Watch the Footage archive

I know there were one or two instances where we panicked about a random troll posting something on one of the blogs and RUINING EVERYTHINGZZ EVAH, and each time, a couple people argued, as the voice of reason, "Come on, the GMs are just going to ignore trolls; you can't expect them to have the characters react to things that none of us have any control over."

So um... how true is that? If trolling/spamming had been more serious, would characters have reacted to it? How much would a troll or spambot have been able to derail a character's plotline from the path we were trying to push him toward?

Honestly? We'll never know, because it didn't happen. Sorry to disappoint with my answer; it's just something that never needed to be dealt with, so we never really discussed.

You could see that it was actually a serious fear when we discussed the Witch's campaign. I do believe that the ARG could easily be ruined by trolls. Good thing it didn't happen.

We really put fairly draconian comment approval on the blogs. I had to manually add each commenter to a list to allow folks to freely comment on EFP. Unless one of *you* started trolling, we knew we were in the clear.

That said, we were ready to deal with one of you going rogue. We're very appreciative that none of you did.

We would have fed them to Cerberus.

I mean, I do think that trolling is a thing that actually happens, and our characters would have responded to it in the various ways that real people do.

But I'm pretty sure what Qara is talking about it when someone posts on the blog something along the lines of BY THE WAY ROMEO IF YOU GO BACK TO YOUR STORY YOU WILL TURN INTO A WOMAN or something like that. And again, characters would also respond to those as they would -- but I doubt it would ever totally ruin everything.

I dunno! If every commenter on Adam's blog said "you are ugly and your plays suck", maybe he would have become depressed and lived in the street. I don't know. That's really sad to think about so let's be glad you guys aren't assholes.

Tom wrote:I dunno! If every commenter on Adam's blog said "you are ugly and your plays suck", maybe he would have become depressed and lived in the street. I don't know. That's really sad to think about so let's be glad you guys aren't assholes.

Or changed his background and font and started blogging stereotypical goth poetry. Quick, someone rewind reality to then, I want to see if I can drive him to gothyangst levels.

Stop making me want to do it again!

Tom wrote:Stop making me want to do it again!

Like you need us for that

I mean, this happened to a certain extent with the Witch. People were mean to her and she got super depressed. =) I don't think its unreasonable to think it could have affected the others.

About Frankenstein Play, if I remember correctly Mark intended it to be awful and for the players to hate it. So you may have affected that one in the other direction.

I... was also thinking along the lines of legit spam, like when that weird troll from the chatroom posted on Adam's blog offering "legal advice" with a sketchy link. I'm imagining the kind of spam that at one time plagued the forums showing up in blog comments, and a character posting something like "OH GOD SOMEONE SUGGESTED I BUY UGH BOOTS SO I CLICKED THE LINK AND NOW I'M OUT HUNDREDS OF DOLLARS AND MY COMPUTER WON'T STOP MAKING THIS AWFUL SOUND WHAT DID I DO WRONG?"... though I can kind of see why that would be problematic to implement.

You have NO IDEA how many comments like that were caught by the spam catcher on EFP. There's a reason, despite the onerousness of approving all your comments, why I never turned off the vigorous spam detector.

Kind of wish we had taken a dramatic left turn in one of our arcs triggered by spam, now. Thanks, Qara.

According to Sicon, a word in the quote for the Cabal sub-forum here linked to spam. .

All of us managed our own blogs, so we made our own decisions about how to moderate comments. I started out having auto-approval on both of mine, and it worked fine for a while. Then, one lovely day, a few spam messages started coming in. I deleted them. Not too long after, I log in one day and find that dozens more have appeared. I turned on the filters. A week later, I had to sift through hundreds of spam comments to catch the legit ones that accidentally got caught in the filter. By the end of the ARG, I had over 1000 comments labeled as spam. I'm pretty sure our server was cursed or something, because every single blog had this problem. I don't think Mark ever turned on the filter for Adam's blog because I remember cleaning like 1500 spam messages out of that one.

Basically, we tried very hard to pretend that spam didn't exist in the alternate reality.

Val Reznitskaya wrote:All of us managed our own blogs, so we made our own decisions about how to moderate comments. I started out having auto-approval on both of mine, and it worked fine for a while. Then, one lovely day, a few spam messages started coming in. I deleted them. Not too long after, I log in one day and find that dozens more have appeared. I turned on the filters. A week later, I had to sift through hundreds of spam comments to catch the legit ones that accidentally got caught in the filter. By the end of the ARG, I had over 1000 comments labeled as spam. I'm pretty sure our server was cursed or something, because every single blog had this problem. I don't think Mark ever turned on the filter for Adam's blog because I remember cleaning like 1500 spam messages out of that one.

Basically, we tried very hard to pretend that spam didn't exist in the alternate reality.

Spam? What spam?

Val Reznitskaya wrote:I don't think Mark ever turned on the filter for Adam's blog because I remember cleaning like 1500 spam messages out of that one.

Basically, we tried very hard to pretend that spam didn't exist in the alternate reality.

I remember seeing spam on Adam's blog and considered warning him about it, but I noticed that they didn't seem to get any official acknowledgment and decided against it.

I remember seeing over a hundred spam posts on Adam's blog after he was refic'ed, because I am obsessive and was checking every blog anyway, and going SLOWLY INSANE until they finally disappeared. All my <3s belong forever to whoever made them finally disappear.

I still like my explanation of the spam being caused by a very frustrated GLADoS trying to do whatever little she could to attract attention to herself so she could go home.

BUT YOU DELETED ALL MY POSTS.

I'M STUCK HERE FOREVER NOW AND I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH MYSELF.

YOU REALLY ARE HEARTLESS. MORE HEARTLESS THAN I, AND I'M A COMPUTER. TELL ME, WHAT'S YOUR EXCUSE?

*ahem* Sorry, don't know what came over me.

Connor Fallon wrote:I still like my explanation of the spam being caused by a very frustrated GLADoS trying to do whatever little she could to attract attention to herself so she could go home.

BUT YOU DELETED ALL MY POSTS.

I'M STUCK HERE FOREVER NOW AND I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH MYSELF.

YOU REALLY ARE HEARTLESS. MORE HEARTLESS THAN I, AND I'M A COMPUTER. TELL ME, WHAT'S YOUR EXCUSE?

*ahem* Sorry, don't know what came over me.

This reminds me that I was GLADoS for "Everyone is a Girl in the Internet Day"

I tried to troll people in the chatroom once.

Endless Sea caught me though. (trying to blow up Parliament like Guy Fawk- no wait, sorry, that's from too many Horrible Histories reading)