The Troper Shipping and Troper Dating Service thread needs help

This is an issue already being discussed in the thread. The topic is being moved over here so it is more organized and more visible for staff, so the discussion is actually meaningful. Let's keep it civil.

Lately, there have been several incidents in the Troper Shipping and Troper Dating Service thread in Yack Fest. Disagreements between users on content led to many regulars threatening to leave or actually leave the thread. This led to an extended discussion on subject matter.

In my opinion, the source of the conflict is the increasing political nature of the thread. Many new users are joining who want to discuss politics and religion. Since then, it is brought up every day. It is difficult to hold a fun conversation while others are posting Walls of Text regarding economics. Regular users have left for various reasons since politics became an everyday part of Troper Shipping.

A few have suggested that rules be placed on the thread. My suggestion is to encourage use of the Holler feature if there is an issue and self moderation. None of those are new rules; they already apply to the whole forums.

Users who have left moved to Hangout Thread. For that thread, I suggest a complete Ban on Politics. Nothing that would appropriately be discussed in On-Topic Conversations should be discussed in that thread. This is more of a preemptive measure to prevent the same thing from happening there.

Bookmarked. Assessment will follow later.

I would say that the drama has less to do with particular topics so much as a general lack of appropriate conflict resolution skills. The thread is friendly enough when everyone agrees, but minor disturbances quickly escalate unimpeded. These can be as trivial as Tropers feeling ostracized because a greeting post got buried under a dozen others, during high traffic times; occasionally, arguments will break out over drama itself, because the majority of the thread's members are incapable of discussing issues courteously and directly.

I'm not entirely sure what ought to be done; it's not exactly feasible to put the whole thread through Etiquette 101. A temporary lock might be sufficient as a scare tactic, and there's been some talk of posting some rules as a header.

Maybe not so much "rules" as "guidelines." Such as pointing out what the thread is there for (which is generally hanging out and coming up with ways to make more Troper Couples) and what it's not there for (political or religious debates) with instructions as to where to take that kind of conversation (to OTC or one of the Covens if you're just looking to discuss it with like-minded people).

The Insecurity Thread has such guidelines as a header and for the most part it seems to work. It gets the occasional shitposter but those are quickly shot down or ignored.

Ego pretty much summed up my sentiment, and thankfully in a far less indicting way than me.

While we're at that, there could be an introductory post that makes more sense with the state of the thread today. Many users enter confused about the subject.

Here's a thought. Why don't you not use it a general chat-about-whatever-takes-your-fancy-at-the-moment thread? Stay on the general topic — fooling around with troper shipping.

Seriously, several of the Yack Fest mega-threads have become completely interchangeable as far as content. I have to look at the page header to see whether I'm looking at the Hangout, the Random Thoughts Thread, the Shipping and Dating thread, or Updates. While Yack Fest isn't expected to stay in topic as rigidly as OTC, the media subforum, or the rest of the left side forums, there's no point in having different threads for different topics if people are going to post whatever they fell like in whichever one they're in at the moment.

The end result of that is that we have at least four threads that are virtually identical, except for which clique dominates it.

I've looked at that thread once and to be honest, it seemed to me like it was used exactly like a hangout thread.

Now as for the issue with politics and religion, is that thread particularly susceptible with that kind of discussion?

That pretty much sums it up, it's a thread ruled by a group of people rather than a topic. On the other hand, if it wasn't for that, the board would a) probably be an even less personal place and b) the shipping thread would die down quickly, because quite honestly, people don't seem to give much a shit about shipping anymore these days, but at the same time the general hangout thread would attract more people and become another potential clusterfuck in the process. I guess you might as well change the titles to "Troper Gang X", because the general sentiment here seems to be less about "who wants to talk about what" and more like "who wants to talk to whom", so I guess we have to keep the group dynamic in mind when dealing with issues.

edited 21st Nov '13 1:26:08 PM by TAPETRVE

I think moving TS&DS from Forum Games to Yack Fest helped the "hang out" atmosphere and discouraged the "shipping" posts because while the thread wasn't a game it was treated like an on-topic thread in FG (shitposting isnt common over there as it is in YF.) It's not that it's hard to stay on topic, it's that yf has the "lets be idiots here and shitpost" feel to it because thats how its been for years now, even more so after IJBM was trimmed. TS&DS is going to be difficult to set guidelines to, much like the other "just for fun" threads.

As for people trying to talk politics and other long discussions. Ask them to go to OTC or ignore their posts?

Shipping is actually still a thing, as we often figure out the hard way.

Now, a thought on the politics/religion problem: I think that while not inherently inappropriate for that forum, I'd expect the Yack Fest population to be far less inclined to discuss that kind of topics than the On-Topic Conversations population, because they are usually "serious" subjects and Yack Fest is more for relaxed conversation. I would point folks to OTC if their discussion topics are a problem.

It's not unreasonable to ask people who want to talk politics or other serious topics to go to OTC, but then they have to abide by the OTC rules about staying on-topic and debating in good faith.

We've avoided heavy-handed moderation tactics in Yack Fest because it's supposed to be a very loosely regulated forum; as long as people remain civil to one another, we don't make any effort to force threads to remain on topic or even coherent.

If it's basically turned into a series of hangouts for various cliques, then one has to wonder whether it's serving a useful purpose any more.

Ignoring is a bit hard to do when there's a discussion rolling over a whopping 4 pages and any objection gets overruled in the process. Having someone with a fancy pink mod textbox around would certainly help catch peoples' attention.

Well then, do we want to enforce that "serious" topics in Yack Fest are forbidden? That's a significant step and not one to take lightly, especially for us as mods because it means we'll have to deal with a ton of "off topic" hollers about Yack Fest threads until people get the memo.

Never mind the usual rash of complaints about "sucking the fun out of the site", and the fragility of the egos in some of those threads.

edited 21st Nov '13 1:39:35 PM by Fighteer

How about we appoint one or two reliable regulars to educate people a bit and intervene if necessary? Sad enough we need to resort to such measures, but maybe they'll listen to someone with some authoritah.

I don't think that serious topics should be forbidden in Yack Fest. Not everyone is interested in the strict limits operating in OTC, and serious topics can be treated casually, derailing or morphing into a sort-of-related topic (which is not allowed in OTC). The distinction between OTC and Yack Fest should not be what the topic is, but how tightly the topic is adhered to.

Frankly, I'm beginning to think that several of the threads in Yack Fest (Updates, Random, Hangout, Shipping and Dating) might benefit from being locked down and started fresh. The Gushing thread is another one that's become a clique hangout, with the same (roughly) dozen to two dozen people constantly gushing and countergushung back and forth. It's long ceased to be a place where a non-regular posts to say "Hey, <this troper I interacted with over in some other part of the forum> is pretty cool."

edited 21st Nov '13 1:47:05 PM by Madrugada

I do agree that many Yack Fest threads have become too general.

As for serious discussion, it's not so much that people are fighting over it, but that that's not why the users come to that thread. They like to chat AMD have fun. Not read about what a politician in England said about their economy.

We set Yack Fest up deliberately with the understanding that topics would get derailed and that was okay. If you want a politics-free thread, start one, and ask for a pinned header.

That could work, but what exactly would it be for, other than a politics free general discussion thread? Most general discussion threads are not political anyway.

For TAPE's suggestion, I do agree that not enough moderators are active on the east side of the forum, whiched me to think about whether limited power mods were explored.

I think we can worry about how to implement a policy once we have agreed on the policy. Besides, how well do requests to move a topic elsewhere work?

Almost never. In fact, sometimes linking to another thread more suited for the subject is responded with cries of "We'll talk about whatever we want."

Even in Yack Fest, we do have some threads as "utilities" for specialized purposes. Absent people is about departures and absences, and is actually marked "On-Topic". Quickie questions is a useful pinned thread to handle expedient Q&A. It's implied that you should stick to the purpose.

If the main problem of the Shipping thread is that it gets derailed, maybe it should be handled similarly, with its own defined purpose.

I know Yack Fest is supposed to be lax and tolerating topic drifts, but we who post there know don't expect any random thread to get shifted in a random direction. It's still possible to keep topics there distinct.

Well, if you were to define the purpose of TS&DS as it is now, it would be "The Hangout Thread but without the sensibility of the Hangout Thread." This is unacceptable for obvious reasons.

I think the purpose of Troper Shipping and Dating Services and its current purpose could be made to work together, but only under certain implications. TS&DS is, ostensibly, a place where single Tropers and not-so-single-Tropers get together and try to turn the former into the latter and try to keep the latter as the latter. While we have the Romance thread in Yack Fest to do some of that, Troper Shipping could be used as, well, as a Dating Service, where single Tropers go to mingle, chat about topics that they enjoy, and try to find that special someone. It would be a place where the topic is less stringently focused on a given media, like in the Works Forums, but also geared more towards building camaraderie between two potentials. And also for not-so-single-Tropers who want to hang out together but also want to hang out with other people go on "double dates." Terl and Musey's interactions in the Shipping Thread is some of the best, to give one example of how that works out.

Obviously, that atmosphere isn't conducive to shitposters or controversial debates, as clearly no one who's there for that purpose would want to put up with them.

In my experience, the dating portion of the title has been largely ignored.

TS&DS was never for actual shipping, though. It's just a funny thread that turned into a megathread for hanging out. Which isn't a bad thing, but there's a lot of megathreads now. Some might die out (like how the Jammies thread did) but for the most part, the trend is definitely "hangout threads" for groups to really form and develop. We don't need moderation and we don't need to approach the thread like we're children who can't play nice at recess.