Ask the Tropers and best practices

Obviously, we all are aware that ATT gets a lot of misguided traffic for questions better suited to Trope Finder and You Know That Show. However, I wanted to open up a focused discussion and perhaps an Administrivia page about what roles ATT should fill, and how to use ATT effectively, and even what should be actively discouraged.

For example, there was a recent post questioning if a first-time poster was a ban-evader. The query got many upvotes (marking it as prominent/of-interest), and some speculative responses, but ultimately it appeared to be a bust. Further responses pointed out that such queries can be off-putting and even drive out new tropers, while others pointed out that such queries are posted all the time in crowdsourcing for others who have personal knowledge/experience with ban-evaders.

(That query has been marked private by now.)

This brought to mind something that I've been wanting to discuss more openly, regarding the following behaviors in Ask the Tropers:

• Discussions about contentious disagreements, especially if the disagreement is privately contentious (mostly PM's).
• Discussions about potential ban-evasion
• When it is appropriate to bump / next steps if bumping isn't getting you a response.
• The line between popcorning and substantial participation, especially in regards to avoiding potential "dogpiling".

While I understand that there are a lot of technical improvements we all want to see (such as directing people to the right type of query in TF/YKTS, or changes to the header), that's a different topic.

So - thoughts? Do you share concerns, or have different concerns? Or is everything perfectly all right now, and we're all fine here now, thank you.

With regards to the recent discussion (which I was ironically trying to post to when it got privated, so I don't know if my last post ever made it in), there's been other cases of people arguing against the idea of using ATT as a venue to post about suspected ban evaders.

On one hand, it can be useful for helping people gather evidence, identify evaders in the future, and it makes the entire ordeal public and transparent. On the other hand, it unfortunately can lead to a lot of assumptions and people throwing innocents under the bus.

There's an issue with ATT where people don't seem to always look into the issue being discussed. They just upvote anything they think is important, even if it turns out to be entirely false or misguided. I'm guilty of it and I think a lot of people are. We assume the person posting has their facts straight, and sometimes get proven wrong.

On the other hand, there are other times where reports don't get enough attention and slide too far down the page for a mod to see them.

All in all, ATT is in a weird spot because it's the best place to go on the site to report problems, but it also has a lot of people overeagger to see those problems get resolved- even if it turns out there's no problem at all.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

I think ban evading posts should be posted on ATT privately. After all, only mods can check and see if the accused troper is actually a ban evader and there wont be as many issues as the public wouldnt be involved.

Macron's notes

While that's true, keeping them private makes it impossible for anyone else to know if someone is a ban evader, if the ban evader returns, what to keep an eye out for, etc. That'll make it harder for people to find ban evaders.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

Uh... why is this bad? If discussing, say, a potential ban-evader, isn't it actually important to find out whether or not they are? The upvotes don't (or shouldn't) have to be presumptions of guilt, just that it's important to look into. I've upvoted ATT posts I disagreed with in the hopes of bringing them to wider attention.

Not bad necessarily, it can just make a post with false information seem more popular than it is. If the upvotes are for it to get more attention I completely understand, but due to it being a thumbs up, it comes off like an explicit approval of the post rather than an attempt at getting more attention.

So on the occasion where someone posts, say, an argument in favor of reposting a shoehorned example, if it gets a lot of upvotes that looks more like people not reading the example and just blindly agreeing, rather than a more neutral "this needs attention" thing. This is something that has happened before; I was one of those people who blindly upvoted it, so I know it's a thing.

I hope I'm articulating this well enough.

Edited by WarJay77 on Apr 23rd 2020 at 8:06:21 AM

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

Maybe an exclamation point would be a better icon for ATT than the thumbs up. It has a “hey, look here!” effect without such a strong implicit “this is a good thing” effect.

SoundCloud

Yeah, another way to phrase it might be that it's a similar issue to TLP hats. Some hats are a stamp of approval, others are attempts at encouraging the sponsor, etc. Without knowing what each hat is for, all you get is a draft that seems to have a lot of approval even if it doesn't yet deserve it.

The same is true for the thumbs up button, to a lesser extent. Sometimes it's used to get more attention on the post. Sometimes it's used as approval of what the post is saying, especially if someone doesn't know how to contribute otherwise. Without knowing what each is for, the fact that it's a thumbs-up makes it seem inherently like a positive reaction, again, even if it doesn't really deserve such positive feedback.

It's not the end of the world. It's just something that came to mind when thinking of potential ATT issues, especially since the recent thread got 20 upvotes.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

That's where a moderator comes in. If the suspicion was correct, it can be marked public, and an explanation given. Tropers can go to the evader's edit history and clean the pages. If the suspicion is in error, the moderator can reply and keep it private, reassuring the teller that cleanup is not needed. Moderators have the power to switch threads from public to private and reverse it.

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I'm not actually committed to this as a solution, I merely offer it as a solution to the identified problem.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

How are you?

I've only been active here for 4 months (and I'm about to change handles to Immi Thrax because I didn't know good handle etiquette when I made this one)— so my perspective from a fast-learner-but-still-a-youngin-to-this-site

Regarding ATT, it's really puzzled me. Some stuff pretty quickly shows itself as being in the wrong place because people basically say "wrong place" and it gets locked. But then other inquiries get dozens of responses, so it gives the impression that "ah, this is the place for those concerns— they're getting discussed so this must be the right place". This may actually be the wrong impression that actually conflicts with what's best for the site or policy buried somewhere not obvious to a newish user.

Topics I've frequently seen posted and getting many responses:

• troper A (with or without a troper B) is edit warring on page X
• is this edit by troper A I saw on page X okay or is it a problem?
• now that we mention their page X edit, look at troper A's other edit history— problems?
• what should be done about page X's problems?
• there's something suspicious about troper A that reminds me of banned troper B

Possible ban-evader wise, I've seen many posts in my time here where someone posted that they suspected troper A was former troper B based on their types of edits, similarity of Single-Issue Wonk, etc., which appears to be 1) signaling the mods to IP check, and 2) asking other tropers if the behavior matches anyone they remember. Then people chime in with observations. Without knowing better, this seems like the way to raise concerns about ban evaders and other concerns related to tropers. If there's an actual guide/policy about handling suspicions, I'm unaware of it, and it would be a good idea to have.

The ATT question thingy, for example, has a checkbox to mark private "Make Private (For security bugs or stuff only for moderators)"— but what stuff is only for moderators? Unclear.

Edited by immichan on Apr 23rd 2020 at 5:50:10 AM

I've been unclear on that too. What should be kept private? The only times I've made private queries were:

• Two times when I didn't want to stir drama by reporting someone, and just wanted to quietly alert the mods.
• Once when I was explicitly told to make a private query regarding Echo Chamber videos by Willbyr.

Other than that...I'm unclear.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

One thing that should ALWAYS be private is when reporting suspected security vulnerabilities - because if the report is public and there really is a vulnerability someone might try to exploit it before it is patched. I believe I have seen this mentioned before someohere, probably in ATT in response to a user's question, but it really should be common sense.

Yes, that's one of the two things it tells you should be private. The ambiguous part is "stuff only for mods".

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

In my opinion, the following should always be private:

• Reports of PM misbehavior
• Technical reports / security gaps
• Questions of moderation that you want multiple mods chiming in only. (This is a squirrelly one, because sometimes people assume a question can be answered by moderators only, but that's not the case.)
• Reports of other ATT behavior.

Edited by nombretomado on Apr 23rd 2020 at 8:14:27 AM

Reports of problem behaviour usually should be public, as imitation is how people learn to report problems and to not engage in them oneself. The main exception I see are reports of certain troublemakers that are triggered by discussions on them.

There has been a tendency over the past years of people posting non-quick questions that then become extended discussions. I am thinking that people need to stop doing these (queries and extended discussions).

Edited by SeptimusHeap on Apr 24th 2020 at 9:52:15 PM

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

Those sort of discussions often become policy debates, which is something ATT is very much not for. Granted, I'm hardly one to talk when it comes to superfluous debates (It's almost like I'm very stubborn and perpetually bored or something), but policy debates in ATT need to cease.

For example, often times someone might come to ask "how do I disambig this page"? Soon people will show up to tell that person they don't have to disambiguate it. Innocuous without context, but often sparks debate between the "pro-disambig" and "anti-disambig" camps, while the person who started the thread just wanted to know how to do something.

Policy debates belong in the realm of the forums, not on ATT. But people get super passionate about these things and, when they see a chance to discuss them, will want to do so. I get it. I do the same. It's just also something we all need to work on.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

Hi. I'm the guy who got rather annoyed with the ATT and it ultimately being a bust. I still kinda stand by that, because I feel like it was going a bit too far. Most sockpuppet reports I have seen would actually mention who they thought the socks belong to, just search for "sockpuppet" or "evader". This one not doing so and seemingly taking part in scaring a potential legit editor as well as receiving a lot of upvotes made me feel quite disturbed, as it felt like community approval for reporting someone without having a lot of evidence and a way to scare off people who click the "Popularity" tab in ATT, as it would show there fairly high and show how people are willing to report someone and approve of it without proof.

Upvotes can admittedly be problematic. I remember that there was an ATT when I was a novice myself and I thought that due to people giving it upvotes, I thought they agreed with the course of action and I decided to ahead with it. It turns out they didn't and I had to apologise. Potentially using some other symbol to clarifying their meaning if it's intended to be something else, like an exclamation mark as mentioned earlier, would work.

As for questions turning into extended discussions, that just happens if a topic is contentious. We should get used to it, as we can't expect everyone to ask in ATT to know what is considered controversial. Then again, sometimes I feel like a question can be answered simply and people pile to it anyway (like here, when the person just wanted to know if you can always make a work page, and people kept adding stuff like how to make one but the person didn't ask for that, he might have already known that).

I also think we should start a Administrivia.Dealing With Newbies page. When and how to help them, when to be suspicious of them, when and how to report them. Maybe add a list of form answers to common noob questions and mistakes, like "How do I make a work page?" or "What show is this?" (when asked in ATT). Such a policy would certainly improve conduct, as we'd know how to easily make this a friendlier community while knowing how to deal with undesirables. That latest situation seems to be more for the "suspicious" tab than "report". A more specialised Administrivia.Ask The Tropers policy would also help, which could be linked to from ATT's header if admins make it so.

Edited by Piterpicher on Apr 24th 2020 at 10:39:16 AM

Currently mostly inactive. An incremental game I tested: https://galaxy.click/play/176 (Gods of Incremental)

You didn't see it because I posted it almost exactly when the damn thing was sent to the mod's shadow realm, but I did point out in my final post that there were a LOT of reasons why people were suspicious of this person.

While I'm generally okay with the "dealing with newbies" Administrivia page, this person sent up a lot of red flags extremely quickly, and I feel like the only misstep there was calling them out on the cleanup thread. The report was fine and necessary. I still maintain that person could've just as easily been a meatpuppet for someone else as they could've a normal troper who made a horrible first impression just because everything aligned...in the worst way possible.

Knowing how to format posts but not the rules against bashing? Making no edits, but somehow ending up on a cleanup thread in an obscure part of the forum, specifically to try and repost things that had already been deleted? All very fishy. It wasn't people just jumping on a random newbie out of paranoia- there was good reason to think something was up. I still think something might've been up, but now I'll never actually know for sure (ban evasion isn't the only possibility).

My point is, this report is one of the things ATT is meant for. Being openly suspicious on the thread? Bad idea. Posting a report about suspicious behavior in a public and transparent manner? Not a bad idea at all. I stand by that. Even if we were all wrong, now we all know. And c'mon, you can't look at all of these weird facts surrounding their post and not think something is, at the very least, off. Nothing lines up, for a whole slew of reasons. Making that report was necessary and wasn't just baseless paranoia directed at a random passerby.

This goes back to my argument against making ban-evasion reports a private matter. The transparency is a good thing. If people get it wrong we can be called out on our bullshit. If we get it right we've successfully informed the community of the problem and now others know what to look for in the future. Also, at least twice a ban evader had found themselves on ATT and outed themselves by being incredibly obvious. Making a private report when it's so blatantly obvious makes no sense anyway, because there's no chance of being wrong. I just see no harm in having these things remain a public affair. Worst case scenario, you just get a bunch of people being told they're wrong. Best case scenario, you've publically outed a ban evader who can very well return with the same exact habits, now easier to spot because people are more inclined to keep an eye out.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

No, worst case scenario is you make new tropers feel attacked and insecure about contributing to the site, making it less likely they return, because people post suspicions without evidence. The new tropers feel like outsiders to a clique and share this discouragement with other people and we get a reputation for insular behaviour. When you cut off the adoption of new members, it stifles the growth of the group.

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That might be the problem; I'm envisioning the numerous other reports where the issue isn't so clear, but people dogpile on speculating anyway because they're bored and want to play "guess the rule-breaker" without having confirmation of rule breaking.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

An issue I've seen is when people don't want to follow through with discussing policy or whatever in the appropriate forum thread(s). Like, people will ask about a policy, then people will debate the usage of that policy, and then we'll be told to move it to the forums, then someone makes the thread and the ATT gets locked but then everyone moves on. I'm sure I myself am guilty of this as well, but still, breaking up the discussion into a new location "breaks" the discussion, so to speak.

I've seen people insist on using ATT after being told to take it elsewhere, too.

Sometimes it's like people think the mods are telling us to stop discussing the issue at all, rather than merely to stop discussing it in ATT specifically. (I mean, I feel like this didn't happen several years ago.)

Edited by WaterBlap on Apr 24th 2020 at 11:03:28 AM

Look at all that shiny stuff ain't they pretty

The new troper felt attacked because other people decided to be suspicious on the cleanup thread. The report had nothing to do with it. They didn't even know it existed.

As for the second issue, that's why I put that part in the context of "If the ban evader has basically already outed themselves anyway on the same page of ATT". It's happened before, and that was the circumstance in which I felt it would be too obvious to bother hiding.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

I'll probably write a longer post about this tomorrow. My brief thoughts for now are that yes, that person might have been somewhat suspicious (not like super suspicious, but still), and perhaps there is a benefit to posting in ATT because the person can always call us out if we're wrong or out themselves easily. I think that 60% of my fear stemmed from the post on that thread calling out the guy and scaring him off, 20% from the ATT post not really having concrete evidence like all other typical sockpuppet callouts I've seen, and 20% from all the upvotes and bumps. While I think there could be a better method for stopping these kinds of ban evasions altogether as suggested here, they can indeed be reported for now. Glad to hear that the idea for a policy for how to deal with newbies is something worth considering, though.

Anyway, yeah, that's what I think for now, I suppose. I may explain why I only thought he was somewhat suspicious tomorrow and some more detailed thoughts, but this is a laconic summation as I still believe conduct can be improved.

Currently mostly inactive. An incremental game I tested: https://galaxy.click/play/176 (Gods of Incremental)

I am interested to hear your more in-depth thoughts on the matter, though we're going to want to keep this tangent brief to avoid derailing the thread. I gave my reasons, you'll give yours, and I think most of us here at least seem to agree that the ATT report itself was not the biggest problem, and even if it was it's not something we should hold up as an example of why these reports shouldn't exist.

It was a weird situation with a questionable new troper doing questionable things and people reacted impulsively. While making impulse reports is a problem and those reports will sometimes get an excessive amount of "upvotes" from people, they're not as common. I can get behind discouraging reports of these kinds until more evidence exists (or even just priviting the ones that lack as much evidence since it's less likely they're correct, despite my general preference for transparency), but these reports in general, even if they target new tropers, are usually necessary and helpful. More often than not they catch problems before they grow worse. Speaking about problem reports in general of course, not impulse reports.

It's just that not all of the reports are going to be 100% based in fact, and not all of them will be proven right by the mods. That's not a reason to discourage making things like ban evasion reports, we just need to be smarter about how we do them.

...That said, I think most of us here have jumped on a potential ban-evasion case only to find out we're wrong. It's happened to me a few times, at least. Part of the problem might be confirmation bias; if we think someone is a ban evader, well, we're going to pick up on the evidence that claims they are, and vice versa if we don't. Again though, that's more something we just need to try and control rather than a reason for not having these reports in general.

Edited by WarJay77 on Apr 24th 2020 at 7:49:04 AM

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

An ideal ban evasion report is probably this recent one.

Things that made the query good (controllable):

• Linking to both edit histories
• A clear explanation of the evidence leading to this suspicion

Things that made the resolution clean (less controllable):

• It turned out to be true, with further evidence uncovered by a mod (IP overlap and timing)
• It got looked at quickly.

Alright, here's why I believe that while that person was certainly more than your typical newbie, still has gone through somewhat excessive suspicion:

• The post was formatted properly was something I can't fully agree on. The only formatting that was really advanced in the first post were bullets. There was no link to Idiot Plot at the beginning, no italics when mentioning TLJ, no potholes in the examples, no other format changes I'd see in an already experienced editor. That said, he did at least understand indentation, which I think I understood when I joined, but haven't really used much (I typically don't find the need to use sub-examples cuz I don't have them, that's all).
• The post was in an obscure area of the forum. Short-Term Projects may not be the most popular, I agree. Also find the precise thread he was looking for might not have been the easiest task. That said, all of those forums are still on the left side and rather visible. That said, I think one of my earliest posts was in the Translations subforum, which is comparatively a rotting husk (even I have given up on the Polish translation due to lack of interest), so beginners may be able to find their thread fairly easily.
• The post was related to Star Wars. Here's another thing that made unsure about this being an evader - Star Wars is very popular. Complaining about Star Wars is also popular. From what I can tell, many ban evaders have been outed because they were about less widespread to niche topics, like 7th Heaven, Darkstalkers, Demon Legacy, or Inanimate Insanity. Compared to those series, Star Wars related pages receive a lot more edits and in fact, the whole franchise has more than 48000 wicks as noted on Trope Overdosed. There was also this ATT where an account named Mariofan 1000 was assumed to be Jmariofan 77, a ban evader, and it has also been considered to be a potential coincidence since Mario is just that popular. Something similar I feel like happened here, where it could have been a misreport due to the franchise of interest having tons of fans (or complainers).

In general, I believe that the evidence was rather scanty here. I admittedly haven't caught many ban evaders on here, but I have seen reports. This just wasn't on the same level as those reports. The point that a person can out themselves in ATT is fairly understandable, though, and I ultimately don't have anything against reporting them in ATT reasonably, like in Nombretomado's post.

Additionally, I kinda feel like we need to improve our civility in general. Wikipedia (now, I know we shouldn't imitate them fully and I certainly don't think that we should do so, but we can use their ideas sometimes and this is an observation) has a dozen or so policies on how to be civil as detailed here ("Assume good faith", "Don't distrupt to make a point", "Don't bite the newcomers", and a few others elsewhere like "No personal attacks").

In terms of actual Administrivia policies on how to behave civilly, we have nothing (other than some mentions of "Don't be a dick"). That's very broad and unhelpful, and ultimately doesn't stop what can be subtle/unintentional dickery like that kind of accusory posts (the ATT itself really was small potatoes compared to the post in the thread and maybe the community really wanting to ban), posts that just say one sentence that doesn't really address the topic at hand like "you're grasping at straws" here, or unwillingness to help people (this is why I almost never use the "" icon outside of IP, because I believe it's either an annoyance as you can tell when they're replying directly to the post above, or a recipe for ignoring simple questions, like this post). We need to better build behavioral standards to attract more users while keeping justice when necessary, and the Dealing With Newbies page could help in that (plus the list of form answers to common ATT questions would help with simply answering them faster, kind of like with Wikipedia's welcome or warning templates, there we go, I'm mentioning what else we can take from them again).

The last comparison to the Wikipedia I hope, but they also have their policy that their Checkuser thing can't be used for fishing, which is checking an account's IP when no evidence is provided. I wonder if that could be useful if we considered not doing ban checks when there's no evidence as well? That said, they also say that "it is not fishing to check an account where the alleged sockmaster is unknown, but there is reasonable suspicion of sockpuppetry", and this case may or may not have fallen under that. I must reiterate that I don't want us to be like Wikipedia, more like take their better aspects regarding conduct and use them, an area in which I believe us to be lacking.

These are my thoughts on this stuff (still under 6000 chars, luckily), I wanted to get it off my chest. Thank you if you read it.

Edited by Piterpicher on Apr 25th 2020 at 10:00:29 AM

Currently mostly inactive. An incremental game I tested: https://galaxy.click/play/176 (Gods of Incremental)