current record afaik: 28 on ch 31 P_Artsypants Longest Night

[alexseanchai]

number of times I've marked the Lila anon's verbatim-identical† comment on today's fic as spam: ||||/ ||||/ |

thinking about going through and clicking Spam on every comment she's ever left, because it's one thing for AO3 to do fuck-all because her unwanted roleplay comments that aren't associated with an AO3 account are annoying, another for AO3 to do fuck-all when the said comments are spammy. timestamps of these comments, per Gmail, are 1:14a, 1:30a, 1:39a, and 1:43a, as of 1:44a when I post this post; you will please to observe I opened Create Entry at 1:40a.

illustrative examples of previous Lila-anon comments: "you're full of something", "go on and sound your horns", "the ball's in your court now"

as far as we know, the Lila anon—I think we're assuming there's only one, excepting cases of people trying to troll her back and also taking the Lila persona—is the same person we were talking about in July. turning on comment moderation does not stop her; at least four of the times she hit P_Artsypants's Longest Night ch 31 were after turning comment moderation on. archive-locking the fic and turning off anon comments will both stop her, but I am among the writers who really wants to do neither.

*cranky*

ETA: per advice from HopefulNebula, leaving this one up and reporting the escalation to AO3 Abuse

† attempt 6 added a line; 7 added a word; 8 changed a word and fixed a spelling error; 9 added a word; am done with this footnote now unless future editions of the comment are significantly different

Comments

[chanter1944]

What the?! I can understand how, under certain circumstances, having roleplay comments turn up could be fun. What's outlined above does not qualify. :( Rings ominous, in fact. Eeks!

So far, anonyLila hasn't landed on me. Then again, I haven't written any Lila!fics. Part of me is wondering if that will matter, if anonyLila gets a look at, say, alterna-wielder Jalil and takes issue. Then again, I may just be borrowing trouble.

[alexseanchai]

she doesn't seem to hit any fics not tagged "Lila Rossi", and she does not hit all of those that are

[chanter1944]

I hope reporting her to AO3 abuse does the trick. Because yeah. There are fun surprise!roleplay circumstances, specifically those wherein the person landed on also gets a kick out of the RP, and then there are not. These are not. :(

[silveradept]

Hrmph. At a certain point, the persona is no longer novel, which seems to have been its saving grace at the beginning, so all ahead full on getting it removed as spam.

*swears a lot*

[alexseanchai]

Hi,
The AO3 Policy & Abuse committee has received your complaint regarding the inappropriate and spam-like comments left on Swap and Smell the Rose Garden. Unfortunately, since the comments did not come from a registered user, there is little we can do other than delete them.

Many unregistered users leaving repeated and unwanted comments use different IPs, provided by a proxy service; this makes blocking IPs ineffective. When we have tried implementing IP blocks in the past, we ran into issues with innocent users getting caught up in the ban. No matter how many we block, the user can simply switch to a new service.

It is also possible to create multiple disposable email addresses. We can ban actual accounts that use these sorts of addresses specifically for harassing people, but we can’t do much against users who use them for unwanted or harassing anon comments.

At the moment, the best solution is for users to restrict their works so that only logged-in users can view them or to disable anonymous commenting, which ensures that only registered Archive users can comment on the work, but will still allow guest users to leave kudos. You can also enable comment moderation, which will prevent new comments from appearing publicly on your work unless (and until) you approve them.

If you’re not sure how to edit the privacy settings on your works, you can consult our Posting and Editing FAQ: http://archiveofourown.org/faq/posting-and-editing#controlaccess

Please, feel free to share our advice with other users who may be experiencing the same issues. We strongly advise creators and their readers not to engage these anonymous commenters in dialogue. However polite or rational you may be, it almost always leads to escalation.

We hope this alleviates your concerns. If you have any questions or any further information to add, please respond directly to this email.

Bella
AO3 Policy & Abuse

We hope this alleviates your concerns.

Well you are certainly free to hope that. But no. No it does not.