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Sheizenhammer
If you find me ignorant, enlighten me.

Age 36, Male

Zzzzzz...

Yarm, UK

Joined on 12/31/08

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Sheizenhammer's News

Posted by Sheizenhammer - October 25th, 2014


They make good carousels.

2692815_141423634512_anigif_enhanced-buzz-23756-1372190215-13.gif


3

Posted by Sheizenhammer - October 22nd, 2013


After seeing yet another stupid baww thread whining about a mod locking things that didn't belong in General, I decided I've had enough of the fact that most of the criticisms of the mod team are little more than directionless, incoherent anger that fizzles out in a day. What if a mod really is being an overly authoritative asshole and, due to the structureless nature of most of the complaints, gets away with it by passing all of them off as petty butthurt?

This is my attempt at separating the mods that are here for the right reasons from those that aren't (or at least, finding out once and for all if there are any genuine pricks on the mod team). The idea is simple:
Numbers don't lie. By looking at the mod's recent post history and assigning numerical values to certain types of behaviour, it's possible to create a scoring system that uses nothing but their own posting habits as evidence of excessive authoritarianism, thereby removing the inherent (and rampant) user bias in judging their actions.

The method has 3 steps to it, and all of them use the last 100 posts of the mod's post history. Each step will produce a 'final score', and the sum of those 3 final scores is what, in my personal method, is used to determine the likelihood that a mod is using the BBS for the sake of a personal need to feel superior instead of a desire to maintain and improve the community they're supposed to be a part of.

STEP 1
Look at the last 100 posts the mod has made. Count the number of lock messages. The reason for counting the percentage of lock messages is self-explanatory. The final score for this step is:
less than 10 lock messages = 1
10 - 15 = 2
16-20 = 3
21 - 29 = 4
30 or more = 5

STEP 2
Take the percentage of the 100 posts that were NOT lock messages. Count how many different threads they appear in. A post history that is restricted to just a few threads is an indicator of a lack of interest in the wider community as a whole, and many older users often end up circle-jerking in threads they started / liked when they were 'regulars'. This isn't a desirable behaviour in a person who has an obligation to assist the entire community. The final scores for this are:
More than 20 different threads = 0
15 - 19 = 1
10 - 14 = 2
5 - 9 = 3
less than 5 = 5

STEP 3
(This step is harder to explain, but not actually hard to do once you get what I'm trying to say.)
Going back to the posts that ARE lock messages, see how many are adjacent to other lock messages. Count every time 2 lock messages are next to each other in the post history. 2 lock messages together equals 1 'link' between lock messages. 3 lock messages together will equal 2 'links' as the 'top / middle' and 'middle / bottom' post joins each count as 1.
Why does this matter? It shows if the mod is locking things in waves, raising the possibility that he or she is actively going looking for things to moderate instead of just dealing with them as he / she comes across them. Going out of your way to use mod tools indicates that they like the mod buttons a little too much (or at least, more than using the forums normally, which should be the main point of coming here, moderator or not). The final scores for this are:
3 or less = 0
4 - 6 = 2
7 - 9 = 3
10 or more = 5

FINAL CALCULATION:
Add up the 3 final scores you got from all of the above steps. Based on the result, the likelihood that the mod in question is moderating more for the sake of his / her own ego than anything else is:

3 or less = Very unlikely
4 - 6 = Unlikely
7 - 9 = Possible
10 - 12 = Likely
13 - 15 = Very likely

-----------------------------------------

This is the most reasonable way I can think of officially standardising how we, as ordinary users, can judge how the mods act. However, it does have its limitations. These scores can cause a mod to appear power-hungry if something such as a spam flood or stupid meme forces them to lock a lot of things in quick succession. If you want to be really thorough, you can do the calculation again with the next 100 posts (posts 101 - 200 in their history). If you get an overall score that's within 2 points of the first, it's safe (IMO) to say that what you're seeing isn't a random blip.

And yes, this only works on forum mods. And no, most of the people who cry over mods will not suddenly stop crying as a result of reading this (hell, it's FAR too much effort to actually do your own research before calling someone out on abusing their position right?). Most of the people who cry about mods won't read it, full stop. But if it gets so much as one person to stop and think about what they're actually doing when they go rage at Wade, or one more person besides me to stop and think about if all the complaints really do have some truth to them, then it was worth writing as far as I'm concerned.

And if you are a forum mod, and do this on yourself and get a 'likely / very likely' score, please have a long, hard think about why you're really here.

(K, I'm fucking done.)


Posted by Sheizenhammer - July 28th, 2013


Are fucking awesome.

Discuss.


Posted by Sheizenhammer - May 24th, 2012


...Needs more batshit.


Posted by Sheizenhammer - February 29th, 2012


(NOTE: This one's shorter than the last post, if you couldn't be bothered to read that one.)

Turns out I'm not the only one being dicked over by the cunts at M&S. They do it to every company that has anything to do with them, it seems.

Someone I work with used to work at a pie factory called Bowyer's. They make pies for supermarkets all over the U.K, M&S included. Each supermarket / customer they get gives them a recipe for the pies they want making, and Bowyer's takes that recipe and puts all the ingredients into its pie-making machines, as per what the customer wanted. The rest is as simple as watching the pies effectively make themselves; it's mostly automated beyond the choice of recipe / ingredients.

Because there's often more than one type of pie being made at the same time (and since it's a BIG goddamn factory), occasionally the odd ingredient ends up in the wrong pie, or a pie gets sent to the wrong customer. Such is life when almost the entire factory is ran by computers; people get lazy about watching the equipment, and said equipment itself has no intelligence of its own, so shit like this slips through the cracks every once in a while.

Where does M&S come into this? They got a letter from one of their customers. This letter was full of praise at how much better their pies had gotten all of a sudden, and how this customer was going to buy them much more often now. Kind of the thing back-room workers consider a nice little pat on the back for their choice of ingredients....

....Except, said back-room workers hadn't done anything to the pie recipe. It had been the same for years, and this letter didn't make any sense to them at all.
It turned out that a batch of another supermarket's pies had been packaged up as M&S pies by accident. They were the same type of pie, but using a different recipe to the one M&S made up.

Now, get this: M&S actually COMPLAINED to Bowyer's about their recipe not being used. Think about that for a second. The only thing this "mistake" had done at all is win them the highest form of praise from a customer it is possible to get. Every other supermarket in existence would've just kept their mouths shut and enjoy the random good fortune while they could. But apparently, if you're an M&S employee, that is of no concern at all. The only thing that mattered to them was the petty principles of it. And perhaps the crushing reality that their over-priced pies were actually worse than the equivalent, reasonably priced products in other supermarkets (given the amount of praise in this letter, I'm guessing the pies were a LOT worse too!).

The really stupid thing is that this kind of self-limiting attention to detail is exactly what they use as their main excuse for their prices being more than twice that of other stores. They argue that because of all the extra care and attention they give to their food, it's worth the extra money, but it just isn't true. The extra money goes to fueling practices and presumptions that simply don't hold any logical weight whatsoever when it comes to determining how good the food actually is.

The one thing I've learned from my job is that supermarkets rarely, if ever, produce their own food. It's almost always ordered from independant producers, and those producers almost always make the same produce for more than one supermarket. All the supermarkets do is slap their own name on the packaging. So if one supermarket is trying to say it's inherently better than others by inflating their prices, in 99% of cases there'll be a much more reasonably priced version of exactly the same produce elsewhere... usually not more than a few hundred yards away, down the other end of the high street.

Fuck 'em. In the ass with a stick.


Posted by Sheizenhammer - November 13th, 2011


Seriously, fuck Marks & Spencer.
I used to have respect for them, seeing as how their oldest store (105+ years and still going) is in the heart of the city I went to uni in, but now they're just cunts to me.

Why? Because of 2 things:
1. Their food range.
2. My job.

As some of you might know and not care about already, I'm a microbiologist. It's my job to make sure the good people of southeast England aren't killed by diseased food products in supermarkets here. Recently, we got a job contract from one of M&S' suppliers; a company called Provenance. I've only been dealing with them for the last 2-3 weeks, but I'm ALREADY sick of the shit we get off of M&S over their share of the Provenance produce we test. There are 2 main beefs I have with it:

Firstly, it proved beyond ANY doubt that their food is indeed overpriced.
The stuff we get for testing from Provenance goes to 3 different supermarkets: M&S, Sainsbury's and Tesco. I kid you not, the ONLY difference between the 3 batches of food is the packaging. Microbiology testing basically involves dissecting anything you get sent to make sure you've got a representative sample of the stuff, and after taking all of Provenance's samples apart, lemme tell you: there is NO difference whatsoever between the contents of M&S' products and the equivalent Tesco / Sainsbury's crap. It comes from the SAME fields, is packaged in the SAME factory and handled by the SAME people. So the next time you see one of those "This is not just food, this is M&S food" adverts on the TV (you know, the ones that try to justify them having price tags that are often more than double those of other supermarkets?), feel free to go out and punch the first M&S employee you find for being a lying sack of pretentious vegan-shit. You'll be doing the world (well, my world) a favour.

Now, if this was the only problem, then I'd be totally fine with M&S. There are loads of other high-priced stores out there that do exactly the same thing (Waitrose is another one: their stuff comes from the same supplier that makes food products for Asda and Co-Op, just with a different package and an inflated price tag). But oh, if only that were the sole problem I have with them.
You see, they aren't just content with being pretentious fuckfaces towards all of their customers. Oh no, M&S like to take it one step further. They like to be pretentious with their quality control standards too. And this is where my MAJOR beef comes in:

Put simply: They waste their own money, our testing reagents, and EVERYONE'S time by ordering microbiology tests they don't need. It started off as ridiculous, and has recently reached SUPER-ridiculous levels.
It all revolves around E.coli tests. The normal E.coli test is a very simple method involving an easily made reagent we have bucketloads of, and takes as little time as a microbiology test can take. Processing all of the samples would take no more than half an hour if that was all they wanted as far as E.coli was concerned.

BUT NO.

Instead, they want the "super-sensitive" E.coli test, which is a ROYAL pain in the ass to do, isn't really that much better at picking up E.coli anyway, uses expensive-as-hell reagents that are very difficult to make, and takes 4 FUCKING HOURS to finish, on ALL of their shit.
This test is not meant to be used unless you have strong evidence to suspect your produce has been contaminated with E.coli, but they don't care; they want to use it like a normal test regardless. Ironically, Tesco and Sainsbury's are happy with the normal test for their share of the produce (which, remember, is exactly the same food in a different package), but M&S just want to be stuck-up dickwits about it.

And that's just the normal level of ridiculous we get off them! They've recently started taking it to a whole new level of stupid:
They've started ordering tests for E.coli 0157, which is a dangerous strain of E.coli that can cause food poisoning much more readily than normal E.coli. Makes sense to ensure it's not in your food, right? Most food companies do indeed order the test for 0157 every month or so to make sure it's not anywhere in their produce, and I would'nt have a problem with M&S doing the same.

BUT THEY DON'T.

Instead, they want the test done 12 TIMES A DAY.
EVERY. SINGLE. FUCKING. DAY.
This little gem of incompetence has come from one of their shelf-life tests. Again; we're testing the shelf-life of the same products for all 3 aforementioned supermarkets: the other 2 are being sensible and only ordering the 0157 test at the very end of the testing. The morons at M&S want the test done as many times as possible, for no good reason. Remember being told not to put maths answers to 73 decimal places in class? That's basically what these tools are doing with microbiology results: Spurious accuracy just for the hell of it.

Why's this so bad? Well, it's not for the difficulty of the test itself this time: it's no harder than a Salmonella or Listeria rest (which we do dozens of times a day without breaking a sweat). The problem here is that one of the ingredients for the test is LITERALLY worth its weight in silver, and THESE CUNTS HAVE DRAINED 6 MONTHS' SUPPLY OF THE STUFF IN 2 WEEKS thanks to their 'all day, every day' mentality towards it. We can't make the ingredient ourselves; we have to order it, and because of the price of it, the order has to go through head office, which can make actually getting the stuff back in stock a very slow process. MUCH slower than what fucking M&S are using it up for. Ergo: We're fucked if anyone else wants an 0157 test for the time being.

Oh, and it gets better. Yes, it gets even better.
Remember me mentioning Listeria up there? Basically there are 2 tests for it we do: Presence / absence and enumeration. The presence / abcense test just tells you if the food's been contaminated with Listeria or not; the enumeration test tells you how bad the contamination is. It is generally accepted practice to perform a P/A test first, and then an enumeration if, and only if, the P/A test comes back positive for Listeria.

How have M&S managed to fuck this up? They order the enumeration test AND the P/A test, on ALL their stuff, at the same fucking time! This basically translates into us wasting a HELL of a lot of reagents we actually need for the tests that turn positive, for no good fucking reason again! There is absolutely NO sense to doing an enumeration test before you even know there's any Listeria there at all, besides them being impatient twats and thinking they're somehow more important than all the other customers who need the test done when things actually do test positive for listeria. M&S are not only fucking themselves over by wasting money on tests that don't need, they're actually dragging down our ability to give timely reports to other customers too, which in turn slows down the entire chain of food production for them (you can't sell food unless it's been declared safe; we can't declare it safe until we do the tests; no declaration = supply chains grind to a halt). Ordering tests you have no reason to believe you actually need (hell, I'm sure by now they know they DON'T need them, but are still doing them anyway!) serves no purpose than to make everyone else's life a misery.

All in all, it takes 10 times as long to process this crap as it should, all because the amount of work we have to do, the amount of things we have to make, and the time we have to spend on it, is being padded out with pointless douchebaggery on behalf of Marks & Spencer's Quality control team. So the next time you see something in M&S' food aisle that looks good, remember: there's probably a very easy way of getting the same thing for half the price at another shop, and avoiding them like the damn plague will make your wallet (and my blood pressure) very happy. If it were up to me, they'd be out on their dumb asses by now, but alas, that is not my decision. Fuck!

TL;DR: Don't buy food from Marks & Spencer. They make me RAAAAAAAAAGE!!

(P.S: Still don't know if staying or not. Previous newspost is still there, and will be until I know either way if I'm staying or not. Shouldn't be too long until I get a definite answer, though.)


Posted by Sheizenhammer - September 4th, 2011


Found a temporary job; life got slightly less shitty; now I have a bit of free time to come here every so often. I probably won't be as active as I was on account of this house's internet connection being a massive piece of shit. Seriously, it's dead most of the time.

If this newspost disappears, it means so have I (again). I have no idea how long I can be back here for, or if I have to leave again at all, for that matter. Life's that good around here.

Watch this space, I suppose...


Posted by Sheizenhammer - June 12th, 2011


Well, I said I'd put a reason why I'm leaving here if I got the chance, so here it is:

For the last 2 years now, I've been stuck in an endless vicious cycle when trying to find a job. Because of the whole recession crap, the only thing anyone in the industry I want to work in cares about is experience. Being a graduate (as of 2 years ago), I have little to no "real" experience of the industry I want to work in. Ergo: No experience = no job; No job = no experience. Me = buggered.

Now, if it were that simple there'd be several ways around said experience problem. However, because it's me (or rather, pretty much every circumstance that makes up my life right now), there are several more problems confounding the issue:

1. The graduate and training job markets have literally died here.
There isn't a single employer anywhere near where I live that deals in the things I want to deal in, and is currently willing to take on people without a proven track record. And the problem is only going to get worse, as:

2. The industry itself has literally died here too.
It was never very strong to begin with, but there still used to be a good 20-30 companies that did what I wanted to do before the recession. Now, there's 3 left. Of those 3, all of them are in such deep financial trouble that hiring anyone is out of the question. I wouldn't be surprised if there isn't a single one left by the end of this year, which means:

3. Voluntary work, the only way out of said experience vicious cycle, is now impossible around here.
The only other way of forcing an employer to take notice of you is via an apprenticeship, which would've been a good idea since apprenticeships still do go on in places close to my home, but:

4. You can't do an apprenticeship if you have a degree already.
Yup, thanks to a lovely little piece of government red-tape, an apprenticeship counts as a 'level 3' qualification whereas a degree counts as a 'level 4' one, and you're not legally allowed to go backwards on their (somewhat backward in itself) scale of education.

So that's the experience side of it. If that were the end of the problems, this wouldn't be too bad, since there ARE places that would let me volunteer in other parts of the country. But that would be far too easy, wouldn't it? The other side to this is money... or rather the lack of it needed to move.

There are lots of agencies and government funds set up to help people move in search of work. All I'd have to do in theory is sign up to them to be given a fair amount of financial help, enabling me to move somewhere less hopeless. Simple, right?
WRONG!
There are 2 major types of help available: JSA and housing benefit. And neither of them are any use in my case because:

5. JSA can't be given to people doing my kind of voluntary work.
Apparently, they DO allow you to do voluntary work as per their own definition of it, but one of the technicalities of their definition is that it must be in a not-for-profit organisation in order to count as voluntary work that qualifies for JSA help.
Guess what type of organisations make up the entirety of the industry I want to work in. Yup; correct.

6. Housing benefit, in addition to having the same problem as JSA, simply isn't enough to cover rent in the areas where my preferred industry still lives.
Anyone who lives in England will know there's a big damn North / South divide in it, and living costs are no exception. Up where I am now, £50 a week will get you into most rented houses easily. Down where I actually need to be, You need at least £80 a week for so much as a box room, let alone anything pleasant. And the maximum housing benefit isn't anywhere near that amount. So I suppose it's no surprise then, that:

7. JSA + Housing benefit = nowhere near enough to live on, even if I were entitled to both.
Whoever did the calculations for this shit really needs to get a better grasp of numbers. Or economics. Or simple reality, for that matter.

Oh, and just for added fuck-you-in-the-face factor:

8. My immediate family have easily enough money to help me out here, but they just plain won't, out of petty childishness and spite.
I could write a goddamned book on why my family is not worth the effort of chasing for help with this, but suffice to say, rich people don't get that way by being altruistic. Asking for help is pointless, and would take far more time and patience than I'm prepared to give it. Fuck every last one of the backstabbing cunts, thieves and liars.

--------------------------------------
--------------------------------------
----------------------------

So what does all this have to do with leaving NG? Well, that part's much simpler:
Due to all of the above, my options are limited. In fact, there's only one left. It turns out that I have just enough money to move out of here down to where I need to be for 3 months. There, I can do the voluntary work I need to get a meaningful job with. Of course, it's not that simple: To do it for long enough I need to find enough menial jobs to fund myself for at least 6 months down there, and this is where all my free time and effort must now go.

The odds of me finding a job are definitely better down there than they are up here, but it still won't be easy by any measure. Add to that the time limit (basically 6 weeks, boring calculations excluded), and you can see why I'm not liking my odds of finding one in time, before what little money I have runs out and I'm forced back to the middle of nowhere with regards to volunteer work. I'm effectively gambling every penny I have on finding a better life down south, and I don't like my chances, but however hopeless the odds, gambling it down there is still better than pissing it away up here, and what choice do I have anyway?

I start packing up tomorrow. This computer will be boxed up and not used again until I'm down in my new house, and when I'm down there It's going to take pretty much every spare hour I've got to have a chance of pulling this off, which means no more dicking around on the internet all night every night. On top of that, the house I've found to move into has a BT connection, and is almost certain to be in a BT blackspot as far as watching flashes is concerned. As a result, there was little point in keeping membership in the EGB if I can't even watch flashes anymore, even if I did find the time to post there.

I do not like this situation one bit. I'm having to gamble my entire future (not to mention my enitre bank account too) on razor-thin odds, and even then it's a no-win situation. Its success will mean I lose what little connection I have to my uni friends / old life; its failure will spell the end of the last hope I have of finding a purpose for myself. Were this not the only option, I wouldn't be doing it, but I've simply exhausted every other possibility, and there are no more options to explore.

I'm going to miss having the time to play with this site and all of the awesome people I've met on it, but to be honest, lack of free time is the least of my concerns right now. This isn't the first time I've had to abandon NG for an indefinite period of time, but for all the previous times I was just an anonymous randomer who didn't even have an account, and no reason to explain where I'd gone either. Hopefully, I'll be back one day (just like the other 3 or 4 times I had to leave), but that day is probably a long way off yet.

...."Hopefully"....
Hope. The only thing I have left.
FML.

I suppose there's a message here, which I'd like to share with everyone (Yes, this is your TL;DR if you were looking for one): Don't make the same mistake I did. Use your time at school / college / whatever to get some proper experience (or at least in an employer's good books). Qualifications alone will get you nowhere in this world, but most of you are still in school and thus in a position to avoid being caught in the same problems I am now. Don't come out of your education before you have some kind of employment track record, however short or irrelevant you might think it is. It's better than nothing, and you'll be surprised how much more it does for you than the same old qualifications everyone else has.


Posted by Sheizenhammer - August 2nd, 2010


THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH FLAGGING REVIEWS. It's merely here for the purpose of laughing at all the really stupid shit that NG's resident moron population likes to write in that review box.

Here's 20 of the best (or worst, depending on how you look at it) reviews I've ever seen. Complete with reasons why they deserve a special place in my "laugh at for years to come" picture folder. Enjoy!

1. Art review bawwing.
I've had this as the example of what NOT to do in the review space for a while now, and it's still one of the dumbest things I've ever seen even to this day. The hilarity of this one is self-explanatory, really.

2. MY CAPS LOCK MAKES ME SMART!!!
BECAUSE IF I TYPE LIKE THIS EVERYONE WILL HEAR ME BETTER, RIGHT?! EVEN IF I PLAINLY DON'T KNOW NEWGROUNDS HAS AN N-WORD FILTER, IT WON'T MATTER CUZ I'M SMART NOW!!!

3. Obvious, socially inept emo-rage.
I dunno what's worse, the review or the fact that I found it on an obvious spam flash that was blatantly making fun of emos while being sarcastic. This guy wins a place here just for the sheer amount of oblivious whining about shit that had absolutely nothing to do with the submission it was left on.

4. Troll'd!
Dear Newgrounds: Bringing up Sigmund Freud to try and sound clever doesn't work when you're trying to sound clever to an obvious troll. Especially if you plainly KNOW it's a troll, but decide to try and argue anyway.

5. Feminazis.
You don't get many man-haters on Newgrounds... but that just makes them all the more obvious (and fun!) when they do come here, failing to realise this site is almost entirely populated by males. XD

6. YUO INSULTED MAH FAVURIT FALSH BAWWWWW!!!1111!!1one!!11
...My tard-rage detector is STILL broken from this one. The thing practically went nuclear. I mean, seriously, how is it even possible to mis-spell some of those words??

7. I'M TELLLLLINNNNG!!! IMMA TELL ON YOOO!!!
Protip: The 1st amendment does not give you the right to set the police and / or media on anything you deem to be offensive on a whim. Nothing does. But damn, that all-caps typing is making me think he's so much smarter now... Maybe the police will listen more if he types his e-mail complaint in all-caps too? : /

8. Not taking the hint.
This one's obviously been deleted before, making the author of it look even more like a retard. And that's in addition to relating almost everything said about no.7 to this one as well.

9. (noob)Rage against the machine.
Seriously, if you can't even spell 'comment', you probably shouldn't be reviewing things. Having no idea how the review system works isn't a help either.

10. SILENCE!! I KILL YOU!!
Ah, the death threat. Newgrounds' oldest and most obvious way of noobs making themselves very, very easy targets. Still funny even now, especially since most reviewers have learnt not to do this (meaning only the most oblivious and / or blinded with rage still threaten to kill people in reviews).

11. If you delete this you are GAY!
Leaving little lines moaning about how reviews keep getting removed just makes them even funnier, IMO. There's also the little fact of this one being chain-spammed all over every Kitty Krew flash in existance by the same guy who wrote this one.

12. = Suspected IQ of this guy.
I... I'm speechless. Please tell me this isn't serious. I don't think I want to live anywhere near the human race anymore if it is. -__-'

13. Paradox fail.
I dunno if this was actually trying to be funny or what, but it still stuck out as being particularly retarded at any rate.

14. Coherence fail.
I honestly have no idea what this guy was trying to say. Anyone here able to translate fucktardian? I'd love to know what this was supposed to be about.

15. Spelling fail.
If not knowing how to spell 'comment' is reason enough to bar someone from writing reviews, then not knowing how to spell 'retarded' should earn you a ban from the whole of Newgrounds.

16. Repetition is the key to sucess...right?
Not if what you're repeating is completely brainless number-spewing.

17. Loophole exploitation fail.
So lemme get this straight: Posting "go die" will get your review deleted, but writing "go fuck yourself faggot ass bitch head" is OK?
Moron.

18. Homophobia.
"Being gay" is not a bannable offense. But since you're just so smart for typing in all-caps, I'm sure he'll leave of his own accord when he sees your obvious genius.

19. Inability to look in the mirror.
Oh god, we're all screwed! People, he's going to get the FUCKING PRESIDENT ON US!! We have to hide before Obama gets here and completely ignores the guy's prolific (blanked out) use of the N-word! Yes, he'll delete Newgrounds and throw us all in jail!! SHIT, RUN YOU FOOLS!!!
...God, I don't think I've laughed so hard before. Thanks to Domo for giving me that one, it's fucking gold!

20. Worst. Review. Ever.
No really. I honestly can't think of how you could put any more fail into 8 words. Hell, I never imagined it was even possible to put anywhere near THIS much fail into half a line and a title box.
Oh, and if you're wondering why it looks fake: I found it in the obituaries (so no rating buttons), and it was part of a set of dumb ones that I cropped down and saved over, leaving just this one (hence the bad quality - all the re-saving of it). I swear to god, this IS a real review. Or rather, it was...

OK, I need to go wash my brain (again) now. Think you've got a funnier one? Put it in the comments. And tell me which one is your favourite while you're at it; I'm wanting to turn this into a 'top 10', but without knowing which are the overall funniest that's kinda hard.

EDIT: Changed to approved comments only because some people are too stupid to read the bold, all-caps first line of this post. This is not about whoring links to abusive reviews. Please read the post before assuming you know what it's about.

MOAR EDIT: NEW ONES!
21. Furries must die!!!
It's official: if you like furry porn, you are a morally bankrupt paedophile and the FBI wants to kill you. Well, that or just this idiot wants to kill you; either way. Meh.

22. SIEG HEIL!
DAS GRAMMAR IST NICHT CORRECT!! DU HAST INSUTED DIE FURHERLAND UND MUST BE SENT TO DAS GASCHAMBERFIELDEN!!
VEE MUST EXTERMINATE ALL WHO OCCUPY OUR LIEBENSRAUM FUR DIE GRAMMATICAL RIECH ZAT VILL LAST EIN THOUSAND YEARS!!
(lol.)

23. Fanboys. Always get 'em.
You'd think this was a rare occurrence, wouldn't you? Unfortunately this is pretty tame as far as what your average fanboy / hater does with the review box.

24. Multi-N00bing.
Yes, these two really were right next to each other on the review space like this. And yes, they're both real too.
I swear, if there's one thing dumber than the obvious trolls on NG, it's the people who fall for it and give them the attention they're after.

25. PETArds
At what point were cats actually able to understand human insults anyway? Why the fuck would they even care about a flash on a website?

26. Cockophobia.
WAAAAAHHH HOW DARE YOU MAKE ME LOOK AT A DICK!!! NOW IM GAY BECAUSE EVERYONE KNOWS LOOKING AT DICKS MAKES YOU GAY!!!! FUCK YOU!!!! I MUST RAGE ALL OVER THE INTERNET NOW TO OVERCOMPENSATE FOR MY GAYNESS!!!! AAAAAARGH I HATE YOU!!!
This is stupid on so many levels it just defies belief...

27. EPIC spelling fail.
Now this is a first. Not a SINGLE word more than 3 letters long spelled correctly. I... um... er... WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU PEOPLE FEED YOUR CHILDREN THESE DAYS!!!?? LEAD SHOT!!!??

28. Hi, I'm new to Newgrounds. And the internet.
As a result, I am completely unaware of the fact that other people may not have the same opinions and / or sense of humour as me. Therefore, it is my self-proclaimed prerogative to point out anything I don't like not being hidden from me, lest my faggotry become uncontainable and explode all over the review space. As these are obviously things everyone knows, I take my review faggotry to be your fault for making something I don't like and having everyone else laugh at it. BAWW!

29. Oh the irony.
I really have to hand it to the author here. I couldn't have said it any better myself. XD

30. "I thought we were above this harsh slandering."
...............BAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAno.

31. I'm 12 and what is this?
This is what you get for treating Newgrounds like a fap-library, dear under-ager. Now GTFO and find something else to do with your parents' computer you worthless little shit.

32. Anime fanboyism is always funny.
HOW DARE YOU INSULT MY IMAGINARY GIRLFRIEND BAWWWWWW111!!!1!!one!!!
Fun fact: this was found on the same submission as #31 was. NG hasn't lost its talent for causing butthurt, it seems. XD

33. Derp combo x18
Wow. Just wow. There's really nothing I can add to this that would make it look any stupider. All I can really do is point out the fact that he even managed to misspell 'ignorant' in his rant.
Seriously, I actually feel like I've laughed something loose in my head. I can see all funny colours and shit now... o_0

34. Double fail.
No. Fucking. Comment.

35. Dear fucking God...
What's worse than bawwing at an obvious troll? Reviewing without watching it and not even realising it's a troll video in the first place. I honestly don't know who's the bigger idiot here... I mean, they're both prime examples of everything that's wrong with the review system, but... Fuck it, I don't know.

36. There's a point in here somewhere...
...But the rampant mangling of even basic English makes it all but impossible to determine what the point was, or where it is. Sad, really. : /

37. I take back #20's description....
...Because THIS is now the worst review I've ever seen.
Dear Mindless YouTube commenter:
I hate you SO FUCKING MUCH that I'm actually contemplating setting up a Mayan sacrificial altar in my house, and slaughtering as many small furry animals as I can find on it, in the hope that 2012 DOES happen. Just so I can picture the look on your worthless little fucktarded face as the meteor slowly comes into the view from your window.
...OK, we all know you probably don't have a window in your parent's basement, but at least some of your equally pathetic friends will be sad enough to spend their final moments uploading videos of it to YouTube, so you'll still get a front-row seat as far as I could care. And care I will, because I'll be laughing myself stupid right up to the end. Hell, if I time it right, I'll laugh myself to death just before the meteor hits you and blasts you into trillions of sub-atomic self-improvements. BECAUSE THEN I WON'T HAVE TO BE REMINDED OF YOUR PITIFUL LIFE ANYMORE, AND I'LL BE HAPPY NO MATTER WHAT!
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some stone, candles, sharp objects and goats to buy.

38. I love the obituaries.
And I didn't think it was possible to jizz yourself into a state of brain-death, either. Well, what do you know? XD

39. Author deserves a cookie for this one.
So simple, and yet sooooo true. XD

40. Wat?
The fuck?

41. LMFAO!!!
Now THAT'S a keeper! I haven't seen butthurt like that for a long time. He even made a butthurt username-alt just to do this with, too. XD


Posted by Sheizenhammer - July 26th, 2009


NOTE: There is no TL;DR. There never will be a TL;DR. Read all of it (especially the links), or don't read it at all. Only knowing bits of the story when it comes to the whistle system is what causes people to lose their whistles. You have been warned; it's not my fault you were too lazy to read all of it and went incorrectly flagging things no-one told you were abusive. Whining at me will get you nowhere.

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As many people know, Rage's thread was designed to give users the chance to up their whistle level, while helping the review mods get rid of all the review abuse from before the whistle system was implemented. While it proved a valuable resource for mods and regulars alike, it eventually became the victim of its own popularity, and was flooded with inaccurate judgements on what should and shouldn't be whistled, and because of the persistant headache it caused the review mod team, in the end it was locked.

There have since been a few attempts to re-create or copy the thread by users in the hope of getting links to "free whistle points". So far, they have all either fallen into obscurity, or been removed because of the exact same problems that ended up plaguing Rage's thread.

The main reason Rage's got locked was that people with misguided ideas of what was abusive and what wasn't were posting links to non-abusive reviews, which were then incorrectly flagged by other, equally misguided users (and people who were just flagging everything blindly). The result: The noobs got broken whistles, and the review mods often had to go into the thread and delete / belay the post linking to the review(s), thereby wasting their time.

This exact problem appears every time the method used by Rage's thread is tried. By posting links to reviews and telling people: "This is abusive, flag it.", there will be constant mistakes of that nature. This is where the point of this post comes in:

Instead of throwing a load of links here and telling everyone to flag the reviews they go to, another option is to tell people how to find said reviews on their own, without needing to be spoonfed by other people's links. So here you go: Everything I know about finding the damn things.

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First things first: What should you whistle?

This is something I'll not be giving specifics on, for the aforementioned reasons (and the fact that I'm not a mod, so you shouldn't be listening to specific rules advice from me anyway :P). However, if you want to play the whistle game, you need to learn to play it right, so here's a few useful links:

1. The review guidelines. Anything that's a direct violation of these will most likely be abusive, so it's a good idea to know them inside out before starting to look for abuse.
2. The review answers thread. It makes for a good read when trying to decide if something's abusive or just plain useless, and gives a lot of information about those areas of the review guidelines that are less well explained.
3. The new review answers thread. In addition to the same kind of advice the last one gives, this one is still unlocked, so if you have a question about something that hasn't been asked already, this is a good place to start (that is, if any review mods ever remember to check it!).
4. A reminder. While some of it is more a matter of opinion than anything else, it is still accurate with regards to what we do and don't know about the whistle system itself.
5. The abusive review game. It serves as a decent test of knowledge and understanding of the rules, as well as reinforcing everything linked to above it.

And remember: IF IN DOUBT, DON'T FLAG! Flagging stuff that could go either way with the review mods can cost you much more than you stand to gain by trying for a few extra whistle points in this manner.

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Done reading? OK, time to go find some abusive reviews! Listed below are all the places and tricks I like to go / use to find review abuse.

1. Turd of the week.
By far the easiest place to find abusive reviews is the TOTW (well, whenever it's not deleted at least). Just about every review guideline gets routinely broken here by butthurt idiots who think the review system is the same as YouTube's comment box. Lots of easy whistle points are left there every day, so be sure to check it regularly.

2. Front paged stuff.
The largest amount of web traffic goes through the front page, so naturally the most reviews get left for things on the front page. Ones to watch for are those submissions with 'adult' ratings or other questionable content, which often makes people use the review space for yelling at the author BECAUSE it's on the front page. Giving a flash a low score because of something the author has no control over is almost always abusive, and this makes odd frontpage choices a sensible thing to look into for abusive reviews.
However, it's not just the weird shit that gets review abuse, as the frontpage is also the most popular target for spammers and ad-bots, which will leave referral links and other blatantly abusive stuff in the review space. And let's not forget all the dumbass youtube commenters (who plainly haven't read the review guidelines) coming to the frontpage just to leave their crappy 2 cents on everything. All the random noobery on the front page alone can add up to a lot of abusive reviews a day.

3. The top 50 / weekly award winners.
As above, but often to a lesser extent. "This shouldn't be on the top 50 so here's a zero" is a common theme here, as well as all the usual review stupidity.

4. the 'Sort by score' button.
If you want to find abuse on a popular flash, but don't want to wade through hundreds of decent reviews just to find a few abusive 0-bombs, then this button is for you. Click on the text that says '567 reviews' (or however many reviews it has) to get to the review list for the flash. At the top there'll be a 'sort by date / rating' option. It's set to 'date' by default. By changing it to 'rating', and going to the last page of reviews, most of the hateful 0-bombing ones will have been distilled out of the rest of them, making it much easier to find them.
It might also be worth looking through the first few pages of the other end of the scale too, as some 10-reviews go too far when it comes to praising the flash (read: ascii art, text flooding etc.). It won't find all the abuse on a flash, but it makes a few dumb review types obvious at any rate.

5. Spam flashes.
Hoo boy, this one can get hilariously dumb. The abuse is so obvious I don't even need to go into why things from spam crews are worth looking at. Basically, anything with a Clock Crew, Lock Legion, Star Syndicate, or any of the countless other spam crew tags will get its fair share of shit, just for being made by a spam crew. Hell, some CC flashes are actually good, and people still tell the authors to go die in a fire for making it, just because they see spam as something to be destroyed at all costs.

6. New flash submissions.
The under judgement stuff can still be reviewed, even though said reviews can't be seen by anyone. Sometimes, people will use this fact to leave deliberately abusive stuff on flashes they think won't pass judgement (in which case, the review will be visible only in the obituaries, away from the reach of the whistle system). Sometimes these predictions go wrong, resulting in very obvious abuse being left on newly passed flashes. They get removed relatively quickly, but if you can catch them they make for free whistle points, so it's worth a look every now and then.

7. The Audio portal front page (especially the top 5).
Due to the lack of traffic, the audio portal gets very few reviews left in comparison with the flash portal. However, because of that same fact, the abusive reviews left there will stay there for much longer than your average abusive flash review. This is especially true for things that have gone off the front page, but the easiest place to find audio abuse is the top 5, where people often like to bitch about things being in the top 5, and giving them lousy scores because "this shit doesn't deserve it!".
Protip: the top 5 is selected by A-Bot, based on votes alone. If it gets in the top 5, then (by definition of what a vote signifies) it DOES deserve it!

8. 'Meme' flashes.
Lazers, Barrel rolls, desserts of questionable veracity; you name it, if it's in a flash people will be tempted to spew whatever meme the flash is about. A good example of this is the Lazer collab series: the number of ascii art shoops I've flagged in the review lists for them is just moronic. Same goes for any other flash that either started or is centered around a meme.
(This includes flashes that start NG related memes and activities, like the infamous 'B').

9. People's review lists.
If you see a blatantly abusive review, check the rest of the user's review list by clicking on the link in the review (to go to his userpage), and then scrolling down to the 'flash reviews' or 'audio reviews' links at the bottom. A really bad review is practically proof of not knowing the review guidelines, and if they leave one abusive review (be it through ignorance or malice), chances are there'll be more where it came from.
However, if you find a link spammer with more than a handful of spam reviews, it's best to notify a review mod instead of flagging them all, as review mods have said that they don't always give out points for every single review left by spambots and whistled, and can just destroy the whole list. Ergo, you'd be wasting your time if you flagged them all. Small lists of spam is usually OK (since they can be cleaned up with the normal tools), but it's still worth contacting a mod over it (after flagging them all first :P).

10. The obituaries.
Weird, no? The last place you'd expect to find abusive reviews is somewhere where you can't actually flag anything. However, applying no.9 to the obituaries can turn up some surprising stuff in people's review lists. It doesn't matter if the flash was deleted or not, the review was still written, and if it shows a complete lack of knowledge of the review rules, then the same thing usually applies here too.
This doesn't have as high a success rate as looking in the lists of reviewers of recent (non-deleted) flash, since abusive reviews aren't cleaned completely from the system on deletion, and will re-appear in the obituaries if the flash gets deleted, meaning the review abuse you would've found by looking in the existing flash reviews may have been removed already by the time you find it in the obituaries (more so than when you use new flashes as start points to look for abusive review lists).

And if all else fails:

11. Google advanced.
Why bother searching yourself when you can get the world's most powerful search engine to do the work for you?
Well, a couple of good reasons actually. The first is that it's way more fiddly to set up and use, and also that it can bring back abusive reviews from ages ago (like, pre-2003 when there weren't any review guidelines at all). However, when used properly (and when it works) it can make finding abusive reviews very, very easy.
Firstly, go to the Google advanced search option, and enter any of the following in the "Search within a site or domain" box at the bottom:

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/revie ws (for flash reviews).
or
http://www.newgrounds.com/audio/review s (for audio reviews).
or
http://www.newgrounds.com/art/reviews (for art reviews).

Then, enter whatever keywords you can think of in either of the two top boxes. 'fuck you', 'stolen', 'php?act=idx' (<= it's a common part of several popular spam links) 'blam this', 'front page', or anything else you can think of to use as keywords when looking for questionable reviews. If there are any reviews containing the keywords you enter, Google will find them. However, it can't tell the difference between a review and the authors response to a review (and sometimes it can bring back results of already deleted reviews for some reason). It takes practice, and patience, but there's no hiding from Google. If it's been left, regardless of where or when, Google can find it, making it a powerful tool when looking for them.

And lastly:

12. Everywhere else.
Hell, some of the most retarded crap I've ever seen was found by complete accident while going through old favorites, random portal entries, and so on. Just because a flash / audio / art submission doesn't fit any of these points doesn't mean there won't ever be any abusive reviews left on it. Just keep your eyes open, and be curious about what might be in that last flash's review list. If you have a hunch about something, why not go look there as well? It can't hurt, right?

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That's all, folks!

Although, by no means is this a definitive list. I'm sure there are loads of other tips and tricks at everyone's disposal that I don't know about. If you want to share any tips you have, or want to add anything to what's been written here, please do. The more collective advice that gets posted here, the better.

NOTE: I will let people post links to flashes that get more than their fair share of review abuse, provided the following is heeded in their comments:

- It isn't the TOTW, on the front page, or somewhere else already covered in this newspost. That's just pointless given the context of all this.
- No links to reviews / descriptions of which reviews should be flagged / anything that points out exact reviews. That's what killed Rage's thread, and I'm not letting comments with any of that same spoonfeeding mentality through.
- It actually does attract a lot of genuine abuse. Only if you're absolutely sure what you're seeing in the review list is against the rules (i.e. you've read the review guidelines and the linked threads, and have seen a review mod say that what you're reading shouldn't be in the review space), should you be posting it here.

And above all else, have fun laughing at all the hopeless, moronic, and downright bizarre things people like to write in that review box. Enjoy!

Rage's thread, D.I.Y style.


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