an unfair proposal (long)

This post will be controversial. Please, sit down.

Dragonball Z. Mainstream markets will tell you how much they love it. Wide demographic spread. Obvious merchandising tie-ins. A cheap, unending supply of "new" content. It is the new GI Joe.

The "other" anime fans will tell you how much they hate it. Mainstream markets love it. Stereotypical demographic spread. Obvious merchandising tie-ins. A cheap, unending supply of over-stylized punches. It is the new Captain Planet.

The truth is, it's all a little silly in one way or another. The same people who hate DBZ will go around proclaiming the high water mark as Evangelion, which in my view is a good premise wrapped in a few clever set pieces and 80% filler episodes. Sames goes for Love Hina, a show whose tired Three's Company setup was already worn into the dirt a decade earlier by a young man named Tenchi Masaki. I'm no expert on DBZ, so I don't have many thoughts on DBZ, save this one:

DBZ is the source of all but one inter-member problem so far on this site. (The other was Yu Yu Hakusho.) Every gallery on the ban list is a DBZ gallery. I just dealt with one DBZ problem for half an hour and I have another waiting in my inbox. I have 8 e-mails from 2 members in 24 hours both talking in my ear at the same time about how I should ban the other. Quite frankly, all my offers to help rich Nigerians are getting lost in the shuffle.

I'd like to work more on this site, but lately, I've been solving disputes more than programming. Today, I had an epiphany.

What if we just lock out any more DBZ sites? What if we assume that the ones we have now, Wednesday, October 30th, 11:03 PM CST, are all kosher and instantly delete any more DBZ sites?

Anyone who is in can stay. It wouldn't be fair to shut people down who have done nothing wrong. For the first time in RS history, we will turn people away at the door with DBZ cels.

This is more in the name of efficiency than just outright evil.

Reasoning:

To me, banning DBZ means less time spent arguing with whose cels belong where. I don't believe this is a fluke. I have yet to find any disgrunted Fushigi Yuugi fans. They have just as much clout here as the DBZ people. It means more time spent thinking about additions to the site rather than arbitration. It *probably* means less bandwidth usage... just a guess since the top search term for the last few years on major search engines has been "Dragonball Z".

It didn't even strike me as a possibility until today. I couldn't even imagine being that ruthless until I realized how much time I was spending just dealing with DBZ issues. We wouldn't lose any members we already have. We'd avoid any more inane he said/she said cel arguments. We'd save time and money at minimum expense. Just put in a big warning at the gallery creation screen that says, "NO MORE DBZ. TOO MUCH EXCESS BAGGAGE." Anyone who sneaks by will be vaporized by hand.

Fair game? Bad call? Your thoughts would be much appreciated below. I'd specifically like to hear from DBZ collectors about how they would feel about new DBZ collectors from being locked out.

Thanks for reading.

jn

I check Rubberslug daily for updates and such. There are 2 things that bother me:

-Updates not showing anything. Why does it need to go to the front page if you can't view it anyways? So many people update their private areas so frequently, that I don't even visit thier gallery anymore..ever.

-DBZ galleries. I remember one day, every single gallery that was updated in the 24 hours was a DBZ gallery. Some only updating their "toy figures" or whatnot. I like to view lots of galleries with many shows, (some i know, some i've never seen). But I never look at DBZ updates.

As for your proposal, as much as I dislike DBZ, I don't know if this would be the most "rational" way to approach this. I just think that it needs to be controlled just a liiiiiiittle better. I mean, if I were a dragon ball z cel collector, and I found Rubberslug.. and it says "no DBZ allowed", I would get offended. Yes, all the banning you have done is on DBZ galleries, but there are some very legit and polite/normal DBZ collectors out there. I would just have a message for the gallery startup page, that says:

"Notice to all (specifically DBZ) collectors: You are allowed to post only YOUR cels in YOUR gallery. The moment I recieve a complaint on stolen cel images, I will close your gallery and ban you - NO QUESTIONS ASKED."

Of course.. that wouldn't be exactly what you'd say.. :P, but something along those lines. That gives them ample warning that they will get their gallery closed & banned without having to "argue" it out or anything. This would help with email moderation, and probably prevent it from happening.

That is just my suggestion.
*chants* Down with DBZ! hehehe

Oh! and btw: Fushigi Yuugi collectors are primarily female, and DBZ collectors primarily male. Maybe this has something to do with it? ^_~

~Tara

I, myself, would definitely not be sad to see an end to all Dragonball, all the time updates. I?m sure stopping BD sites would help with bandwidth issues too. But your right, it is not fair at all. It is going to bend a whole lot of people out of shape, are you ready for the mountain of crap your going to stir up? I can envision the forum flames now??actually it has been kind of slow on the boards lately and the girls are getting really bitchy about the littlest things. This could give them something to distract them from the ?newbie? breaches of protocol. (Giggling deliriously!!!)
In the end it?s your site. Perhaps instead of a wholesale ban you could actually start charging for the site privileges (nominally I hope) that way some 15 yr old punk can?t pass his time ripping off images and creating new galleries of his favorite Goku evolution. Your site is just way too cool; word was bound to get out how easy it is to have a free site for mischief.
And how did the Nigerians get your name too? I thought I just received a misdirected email.

Just to clarify, I'm not anti-DB-collector, I'm just anti-problem-magnet. I don't think it's fair to generalize, but I can't help notice the pattern that all the problems are DB (or they have l33t hax0r DB-inspired names). I just got an e-mail from a member -- a friend I met before I started this site -- about a DB nut trying to go from annoyance to con-artist. It's only getting worse.

I'm not saying don't collect Dragonball. I think collecting anything is great (stamps, vodka bottles, pez dispensers, Dragonball cels). Just don't do it here. That's the idea anyway. Any *NEW* sites that have dragonball get squelched. Old sites can continue to do whatever they please.

One thing I want to avoid is having the majority pay for a few people's mistakes. I'd prefer if you didn't have to choose between paying or having a website.

There's a lot of really niche anime cel collectors out there who are putting truly unique pieces of art from shows you don't see everyday in their galleries who aren't web design experts. To them, RS is their best option because everyone here speaks their language and it's relatively easy to create a clean web catalog -- even if it isn't particularly fancy -- of their collection. You can make your page look like less of a big box, but you won't look terrible unless you really try. (picking low-contrast colors, adding huge blinking graphics, etc.)

I considered the DB-specific admin thing, but then I realized it's like programming for Netscape support. The bottom line is you end up spending way too much time and effort on a minority that no one will notice is missing. I sure wouldn't volunteer to be that admin.

We're paying more for bandwidth these days too -- it's like paying more to be annoyed more. It defies logic. I could ask that anyone who wants to collect DB gives us money -- which is kind of sadistic -- but selective fees have a bigger problem. How do I set a fee low enough to be reasonable to *everyone* and high enough to avoid schmucks? Also, if you paid a fee, wouldn't you be entitled to preferential treatment?

In any case, the more I think about this, the better it sounds. Two more fraud reports coming in between my first post and this one is really helping the case.

Oh, and if you hate being constantly offered to move money out of foreign countries:

http://www.somethingawful.com/article.php?id=422

*snicker* Assylvania... *snicker*

About banning without due process:

I can't do this. What if some genius decides to walk in and start accusing everyone and their brother of stealing from him/her? Result: a lot of members -- and quite a few people I've made friends with -- get indicted in some monster imaginary DB conspiracy ring.

Like I said, I *like* having all these folks around who are all into the same things. It's good for community, and good for the site. The problem is that the show just tends to bring in too much excess baggage. And yes, I've been to enough anime conventions to know that every fanbase has its nutballs. FY, RK, Slayers, etc. Those nutballs may dress funny, but at least they don't go around creating websites designed to take stuff that doesn't belong to them.

I don't get involved in these complaints until I see scans. Banning without questions is a little too secret police for me. I'd like to know all the facts, but I'm starting to think that I shouldn't put myself in a position where I have to make any judgements at all.

jn