Coming Out…..A journalistic Adventure…

There has been a lot of discontent particularly over recent months. Animosity, bad feeling, confusion and many concerns and accusations doing the circuit. Both publicly and privately and I, like several other people joined various posts to help try and bring out some of these complaints into the open. (Which added to the list of general questions lol) but still it niggled my inquisitive mind that there was no concrete evidence just words. I decided to embark on a journalistic experiment to see if I could answer some of these questions which had some interesting results

THE EXPERIMENT
The experiment was to go under cover for two weeks and see what I could discover. (as you can see I am a big fan of detective literature)
13th February set up the new identity with an end date in mind of the 27th February

Question 1:
a) Are people liking and commenting on someone’s poetry because they like the writing or because they like the person?
b) Do people nominate only their friend’s poetry or the poetry that they like?
c) Are new poet’s poems over looked for the more popular poets?
Conclusion:
The results were that 6 poems in 6 days received 18 likes and 2 nominations which proves that clearly new poets are being recognised for the quality of their work and people are leaving likes and nominating poems they like not for a person they know

Questions 2:
d) Do readers have particular style favourites that influence their preferences when judging? (which could be misconstrued as favouritism?)
Conclusion
Since the likes and nominations in this experiment (made by random readers) were due to people liking the poems rather than the person I conclude that the majority of normal people judge poetry on how a poem appeals to them not on the person who wrote the poem.

Question 3.
e) How difficult is it to be operate under more than one identity?
Conclusion
For me conducting this undercover identity was more difficult than I imagined it would be. I kept forgetting who I was and almost gave the game away several times. Trying to appear to be two different people has challenges that you don’t even begin to think of and I wasn’t prepared for the feeling of discomfort I felt especially when I received such nice comments about my work and the nominations. I felt like I was a fraud even though I had written the poems because I wasn’t being myself it made me feel very uncomfortable and had to keep telling myself its only for two weeks. So my conclusion is that you would have to be crazy, very clever or naturally deceitful to be able carry off a second persona for a long period of time because it is much harder than people think both physically and emotionally.

Question 4
f) If a writer writes in a similar style to another are they the same person?
Conclusion:
There has been a lot of whispering that this person sounds like that person are they the same person? I think that the answer on this one is that every writer has their own voice and they can try and write in different styles but eventually the voice will be recognised in the end.

I managed to change my style for the first five poems but the last one was recognised on the ninth day by our super sleuth Larry. So I think it is unlikely that someone would go to all the bother or get away with a second identity and be able to pull them out on a daily basis without being recognised.

CONCLUSION SUMMARY
The findings of this under cover endeavour are clear. The majority of people are fair and leave likes, comments and give nominations to the poetry they like. New people are recognised for the quality of their poetry and nominated accordingly. The majority of judges judge poems based on individual taste and on what appeals to them most. Finally it is incredibly difficult to successfully pull off a second persona for longer than a few days without people eventually realising who you are.

I just wanted to offer my sincere apologies if the making of this report caused anyone any upset or hurt. It wasn’t my intention to hurt anyone but with hindsight I may well have inadvertently done so. A genuine thanks to everyone who left such nice comments and likes and to the two people who nominated my poems.

I hope that this report has answered some of the questions that have been circulating and put some of the demons to rest. Please be assured from a personal and journalistic point of view this is not an endeavour that I would ever wish to repeat and Wuggleberrys account will be deleted as planned at close of play on 27h February

Best wishes Milly / Wuggleberry

Hahaha :) We have been watching to see what your plans were with Wuggleberry. Genuinely and pleasantly surprised that you were doing detective work. Yes, Larry caught the second account. His sleuth skills are second to none.

How did it feel commenting on your poems as yourself and your alter ego???

Ooh Milly! How interesting! Having looked at your alter ego, I'm really very uplifted to see that new members are welcomed, liked and nominated. I felt this when I joined in the summer, before anyone knew me and this proves what I've said about counting 'likes' being just as fair as any other judging process. I can't imagine the stress of trying to be two people though, lol :-) x
=^.^=

The truth is quite a lot of them were actually accidents because I was thanking people for leaving comments as Wuggleberry then realising I was logged in as Milly and having to go back super quick and rewrite the thanks changing them into comments to try and disguise who I was.

The personal thanks that I gave people for their comments were genuinely heart felt because those people took the time to reach out to a new person and make them feel not only welcome but encouraged too and I couldn't leave them thinking that those comments were not appreciated.

Even though I had written the poems myself (and it was a surprise to receive so much such support and encouragement) it felt hollow, tainted and I couldn't shake the ever increasing feeling of discomfort. I didn't realise how bad doing something like this would make me feel. I wanted so many times to just admit what I was doing but the scientist in me wanted answers and the peace keeper in me wanted to put to rest all of the whisperings and discontent that have invaded the site recently.

For the first time I suddenly realised that being a detective isn't all its cracked up to be and wasn't at all the experience that I expected it to be. Thank fully the results were good and hopefully helped bring some clarity to some of the on going issues.

Kitty, Believe me if I ever want to try some madcap idea again to get to the bottom of something again just shoot me. The idea of being an undercover detective always looks so glamorous but the reality is that you have to have a set of skill sets that I just don't have. The findings were good but the process and stress was killing me. I'm so glad that I can get back to being just me.

Sorry Milly, it was a mistake.

[Naaz accidently posted something in the wrong feed]

Don't worry Naaz, easily done :)

Fascinating Milly! You are quite clever. Well done -

By the way, while this was brief and Milly has publicly confessed and explained everything, we were going to take action soon because we have a rule about second accounts. Please don’t get ideas!

17. You are allowed an alternative account so long as it is not used as an alias. Provide your identity in the profile of the alternate account by means of not misleading PnQ members.

Is there any easy way right now for the mods to tell if someone has another account and is not open about it? I mean like a little warning flag that would alert you guys?

Hi Hellon,

I think that my undercover activities in addition to proving the points above, have also proved that the Moderators are doing an excellent job of keeping us safe. They can hardly reveal their methods but what ever their methods are they quickly identified my undercover persona and were waiting to see what I was doing. which to me proves that we are in excellent hands. (Despite some of the many concerns that have been circulating recently)

PS I am not a deliberate militant setting out to break rules. I didn't realise that there was a rule that you had to provide your identity in the profile of the alternate account but it does make sense. So that is another good thing to come out of this activity is that it has helped raise awareness of this rule.

With all due respect Milly...my question was directed to the mods so I would like an answer from one of them please....

. They can hardly reveal their methods but what ever their methods are they quickly identified my undercover persona and were waiting to see what I was doing

^^^

Now this makes me think that something stranger is going on because....in the past, when I've questioned if a member may have more than one account the mods have told me it's very difficult to trace so...hey..who's telling the truth here???

Hellon,

I'm sorry I really didn't mean any disrespect to you and I'm sorry if my responding upset you. The reason that I did respond to you is was because the whole point of this exercise was to put to bed some of the recent discontent, concerns and accusations doing the rounds recently. I feel that this activity and report has successfully proved many positive truths about the site and will hopefully help give people peace of mind.

I also feel that it proves that the Moderators are being diligent. It doesn't mean that anyone is lying to you its possible that when they spoke to you previously they didn't have the same procedures in place.

For whatever its worth, Milly...I am glad that having done this you have proven that our mods, our nominators, as well as our judges are doing a fairly good job. We are in safe hands and this site is a just an amazingly beautiful place!

I did not have a single hunch that you are Wuggleberry but I have read everything you posted. I am elated when I see new members signing up. Anyways, now everything is clear to us.

Mossy, Thank you. It was a really difficult thing to pull off even for a few days but I think that it was worth the effort because the results are very clear and as you say they reinforce the excellent work that people freely do in supporting this site.

Hellon,
I’m somewhat at liberty to say we have methods that require creativity and are not automatic by any means. In many instances it is other members who notify us of suspicions,

I also do not understand why the Wuggleberry site is still open, having been admitted a secret account. Why is there a waiting period when normally we demand action within 24 hours?

Hi Larry, Hellon Im sorry but I wasnt aware that it had to be taken down within 24 hours.

I did clearly mention that it was being left up until Tuesday earlier in the feed so that people could see the results of my findings and nobody else had raised any issues with that. I presumed that there would be journalistic interest.

Howevee If it is causing you a problem then of course I have no problem removing it.

Best wishes Milly x

Hi Milly,

Admittedly I’m not usually the mod who pm’s members to remove accounts, and I had forgotten that it’s typical for us to issue a 24-hour waiting period and then take action ourselves. That’s my oversight for not mentioning it earlier in the thread.

Regardless of Millys reasons she broke the rules and deserves punishment. The 2 from PR had a good reason and they were still punished. 6 months suspended from club and could not win weekly for 6 months.

Why has Sylvia's post been updated' by the P&Q Mod Account?

Without divulging further information, a rule was broken, hence why it was updated.

The rule in question:

"Do not post your email address, personal address, social media account, or any other pertinent personal information within the forum or on your profile without the express permission of the moderators. Likewise, do not post the personal information of another person or member."

I read this thread several times but I still don't understand 1 thing, aren't accounts used on same computers, phones etc and signed in over the same connection get linked together anyway in an automatic way?

As in the data will show that they share the same IP address, etc? Like even if you are two different people, say friends, and signed in to each other's accounts, the system will assume that you are 1 person ..

Or I have no idea what I'm typing

I thought the same thing Nana but...I see your post is now 18 hours old and still remains unanswered so...Mods???

Don't you just love it when the mods rubber ear a question??? This time a double whammy...

I don’t really know how it works. I’m the least tech savvy person in the world. Computer ID’s and IP addresses are different. I think: The former shows accounts sharing the same computer and the latter shows accounts sharing an IP.

Hellon, your post makes me think you think we rubber ear things a lot. If there have been other questions unanswered, please repost them so that I may answer them to the best of my ability.

It helps us do our job not to divulge the mechanics of the site.