Oh, Quora violations! Let me tell you about Quora violations. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying…well…it depends. I certainly wasn’t the idiot ol’ Bill was talking about. I know that, because I wasn’t alive then.

Have I ever had an answer collapsed for violating BNBR? Just today I appealed for the second or third time violations on Quora dating back two years. I appealed each and every one of them yet again this morning, and I was the politest son of mother’s gun you ever saw.

I inquired after the health of the mods, and I wished them continued mutual blessings, here and in the afterlife where we shall all meet and where I will have to appeal to St. Peter, that venerable Gatekeeper to Heaven, as to why I was unkind in a Quora answer. I think there were three of them today.

Please accompany me as I guide you through the Heavenly Interview Process:

“Ms. Wolf, I see by your record that you were oft impatient, frustrated, and occasionally unkind in your dealings with your fellow man. And woman. And the occasional gold fish. Why gold fish?”

“They’re annoying. Always swimming in a circle and staring at you if they happen to catch your eye. Never getting anything done.”

“Well, you’ve been absolved of all guilt for your sins, even the one where you sped through a school zone while school was in session. There were no kids present. I agree with you, that’s just stupid. Also, taking that pen from work is A-okay.”

“Thanks, St. Pete! I appreciate that. Can I go in now and collect my harp and sandals?”

“Hang on there. I have a list over here….somewhere… ah, here it is. *drops scroll ten feet long* This is a list of Quora violations. It will take an eternity to go through them and appeal them to the Moderators. You know, the Moderators?”

“I appealed all of those more than once, and yet I’m still getting dinged for them, St. Pete. They’re on My Permanent Record, and nothing I do changes that. I’ve asked the mods how I might atone for my sins, and they reply not. I’ve offered to walk across hot coals! Not five minutes ago, just before expiring, one called to tell me my teasing comment to a friend was a violation! Now I’ve got that on my soul. My soul, St. Pete! They never TOLD me what was wrong with my collapsed answers! Take a peek at this one: Gigi J Wolf’s answer to Why do college girls have to go to the bathroom and high school girls don’t?”

(Wanders around touching things while St. Pete reads the answer, upvotes it, makes a mark on his Heavenly Clipboard, and then turns to her again.)

“I’ve never seen anything quite like this. You mean they’re giving you violations for deleted comments, appealed answers, and even a PM that was accidentally reported? This will take more than a Heavenly Host to sort out. Meantime, you go on in and I’ll get back to you in a thousand years or so. Keep your mouth shut. Don’t ever say anything, and you may keep your bottom out of trouble.”

“Thanks, St. Dude!”

In my private messages on Quora, not long after I sent Moderation an email about shenanigans on the site, I received what appeared to be a list of violations the length of the names in the guest book at Ellis Island in 1900.

The list totaled 18 violations, only two of which were newer than a few weeks. Just now, less than 24 hours later, I received the exact same list of violations.  I think Quora could design a new level for Dante’s Inferno.

In short, I’ve been uncommonly good for me, and my record would have been cleaner had a few people not spent some of their precious moments combing through my activity in an effort to find something to report. They should try diddling with other things. Much more satisfying to my way of thinking.

The only new things they found were two spam questions. The first was a mistake on my part, for which I apologized to the moderators. The spam portion of the Policy Menu didn’t cross my mind before I posted the link to the Pan Am Experience, asking if anyone had been there and if so would they write about it. I wanted to hear their stories. Silly me.

Below is the appeal letter I sent to the Quora Mods, FOR THE SECOND TIME, on this violation.

Keep in mind, to appeal each violation requires finding the offending link, copy/pasting the offensive whatever, and then typing an appeal letter for each one.

An “Explain yourself, young lady,” letter. Ugh.

Do you know what that’s like when you’re 64, retired, not getting ANY compensation for writing on the site, and you have to “Explain yourself” over and over again for the SAME violations to some faceless Hubots (human bots) who’re all of 18, if they’re a day?

Hello, Mods!

How are you today? I hope all is well with you.

I received a violation for this question which has since been deleted. I’ve appealed it already and cannot fathom why I received a notice about it. This new violation really confuses me, Moderation, and with all due respect, I do wish I could get an answer as to why I’d receive more than one violation for anything, much less a deleted question for which I’ve already explained myself. I ask because I don’t know how to further atone for my sins. You do know about double jeopardy? Even courts and God let things go after suitable recompense has been extracted from an offender.

However, I will reiterate what I said to you the first time: This question was a simple mistake.

I have no affiliation with this company, and I momentarily forgot myself (It happens, believe it or not, especially at my age! Haha!). I merely desired a personal account of said Experience, since it’s possible I will never have the funds to spend $500 on an evening’s meal, and STILL not be in Paris when the meal is concluded and the doors are opened. 

I have apologized to Quora once, promised never to do it again, and I’d like to move on, maybe do something else with my life. Is there something more you feel I should be doing? I would be happy to comply, believe me. You name it, I’m there. Perhaps send you a tchotchke from Vegas?

Yours in gratitude for our continued mutual blessings,

gigi wolf

The other spam question asked whether the Bottom Writers, a club formed by us unwashed masses, would be interested in a calendar made from their pictures.

I told the mods the calendar doesn’t exist, had no link, promotes nothing, and therefore can’t be spam. It’s like talking to a brick wall, which by definition is Moderation.

What more can I do? They won’t delete these from my Permanent Record, they refuse to accept bribes, homemade cookies, or watch me try to swallow cinnamon on YouTube.

I’m at a loss. These people need to work for the government. They never forget or forgive anything.

Among the 18 violations was one for a private message, mistakenly reported by a young friend on her phone. For this one, I said much the same thing to the Mods with a few changes:

Hello Mods!

How are you? I hope you are well. I know you must be tired of getting these appeals. This is close to the last one, so hang in there!

This one in particular has me flummoxed.  (Name Deleted) accidentally hit ‘Report’ on my message. There are several messages between her and I and I would be happy to let you see each one. Here’s only one of the sort I send to this young lady, and it’s fairly innocuous.

Gigi J Wolf Jul 10

‘Okay, well I’m pulling for you. I want you to be my doctor.’   (Sinister, isn’t it?)

I don’t know which of my messages is the one you’re referring to, or which she accidentally reported. It would be helpful to have that information, so that you could check with the young lady, a friend of mine, and make sure I’m not fibbing about this, just to get out of trouble. It was a mistake on her part which she told me about as soon as it happened. It’s hard to know what one should do about one’s own mistakes, let alone someone else’s, don’t you agree?

Yours, in gratitude for our many blessings, and with all the sincerity of which I’m capable.

Other violations were for comments that have long since been deleted, almost two years ago, and for which I’d already prostrated myself, dirtied my clothing, and squirmed on my belly.

One of them was this comment, “Damn straight. Now fetch my mink, and be quick about it.”

This was a teasing comment in reference to the author’s view that he didn’t like all the celebrity status accorded a few top writers on Quora.

Let’s look at it more closely, shall we?

‘Fetch‘ is a little insulting, suggesting as it does a master/servant relationship, or dog/owner one, if you let your dog fetch your mink. Since it’s the internet, I think we can dismiss that, however. It would be hard for anyone to fetch me something from Quora unless they lived in the same house, and then I just yell as usual from the back room, “Hey! Fetch me my mink and be quick about it!”

‘My mink‘. Again, a little presumptuous, simply because it’s generally rich women who owned minks back in the day. Since this isn’t ‘back in the day’, and I live in Vegas where the temperature allows for a mink maybe an hour or two a year, I think we can safely stow those words in the Stick It Where The Sun Don’t Shine storage unit of Quora.

‘And be quick about it.’ Oh, well. Clearly, this whole comment means I should be shot with the rest of the Czar’s family.

You may wonder if I know who reports comments. It’s a simple process of elimination. For instance, I once commented to my friend, Mickey, that I would downvote a question about ‘fat girls’. We thought it was rude.

That was the entirety of my comment and only one other person was present. Mickey and I think we know who is making violation hay while the sun shines.

One violation was more puzzling than these, if that’s possible. I didn’t even know how to appeal it, since I’ve never heard of it before: It was a violation for upvoting an answer that was subsequently collapsed!

Never ask ‘for whom the bell tolls’, they will come for all of us. I’m not un-upvoting the answer. Hell with that. If McCarthy wants to know if I’m sleeping with a Communist, let him come to my house at bedtime.

Here’s an answer that was collapsed for violating the Be Nice Be Respectful policy, which on the whole works pretty well, if used responsibly, *cough, cough*:

‘What is the rudest way your age has been used against you?’

Try being older and listen to the rude. Oh, yeah. You’ve got THAT to look forward to.

“Oh, you were here first, and not this hot young thing?”

I’ve been giving this deep, deep thought, and after taking a mouthful of aspirin due to unaccustomed brain activity, lemme tell you about rude because of age. I read a comment on someone’s blog post listing 13 reasons people shouldn’t use a pubic pool. I mean, a PUBLIC pool. (Why do I keep DOING that?)

This person said that she didn’t like to use the pool while the old people were doing their aerobics because they might pee and poop in the pool. What the….?

This pissed me off so much, I almost wet my pants. Among other things. People really shouldn’t make us old people mad. We only have so many pairs of underwear.

I really don’t know if I qualify as ‘old’ according to this person’s standards. I’ve checked my AARP standings, and I think I do. Well then, if I have to wear diapers, so does her toddler. If I’ve committed an atrocity in a pool, it was when I died for a few minutes and lost control of my bodily functions. No, this doesn’t happen to me a lot, although I wouldn’t know it if it did.

I came across another thread on a blog post (I’m sure there are many like this), in which the participants were grumbling about older drivers. This subject drives me crazy. Time to do a wash.

One young woman commented that everyone should turn in their driver’s license at the age of 50. Oh, my. I lost control of my truck right in front of her picture window where she was gazing upon her relatively quiet, undisturbed suburban street.

Until I got there, and got lost, got confused, couldn’t read her address where it’d worn off and she hadn’t replaced it, caught my foot on the gas pedal, and careened…. Well, I won’t go into details.

Anyhoo, seeing as how there’ll be a great number of people stuck at home after they turn 50, unable to get to work, I thought I’d volunteer at the DMV to accept the now-defunct licenses of the people who lobbied so hard when they were 28, to get this bill passed. They are true Americans, and I want to be there to be welcome them on their mid-century birthday.

It’s gonna be a busy week down there and I need to buy more underwear. Anyone free to give me a ride to the mall?

This had 313 upvotes, which I think may be part of the problem. I still can’t figure out what’s wrong with it. It’s possible other users report answers to get them collapsed, Moderation Hubots collapse them, issue violations from their cop books, and that’s that.

Herein lies a big problem with Quora. If other users are threatened by a writer, they will use their little rat teeth to gnaw through their answers. Very few of my less popular answers get collapsed I notice.

I don’t make any more money than they do, so financial compensation isn’t it. They’ve made sure I won’t be awarded a quill, so that can’t be it, either. Is it some perceived ‘popularity’ status? Everyone is liked by someone.

Besides, drive off one putative ‘celebrity’, and two more will pop up to take their place. If you aren’t capable of capturing the imaginations and affections of your readers, that’s that. You just aren’t. No need to poop on other people. That’s just small.

There was no other message with these Violation Reminders. No, “Pay up or lose your tongue and leg,” or ”You’ve got five minutes to pack your desk, and then we call security.”

It was sinister, even more so without a message.

I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find an unmarked envelope stuffed with pictures of me and my family, sitting on my doorstep one day or maybe lying on the bed next to me one morning, it’s envelope flap torn off, and glue soaking the bed.

These pictures will show us engaged in everyday activities, around town, in the shower, eating breakfast. Similar to what the CIA or the Mafia might do. This would send a strong warning, that I’d ‘better button it, or something bad will happen to you and yours. ‘

They’re probably using a drone. If I shoot one down, do I get a violation for that?