under 13 in any circumstance without notarised authorisation from the child's parent or guardian. In many cases the terms may prohibit the disclosure of school districts, street addresses, post box numbers, or telephone numbers in the profile. The profile is subject to closure if any required information is incorrect to the knowledge of the holder. All of this is in place to protect the privacy of the profile holder and/or comply with regional laws. The terms of service for social networking sites tend to vary, so you should review the site's policy before you begin creating your profile.
8. Take personal and technical precautions whilst using a chat room. Because many chatrooms can host many users at a time, a chat room is the worst place in which to reveal any personal information unless you are using a private messaging function (which is provided by all mIRC-supported chatrooms). Be sure that the chat room is moderated regularly so that people won't have the audacity to pry you open for information. In addition to personal hazards, some users may use the chat room (if it is mIRC-compatible) to unleash bots that may carry viruses or prove to be Trojan horses, so be sure to have your antivirus programme activated whilst using a chat room.

Of course, it still may be possible for people to gain access to your information even with these precautions. If someone receives any bit of information you give, they can use that information to conduct searches through regional logs, which are required by federal law to be open to all people. If you give them enough information and maintain nonchalance in the form of your profile, expect someone scary to stop you. You should only give out delicate information such as your telephone number or address to people whose identity you have successfully verified and deem to be of an appropriate nature.

MySpace

If you were to walk into the computer room during the lunch period and the seats were filled, in nine cases out of ten every occupant would be looking at each other's assortment of friend pictures, 'txtspk' blog entries, and vibrant colours. They are looking at Fox News Corp's MySpace, which so happens to be the most popular blogging network out there.

Then you'll begin asking me, why do I not have one?

The same can be answered for other blogging networks such as Xanga and LiveJournal. Most of the time these pages are not full of anything serious, but rather full of randomness. On one sidebar you'll find a little journal written in 'txtspk'; on another you'll see a photo slide show*; on the main division you have a list of interests, age, sex, and forms of contact. Yes, the journal, which usually doesn't feature anything constructive anyway, is secluded in an obscure corner of the page. Plus which, the service often will limit how much you can customise the look of your page, and those that have access to expanded controls often use them recklessly, changing the cursor or playing downloaded music. Because this practice is overdone and treated as a standard for sites like this, nothing constructive is yielded.

On top of the random assortment, MySpace has unsurprisingly become the venue for predators. A few years ago I read about a girl from a Catholic high school that advertised herself as 'sexyme4u2see' and posted nude pictures of herself on her personal page — and she ended up dead in a culvert. And not too long ago I heard that Xanga was the venue for meetings between David Ludwig and Kara Beth Borden of Lititz, Pennsylvania; the former killed the latter's parents after they severely restricted their relationship, but not before they had exchanged nude pictures of themselves via mobile phones. In the latter case Borden had risen her age on her profile to 17, ostensibly to evade COPPA regulations (which is why members on Super Cheats have to be at least 13).

And last but not least are unmoderated chat rooms. It is often here that many people agree to meet up in real life — and this way many unsuspecting minors die. They're not IRC rooms, so there's no reliable means of moderation or surveillance apart from anyone in the crowd that was smart enough to eavesdrop.

Even with those aside, it's the fact that too many people use them. This means — you guessed it — cliques. People will set up friend networks on MySpace, Hi5, and Xanga despite the intricacy of the network incurred by adding friends on your profile. And when there exists a high concentration of people using MySpace on a regular basis in a school, not only is the site marked out by Internet filters, but people will hog the computer room to form a chain of users sitting in their chairs, leaning over to advise another on the maintenance of their page. The ones who have to do actual schoolwork — or post stuff like this on Blogger like I do — are left out to wring their skin of tears.

* I have come to hate the practice of using buddy icons as photos in these galleries. On my Hi5 account I happen to have a person in my network who presents herself with an icon containing psychadelic flowers and pink text reading 'men prefer blondes but they love brunettes'. Oftentimes people prefer not to give actual pictures of themselves, but rather follow the practice of putting random uploaded images, which is explicitly against the site's terms of service.

Karma

PKMN.NET has done away with a few things: First, it's scrapped the Nederlands board, which was supposed to be for Dutch-speakers but then became more popular with people that had just used Babelfish; it decided to isolate creations of the members in a board dedicated to Fake Whatever (which previously was a sticky topic designed to handle all of it), in which I have been happily exploiting my ability to draw up some parts of the big Fakédex project as far as the walkthrough goes; and most importantly, it has decided to initiate a trial run of something kept secret by the people at the Simplemachines front desk: karma.

In Proboards and SMF forums, you're supposed to 'exalt' or 'smite' people, increasing or decreasing their karma, depending on popularity. However, the PKMN.NET administration has decided to restrict it to a select few such as the people who donated to help the tsunami victims and people who actually know the ins and outs of the board. To many people, including myself, the concept of karma has still come off as something that has the ability to define groups and make way for more discrimination. Because the karma system is inadvertently being advertised as a way to determine the smart from stupid, it'll make for people going around the forums, polishing their figure, and declaring that they're cool and smart because of the karma figure they have. Then when you do drop the figure, the person changes instantly from glad to mad, demanding answers. And when the karma falls into the negatives, they eventually start to whimper about how 'unloved' they are.

The destructiveness of this system is a calling back to forum teams and cliques. We learned that cliques are formed by people with things in common and that members will have a tendency to shut others out of their lives as a result of joining. Karma levels are bound to set a boundary that is characteristic of the hindrance that separates the enclave that is the clique itself and the people that have the same potential but whose appearances detract from it. It also calls back to the point system inaugurated at the Sky Temple — ranks are set by points that are generated by activity and apparent cooperation with the rules and will to engage in the activities contained in the site. It has even been proved by psychological studies that assigning such statuses and points is destructive to the development of a person, especially a child that the site aims to make a user of.

Because TPL had an SMF forum, it came with an option of enabling karma. The disarray in those forums came primarily from the administrators flaming each other, and the low karma that nearly everyone received — if only the forums were still open today — was testament. So it's no coincidence that I only see high karma these days for the interdependent PKMN.NET admins!

Two Accounts = Trouble

Until two days ago, Dr Advice was a dodgy reference about the goings-on of the Super Cheats staff. And until then Mr King of Games was afresh from his technical victory over The Legend Killer RKO, who was caught faking up 'Mr Kennedy' and Soucercer of Wise (the latter I had banned for a month from the team area). But then some horrible exposé had to come up, and it was left to Dennis to declare that he had found them, on the basis of an IP check, to be the same person!

I have seen people create fake accounts before, but I have never seen it used for a purpose like this. Dr Advice was nothing very special — although Sanzano did toy with him in a session called 'Psycho Surgery' and ended up banning him temporarily for trying to interfere with the moderation process (two moderators at the time, LPD and The Ultimate Cheater, was also banned for this offence, but The Ultimate Cheater was cleared shortly afterward) — and Mr King of Games didn't seem to necessitate an about-face on his record, having initiated a popular character tournament. In contrast, I had always known the creation of a sub-account to get around restrictions on forums; on PKMN.NET I have seen several members try to get around signature restrictions (if the size of all images attached to a profile exceeds 40,960 bytes (40 kilobytes), signature display is suspended until the pictures are changed to fit the quota, but their rule code only states that the signature will be edited directly) by creating an account on which they suppose they can exploit a sig once more — but these are usually found out and either the restrictions are tacked onto that account as well or that account is removed from the database.

Many pre-built member databases — forums and submission and comment systems like the Super Cheats system and blog venues like Blogger and MySpace — try to discourage the creation of multiple accounts, but this is easily defeated by creating a new email account (which, due to the presence of public computers, can't possibly be monitored). The objective isn't to keep people from bypassing restrictions on their formal accounts, but rather to deflect 'phishing' (the use of a mask of a valid email account by a bogus user to trick people) and to thwart the installation of adware and spyware that could pass from the site to the user's computer. Since that measure hasn't worked well, of course, sites have resorted to forcing users to type a security code to log in or register (a bot used to install spyware won't be able to decipher the code, which is embedded in a graphic).

Then, in rare cases, there are people — Video Gamer Network is unfortunately full of them — that create accounts to feign another user. The Legend Killing tournament on Super Cheats, a question-and-answer game much like a cross between Hollywood Showdown and The $100,000 Pyramid, was the venue of the Dr Advice case: Mr King of Games was the emcee and Dr Advice, for reasons then unknown, was doing unusually well in the tournament and was able to beat out 'The Legend Killer RKO' at his own challenge and get him banned. (It was later revealed that The Legend Killer RKO was itself a sub-account to Jcdamasta330.) But after The Legend KillerRKO emailed Dennis for clemency and was turned down, Dennis decided to do a little study on Dr Advice and found him to have IPs identical to those of Mr King of Games himself. Oops.

At any rate, there is no way for this practice to be effectively stopped, but it is not, as you may think, a very common practice on most forums due to the presence of vigilant administrators like Dennis.