Appeal to the moderation

Isn't this what spoiler tags are for? Major twists from a new film should obviously spoiler-tagged, and if he didn't that seems like a problem. But if properly spoiler-tagged, I don't see why this should be a violation of policy, or a huge hardship for anyone who hasn't seen it.

"It's just a show; I should really just relax"

Seeing new massive spoiler text blanks still vaguely hints at what characters/topics come up in the movie.

And then there's the issue of examples that don't make it clear that the spoilered text is about Endgame rather than an older MCU film.

Hold up, was the Endgame article locked at the time, as the posts in bans thread seem to say? If the main article is locked to prevent people from gushing information about it onto the wiki, it's just common sense that it shouldn't be being added to anywhere else on the wiki too.

Edited by Adannor on Apr 25th 2019 at 8:10:43 PM

Not quite accurate. The external-facing reason was "Locked to prevent Speculative Troping before release."

Internally, we marked it simply as "pre-release work".

People like to gush, and you helped create the unwritten policy where examples cannot be added based on unofficial leaks because it would be impolite. That policy gives free reign to add examples once a work has released, even if it isn't in your country. That was considered sufficient for "common courtesy". If it isn't, then policy needs revision.

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Overall, context went "In Avengers: Endgame, [spoiler tags]", except on YMMV.The Avengers 2012, which I removed for being Not An Example anyway.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Again, the specific issue was not trope examples, but entries on articles for other Marvel films. I didn't read them, obviously, but if you're doing things like "Harsher in Hindsight: X happens in Endgame", you're pushing the boundaries of taste.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Again, if Harsher in Hindsight is going to violate "good taste", then the trope is the problem.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

No? Adding that X is harsher in hindsight on a different work’s trope page the same weekend the other work comes out is the issue.

FWIW, the overwhelming majority of examples I've ever seen for the 'hindsight' tropes are bad/shoehorned. Thought that might be relevant to the conversation.

Edited by nrjxll on Apr 26th 2019 at 5:31:50 AM

That's what the tropes ask you to do. Work A collects "in hindsight" examples from Work B context. They don't belong on the Work B pages.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

So with yet another derail in OTC about laws around child porn and pedophilia I’d like to bring the topic here, specifically if we should just ban discussion of the topic. It tends to get heated, it makes a lot of people uncomfortable and it’s especially bad due to there being the shadow of TV Tropes history with pedos.

My disagreement with the mods on that policy is known and I’m not trying to change that, I however do think we need to consider if it’s possible to both allow pedos on the site and allow discussions on the morality/legality of pedophilia, I feel like we need to chose one or the other.

MOD EDIT: The line deleted is a good example of how heated it is.

Edited by nombretomado on Apr 28th 2019 at 3:48:04 AM

“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran

What,where?

Link to said discussion plz

New theme music also a box

And my post has been edited...

So now let’s have a discussion about that. How are we meant to have any trust in the mods if you’re going to edit people’s posts to remove references to the rules you guys choose to implement and how you choose to implement them?

What’s the point of this topic if the moment I bring up a controversial mod policy you guys edit out the reference to it?

“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran

discussion here

New theme music also a box

The assertion that we are sheltering people who are unrepentant is not accurate, though I can understand that the lack of insight into the particular mod conversation can lead to that conclusion.

While we do not want to include the breadth of every single mod conversation (the edit banned/suspended thread is the only real conventional venue), we take as terms of condition that help is being sought and that anything close to apologia will not be tolerated.

ETA: This goes back to the conversation from last year. We have access to PM's. If someone is let back under those stipulations, we are checking.

Edited by nombretomado on Apr 28th 2019 at 4:13:11 AM

I think that making a post here replying and correcting my incorrect assumption is much better than editing my post. By editing my post it made it seem like you wanted to hide the policy from us, that’s not a good look.

This thread of all threads should have a super light hand when it comes to mod powers being used on people, members aren’t going to feel comfortable raising issues if the moment we do you guys start screwing with our posts and implicitly threatening retaliation for us questioning you.

Like I’d get it if I’d named names, because then it’s not free discussion, it’s an attack on another user, but I named no names and made no direct references to how I found the policy, but you went into my post anyway.

Now back (kinda) to the original topic.

I’m glad to know that there’s more to the policy than just a “well if you promise not to admit to it again”, I’m pretty sure that’s part of why Amber was always so angry about it. I know that I certainly felt better when I found out that you do extra monitoring so as to avoid the risk of this site being used to groom children.

You guys really need better communication on stuff like this, I get you want to avoid a lynch mob forming (and that’s why you banned Amber, because he got close to that line some times), but this issue has dragged on for years now, in large part because those of us aware of the situation at the time got minimal info about what you were doing to address the risk we’d all just discovered, like this is the second time this has come up since it happened and you are only now mentioning that you require a promise to seek treatment? That would have been super relevant to know and would have given a number of people more peace of mind.

Edited by Silasw on Apr 28th 2019 at 11:24:39 AM

“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran

For what it's worth, I was unsure if I'd have a chance to respond more tonight, and felt that letting an assertion like that hanging out there would inflame a lot of speculation and potential lynch mobbing. Given your concerns, I see in retrospect how that would have worked out for the worse. My apologies.

Gonna double post just to avoid the risk of talking past someone, as I’m pretty sure that there are people active in this thread right now.

I get the desire to correct by incorrect assumption in my post, removing the line wasn’t the way to do it, that comes across as you guys hiding things. It would have been much better to edit in a mod comment say that I was wrong, simply putting after the removed line “mod edit: this is in fact not the mod policy, I’ll explain fully in a post further down, but I want to note here quickly that your understanding of the policy is incorrect” would have been fine.

Edit: Apology accepted, on a more fun note, the joy of doing edit inserts into posts as a mod is that you can use special colours. So you get to graffiti users posts in your own colour, it’s one thing I had great fun doing when I used to mod a forum.

Edited by Silasw on Apr 28th 2019 at 11:31:24 AM

“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran

I feel like I need to point out that our rules, both in letter and spirit, concern what a person does or says on our site, not what they believe or feel inside themselves, not what kind of person they are or what they have done somewhere else.

We don't involve the community in these decisions (beyond what you see in Edit Banned) because they are private. None of you have any business in other people's personal lives, judging their fitness to participate here. That is for us to handle.

If any person acts in a way that violates our rules, including in private communications or even offsite in ways that can be proven and provably linked to them, we can and will do something about it. We have done so in the past. "Gut feelings" are not evidence, and we cannot reasonably act on that basis. We also don't sanction witch hunts of any sort, where users try to draw out or unmask someone's private beliefs in the hopes of reporting them and getting them in trouble.

We want people to feel welcome to come to TV Tropes, regardless of who or what they are or what they believe, as long as they are here to discuss and enjoy media, which is our core purpose. We want people to feel safe here and able to express themselves without being threatened, as long as that expression does not violate our rules. If someone does feel threatened or unsafe, we want to know about it, but there needs to be evidence of that threat in the form of an actual post, message, wiki edit, etc.

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Now, I did skim the thread that kicked off this little bit of fun, and spoke with ~nombretomado about it. I didn't have time to read the entire conversation. Talking about sexuality in video games is acceptable as long as the conversation itself doesn't become prurient. Censorship is an equally valid topic. But I think we should declare a moratorium on discussions of pedophilia or accusations thereof, outside of the P5 forum. That's going too far.

Edited by Fighteer on Apr 28th 2019 at 7:40:23 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Sure and I’ve always understood that, but my issue with what I thought was the policy was that what I saw seemed to not be enough to protect users from a very real risk.

It took until last year for me (and I believe anyone) to find out about the extra monitoring, I suspect that the Amber situation might not have gone the way it did if he’d know everything I now know.

I love what you guys do with the edit banned topic, it’s both great streamlining and allows a window into how you guys act, it enables people to see the job of moderating and understand that it’s not the hilarious power trip people think.

But in the case being referenced you pulled the curtain back half-way and that has caused a lot of confusion. If I’d seen nothing in the edit banned thread after the incident and then a post there saying “[user] got banned for their comments in [thread], a discussion has been had with them via PM and under conditions set there the mods feel that they are able to be part of the community again safely”, I’d have taken it on faith that you’d placed reasonable conditions and things were fine. But instead we saw what we (I stand reasonably) thought was the full picture, it left myself, Amber and probably others wondering what you guys were playing at, because we had no idea that there was a side discussion that we were missing.

Sometimes closed door discussion are needed, sometimes you can do open door discussion, but half door discussion just lead to confusion.

“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran

That's quite fair, and we'll try to be more transparent about it in the future.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

I have a general question. I'm not sure how recently ago this was, but on ATT, when infractions were made in the rules, tropers were often 'called' by a mod to talk it over. Lately I've been noticing more suspensions or bans, seemingly without notifying the offending tropers. Has there been a policy change in some regard?

Edited by lalalei2001 on May 2nd 2019 at 3:36:57 AM

The Protomen enhanced my life.

Moderators expect us (the average troper) to make the warnings and Personal Messages to most offenders. When a troper persists despite these warnings, or if they go past a certain degree of freedom (such as an Edit War), then the moderators ban them. Bannings are euphemistically called different things; calling them in, will have a chat, bounced, kicked, hit them with the ban-hammer, etc.

Assuming a first-time offense, the ban is meant to force the troper to visit the thread before they do any other editing. Once the moderators verify that the person won't be a dick, they're released. Less of a punishment and more of a "we want to give you personal attention since you didn't pick up the rules from the rest of the community". Second-time offenses are a bit more iffy, and the only way I can image someone getting to edit after a fourth ban is that it took several years between any two of them, none of them are for the same reason, and they were otherwise an outstanding contributor.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Thank you! That helps clear things up ^^

The Protomen enhanced my life.