Sweet surrender and your poison pen are gonna take you and make you whole again.

[reddragdiva]

Many years ago, we had a problem on alt.gothic with persistent and vicious Usenet trolls. The sort of people who consider they have an absolute right of free speech to fuck up social spaces in any way they aren't actually physically stopped from behaving. I even still have a page up about the dears.

I am just reading Consumerium. Read this, this and this. Think about them. Roll them around in your head for a bit. Understand what the aims are here. This is a project to do a specific and highly worthwhile thing.

Then read this and try to work out how they will ever get back from point B to point A. I can't see it myself.

Even the front page got vandalised. I wonder how long it's been that way and if the non-native English speakers running Consumerium will ever notice. These parasitical trolling fuckwits have infested it comprehensively. One hopes they are proud of their fine work.

Kill it and start over? At present it's so comprehensively fucked I doubt any wiki spirit would survive the bureaucratic processes required to fix it in place.

That said, the trolls are nothing to the fuckheads. "I prefer rogues to imbeciles, because rogues sometimes rest" — Alexandre Dumas (fils), loosely translated.

Nonhierarchical intentions are an ideal to work towards. Motivation of volunteers is incredibly powerful but incredibly fragile. But stuff like this make me think, "let's give JACKBOOTED FASCISM A CHANCE." (Then I take my medicine.)

Collaborative development is the future of almost any field that can possibly be cast in terms of factual information. But refusal to believe fuckheads and arseholes exist will not protect you from them. Assume good intentions and carry a big fucking stick.

Update: I asked Juxho about this in IRC a few days later. He's seriously considering wiping the whole thing and starting over. I fear this may be the only answer.