Who said it was LOL? Anyway, I think that's what happened, a mod "liked" it while it's still wherever articles go while waiting to be approved. I think this happened to me once before when I only had a few articles up. [edit] Yep, happened March 7 with Blackdrakon. He was looking at it, "liked" it, but got interrupted and didn't approve it. He fixed it when I pointed it out to him.

That is exactly the question!

I got a notice that someone liked my last upload, Molly's Chapter 6. The odd thing is that it doesn't seem tobe approved. If I click on the link within the notification, I get a What's up?

Aha! Finally a response from someone in the know! Would it be possible to get a list of the words on the proscribed list? I imagine many of them are self-evident, but clearly not all of them are. It's really rather frustrating to spend time working on an article, wait for it to get approved, only to see that redactions have taken place that could have been avoided.

So, I wrote to the company that makes the software which runs this forum, UserEcho. According to them, their software does not have any form of autocorrect. They suspect a plugin. So, we're back to the idea that someone HERE has set this up, and presumably, has control over the list of words.

In the parallel reality that is the Tankiverse, Yahoo! and Google end up merging and rebrand the new corporate entity as G!. The product they offer that lets you view satellite imagery of the Earth is renamed G!World.

I'm not interested in overcoming anything, I just want to understand why such an innocent word is on the naughty list.

I'm going to counter the trends here... One of the things I like about this review is that it is very in-depth. It actually talks about the practical aspects of playing the kit, with very specific examples. So many other guides speak in generalities, offering no information that isn't self-evident. Yours is much better, actually helping me make an informed decision on the kit. Another thing I like about it is the lack of pictures. I find that most reviews literally "throw in" pictures that really don't do a good job of reinforcing the content. Adding pictures doesn't inherently make an article better; although adding appropriate pictures can. Yours didn't need them, imho. In my world, content is king, and you delivered!

Molly’s - Chapter 6 Fanfic in the Tankiverse by Hippin_in_Hawaii “Would you like a ride today, sweetie?” I froze, peanut butter spread halfway on the sandwich I was making. “Molly called and invited us out, and we’d like to meet this Olaf and your other new friends.” Jiminy Christmas. This couldn’t be good. “Um, sure, ok thanks,” was all I managed to say, but my mind was moving at a zillion miles per hour. What was going on? Were they going to pull the plug on this? Molly called? Like, she actually knew my number and called my parents? What did I do wrong? Hindsight, they say, is 20/20. My parents could hardly have failed to notice the changes in me since I’d started going to Molly’s regularly, and certainly not in the weeks since Olaf’s crew had arrived. I’m sure my dinnertime conversation was much different than it had been when school was the biggest part of my life. It was inevitable they’d want to Be Involved. Dread is an amazing thing. It slows time and accelerates your brain. In the half hour between that brief conversation and us getting in the car, I must have come up with a thousand possible doomsday scenarios. During the drive to Molly’s, I came up with a thousand more. Suddenly, as we were pulling up to Olaf’s camp outside the garage, time sped up. Only a few heartbeats passed before Molly, Olaf, Mom, and Dad were closing the door to Molly’s office, leaving me outside. Shock came to find me. “Come on, Tad! We’re about to pull the treads off a Juggernaut. It uses seventeen different pieces in each link group. Seventeen! It’s really amazing to see!” Numb, I followed him to bay three where Elsie and her team were just getting to work. Amazingly, focusing on work allowed me to forget whatever dire machinations were going on without me. Shock was right, the tread of the Juggernaut was amazingly intricate. For such a huge machine, you’d expect a brute-force approach to the mechanics, but nothing could be farther from the truth. The treads, the rollers, the bearings, everything about the system was complex and intricate. Not delicate, never that, but the ingenious ways that the engineers had devised to work around the colossal weight of the beast was breathtaking. Did you know that the road wheels utilize compound bearing packs with four different sizes of ball bearings to maximize points of contact and distribute wear? It’s like a Chinese puzzle box of titanium marbles! I was so engrossed that lunchtime came before I knew it. As I sat down on one of the few grassy spots to enjoy my pb&j while watching the rush, I saw Olaf striding towards me. He reached down (way down) to tussle my hair; I usually enjoyed that, but seeing him just brought back all my worries. “So when do I have to go?” I asked miserably. He looked puzzled, and folding his gangly legs beneath him, sat down beside me. “Go?” “Isn’t that why Molly called my folks? To get me out of here?” Olaf looked up at the sky and scratched the stubble on his chin. “Tadpole, the world has plenty of problems waiting around for you to find. There’s no need to spend time inventing new ones.” He unfolded himself and headed back to whatever task he’d interrupted to come and deliver that cryptic message. The sun came out. I mean, it literally did; the day was overcast, and just then the sun peeked out from behind the clouds. I chewed over his words as I chewed my lunch. Whatever he was trying to tell me was a little too deep for my adolescent brain, but I definitely got the sense that I wasn’t being let go. Finishing my sandwich, I went in search of something to make myself useful.

*like! This is the first guide I've read that actually has useful information!

In 13 days, you've had over 60 hits and (including this one) six replies. Well, five, since one was yours. Dude, you need to adjust your expectations if you think this is nobody. You're in a tiny subforum of a game that's dedicated to tanks, not writing. You have more views than Chapter 3 of my Molly's series, which posted 2 days before this article. Try to have a little perspective!

Update: It's Friday morning, local time. Lane has weakened to a Category 2. As such, its reach is diminished, and its arrival here in Oahu is delayed. Right now, it's a bit gusty and sprinkly, but nothing scary. The serious stuff is now scheduled to arrive overnight, somewhere between 8pm and 2am. Lane has also slowed down a little, and will be executing a turn to the west as it passes us, the combination of which will cause it to "hover" just below us. The nastiness, at least for Oahu, is now expected to last into the early part of next week. Since the power and internet are currently still on, I went ahead and posted this week's installment of Molly's. Look for it soon!

Molly’s - Chapter 5 Fanfic in the Tankiverse by Hippin_in_Hawaii Scrubbing links was a job that never went away. There was no end to it. If you owned a tank, and actually drove it, you were going to need replacement parts on your treads. Regularly. Secondhand tread components were a stable revenue stream for Molly’s, and as such, there were always parts to be cleaned and sorted. My mom talks about laundry as an endless task; for my father, it’s dishes. For Molly’s, anytime there was nothing more pressing to do, the wheelbarrow was waiting. This, of course, I see with the clarity of hindsight. I spent two weeks out there in the sun, dressed in mopp gear, scrubbing. When I showed up the following Saturday, I expected nothing different. At least, until I reached the back gate. Not only was it unlocked, it was standing wide open, and had a red handkerchief tied to it, hanging limp in the still air. As I got close to the warehouse, I heard the sounds of power tools, of heavy engines, of colliding steel parts. Even closer, I could hear shouts. As in, people. I’m sure my own mouth was hanging open as I walked around the garage to see cars and trucks parked outside. All three bays were open, and each had a tank inside. And there were people, dozens of people, swarming over both the tanks inside the bays and the hulks in the yard. I was agog. I walked to within a few yards of the closest bay, sat on an old transmission, and watched, trying to wrap my head around it. The focused chaos was amazing. The tanks in the bays were coming apart at an amazing rate under the hands and tools of these mechanics. Parts and components were being forklifted onto massive trucks. Despite the clamor and the seeming frenzy, everything was moving smoothly. No one hit anyone else, no forklift backed into another. The woman, when I spotted her, was deep in conversation with a ridiculously tall, gangly man. They were both bent over clipboards, he having to stoop nearly half his height to see what she was looking at. At some point she looked up and noticed me, and actually waved. I waved back, surprised, and not knowing what else to do. The tall man noticed. “Who is that now, Mol?” he asked. Ok, so she WAS Molly! “Oh, just my new tadpole,” she replied. “Come on over, Tad,” he called. I jumped down and started to trot across to them, only to be honked at by a forklift returning for another load. “Watch where you’re going, kid!” came angrily through the air. Another nearby mechanic turned from her task, took me by the shoulder, and steered me safely to my destination. “Always look first, Tadpole, or you won’t grow to be a frog,” she chided me as we walked. His name was Olaf. In my mind, Olaf was a name for a short, fat, red-headed uncle with a bushy beard and a twinkle in his eyes. This man was wrong in every single characteristic except for the twinkle. Molly made the introductions, such as they were: “Tadpole, this is Olaf. These are his crew. Watch everything, help however you can, and don’t get hurt.” Olaf pointed at a bench in one corner. “Sit there. Watch Elsie and her team, they’re stripping the treads off that one.” Elsie would periodically swing by my stool to talk about what was happening. After the tracks were completely disassembled, their crates forklifted off into the depths of the warehouse (presumably for me to scrub later), I learned about drive wheels, road wheels, return rollers, and idlers. I learned about suspension and transmission and linkage and brakes. By the time the weekend was over, they had pulled the entire powertrain from the tank. Over the weeks to come, I learned a phenomenal amount about how to disassemble a tank. And I learned a bit about Olaf and his crew. They were like gypsies, or that’s how it seemed to me. “Migrant workers” is the term a grownup would use. As odd as it seems, once you get outside of the big leagues (like Performance Armour, for example), it’s hard for an independent outfit to have enough work to employ fulltime mechanics. Molly’s did employ a few, but they worked weekdays, so I never encountered them. Anyway, in the tank support industry, there were more mechanics than there were jobs, so crews like Olaf’s evolved. They ran a circuit of salvage yards, moving their expertise and heavy equipment from one yard to the next. They descended on Molly’s like locusts, once a year, staying for maybe six weeks before moving on. Their pay was on commission: they stripped the parts, Molly sold the parts, and they received a healthy percentage. I became Tadpole-on-the-spot. If a drip pan was getting full, I was there to swap it out before a drop sloshed over the edge and hit the floor. If someone’s wrench was juuuust out of reach, I was there to put it in their hand. I could judge the size of a bolt from across the garage, and be there with the right socket before the mechanic even realized what she needed. And I knew who to ask for what. Josie was one of the forklift drivers, but it was his job to deal with the waste barrels as they filled. Components that were being loaded into the warehouse, though, were Lars’ domain. I learned a lot about the interior layout of Molly’s from Lars. Elsie’s team were Shock, Marc, and Lisbon; they specialized in drive trains and engines. Frau’s team… well, you get the idea. No matter how early I got there, the crew was at work. No matter how late I stayed (always remembering to call home, of course!), the crew was at work. If I stayed past dusk, one of them would drive me home. They had a bus outfitted with racks that could sleep ten people, and a kitchen-on-wheels that never closed. Their days were regimented like a military outfit. I took no small amount of pride from being able to turn myself into a tiny cog in that never-idle machine, and from the smiles and pats on the head I began to accumulate.

Hurricane Lane is coming my way. http://www.prh.noaa.gov/cphc/tcpages/?product=5day_cone_with_line&stormid=EP142018 According to current projections, we'll have tropical storm force winds by Thursday evening; rains and flooding expected beginning Friday morning and lasting through the weekend. There hasn't been a hurricane to come this close since Iniki in '92. I may be late posting the next chapter! ;)

Driving a tank, if that ever happens, clearly is a ways away. Driving a forklift, on the other hand...

Like fresh-baked pie!

Molly’s - Chapter 4 Fanfic in the Tankiverse by Hippin_in_Hawaii If you use something like G!World to look at it from space, you’ll see that Molly’s is really big, around five square kilometers, although the funky shape makes it hard to be sure. It’s sort of like a long, skinny trapezoid that’s bent in the middle. Then you tried to draw it on top of the washing machine while the spin cycle was running and the load was off-balance. I didn’t know much about zoning and such at the time, but it was clear to me that Molly’s had been there first, and the warehouse district had just grown around it and swallowed it whole. That first day, when I came to the locked gate and turned right, that was either dumb luck or providence. If I’d gone the other way, I’d have spent more than an hour getting around to the open gate. Although, to be fair, I would have passed a few others along the way, including a proper front gate with a proper, well-paved, extra-wide driveway, and a proper sign. The warehouse was shaped like a capital L with a couple of small bits sticking out. The long hallway I entered every day ran through the short leg. There were several rooms on either side, and I became familiar with their functions and contents as I single-handedly cleaned out that hallway and found the source of the smell (The details aren’t important, but there were rats and a broken toilet involved. Gross.) Wandering around the outside of the warehouse, I could see that the outer wall of the long leg had several roll-up doors. The original building had probably had a dozen bays for stripping cars, but you could see by the paint and patching that half of those had been ripped out and replaced by three larger entrances. Much larger. With reinforced concrete ramps. Bays for tanks. My imagination ran wild, wondering what was inside, but that portion of the building was always locked. The only access that was open was from behind the counter, past Molly’s office. If that was Molly; I still didn’t know for sure. I spent the first few months mostly on custodial duty, cleaning areas that probably hadn’t been cleaned in my lifetime. I did some sorting of parts and rearranging of crates, simple stuff like that. I do remember the day I got “promoted” to actual mechanic’s work, though. Hanging just inside the showroom door, where I tended to drop my backpack everyday, was a heavy black rubber apron and a gas mask. I guess they’re actually called respirators, but it looked just like something out of a war movie. I looked towards the counter where I heard her typing; she paused and nodded towards the front door. Outside, there was a wheelbarrow full of track pieces. There was a large bucket, sealed, with some scary-looking warnings on the side. There was a pair of huge black rubber gloves. And there were a dozen bins. I squatted down to read the warnings. Nothing sounded friendly. I nodded to myself and went back inside. She actually spoke to me while helping me don the mask. It happened sometimes. We never had a conversation, but she would sometimes break the silence by giving me instructions. “Make sure that the seal is good. You should be able to draw a vacuum. Always make sure to have the mask on before you touch the gloves, and not to take it off until the the gloves are off and you’ve scrubbed your hands. Do not get it in your eyes.” That was the most she’d said to me in a month. So, dressed like a butcher from a horror film, carrying a chair and some stiff-bristle brushes, I went to work. The first thing I learned was that being outside, away from the air conditioning, while being dressed in heavy rubber was hot. The second was that this particular style of tread had four distinct pieces: I dubbed them the pad, the link, the link pin, and that other thing. The third was that this tread had been, as my grandpa used to say, “rode hard and put away wet.” As I cleaned each piece, I’d also evaluate its condition. Was it good? Not really good, but usable? Or junk? Then I’d toss it in the appropriate bin. Four different pieces, three different conditions, twelve possibilities total. Since she’d provided me with a dozen bins, I felt confident I was on the right track, so to speak. It took all weekend to empty that wheelbarrow. When I came back the next weekend, there was another wheelbarrow waiting for me. Before I started, I walked around a couple of the tank hulks that still had their treads attached, trying to get an idea of how many individual links there were, then extrapolating from how many I’d cleaned just how much longer this would take. Assuming it was just one tank I was doing, and that the tank was medium sized, a little basic algebra told me I had about four more weekends of this at the pace I was moving. Sigh. I sat down, and started scrubbing with gusto. With a little elbow grease (holy cow, I sound like my mom!), I told myself, I could get that down to three.

He wasn't saying that I used the b-word. He was merely sharing that it, too, is subject to redaction, despite having legitimate use as non-profanity.

Any number of synonyms would work just fine, as would simply shortening the sentence to "I could not stop grinning." I'm curious as to why this particular word merits redaction, though.

Yes, a synonym for fool. Archaically, it was used in the medical profession to describe a person with mental ******ation who functioned at or below a 2-year-old level.

So, I'm wondering at the asterisks. The word I used, I also used in the General Fred series once, and it got censored there, a fact I remembered the instant I saw the asterisks. But I'm wondering about the "why." It's a word that, at least in the US, isn't really even rude. I mean, sure, you can contextually make it rude, but the word itself isn't regarded as intrinsically foul. One could use the phrase that I used to end the story at a Sunday church lunch without raising any eyebrows. And I've certainly seen words that carry much stronger negative bias used in stories here and not be censored. Heck, I've used a few myself that escaped asterickification. I wonder, is this one of those national cultural differences? I'd love to know why!

Molly’s - Chapter 3 Fanfic in the Tankiverse by Hippin_in_Hawaii I came back the next day, Sunday, telling my parents at breakfast that I’d be home for dinner. I packed a pb&j and bicycled over. I was excited, and I couldn’t tell you why. All that had happened yesterday was that I’d swept pounds of dirt and tiny parts out of that place, then wandered around pawing through the piles of stuff. The woman never spoke a word to me; as far as I could tell, she never even looked at me again. When she started turning off lights, I took that as my cue to leave. When I walked into the showroom, there was a mop and a bucket waiting by the door. I picked up the bucket and went back into the dismal hallway, looking for a source of water. Then I mopped. Mopping, it turns out, is an excellent way to see just how bad you were at sweeping. Once I had the entire floor a uniform consistency of muddy, I emptied the bucket and resumed my browsing. The woman wasn’t in the showroom for most of the day. She’d step in for a minute or two to type on the computer or to shuffle through some papers, then she’d disappear again. I was alone in there for hours, and still somehow, by the time she started shutting off lights, I felt like I’d barely gotten started. During the week, visiting Molly’s wasn’t possible. School was a fairly mandatory daily commitment. Don’t get me wrong, I was known to ditch on occasion, but somehow I felt that if I started ditching to run out to Molly’s, it would quickly become an obsession. Besides, I was a good student. Not a complete dork or anything, but I did well, and found the maths and sciences somewhat interesting. Saturday morning came. Breakfast, pb&j, bike ride to Molly’s. Where the mop and bucket were waiting again. I was more diligent this time, changing the mop water when it got dirty (which was often), working systematically to make sure there weren’t gaps, even actually pressing down to get stubborn spots. I hadn’t finished the entire floor when she started turning off the lights. “Don’t worry, I’ll get it tomorrow!” I sang out as I rinsed the mop. She didn’t reply. Sunday morning, I was in a bit of pain. My back and shoulders ached; my hands were blistered. Who knew cleaning floors was such hard work? My parents began to press me about my activities. Having their child disappear weekends wasn’t new behavior, but somehow they smelled that this was different. They decided one of them should come with me to Check Things Out. You know, Stay Involved with my life. Show Interest. Sigh. I loaded my bicycle in the trunk of Dad’s hatchback and off we went. I directed him around to the back gate, opened it for him to pass through, then climbed inside for the ride up to the building. Dad’s eyes were a little wide as he took in the surroundings. “How did you find this place?” he asked. “TV,” I replied. He balked a little at the smell in the hallway, but by now I knew where the light switch was, so we made it through without injuring ourselves and without Dad messing up his work clothes. Inside, the mop and bucket were waiting. She was behind the counter. “Hello, um, ma’am,” I stuttered, realizing I didn’t actually know her name. “This is my dad. He wants to make sure that it’s OK I come over here.” She lifted her gaze to him, then nodded with her head, inviting him to join her in the office behind the counter. She lifted the counter, held it while he walked through, then followed him into the office and shut the door, all without even acknowledging I was there. I wandered around, looking at this and that, but I felt despondent. What if my dad decided I shouldn’t be here? What if she didn’t want me here? I kicked at the ground with my toe, and noticed I was standing in an area I hadn’t mopped yesterday. “Well,” I thought to myself, “at least I can finish this.” So I filled the bucket and went to work. After a while it occurred to me that I probably should have heard something by now. I turned to look towards the office, and saw one of the most memorable things of my young life. My dad was standing there, frozen mid-stride, with his mouth hanging open. Literally. Actually hanging open. Like, catching flies open. When he saw me looking at him, he closed it with a pop, just like they do in comedies on TV! Behind him, the lady was silently chuckling. Dad came walking up to me; she retreated to her office and closed the door. “I’ll talk this over with your mother, and we’ll have a family chat if we need to. But today, you can stay, if you want to.” I walked to the car with him to retrieve my bicycle, then went back to mopping. I could not stop grinning like an *****!

There's a quote, usually attributed to George Bernard Shaw, along the lines of "The English and Americans are two peoples divided by a common language." Although Shaw never actually wrote that, or any variation on it, it's a fun notion. One of the things I find enjoyable about this forum is seeing examples of how the language is wielded and spelled differently depending on where the writer learned.

Turns out that yes, yes it is. Haberdash

"Yen" is actually a synonym for urge, passion, yearning, hunger. Children having a yen for yelling is a completely appropriate use of the word. Maybe it's an American English thing, but it's in commonplace usage over here. "Clamber" means to climb, although is seems to carry an overtone of being rushed. You might clamber over a wall if a dog were chasing you. A child wanting food might clamber over the adult who could buy it, I suppose, but that's a reach. I had to dig a bit to even find "haberdash" as a verb. Seems it can mean the act of selling small goods. That one really does seem off the mark, but thanks for making me learn something new!