First, let me make it clear that shutting down OTC altogether would not harm the wiki's mission in any way. It is being hosted solely out of courtesy toward the interests of tropers wanting to have a conversation.
Secondly, if OTC regulars don't start to report derails and stop falling for troll bait, in short, become more self moderating and participating more in bringing in moderation help when needed, I'll have no problem at all with shutting it down.
Thirdly, I'll underscore that falling for troll tactics is the fault of the fish. This forum is expected to be more savvy, not less. Stop being made fools of.
2024 update:
There is a list of banned OTC topics here
. Please read it. We take these rules seriously.
Edited by Mrph1 on Mar 29th 2024 at 11:08:22 AM
reconsidering
nonsense— i fully advocate in favor of abandoning tvtropes and taking to the seas. we'll take down a cargo ship and live like kings!
Edited by Tremmor19 on Apr 4th 2024 at 6:46:55 AM
Oh, hi, my question made it here before I got over my "I am losing the meaning of words" meltdown.
"Justification for piracy" can mean:
- digital piracy, which is usually the context on a forum primarily focused on entertainment media. It is also what I've seen recent moderation on this subforum dealing with.
- naval piracy in real life. This can come up in political discussions, usually not in the sense that the participants of the discussion go out and conquer ships, but when discussing existing pirates (I rather sloppily paraphrased it as "people from poorer countries turn to piracy because Big Capitalism overfished their local waters" in my original question), so just putting "piracy" in the rules for the subforum most likely to host these types of discussion doesn't really spell out what kind of piracy we are talking about here. At least, not for me.
- naval piracy as portrayed in media. Which is the topic that I'm most interested in discussing in general, but it doesn't really fit in On-Topic Conversations.
Note: I'm not making a judgement call whether "moderns pirates are a product of overfishing / capitalism" is a good justification, I'm just saying that this is an actual line of argument that I have heard. I do think that the way the global fishing industry behaves around natural resources is a problem on enough levels even without bringing modern pirates into it.
"He betrayed the Staaarks" is not the only problem here.
Redmess
Obviously discussing piracy in the context of fiction is allowable, yes, but then it belongs on the page of that work, not a general OTC discussion.
Optimism is a duty.
Disasturbator
What we need is a nautical topic to discus matters of the sailing and the high seas!
New theme music also a box
he/him
That's intended to refer to piracy of copyright works. Including (but not limited to) games, video, music, books and comics.
That said, any post advocating illegal activity is likely to be in breach of forum rules. Which, unsurprisingly, would cover things like assault, murder, theft... and piracy.
The specific reference to copyright piracy is because that has been a recurring issue in the past. If we had a problem with tropers repeatedly advocating nautical piracy or tax fraud, we'd probably add bullets for them too.
- Discussing any form of piracy in fiction is fine, as long as it's on-topic.
- Discussing modern or historical nautical piracy in RL is fine as long as it's on topic. I know we've had recent posts about Yemen's Houthis raiding shipping, for example. Pretty sure modern Somali piracy has been mentioned as well.
- Discussing copyright piracy in RL is also ok, as long as it's on topic.
- Advocating and supporting any form of RL piracy is banned. Linking to sites hosting pirated media is also banned.
We hope that's clear.
Edited by Mrph1 on Apr 4th 2024 at 2:31:29 PM
Lost in Space
How in the world could anyone possibly imagine that we'd be talking about nautical piracy with that rule? Is this a serious question or trolling?
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Disasturbator
Its a question ,not a trolling question as such but simply a question since piracy means two things and the rules state 'no piracy' and they were seeking clarification
New theme music also a box
Lost in Space
I literally do not believe you. No reasonable person could confuse the two.
Anyway, either form of piracy is illegal, so would fall under the 'advocating illegal acts' portion of the rules even if we didn't spell it out.
Edited by Fighteer on Apr 4th 2024 at 10:36:37 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Redmess
It's kind of nitpicky, to be honest.
Optimism is a duty.
(Avatar by Coffee)
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Sometimes people speak English as a second or third language and get confused by things native speakers find easy to understand.
Lost in Space
Then it's their obligation to learn. We aren't conducting ESL classes here. Be serious, please.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Disasturbator
I think its a perfectly reasonable to ask for clarification
Edited by Ultimatum on Apr 4th 2024 at 4:21:02 PM
New theme music also a box
Lost in Space
No, it is not. If this were a site about maritime law, maybe, but as a media site, there is only one definition of "piracy" that has any applicability in context.
This is not a serious argument and we will not entertain it further.
Edit: I will make a clarification for the sake of rigor, although this is already in the rules. If you want to talk about digital (or maritime) piracy in a relevant topic, that's completely fine. We don't ban discussion. What we ban is advocacy. That means encouraging, justifying, condoning, or providing instructions for illegal acts.
Edited by Fighteer on Apr 4th 2024 at 11:44:25 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Okay, but that's now getting into "predictable forum dynamics being predictable".
Thanks to tropers/mods who sincerely answered the question. I'm not going to answer individual people because I feel like we are already kind of close to personal attacks here. I don't think this is an "English as a second language" problem as much as a "general understanding of language, rules and/or social dynamics" problem (I do get into these kinds of conflict in real life, too).
"He betrayed the Staaarks" is not the only problem here.
he/him
It's been clarified now, so let's move on.
he/him
If you've been pinged to this post it's because you've been repeatedly thumped in OTC, so we want to make you aware of this discussion and the possible consequences.
Revisiting the discussion on the previous page:
We really don't want to lock any more OTC threads, and the "slow mode" technical solution for moderating OTC is still a long way off.
However, recent multi-thumps on the Social Media and Electric Vehicles threads have raised this topic again.
In particular, Elon Musk is a recurring theme on those two threads — despite the pinned posts, any discussion of Tesla or Twitter/X risks derailing into negative commentary on Musk's politics, legal actions, personality and family life. These aren't on-topic for threads about business and technology.
(If his politics or court cases are directly relevant to Tesla or Twitter, that's different and still on-topic — but they're the exception, not the majority)
The alternative approach that several people suggested (both here and on the policy thread), was for mods to be stricter with users who repeatedly get thumped on OTC threads, especially if there's a theme to those thumps (e.g. a particular derailment topic or a general issue like rudeness).
So that's what we're going to try.
If we have to keep thumping the same people — especially for repeating the same problems in their posts — then we'll consider an OTC subforum suspension.
We already use forum suspensions after repeated thumps, but they're generally reserved for rudeness and other serious issues, so some users have accumulated at least a dozen "off-topic" thumps for different incidents with no further consequences. In future, we'll consider a suspension before things reach that point.
Any such suspension can be appealed in edit-banned. As usual, repeat suspensions will not be so simple to appeal.
Hopefully, this will help to keep OTC running smoothly and reduce the amount of staff support it requires.
Is everyone on equal ground now or are those of us with off topic thumps on strike 2 already?
Edited by Shaoken on Apr 12th 2024 at 11:46:02 PM
he/him
Thumps have always been a "stop doing this" message, of one sort of another. Some active users have more than 50 of them, others have accumulated 6+ thumps for repeating the same issue.
If someone gets new OTC thumps after this point, we will consider several factors, including:
- Whether they've been thumped for the same thing before.
- Whether they've been suspended due to thumps before.
- Total number of new thumps (and types of thump) since their last suspension or conversation with the staff.
@Redmess seconded.
Edited by Risa123 on Apr 4th 2024 at 12:34:48 PM