[This message has been edited by HSO (edited February 20, 2005).]

[This message has been edited by HSO (edited February 20, 2005).]

1.Since people won't have read most of the exchange, please direct your attention to the post entitled "Is this the right forum?" HSO is angry because we disagreed on a method of collaborative writing and I challenged her to a writing contest, which she declined because I'm a "spammer". I think she has to make a case about me being a spammer, otherwise she looks foolish.

2. Basically, I opened a discussion about whether the way I'm rewriting my novel will work and have directed people to a site www.shadowislandproject.com which explains exactly how you can critique my novel and in return own a part of the book. This seems to be inline with what people do in the Fragments and Feedback section, solicit people to review their work.

3. The moderator has said that the discussion wasn't spam.

4. The emails she is referring to were to 5 people in the Hatrack Groups section, which states "if your group needs new members, or if you want existing groups to know you are available to join".

5. I think HSO is out of line and that the moderator should remove her posts.

ps
My dad is a dentist and I made him an old website awhile back, which is where outreachdental comes from.

But I don't think that the forum is really "under siege" because one person (who apparently has no interest in becoming a writer or learning anything about writing) is posting some silly topics and spamming a few of our members. This is just one of those things that happens from time to time. I admit, usually we get a higher caliber of "I'm here to O-N @11 U _||_#3rz!" villains, but that just means that we should take this incident even less seriously.

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Basically, I opened a discussion about whether the way I'm rewriting my novel will work and have directed people to a site www.shadowislandproject.com which explains exactly how you can critique my novel and in return own a part of the book. This seems to be inline with what people do in the Fragments and Feedback section, solicit people to review their work.

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Wow! You mean all this time I could have been asking to own part of the stories I critique? I could have made some money off of this? I could have been called a co-author!

Instead, I, with my lack of ambition, just told them what I thought and handed it back to them, thinking all the while that because they wrote it and it was their idea, that it actually belonged entirely to them, no matter whether they took my advice or not.

Silly me.

But he crossed a line when he emailed Hatrackers who didn't specifically request any information. That is unsolicited email, or more commonly known as "SPAM."

Thus, this topic. Besides, have you noticed how often he "namedropped" the link to his site in nearly all his posts? C'mon, you should be paranoid.

It sounds like at least a couple of the people contacted have current threads there.

You're not being harsh, catnep. It isn't right for us to get upset at the newbies and then say this isn't all that bad.

First, there's all the problems others have mentioned regarding this writing project: copyright, quality, editing, etc. There's so many I don't even want to look at it.

Second, there's a clear misunderstanding on the part of rumi54 regarding emails we send each other on this site. The phrase rumi54 quoted, as I understand it, doesn't have to do with groups formed on Yahoo! or another writing site. It has to do with groups people here on Hatrack form between each other.

That's my understanding anyway. kdw, feel free to correct me.

To invite Hatrackers to join a group that has absolutely nothing to do with Hatrack isn't a crime as long as it's put on the forum and stays on the forum.

Sending unsolicited emails to members of Hatrack advertising a group/website that has nothing to do with Hatrack is, imho, SPAM.

I do not think HSO is out of line in this case. SPAM is annoying at best and sometimes can be a cover for something more insidious. I'm not saying rumi54 had anything but the best of intentions... however, he/she shouldn't be surprised at the reaction she/he has gotten.

That said, I've always been in the "newbies are tender and crispy" camp. Meaning that I think it's good that we get new members coming here, and I wish that we were able to keep more of them. When we get a problem child, we have ample means of dealing with it. Some of our worst newbies have settled down into valued members, after all. I have to admit that I don't see that happening with rumi54. For one thing, this guy doesn't seem to understand that writing is an actual skill that writers need. The obtuse assumption that getting together a bunch of monkeys and chaining them to keyboards is going to produce a great masterwork...it's just really dumb.

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3. The moderator has said that the discussion wasn't spam.

4. The emails she is referring to were to 5 people in the Hatrack Groups section, which states "if your group needs new members, or if you want existing groups to know you are available to join".

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I'm ignoring the other ones for the moment, but #3 states a "moderator" said the discussion wasn't spam. Do we have board moderators other than Kathleen? -- and she was away at a thing for several days. So, we can safely assume she said no such thing.

#4 is just silly [I had another word, but I changed it to silly], in my opinion. 5 emails still equates to spam. It's not bulk spam, but it's still spam.

Here's the thing: Hypothetically, I've got some stale cat food I'm selling on the side. I know some of you here must have cats. So, I look for a topic where someone mentions cats, and I pick out a few emails and hit you up with my proposition:

"Hey, but's it's Purina Brand and you can own it for 3 times the price I paid, you silly gullible person, you. I can even guarantee that some of the kiblets are pre-chewed. Cats love that!"

Other than laughing at me and my lunacy for sending it, wouldn't you be a little disturbed that I tried to sell you something and broken your trust by culling your email address off this site for my own personal gain.

If you don't think Rumi has "business" in mind, re-check that link I posted up there where I said it was "interesting."

How is Rumi54's attempt to get some of us involved in his project significantly different than JBSkaggs asking for submissions to his Fantasy World Geographic project? I suspect they both hope to achieve financial gain of some kind for their efforts.

HSO, you received a single email asking if you were interested in Rumi54's project. You've made no claim that you've received any follow-ups and from the content of his posts, I can see Rumi54 is obviously not a bulletin board bot. You weren't interested and said so. You're not being harrassed.

If anything, your over-zealous anti-spam crusade looks like harassment. You've probably succeeded in scaring off Rumi54 because of your over-reaction to what amounts to an imagined slight.

At the very least, you should let the subject drop. A better thing would be to apologize.

EDIT: Sorry, that's not a fair response. Let me try again:

I did email Kathleen privately with my concerns. And no, I'm not harrassing this guy. I'm simply pointing out the obvious, and apparently defending my position on the matter. But, perhaps I'm taking this far too seriously, so this will indeed be my last post on the matter.

Concerning financial gain, every writer on this board hopes to be paid for their writings, myself included. Writers are supposed to be paid for their work. We are here to try and improve our skills at writing (and reading) in the hopes that we will become successful authors. Some of us realize that we may never acheive the noteriety of Card or King but we continue trying.

Has anyone been offended because I talk about Fantasy World Geographic in this forum? If so let me know.

I'd say that's more than fair. You've never posted a link, or if you did it was when someone asked for it specifically.

jb posted once or twice about something he knew the members here would be interested in; rumi posted repeatedly despite an overwhelmingly negative response to his ideas. and after failing at his attempts to post, rumi started sending e-mail out.

1. Please note my initial apology as a Newbie to anyone I might have offended when I began talking about the idea in the wrong forum. This was posted very soon after posting a link. (at least showing I had good intentions.)

2. The issues with copyright, contract claims etc...have been challenged but unless someone here is an IP attorney or corporate securities lawyer and feels comfortable discussing current case law governing derivative rights in online work let me know. HSO posted a link concerning a post to an Intellectual Property forum...I'm not sure why, as the idea was reviewed by a number of IP attorneys who posted their positive opinion.

3. I don't think anyone has complained of being spammed, the only people who received emails were people in a different section of this site asking to be a part of a writing group. I've received positive responses and been declined, but no one felt spammed.

3. This site requests people to post critiques in order to have their critiques posted. It certainly isn't a huge stretch to call that sweat equity. You critique and you get feedback, an exchange. My model is you critique and you get equity in the book. Maybe you don't agree, but it certainly isn't offtopic or offensive to suggest it.

4. HSO continues to assail me because after repeatedly telling me collaborative writing doesn't work, I challenged him to writing contest, which he has declined. I'm not interested in causing a problem for this site and will never return if that is the consensus, but HSO is out of line.

5. I only posted on this topic so much because I was being personally attacked for being anything from a spammer to a scam artist. I still think HSO is out of line for making unsubstantiated claims about spamming and continuing to assail me on a personal level.

29 total.
7 with links to his webpage.

One of those is a duplicate because he didn't know which forum to post to.
Two were in posts responding to accusations of spamming.

So, adjusted, I'd call it 28 posts to 4 links.

Neither tally seems unreasonable for a newbie with a side project.

The email he sent to 5 people was certainly not standard operating procedure around here, but hardly a serious offense. A polite rebuke would have been sufficient.

I stand by my assessment that Rumi54 was being treated unfairly.

If you would like to post to have your story critiqued (even your novel with 10 writers on board), then that's fine.

You did ask us in that topic to "critique this idea" and we did. We collectively said it was crap. Fine.

But you persisted anyway. You put on your sales hat and you came at us.

I'm not maligning your character. I'm maligning your actions. If you prefer, feel free to email me offline and we'll have a rational discussion and leave the rest of the group out of this.

Fascinatingly enough, guess what my wife does for a living? Patents. Most of my friends are patent attorneys. So, while I'm not personally an expert, I could certainly refer you to some qualified advice on the matter.

With that said, please feel free to have your novel critiqued here. We like doing that. Just don't expect us to buy into your plan, and do not email us asking us to do so.

If you continue to do anything other than participate as a "normal" member, I will be most disappointed and will respond accordingly.

As far as contests go: Who cares? Dumb idea. Proves nothing.

So... shall we start on a new foot, or shall we continue playing "n00bball" with you. (I just learned that word today, I'm pretty excited that I get to use it. It's the little things, really.)

Beth, if I thought his motives were as you describe, I wouldn't defend him.

I just don't want to frighten away new members just because they make mistakes in their first few posts or have opinions we don't agree with.

-Will

At best he completely misunderstood the reason for the Hatrack groups and the advertisements we use to solicit new group members. At worst he's a hack writer who wants someone else to do the work for him for little or no actual benefit.

That said, let's take a look at his original post. It reads:

quote:

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Hello, I'm a graduate student and want you to evaluate a new method of online collaboration for novel writing. Take a look at www.shadowislandproject.com. It's a way for authors to edit and submit changes for specific scenes of a completed but not published novel. These authors (if their work is accepted) then own a piece of the novel. I'd love to hear what you think.

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See, here's the clincher for me. It's the back door approach. Not once in the above does he mention that it's HIS book that he wants to collaborate on or HIS project behind it. He wants us all to think that he's a new writer who is simply asking our opinion on this interesting idea he 'discovered' on the internet.

This guy is a salesman of the used car variety.

And what I thought was really interesting was that he sent me his spam after I had shot down his idea on his original post. That's like that Kirby vacuum guy who comes around about 6 times a year and won't take no for an answer--again.

That said (and all my humble opinion, of course) Rumi, if he plays his cards right, will find an outstanding community of writers here who will gladly forgive and forget his previous faux pas (as HSO, more than anyone, understands) and welcome him into the Hatrack community. BUT, for his sake, it might be best to drop the Shadow Island project, and anything associated with it, from his future Hatrack correspondences. It, and his refusal to let it drop despite the negative feedback and complaints of unsolicited solicitations, have caused enough contention around here, IMO.

I firmly believe Rumi was in the wrong. I firmly believe that HSO was right in discussing it here. If I am wrong I will expect Kathleen to whack me upside the head with her spiked armband the next time I see her.

HSO I AM SO
OFFENDED!
YOU CANNOT IMAGINE HOW OFFENDED
I AM.
EVEN I CANNOT IMAGINE IT.
BUT I AM.
OFFENDED, THAT IS.

OFFENDEDLY YOURS,

mikemunsil, PO
(professional registered offendee #1)

1. I misunderstood what the groups section was and sent five emails to members in that section. I've apologized. So you can see what a narrow violation this was:
This is posted in the Groups Wanted section...

"Interested parties may contact me (djvdakota) at the email in my profile. DO NOT POST YOUR INTEREST HERE or Kathleen will be very put out. <snip> Please feel free to ask any questions you may have for us."

As for the shadowislandproject.com and snake oil comments DJV conveniently omitted the following from the email I sent her:

2. "My proof of concept is a group using this ownership structure on a fiction novel I wrote but never published. I wanted to join your group to see if we could collaborate. What do you think?"

My only point is to prevent SPAM charges. I consider the issue dropped.

You wanted to join my group to see if we could collaborate? Did you not read my posts on your initial topic in F&F? Shall I requote for you here?

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What this sounds like isn't so much a collaboration as a "I wrote a pretty crappy book and I'd like someone else to make it good for me. Then when I publish it my name will be in big letters as the author, with the names of the other contributors on the 'Thanks to all those great people who helped make this possible' page."

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I still stand by that. What guarantee is there that it won't be your name on the cover? None, since it's all up to some editorial board of your choosing.

You know, I also specifically advertised for one or two people, not a mob. I also thought it was pretty clear that we were looking for an exchange of work back and forth--not a one way ticket to obscurity on the credits page of someone else's book.

Ok, I can't help but notice something:

rumi has made some mistakes here. The first was to post in the wrong forum, fragments and feedback instead of open discussion. The second was to e-mail members of hatrack without their permission (for which he has apologized). The last was to offer Kathleen's service as moderator in a contest without asking her first. I had problems with the challenge itself but the only real problem in ettiquette was what I mentioned.

However this started, the people who are now going on and on about this are the hatrackers. I'm not exactly taking his side in this because I think his idea is an abomination, but quite frankly he brought a writing idea to a writing group. If we are rightly suspicious of it that is something that we can discuss and challenge him on, but this has turned into a flame war beyond what it ever needed to be.

So, as topic-starter, I hereby claim this topic dead (if that means anything). Anyone posting after me will receive a giant raspberry in repsonse that goes something like this:

Pttttthbbbbbbb! (maybe bigger..., I've had a long day and I'm particularly "scratchy" this evening.)

Right! Moving on, let's go crit some stories... except I won't be. But that's besides the point!

I end most of my posts with a url. It's a commercial, though not-for-profit, site. It is, hopefully, of interest to Hatrackers, and I'd like to personally invite you all to come and spend 10 days with me in Italy to check it out. But as for the URL... is it right or wrong?