coaltide | Demure

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2024

Demure

Default deadline: December 11 (9am UTC)

Assignment deadline: December 18 (9am UTC)
Main Collection Opens: December 25 (9am UTC)

Madness Opens: December 26 (9am UTC)

Author reveals: January 1 (9am UTC)

Yuletide Discord for Hippos & Exchanges After Dark Discords for Namespace ~~drama~~ 18+ discussion. Google Group for PHs.

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CYRT

That's fair enough. I'm of two minds regarding the de-anoning thing because of [boring rant about how FFA and coal approach anonymity I can't be bothered to retread right now], but I agree they probably should have been more careful.

So the artist didn't leap on it at once - they claimed it after giving other exchange participants every possible opportunity to step up as well.

I don't see how this is mutually exclusive with biting off more than they could chew. They could have claimed half of it, or less. Made the job easier for other PHers. Or, hell, the collection could have been delayed further. It wouldn't be ideal, but that's the way it's supposed to work, right? PHs linger until the person who can fill them comes along. Not until one of the artists passing by decides to just make kittyart.

And I'm even condemning kittyart as a whole. I've received some I quite enjoyed. But it does feel a bit hollow and I hate the idea of getting kittyart in every exchange where I request art and linger long enough as a PH, you know?

first post in this discussion: I would love kittyart in any exchange as long as it was done by one of the resident exchange pro-level artists. Totally uninterested in colored pencil/crayon amateur art whether it's by a fellow fan or not.

CYRT

Yeah, after posting that I realized I made it sound like it was all about kittyart... it's very much a combination of both. Trying to make art too ambitious for your skill level is risky (WRT recip enjoyment), and so is making art without actually knowing the fandom. A gift should ideally not be both.

I think, unlike you, I fall on the side of "okay with low-skill art as long as it's made with heart". I think, faced with a choice between pro-level kittyart and amateur-level truly fannish art, I would pick the latter. I can always get the former with commissions, it's not what I want out of an exchange...

If I had infinite money I'd never do another exchange

DC

I have commissioned art of my rare fandom blorbos and I can safely say it wasn't worth it. The only times I was happy with the result was when the artist happened to be familiar with the fandom. And it absolutely wasn't a matter of art quality, but it just felt completely shallow and soulless. Both times the artist's work process involved sending me WIPs and asking me for input, which made it worse in a way I can't explain.

I've only done it once, so hardly a representative sample, but yeah, the results were disappointing and I won't do it again.

If you're going to hold out for your one true fandom until the very end of the exchange you are gambling at getting a worse gift because you're stuck with whoever can pick up your fandoms in a rush. That's the trade-off.

If you aren't okay with that trade-off, don't gamble by letting your pinch hit linger as a non-required pinch hit until the last couple of weeks.

Yeah.

And the thing is, the recipient probably thought they would be fine with it until it happened, same as the artist though they could totally pull off the amount of art they'd committed to but, well, not really. Hopefully both make different choices next time. And I still think the artist did a nice thing. It just was an overcommitment.

CYRT

I agree that increased risk of a gift like that is kind of inevitable, but I don't think it should be embraced.

Nobody should receive 9k of kittyfic or kittyart no matter how long they linger.

[boring rant about how FFA and coal approach anonymity I can't be bothered to retread right now]

I'm interested!

CYRT

I ended up basically delivering the short version elsewhere in the thread:

I think nonnies are often shooting themselves in the foot when they get all overly-invested and sluethy like that. A lot of venting is kinda meaningless without some salient details, and those salient details are often quite identifiable. When nonnies hold other nonnies to the highest standards of discretion possible, they're directly sabotaging what the space is for.

Additional thoughts to this amount to the fact that people often underestimate what information is identifiable the same way people on the internet as a whole underestimate which of the info they've shared could potentially be used to doxx them. So a lot of assumptions about how this information isn't de-anoning are really about it being too much effort to deanon someone based on the crumbs they've given. Which goes out the window the second you have one over-invested neurotic person with too much time on their hands, or even better, literally any kind of competence with computational/scraping tools/automated data workflows.

Suppose that somebody mentions in an ill-advised vent that they did both exchange X and Y this year, and drops hints about the fandom they got a bad gift in. Cross-reference the participant lists (especially if the exchanges aren't huge), look at gifts in fandoms that fit the bill, and you've probably already got yourself a shortlist. Unlikely there'll be more than one or two matching any other pertinent details in that vent, like "I requested a freeform and it was barely in the fic" or "the ship is barely shippy". And now you know almost certainly who posted the vent, based on information that a lot of people wouldn't necessarily think twice about letting slip.

The only recourse against this on the anon person side is just... lying about details like that, and saying the gift was last year instead of last month, or it was in exchange Z instead of X, or pretending to be different people while same-anoning so it's harder to make a cohesive "profile" of you (and also hope that no troll decides to act like they're the same person as you just for shits and giggles). But there are several drawbacks to this:

1) Fudging or lying about details to increase your own anonymity might get someone else caught in the crossfire. Especially as some nonnies are desperately convinced that all people wanking about the same topic are just one person, woe to whoever happens to be de-anonable among those wankers.
2) Obviously there's only so much you can fudge about the details of your vent in order to increase your anonymity without defeating the point of the vent itself. Sometimes it's super egregious that (*rolls dice for a fictional example*) you got kittyfic specifically in Rarefemslash Exchange, the place people go to find other people who genuinely know and love that F/F rarepair, and that it happened not once, but twice in a row! Removing or altering any of that information would completely neuter the vent and make it harder to understand why you're upset.

But when nonnies treat de-anoning like a game where you're supposed to be as paranoid as possible about identifying details, and even vaguely drawing attention to the creator of a disappointing gift is a faux pas, they create incentives for people to err on the side of caution by lying or just not posting at all.

And if everyone did that, the anonspace would be dead.

I always lie in every vent I make. It's just good privacy hygiene.

It's supposed to be a place where you don't have to worry about that though. And if it isn't, mods and monies should be more up front about it. I remember when mods swore up and down the only thing they'd do with IP addresses would be to stop bad actors like the Magdalene laundries troll. Clearly that was a very slippery and fast slope.

*nonnies

Anyone who doesn't use VPN to post on ffa is slacking

What's the point? It's not like mods there do anything with your IP address.

They track IP addresses, they've admitted it, and they think they can match posters up with IPs. Which is just so fucking stupid.

They don't have to "admit" that they track IPs, DW literally tells you that every time you post.

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(Anonymous) - 2024-12-16 16:41 (UTC) - Expand

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(Anonymous) - 2024-12-16 16:44 (UTC) - Expand

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(Anonymous) - 2024-12-16 17:00 (UTC) - Expand

What an incredible and fascinating insight!

While I mostly agree with this, I don't think it applies in this case.

I was one of the people who identified the art recipient and it wasn't anything I put effort into. They were so identifiable that I immediately knew who they were. I did go back to check the gift I thought they were talking about to verify that I wasn't misremembering, but I didn't have to even do that to know.

There was no game, there was no digging, there was just me (and others) seeing an incredibly unanon vent and pointing out that they were not anon without actually naming them.

You could have just kept quiet about it.

CYRT

How exactly were they "so identifiable"?

I was mildly curious about the art in question (mainly so I could form my own opinion about how disappointing it was as a gift) and I lost interest before I went through enough art in the collection specifically looking for it.

As I said, most people have better things to do than deliberately go through mediocre art and then cross-ref it to the wordcount of the other gifts the recip received.

CYRT

I had gone through most of the art beforehand, and the details they mentioned brought to mind one specific work.

I never had to check their other gifts or anything to verify based on those wordcounts, that was other nonnies. I just saw the vent and was like "Oh this isn't anon at all, I know exactly who this is" and...did indeed know exactly who it was.

Bully for you? You still didn't need to point it out.

CYRT

Thanks coalie! ITA with this.

The deanoning rage on FFA is out of hand. Just let people vent.

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