The Internet Judges D&D Kids — Wrap-Up

Some time ago I pub­lished an inter­view with D&D Kids author Uri Kurlianchik on this blog to find out more about what hap­pened when his arti­cles got removed from the home­page of WotC. In the mean­time I tried to get some answers from “Kynn”. There is no proof that Kynn took part in the actions that led to the removal (except for writ­ing a neg­a­tive arti­cle about Uri’s “Girls at the table”), but fre­quently seems to be the cause of insults against Uri. My efforts were not suc­cess­ful. I didn’t get any answer, not even Kynn’s gen­der. My wishes for the inter­view got genetic to snotty answers and I was blamed of ask­ing par­tial ques­tions. I surely did ask some­what brisky, but I think, I was not par­tial. If some of you like to check them­selves (espe­cially native speak­ers or bet­ter Eng­lish speak­ers than I am), you can take a look at my ques­tions. I’ll add them at the end of this article.

I found many state­ments about Kynn, mostly not ver­i­fi­able. But all agree in blam­ing Kynn to be some kind of sex­ism and racism troll, who heav­ily insults any­body of whom he thinks he’s a sex­ist or racist. And you fall eas­ily into those cat­e­gories, because he inter­prets state­ments as worst as pos­si­ble regard­ing this mat­ter. I was not able to find any descrip­tion that judges Kynn dif­fer­ently. If you sum this up, it leads to cer­tain con­clu­sions, but from my point of view all of this is notre­ally verifiable.

I also received a mail from WotC that is roughly as fruit­fully as Kynn’s, but at least very clear:

Hello,

Thank you for con­tact­ing us. Unfor­tu­nately, we are not able to accom­mo­date your request at this time.

Best,

Wiz­ards of the Coast PR Team

I guess they’ll not be able to accom­mo­date my request at any other point in time. Seems like there is no will to clar­ify this mat­ter from their side, too. That’s sad, but I’m not in the posi­tion to change it, unless we’ll have enough read­ers to be a sig­nif­i­cant voice in the rpg scene (so spread the word!).

What remains is a storm of out­cries on the Inter­net, to which WotC deferred. Whether they did this too light­heart­edly or not remains a mys­tery. But those out­cries have been to harsh in my opin­ion, though I was irri­tated I read Uris state­ments the first time, too. But it was by far not enough to write to WotC. I fol­low Uris state­ments on G+ and it’s obvi­ous that he is of the pro­vok­ing kind and seems to do this inten­tion­ally — I guess, he def­i­nitely is. You can’t blame authors for this. And I can’t blame him of sex­ism or racism either. When read­ing the out­cries and Uri’s state­ments at that time, I was sur­prised and did react even to harshly with my arti­cle. Many things are rel­a­tivized once you look at them more closely and con­sider the cir­cum­stances. I def­i­nitely think the removal of Uri’s arti­cles from the WotC home­page was an over­re­ac­tion as well as reproach­ing Uri in this way.

And as a final note, Uri found an arti­cle that sur­vived the “cleans­ing” of the WotC pages.

The ques­tions I sent to Kynn:

Hello Kynn,

I am still try­ing to get some kind of response from WotC, but they didn’t send me any so far. I am aware of the fact that you are not work­ing for WotC or any­thing, but I’ll include that in my ques­tions below, just to make it clear to our read­ers. I also have to ask, though it feels awk­ward, whether you are female. No offense meant, I just have to be sure for writ­ing the arti­cles and I didn’t find a clear hint on your blog.

I will pub­lish the inter­view unedited on our Ger­man blog (www.herzliches-rollenspiel.de) soon and after­wards also on our Eng­lish blog (www.herzliches-rollenspiel.de/teutonicblogging).

- Please give our read­ers a sum­mary of who you are and what your live­jour­nal is about.

- Are you affil­i­ated with Wiz­ards of the Coast or have taken part in the deci­sion process of remov­ing the arti­cle “Girls at the Table” or the whole “D&D Kids” arti­cle series?

- Did you have direct con­tact with Uri since the pub­lish­ing of his arti­cle until now?

- Can you describe how you see your role in the removal of the arti­cle or whether you had one at all?

- Uri stated in his inter­view (http://www.herzliches-rollenspiel.de/blog/?p=2856) that you have “attacked” him sev­eral times. Did you write arti­cles on your blog or other com­mu­ni­ties on the Inter­net about Uri or his arti­cles prior to the one con­cern­ing “Girls at the Table”? If so, what was the topic of your writings?

- Did you mean to attack Uri or his arti­cles with what you wrote? What was your inten­tion when pub­lish­ing them?

- The removal of the arti­cles and the series from the WotC home­page was accom­pa­nied by a “shit­storm”. As I under­stand it your arti­cle was part of it or its cause, intended or not. Did you take part in the “shit­storm” any fur­ther or wrote mails to WotC crit­i­ciz­ing Uri or his articles?

- What is your opin­ion about the removal of the arti­cle and the whole series from the WotC homepage?

- Have you received or per­ceived reac­tions from the Inter­net com­mu­nity regard­ing your role in the arti­cles’ removal?

- Wiz­ards only gave a brief state­ment on twit­ter: “We’ve removed the arti­cle. The opin­ions of the author don’t reflect the views of Wiz­ards of the Coast.” Do you know more about what finally led to the deci­sion of remov­ing the articles?

- Are you going to write arti­cles in a sim­i­lar tone again? Have those events had a last­ing effect on your writ­ing style or pub­lish­ing policy?

- How do you feel about the events in ret­ro­spec­tive, now that some month have passed?

- Is there any­thing else you’d like to tell our audience?

Thanks for your time and answers.

Regards,

Jan

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