Coal Rivalry

[coalcube]

All the things Coal said, running through my head.

Thursday 25 December: Madness collection works reveals (9pm UTC)
Thursday 1 January: Author reveals, end of event (9pm UTC)

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Comments

Re: Actual Coal (or, what were they thinking)

[(Anonymous)]

Overly earnest question:

Would it be worthwhile for a bunch of us to send emails to the Yuletide mods asking for Bean10 to be banned? Or would this just come off as cringe and Karen-esque, for lack of a better term?

Re: Actual Coal (or, what were they thinking)

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah I wouldn't.

Re: Actual Coal (or, what were they thinking)

[(Anonymous)]

We know at least Morbane reads memes so they're all aware of opinions.

Re: Actual Coal (or, what were they thinking)

[(Anonymous)]

Very Karen-esque.

Like, if you have an opinion like "Getting a gift like this would make me unhappy and I think there is a minimum standard of quality this person is not meeting", feel free to contact the mods. But don't turn it into a letter writing campaign. The lurkers do not support you in email. Even in the very small sample size that is Coal, there are coalies who think the solution is their personal beta services, and judging by past comments, there are people who don't care or who are happy to take one for the team.

Re: Actual Coal (or, what were they thinking)

[(Anonymous)]

SC

oh wow, just checked back and the beta is apparently encouraging them to use AI now?

Amazing.

Re: Actual Coal (or, what were they thinking)

[(Anonymous)]

Oh for fucks sake. The goal should not be how to make it harder to tell this is shit by putting it in a stolen chocolate box.

Re: Actual Coal (or, what were they thinking)

[(Anonymous)]

I'd rather get AI than bean. Of course, I'd rather get something good than either, but the mods don't seem to agree with me.

Re: Actual Coal (or, what were they thinking)

[(Anonymous)]

The AI version of the fic is not better, it just spackles over the warning signs it sucks.

Re: Actual Coal (or, what were they thinking)

[(Anonymous)]

I disagree. I think AI could make something more coherent, more grammatical, and without so many author's notes.

Re: Actual Coal (or, what were they thinking)

[(Anonymous)]

Given coherence is exactly what AI fails at, I disagree.

Re: Actual Coal (or, what were they thinking)

[(Anonymous)]

dc I think this misrepresents the comment.

Some of the better text to speech software can be pricey, I know. Maybe talk to the exchange mods about alternative accommodations like a scribe, or limited use of AI? Or, stick to your guns on the capitalisation as a stylistic choice - just flag it in the top notes, e.g. "use of lower case is a stylistic choice for personal reasons' or something.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/73902471?view_full_work=true

Re: Actual Coal (or, what were they thinking)

[(Anonymous)]

Imagine what the hallucination machine will spit out when given a Bean10 prompt...

Re: Actual Coal (or, what were they thinking)

[(Anonymous)]

I love how you started out hoping you could fix things with beta advice and are now encouraging them to "stick to their guns" about nonstandard capitalization.

Re: Actual Coal (or, what were they thinking)

[(Anonymous)]

And crawling for being ableist because they're too stupid to write fanfiction lol.

Re: Actual Coal (or, what were they thinking)

[(Anonymous)]

CYRT

yikes

Re: Actual Coal (or, what were they thinking)

[(Anonymous)]

dc

I don't understand what you mean.

Re: Actual Coal (or, what were they thinking)

[(Anonymous)]

To be charitable, I assume they meant something like Grammarly, which uses limited AI to fix SPAG, rather than generative AI. (But I also think they could've been clearer about that because obviously most people think generative when they think about AI now, and I imagine Bean would as well.)

Re: Actual Coal (or, what were they thinking)

[(Anonymous)]

Generative AI will fix spag if you ask it to as well.

Re: Actual Coal (or, what were they thinking)

[(Anonymous)]

Probably. Not what they said, though. And you'd think that they'd realize they need to be crystal clear in talking to this person - after a few comments in, if not from the outset.

Re: Actual Coal (or, what were they thinking)

[(Anonymous)]

Fair point, I could have been more specific. Perhaps I needed to be.

I've been travelling today, responding from my phone with distractions, and I tend to err on the side of assuming that standards of understanding are generally higher than standards of communication.

Re: Actual Coal (or, what were they thinking)

[(Anonymous)]

I'll give you this: you're being more polite and constructive than I expected when I saw some coal busybody had gone over to talk to them directly. [Yes, I am here too, but I think I have reason for extremely poor expectations of how coalies will act when they have a bee in their bonnet.]

But, well, every communication to this person clearly needs to be carefully planned.

Re: Actual Coal (or, what were they thinking)

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, I meant a strictly SPaG-only fix, either through existing software or (worst case) asking a LLM to clean the spag. It wouldn't be my choice, even as a disability accommodation, but it's still one of the options available and at the end of the day not my choice to make.

Re: Actual Coal (or, what were they thinking)

[(Anonymous)]

You meant? As in, you're astrokath?

I think you need to stop digging. You seem to have good intentions but you went in with an overly optimistic idea of how you, personally, could fix the problem, which I think you're now seeing is not realistic. The problem is not this person's relationship to grammar and technology, which is clearly unusual, but what they believe to be an acceptable gift, and "You are refusing to meet a minimum standard, so stop it," is a message that should come from the mods, not you.

If you really want to help as a beta reader, please volunteer in places and at times where beta readers are actually requested. Betas are not that thick on the ground. If you want to help, help.

Re: Actual Coal (or, what were they thinking)

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, alas. And you're right, the optimism is a flaw. It's been interesting to see the point the offer got us to though - we do now have a clearer picture of (some of) what has been happening behind the scenes, where the points of failure are, and how much is deliberate vs. oblivious. I also agree that none of this is my remit and am indeed backing off.

re: beta reading, I do volunteer for that and have been helping.

Re: Actual Coal (or, what were they thinking)

[(Anonymous)]

DC

I appreciate that they tried. It went about as well as I expected, but still.