1. Why did I receive an email about this?

SciFiNoir and the membership list was deleted without notice, so the only email list I had to let members and friends know was a list I created of people who expressed interest in speculative fiction and afrofuturism. Many of the people are or have been subscribers over the past few years. Since I have been receiving so many questions about what happened to the list, I thought I could save time by sending out an email using that list to let everyone know what happened.

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2. What was SciFiNoir?

SciFiNoir was a community/discussion list of people with a deep appreciation for any and all things speculative fiction. In addition to traditional science fiction, members are also free to discuss horror, paranormal, sci fi erotica, anime, super heroes, cyberpunk, fantasy, paranormal, sci fi romance, comics, and science fact. This group was not only for the fans, but the creators of works in this genre. I launched it on Dec 27, 1999. At last count we had over 485 members who averaged anywhere from 25 to 125 messages posted a day.

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3. What happened to ScifiNoir?

On Friday morning (April 29, 2005), my browser start page (my yahoo) would not load and the yahoo login page would not accept my password that I have had since 1998. I figured it was just a glitch. Then, a few subscribers notified me that they could not post. The board’s site was also gone!

It never crossed my mind that my problems were as a result of any violation of yahoo’s policies. However, a few people suggested that maybe I angered someone or removed someone from the list and they had probably maliciously submitted false complaints to Yahoo. They explained that this was called “TOSSing” and that it was very common on yahoo and paypal. It seems that both are known for reacting to such complaints by arbitrarily deleting the accounts without any investigation or inquiry.

I know I occasionally piss people off, but I have only unsubscribed one person since the group’s launch. Freedom of speech is extremely, important to me, so as long as I can get someone to follow the rules of the list, I feel there is no reason to remove them. There was an incident about two months ago, but all parties involved seem to be okay and were still actively involved with the list. Since then I have revamped the rules to prevent any similar occurrences. Additionally, call me naive, but I did not think the participants I have encountered on the list (including those that may have a problem with me) are so petty or malicious. So, I continued to see the problem as a technical glitch and decided to call yahoo.

The customer service person was very friendly and sympathetic. After putting me on hold several times to investigate, he became extremely apologetic and explained that I had to be transferred to someone else. That person explained that there was not a glitch, but that I had violated their policy, so my profile was deleted. When I asked questions, the person explained that he was not permitted to tell me what my offense was and that my only recourse was to send an email to a generic address explaining my “experience.” The more I probed about the policy and the ability to fix the problem, the more he got locked into a "script". He stressed that there was no one available to talk to me and that there was no way to escalate the problem. I got the impression there will be no response to my inquiry. Several subscribers have told me this is relatively common and Yahoo has never explained their actions or reversed their decision.

The generic email provided is: experience@yahoo-inc.com

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4. What was the offense that got the board deleted?

I do not know for sure. Yahoo has a policy of not disclosing any information about the offense. However, 48 hours before the list was deleted, there was an extended message thread regarding an article in the Los Angeles Times covering the Toronto Sex Crimes Unit that focused on their fight against child pornography and how the majority of those arrested are Trekkies/Trekkers. See a copy of the message thread here. Several members have joined me in reviewing the groups recent messages, and this is the only thing we can come up with.

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Yesterday, a few people from the list speculated that perhaps that fact that recently they had to click through an adult filter to access the SciFiNoir site. At first, I thought it was related, but yesterday, a similar filter appeared when I tried to access another list, that in my opinion did not have adult content. This suggests to me that perhaps yahoo is making some changes in their policy that may involve purging some lists based on content.

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6. Was anyone notified or warned that the list and your email were at risk of being deleted?

I was not warned, given an opportunity to retrieve my personal email alert members, or notified that there was even an offense committed. The inability to access my start page and my email was the only clue.

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7. Can we at least retrieve the data?

No, all the posts, links, stories, artwork, and other files are gone.

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8. Why the group’s deletion is more important than just the loss of SciFiNoir?

This is very important, because this is another example of the right to free speech being threatened. This is scary, because in my opinion, nothing controversial was being discussed. I suspect yahoo has installed a word filter and no human being was involved in the evaluation. Additionally, there was no accusation or notification made. They provided no opportunity for me to defend “my actions.” Nor did they afford me the courtesy of informing me about the nature of the offense. I still do not know how I violated yahoo's poilicies! They simply deleted everything, without allowing me to retrieve important information I might have had stored as a result of having a yahoo email account or allowing the authors and artists to retrieve any files for the discussion portal. With the email war going on between yahoo and google, I wonder what people would do if they knew that yahoo owned their email and they have no rights to it. Who needs extended storage space under those circumstances.

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13. Will the new portal be named “SciFiNoir”?

No. The ScifiNoir domain belongs to someone else. A few years ago, there was a great site dedicated to speculative fiction that had the same name as our list. I found out about it because the owner contacted me to order me to shut down our group. He threatened to sue if I did not comply. He thought that by owning the domain SciFiNoir, that he was the owner of the copyright and the trademark of the word, and that our pre-existing group was in violation of intellectual property laws. After doing some research and discovering that he did not hold either the copyright or the trademark, I informed him. I also told him that I had originally intended to create a web site and saw no good in us competing. I proposed that we join forces. I also pointed out that we had complementary skills. He turned me down, but also stopped threatening me with legal action. His site flourished editorially, but from what I can tell, it was not profitable and became too time consuming for him to manage. I think he shut it down in late 2003. He owns the domain until 2007.

He is currently using a domain bidding service, called sedo.com. There is almost no traffic on the site (100 hits a month). He also has only had two bids for it since he started trying to auction the domain. My husband made a bid for $100 almost a year ago, and I bid $60 yesterday. The average domain costs between $6-$15. Yesterday, he asked me for $3,000 to buy it. I think that is unreasonable for a domain with no traffic. I do not think that any money can be really made from the portal, and I cannot afford such an ill-advised expenditure for what is hobby.

Some of you have suggested different variations of the scifinoir name. I would love to continue to use the name, but it would lead people to think that scifinoir.com is our home and we would end up loosing as much as 25% of our potential visitors. So, unfortunately, we will have to find a new name and develop a new brand.

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14.So what will be the name of the new portal?

Since I decided to move on, I have been brainstorming. Unfortunately, there are domain auction houses popping up all over the place buying up and hoarding domains. So most of the names I have come up with are taken.

Below is a list of names that I have come up with that have not been taken. Let me know what you think about them. Feel free to send me your own portal name suggestions. To save time and frustration, please check availability first with the domain search tool provided below.

The following are the three names I have come up with that are available:

• darkenergycafe.com
• endarken.com
• scifiinthedark.com

What do you think about them? Do you have any suggestions? Drop me a line at: tdemorsella@multiculturaladvantage.com.

15. Tell me about your plans for the new portal

Although the new portal will prominently feature discussion like our Yahoo site did, we plan on exploiting the technology of the web applications we have to devote more energy promoting commentaries, blogs, and showcasing the works of writers and other artists. While the applications we are installing are feature-rich, we plan on adding some additional features that we hope participants will use. We hope to have the following: collaboration tools, journals, blogs, calendars, this day in scifi history, a writers resource center, scifi facts, media lists, galleries, special writer’s section, free classifieds, interactive story engine, news, event invitation tools, quizzes, polls, writers’ mini-sites, link directory, free downloads, top lists, and more. I also hope to set up site functions and content designed to help people in the same section of the country to hook up for movie parties. (Got the idea from Art McGee).

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16. When will you launch the new portal?

Officially, we will not launch the portal with a full publicity campaign for several months (October). However several members have told me that they are going through SciFiNoir posting withdrawal. :) So I plan on launching the forum within three days of us nailing down a domain name. Hopefully the forum will be available for posting in less than two weeks

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17. How can I get involved with the new site?

You tell me!! I’m just happy for all the offers! We are looking for people interested in in doing any of the following:

• Moderate a speciific topic on the forum
• Be a regular or guest reviewer of books, movies, DVDs, TV shows, comics, graphic novels, games, anime, etc
• Submit commentaries, essays or a rant from a previous post
• Serve on the short story nominating commitee for our virtual short story parties.
• Submit a short story
• Submit artwork
• Submit poetry
• Maintain a writer's experience journal
• Maintain a movie goer's experience journal
• Maintain a TV viewer's experience journal
• Maintain a graphic novelist's experience journal
• Maintain a comic book producer's experience journal
  

We are also interesting in hearing your ideas about what you would like to see on the new site. A few of you have approached me with ideas on collaborating in the past. I hope to revisit these proposals now that we are finally launching. I also look forward to hearing new collaboration ideas.

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18.How do I contact you directly, Tracey?

My email is: tdemorsella@multiculturaladvantage.com

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