#word spread

[mapsontheweb]

The origin of the word "apricot"

#maps #apricot #words #word spread

[themirokai]

I got this comment on a story from my Other AO3 Account this morning.

(Info redacted because I prefer keeping these accounts separate but no one follows me on the side blog I have for that account.)

The story was posted almost a year ago and is relatively “popular” by my average statistics even though it has tropes and themes that are big turnoffs for a lot of people (hence separate accounts). This popularity is undoubtedly because it’s a Marvel Loki story and that fandom is massive.

So there is obviously an algorithm or a bot scrubbing ao3 statistics and leaving this comment on fics that meet a certain metric with the main character of the fic inserted into the comment.

I had a little time to kill this morning so I decided to investigate further. And y’all this is so predatory. Come on this journey with me. It made me mad. It may make you mad.

First, if you go to Webnovel’s website, you HAVE to choose between male lead or female lead stories before you can go any further. WTF?

And that’s weird, but this gets so much worse. This is basically a pay-to-read site that has different subscription models. Which… okay BUT! The authors don’t get paid! Look at that comment again. They’re promising a supportive and nurturing community, but zero monetary compensation. It’s basically, “post your stuff here so we can get paid and you can get… nice vibes?” I mean look at this Orwellian writing:

Using the phrase “pay-to-read model” in the same sentence as “qualitative changes in lifestyles for authors” deliberately makes you think that you can get paid and maybe even make a living on this website. But that’s not actually what it says and authors will not receive one red cent.

Oh but wait, the worst is still to come. In case this breaks containment (which I kind of hope it does) this is where I mention that I’m a lawyer in the US.

I don’t do intellectual property or copyright law but I do read and write contracts for a living. So I went to look at their terms of service. It was fun!

Highlights the first, in which Webnovel gets a license to do basically whatever they want with content you post on their site. This is how they get to be paid for people reading authors’ writing without paying them anything.

Highlights the second, in which Webnovel takes no responsibility for illegally profiting off of fan fic. This all says that the writer is 100% responsible for everything the writer posts (even though only Webnovel is making money from it).

Highlights the third which say that by posting, the author is representing that they have the legal right to use and to let Webnovel use the content according to these terms. So if a writer posts fan fiction and Webnovel makes money from people reading the fan fiction, and the House of the Mouse catches wise, these sections say that that’s ALL on the writer.

So that’s a little skeevy to start off with but the thing that is seriously shitty and made me make this post was that these assholes are coming to ao3. They are actively recruiting people in comments on their fan fiction. And they are saying they are big fans of the character you’re writing about and that they share your interests.

They are recruiting fan fiction writers and giving every impression that you can make money from posting fan fiction on their site and hiding the fact that you absolutely cannot but they can make money off of you while you try, deep in their terms of service which no one but a lawyer who writes fan fic and has some time to kill will read.

I see posts on here regularly from people who don’t understand how this stuff works, don’t understand that they (and others) can not legally make a financial profit from fan fiction. And there are tons of people who will not take the time to dig into the details.

Don’t deal with these bastards. Fuck Webnovel.

#went down a rabbit hole #got mad #webnovel #this is a scam #how to ao3 #fan fiction #please spread the word #long post

[black-quadrant]

on my knees begging you to please look up “squick” if you don’t know it and help bring it back to fandom space by using it. it’s a valuable word we’re missing that through normalizing could solve some of the more prevalent communication issues.

#rebloggable #this goes here too #we need to be spreading use of the word and actively using it #hopefully this helps someone

[dirtcube]

Minecraft Wiki is independent again!!

Yahoo!!! No more FANDOM wiki!!! Find the new minecraft wiki at minecraft.wiki!!

I thought it would be good to make a little PSA post with summarised information on why they moved from FANDOM!

Why did they move?

FANDOM is notoriously a bad wiki for both readers and editors alike. This is due to the insane amount of ads, the site layout, the lag, the fact that FANDOM can just take your wiki from you, etc has made the minecraft wiki decide to move

Because of the lack of agency the minecraft wiki has over its own wiki, they had a long discussion and vote with the community on what wiki platform to move towards. You can view both discussions here and here

By moving to a more independent wiki, they can provide a much better and friendlier service.

What's improved with the new wiki?

New site look, lacking the ugly FANDOM yellow sidebar and removing all other unnecessary bloat! This also includes a dark mode option and other custom settings.

Faster load times! I have incredibly good internet, and even I notice the STARK difference between the load times of FANDOM and the official wiki!

Less ads! At the moment they have no ads, but they do intend to have at least one. The placement of which will be discussed with the community to ensure minimal disruption to the user.

Better search functionality! FANDOM's search is notoriously bad at giving you the answers you need. Now they can have a more robust search function that more accurately brings users to what they are looking for.

No age popups- Unlike FANDOM this wiki does not need to know if you're a child or adult.

Anonymous editing has returned! Users can now once again anonymously contribute to the site!

HOWEVER. THE MINECRAFT WIKI NEEDS YOUR HELP!

FANDOM refuses to close old wiki's that have moved away, and so they will continue to show up in search domains. The old domains such as minecraft.gamepedia.com and minecraftwiki.net are also permanently attached to the FANDOM wiki.

In order to help the new wiki be successful, you can help out in the following way:

Spread the word!

Don't interact with FANDOM links. The less people interact with FANDOM, the more google knows that people are looking for the official wiki and not the FANDOM one!

Dont use the old links, again for the same reason as above!

And of course, improve the wiki :D! Since you don't need an account to make edits, see what you can contribute!

#minecraft #mc tag #mineblr #dirtcube chat #y'all think im not doing anything mc related and thats why i mquiet #but i have actually been doing a lot #anyway this makes me genuinely happy and i need everyone to know so spread the word please mayhaps

[aquitainequeen]

David Slack warning against AMPTP trying to turn the unions against each other, and stating the facts.

#wga strike #writers strike #writer's strike #writer's guild of america strike #sag-aftra #sag-aftra strike #sag aftra #sag aftra strike #signal boost #spread the word #do the write thing #long post

[numetalpuppygirl]

shout the fuck out to bald girls btw. let it be known that i will show the fuck up for bald/balding girls any hour of the day, any day of the week, any week of the year. you could call me up at 3 in the morning and tell me that you happened upon some receding hairline queens who need hyping up and i would tell you i'll be there in five. i love you bald girls

#i NEVER see any love for women who are losing/have lost their hair and it's sad. spread the good word #*char noises*

[freitag1607]

1.05 / Battle of the Labyrinth

#I FEEL SO NORMAL ABOUT THIS #percy jackson #pjo tv show #percy jackson and the olympians #pjotv #percabeth #pjo #screaming crying #mine #100 #500 #1k #5k #im in the middle of packing and this sent me frantically looking for my copies of pjo #anyway #i feel so insane i feel like im gonna die can anyone hear me. CAN ANYONE HEAR ME #annabeth has been so disconnected from the mortal world and just so fundamentally unable to enjoy her childhood #it makes me want to sob like seriously #i hope her and percy go on so many movie dates. like #not even just her and percy i hope percy tells grover and word spreads around camp and movie nights just become a thing at camp #because all these babies deserve it #god im gonna die. im seriously gonna die #WE KNOW THERE'S AN ORIENTATION VIDEO #SO THEY HAVE A PROJECTOR AND A SCREEN #MOVIE NIGHTS COULD HAPPEN!!! #okay bye. i'm going to go scream about percabeth some more

[watchyourbuck]

As of April 4th, 2024, Evan “Buck” Buckley is officially a queer man.

#spread the word guys #queer Buck is canon #it’s canon #911 fox #911 #911 tv show #eddie diaz #evan buckley #evan buck buckley #buck x eddie #911 abc #buck and eddie #tommy kinard #bucktommy #911 spoilers #911 season seven #911 season 7 #911 buddie #911 on abc #911 s7 #911 show #buck x tommy

[fairysexualism]

tumblr just nuked @milf-adjacent's blog with zero warning, no explanation from staff or e-mail whatsoever. her blog has been a vital resource for documenting COVID-19, and she did nothing ban worthy. she seems to be another target of the transmisogyny being carried out by staff.

#covid 19 #covid pandemic #mask up #sars cov 2 #covid isn't over #tags for spreading the word #please get it out there!! #milf-adjacent

[elegyofthemoon]

Upcoming Strike for Palestine 02/18-02/25

There's been a twitter thread and post going around planning and organizing the next days of strike, so I wanted to pass on the message because I didn't see posts about it yet

Link to thread here

Another thread of the same strike

As usual, please continue to boycott and strike and do what you can to spread awareness.

Boycott

Donate

Buy eSims for Gaza

Care for Gaza

Donate to UNRWA

Daily Clicks to Generate Funds for Palestine

#free palestine #palestine #ceasefire #ceasefire now #free gaza #let me know though if there is any update regarding this upcoming strike because i haven't seen a lot about it ? #but if there is an organized strike i want to be able to spread the word #free congo #free sudan #sudan #congo

[mapsontheweb]

Gamal tras Tebe & Lakda - how four words for camel spread across the Old World over the last few thousand years

by u/chotchorton

#maps #words #chotchorton #camel #word spread

[jessiarts]

[Shut off last version of this post to avoid possible continual spread of misinformation that was corrected by staff. Reposting clean with corrected info]

So I'm sure almost everyone knows about the porn bot problem by now, so here's a post detailing why it's a problem, and what we need to do about it.

First off, yes, always block the porn bots. Don't be mislead into thinking they're ok to keep around because they 'inflate your follower count.'

Firstly, no one cares about, nor can anyone even see, your follower count. Be free from the shackles that are the bullshit other socials told you was important. Don't let your ego be tied to a number. Having a lot of followers won't earn you any clout here.

Secondly, bots only follow blogs to try and legitimize their malware (and other dodgy) links. This post goes into more detail about that.

Now that that's out of the way, you'll need to know how to recognize a porn bot. This round the template seems to be:

A profile photo of a pretty lady or guy, usually in their underwear, with a similar header photo.

A bio with some combination of: [Age] // [Name] // [Location] // [Emoji] // [Top Bullshit% OnlyFans]

URL consisting of a name followed by a number (i.e: firstlast999)

Typically an empty blog, or if there is content, it's all dodgy links. Visible, but empty, Likes Tab, & occasionally a visible Following Tab.

You likely recognize the pattern.

So, what you want to do is, first, report the blog as spam On mobile it'll look like this:

On mobile you'll need to report spam first, and then go back to the menu again to block.

On desktop it will look like this, and unlike mobile, you'll be able to report spam and block in the same motion:

If I remember correctly,* be sure to "Report Spam", not "Report sexually explicit material" to feed the bots to the proper channels. Because the blog is empty, they haven't posted anything explicit that would violate TOS. However, staff can recognize a bot, and if you report the blog for spam (the actual problem) they'll take a look, more than likely find that the blog is posting or DMing dodgy links, and dispose of it.

And I think that's it. Here's wishing you all a happy and safe blogging experience!

[UPDATE: It was suggested on another post that the bots track your IP if you click on them to send more your way. However, someone from staff corrected and said this is incorrect. They also corrected the 'guilt by association' myth that bots following you can get your blog flagged by tumblr.

That said, that trail all led to another, easier, way to report/block the bots all from your Follower Tab instead of visiting each blog separately, unfortunately it only works on desktop:

(For newbies, click on the little person icon at the top right of your screen and scroll to find the Followers tab under the blog/sideblog you need to block a pornbot from.)

*I remember this information from a blog that used to be all about taking down the pornbots. Unfortunately I do not know if that blog is still active, nor can I remember the URL. If anyone knows what blog I'm referring to, and/or if they're still active, please feel free to tag them so others can follow them for more tips!

#psa #reblog to boost #reblog to spread the word #tumblr #bots #tips #newbie guide #helpful #useful stuff #tumblr user manual #tumblr tips #tumblr stuff #how to tumblr #tumblr how to #tumblr guidelines #long but important #pornbot invasion #pornbots

[palipunk]

If you’re in London or able to make the commute, today at 12pm (Sunday 14th) there’s going to be a protest in front of the UAE embassy for Sudan - if you stand with Palestine, stand with Sudan

#Sudan #London #spreading the word #UK #keep eyes on sudan #uae

[my-autism-adhd-blog]

Alright people…it’s A N G R Y time! 😡

A boy was kicked out of a New Jersey movie theater after using the bathroom with his mom. This instantly made me angry because some people with high support needs do need help using the bathroom sometimes.

According to this report:

The incident began when Gallinaro’s son needed to use the bathroom and she took him into the women’s restroom. There is no family restroom at the Cinemark in Hazlet, according to the lawsuit.

“My son is not equipped to go into a men’s bathroom in a public setting alone,” Gallinaro told NJ Advance Media last week. “I took him to the women’s bathroom.”

There were other women in the restroom, some of them mothers, she said.

“Right away, they see he’s with me. They pick up why he’s in the bathroom with me,” she said, noting that she noticed one woman “looking at me smiling.”

The 59-year-old manager of the movie theater wasn’t as understanding, the suit alleges.

The manager angrily approached and “shouted blatantly discriminatory remarks” toward the mother and the 15-year-old, the lawsuit alleges.

“A grown man should not be in the women’s restroom,” the manager said in the crowded lobby, according to the suit. “This is not a transgender bathroom.”

Even though there were no other complaints, the manager allegedly ordered the Gallinaros off the property and directed an assistant manager to call the police, the suit states.

This is complete discrimination. Please reblog this to help spread the word. This can’t keep happening.

#autism #actually autistic #high support needs #this made me so angry #please reblog and spread the word #this is discrimination #autism advocacy

[bonefall]

Anyway. Bi and Mspec Lesbians aren't a hotly "debated" topic or even new to queer culture, it's just the newest thing that bullies who REALLY want to be homophobic and even racist use to justify harassing gay people they don't like.

It's the thinnest possible veneer of progressive language wrapped around TERF and reactionary rhetoric so that they can feel righteous for forming an angry mob against vulnerable targets. If you're gullible enough to fall for the newest wave of bigotry within the queer community, and turn on your allies because they're "confusing" or "invading your spaces," the SAME way they turned on bi/pan labels, trans people, xenogenders, neopronouns, and aroace people before this, then get lost.

#No patience. Wither and rot. #These motherfuckers dogpiled the legend who leaked the no fly list because it identified as the wrong type of lesbian. #They will attack the people doing DIRECT ACTION over dumbfuck label discourse. Deeply unserious people. #Embarrassing to think that there are rubes out there who keep falling for this #For ALL our sakes I hope this is literally their first rodeos and they really haven't fallen for this bullshit twice. #But unfortunately I'm too old to be that hopeful. #I didn't get to see the big ''public block list'' made for us dirty queers who support or are bi/mspec lesbians but I hope I was on it #If a man is best judged by his enemies then exclusionists who echo terf rhetoric are the ones I WANT to have. #And ''public lesbian block list'' is in quotes because if you REALLY thought that such a thing wasn't a ''GO HARASS THESE PEOPLE'' charter- #--then you have a black mold where your brain used to be and it's rapidly eating into the bathroom tile you call a skull #Unironically you should not have a platform if you are THAT stupid or malicious to think it was anything BUT a harassment charter #I hope they're ashamed. #Context for those unaware: a flesh-eating amoeba created a public blocklist for people who supported bi lesbians #Minors and extremely small creators without big platforms were on that list #People got harassed but the most namely was Lockandkeyhyena who had people raiding his server with racial slurs and death threats. #I hope everyone involved sees who their ''allies'' are when they spread that sentiment. #A bunch of people ACTUALLY 'invading someone's space' to post the n-word and suicidebait. #THAT is who you appeal to. Sit with that.

[5ummit]

AO3 Ship Stats: Year In Bad Data

You may have seen this AO3 Year In Review.

It hasn’t crossed my tumblr dash but it sure is circulating on twitter with 3.5M views, 10K likes, 17K retweets and counting. Normally this would be great! I love data and charts and comparisons!

Except this data is GARBAGE and belongs in the TRASH.

I first noticed something fishy when I realized that Steve/Bucky – the 5th largest ship on AO3 by total fic count – wasn’t on this Top 100 list anywhere. I know Marvel’s popularity has fallen in recent years, but not that much. Especially considering some of the other ships that made it on the list. You mean to tell me a femslash HP ship (Mary MacDonald/Lily Potter) in which one half of the pairing was so minor I had to look up her name because she was only mentioned once in a single flashback scene beat fandom juggernaut Stucky? I call bullshit.

Now obviously jumping to conclusions based on gut instinct alone is horrible practice... but it is a good place to start. So let’s look at the actual numbers and discover why this entire dataset sits on a throne of lies.

Here are the results of filtering the Steve/Bucky tag for all works created between Jan 1, 2023 and Dec 31, 2023:

Not only would that place Steve/Bucky at #23 on this list, if the other counts are correct (hint: they're not), it’s also well above the 1520-new-work cutoff of the #100 spot. So how the fuck is it not on the list? Let’s check out the author’s FAQ to see if there’s some important factor we’re missing.

The first thing you’ll probably notice in the FAQ is that the data is being scraped from publicly available works. That means anything privated and only accessible to logged-in users isn’t counted. This is Sin #1. Already the data is inaccurate because we’re not actually counting all of the published fics, but the bots needed to do data collection on this scale can't easily scrape privated fics so I kinda get it. We’ll roll with this for now and see if it at least makes the numbers make more sense:

Nope. Logging out only reduced the total by a couple hundred. Even if one were to choose the most restrictive possible definition of "new works" and filter out all crossovers and incomplete fics, Steve/Bucky would still have a yearly total of 2,305. Yet the list claims their total is somewhere below 1,500? What the fuck is going on here?

Let’s look at another ship for comparison. This time one that’s very recent and popular enough to make it on the list so we have an actual reference value for comparison: Nick/Charlie (Heartstopper). According to the list, this ship sits at #34 this year with a total of 2630 new works. But what’s AO3 say?

Off by a hundred or so but the values are much closer at least!

If we dig further into the FAQ though we discover Sin #2 (and the most egregious): the counting method. The yearly fic counts are NOT determined by filtering for a certain time period, they’re determined by simply taking a snapshot of the total number of fics in a ship tag at the end of the year and subtracting the previous end-of-year total. For example, if you check a ship tag on Jan 1, 2023 and it has 10,000 fics and check it again on Jan 1, 2024 and it now has 12,000 fics, the difference (2,000) would be the number of "new works" on this chart.

At first glance this subtraction method might seem like a perfectly valid way to count fics, and it’s certainly the easiest way, but it can and did have major consequences to the point of making the entire dataset functionally meaningless. Why? If any older works are deleted or privated, every single one of those will be subtracted from the current year fic count. And to make the problem even worse, beginning at the end of last year there was a big scare about AI scraping fics from AO3, which caused hundreds, if not thousands, of users to lock down their fics or delete them.

The magnitude of this fuck up may not be immediately obvious so let’s look at an example to see how this works in practice.

Say we have two ships. Ship A is more than a decade old with a large fanbase. Ship B is only a couple years old but gaining traction. On Jan 1, 2023, Ship A had a catalog of 50,000 fics and ship B had 5,000. Both ships have 3,000 new works published in 2023. However, 4% of the older works in each fandom were either privated or deleted during that same time (this percentage is was just chosen to make the math easy but it’s close to reality).

Ship A: 50,000 x 4% = 2,000 removed works Ship B: 5,000 x 4% = 200 removed works

Ship A: 3,000 - 2,000 = 1,000 "new" works Ship B: 3,000 - 200 = 2,800 "new" works

This gives Ship A a net gain of 1,000 and Ship B a net gain of 2,800 despite both fandoms producing the exact same number of new works that year. And neither one of these reported counts are the actual new works count (3,000). THIS explains the drastic difference in ranking between a ship like Steve/Bucky and Nick/Charlie.

How is this a useful measure of anything? You can't draw any conclusions about the current size and popularity of a fandom based on this data.

With this system, not only is the reported "new works" count incorrect, the older, larger fandom will always be punished and it’s count disproportionately reduced simply for the sin of being an older, larger fandom. This example doesn’t even take into account that people are going to be way more likely to delete an old fic they're no longer proud of in a fandom they no longer care about than a fic that was just written, so the deletion percentage for the older fandom should theoretically be even larger in comparison.

And if that wasn't bad enough, the author of this "study" KNEW the data was tainted and chose to present it as meaningful anyway. You will only find this if you click through to the FAQ and read about the author’s methodology, something 99.99% of people will NOT do (and even those who do may not understand the true significance of this problem):

The author may try to argue their post states that the tags "which had the greatest gain in total public fanworks” are shown on the chart, which makes it not a lie, but a error on the viewer’s part in not interpreting their data correctly. This is bullshit. Their chart CLEARLY titles the fic count column “New Works” which it explicitly is NOT, by their own admission! It should be titled “Net Gain in Works” or something similar.

Even if it were correctly titled though, the general public would not understand the difference, would interpret the numbers as new works anyway (because net gain is functionally meaningless as we've just discovered), and would base conclusions on their incorrect assumptions. There’s no getting around that… other than doing the counts correctly in the first place. This would be a much larger task but I strongly believe you shouldn’t take on a project like this if you can’t do it right.

To sum up, just because someone put a lot of work into gathering data and making a nice color-coded chart, doesn’t mean the data is GOOD or VALUABLE.

#ao3 #ao3 stats #psa #my words #fandom #I doubt anyone is even going to read this but I needed to get it out of my system and at least try to stop this from spreading #if you know me #you know I get Big Mad about misinformation #don't take anything at face value #do your own research