While I largely agree with Doe’s post… I want to bring up other interesting things I’ve found out related to this.
I agree with Doe that images that are just astroturfing deliberately false information are still documentation, provided two things:
1. You are not the creator of the image here to astroturf it yourself.
2. You show where the image originates from (if at all possible, the primary source.)
As incomprehensible as Dry Ice can be, he at least sources things. People are free to call out how petty and irrelevant these “contributions” are. To quote Timey16 from one of Dry Ice’s images “Hmm yes, Russian piracy/cracking group. Very trustworthy individuals.” Linking someone’s own actual twitter post (or better yet, an archive to their Twitter/post in case it is taken down) is significantly better than some random person on twitter claiming to have a screenshot of the tweet. Obviously, this is not always possible in all cases (supposed direct messages, phone calls, etc.) We have many memes on things that have been deliberately fabricated. From fake Tweets to examples needed in documentation for entries. And even then, any sort of standard we put in place here, is going to be entirely arbitrary.
So, with that said, while most users contributing to that gallery have been doing this, there is one notable exception. People should be able to verify what they are seeing is real and not a fake screenshot. I had assumed that having a field for “source” and the extreme ease of fabricating screenshots would have made it obvious for users who had been on the site for several years. This was a faulty assumption. I've added an upload notice to the gallery: "Ensure images uploaded to the gallery are sourced to their actual origin. It is extremely easy to fabricate a screenshot." As well as issuing a warning to a user to go back and cite their previous uploads. This doesn't "solve the issue" but it should help.
… and that’s where this post would have ended if this was a healthy website.
DeFACT0 wrote:
Live up to your bio and do the work yourself. Hopefully, conversation will come afterwards.
VeteranAdventureHobo has been doing this. A lot. People making contributions that can be seen as challenging the anti-SBI narrative with skepticism and evidence often gather downvotes. Sure, some of them were being a dick about it and didn't bring much to the table than insults and GG flashbacks, but there are posts by others that were more meaningful. Most of these posts by other people have a neutral to slightly positive score, but an alt or two could easily change this. Image uploads that are void of any real documentation value get quite a few upvotes, while those that are actually important gets downvoted. Hell, even the posts encouraging people to do a better job of documenting are buried.
While highlighting that a lot of accounts on the site appear actively antagonistic to the site’s goals and objectives is funny, it gets better. When I said VeteranAdventureHobo has been doing this a lot, I mean a user recently “reported” VeteranAdventureHobo to another mod. As the mod described the message “they [Hobo] got some "hero complex" in proving people wrong in the comments to that entry”. This comes literally after the same user described Hobo as “an ideological tribalist and sees this controversy as a "win" for the rival tribe” Gee, I sure wonder if that is one of the ones that downvoted nearly everything Hobo has posted, even on other entries.
Like damn dude, I get that you're here to push a narrative and aren’t interested in inconvenient facts, while accusing others of what you do, but for an event that blew up because a person who was doing diligence in research and was threatened over posting it, I would think you would have some fucking self-awareness. If you hate Hobo posting so much, maybe take his advice on how to get him to stop.
Anyway I was gone from reading everything for ~week to deal with IRL things, and apparently, that’s when things really went to pot and a lot of users decided that trying to harass users who are critical of a popular narrative with actual research is okay.
As stated previously:
“So Gamers declared dead once more, cries of harrassment all over the place, followed by right-wing coopting? Same shit, nobody learns anything, people get angrier, and the rift grows ever wider? The situation is definitely threatening to recreate itself.”
To the person upset at me calling it, maybe don’t go out of your way to prove me right?
Or perhaps it was the part where I said: “it feels like people are more willing to question the narrative of both sides and call out false information even if it being true would be convenient for them. This was sorely missing from the GG I saw which would often bury skepticism under downvotes, no matter how founded.” that you were trying to prove wrong?