Friday Q&A

Questionable Deletions

Hi there crickets and trolls! Welcome to another edition of the Friday Q&A. It's good to see everyone getting back to work after the holidays. There were some puzzling developments at Fark this week, and I'm sure you have your share of questions. I'd better get started asking them for you.

Q: Did a couple of contests go missing?

A: Yes, two of the contest threads got deleted. Luckily, they still exist on the Fark Photoshop Scrutinizer, so we can take a look. Thanks to Mr Squirrel for providing such a wonderful tool to the masses.

The first incident occurred on Wednesday, in thread 3291115. The contest, Photoshop this intense drummer girl, simply vanished after going live. Though no official explanation was given, this winning 'shop by Ennuipoet may offer some clues.


It's possible the powers that be received an angry email and just blew the whole contest away. This has happened with threads before, so everyone went on with their business and didn't ask many questions.
Boner sucks donkey cock.
The next day, thread 3303751, Theme: Photoshop your own fake emergency news where it doesn't belong, was greenlit to the main page as an instashop. Unfortunately, the contest disappeared shortly after descending into an all out flame war. There were so many trolls and GISers that the mods probably decided to save time and just nuke the whole thing from orbit. Of course, the real victims here are the people who actually contributed entries. My personal favorite was provided by frequent Clinic poster olapbill.


Thanks to every stupid, ass-munching dicktard who helped troll that thread to death. My condolences to anyone whose legitimate entry got zapped. Since this is Fark, don't expect any explanations. Just move along, citizen. Nothing to see here.

Q: What do this week's deletions mean to you?

A: I find them to be ominous, and think they show a failure on the part of Fark's administrators and mods. Drummer Girl was the admins fault, since they obviously greenlit something they shouldn't have. If a user can track down the original source of an image, I don't see why an admin can't be bothered to.

Personally, I can't figure out what the problem is. I wasn't aware that the age of a PS subject was covered in the FArQ. There's mention of child porn restrictions, but none of the entries came close to that. Even then, why not just delete individual posts, instead of the whole contest? It must be a case of "there's no rule for it, but we're making one up anyway." Or possibly Drew and the gang caved in to a potential legal threat. That's not what pisses me off. I'm pissed because no official statement was given. But I'll get over it, I guess.

The failure of the instashop was even more disheartening. In the past such contests have been lauded as the great equalizer of Fark. They put liters on even ground with TFers, and the idea is that everyone can have a good time and rack up some votes. But what happens to 3303751? It gets spammed by a bunch of punks saying "fail" and posting GISes. Totally lame.

I had hoped the mods would try to maintain a sense of order, but instead they threw the baby out with the bathwater. Why let the trolls win? Make no mistake, yesterday's actions signaled a victory to these douchebags who are trying to ruin our fun. People shouldn't be allowed to come into a PS thread and declare that the fucking idea for the contest sucks, or that instashops suck. Crap like that is not constructive. The absence of it is why I enjoy Fark.

Q: Is this anything new?

A: Nope. Some of you may remember the uproar caused a few months back by thread 3025303, Photoshop this toddler torture device. That contest was never deleted, but was yanked from the queue after several days. The explanation given by the mods was that "disabled kids" were unfit for PS fodder. Guess they'd never met this guy before.


The running kid is safe for contests, and is used frequently. Yet that original picture of the toilet-straddling, non-retarded child model from a handicapped appliance catalog is considered to be off limits. It seems the closer you look, the more the fabric of our rule system begins to unravel. No one wants anarchy, we just want the regulations to be applied consistently.
Call me @ 307-353-9982.
That's all for now, gentle reader. I want to apologize to Edward Boner and that braying jackass TheSniperZERO for not taunting them more in this post. Sorry guys, but sometimes stuff happens that's more important than your incoherent bullshit. You do fill the gaps nicely, though.
I know who Boner is.
Stay tuned for more "that's what she said" setups from the Doctor!