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Edited by GastonRabbit on Oct 11th 2024 at 3:20:25 AM
Formerly Hail Muffins (He/Him)
Once the thread calms down people can continue to post, i just wanted more serious accusations sent to me personally. it can still stay open for smaller incidents with the mods or ask for clarification on policy. Just don't bring up the situations that have already been declared closed or opinions related to other users suspensions or bans. That is only the business of the user who had action against them and the moderation team.
Tagging a senior administrator for visibility and clarity moving forward. Every decision made was made with full administration approval, I don’t make any decisions by myself.
Edited by kory on Sep 10th 2023 at 11:58:42 AM
Now Monitoring Query Bugs and Query WishlistRe-opening this just long enough to note that this is a temp-lock to let tempers cool a bit. The thread will reopen tomorrow morning...AFAIK it will stay open but I can't and won't guarantee that.
EDIT: Correction, it may be Sunday or Monday before it re-opens…at this point, I’m not sure which.
... or when the admins are ready with their statement.
Edited by Tabs on Sep 10th 2023 at 11:36:58 AM
Hey all. The Administration has recently had more time on its hands and has been trying to pay more attention to TV Tropes as a whole. As y’all have seen, we’ve had Kory be more and more active recently. We would like to try and not have any fights in the forums, so we are trying to get rid of the public ridicule of users, and in this specific case, Mods. That does not mean we are doing away with rules or making everything more lenient. We want to know if there is an issue. If someone like a MOD is abusing their power, then they shouldn’t have it. So please, tell us and we can investigate and move to further steps. I’ve always been told you praise in public, and shame in private. It is supposed to help you grow, so that’s what I believe in. Thank you all for your diligent work and please keep helping us try and keep TV Tropes amazing!
Kory's actions and attitude *do* represent an overwhelming abuse of power, and punishing people for criticizing this sort of decision is quite frankly the sort of thing I've seen kill communities in the past.
I'm done here.Definitely echoing
. I want to know - what will ensure that an event like last week, with mass suspensions and departures from the site that was kickstarted by a complete non-issue being severely escalated, won't be caused by the actions of an administrator again, and regardless of what we're supposed to do if we're concerned about a mod's behavior, what is the recourse if we're concerned about a specific administrator's behavior? I don't know how much it's showing, but the userbase's trust in the administration was basically shattered last week, especially with users on the left side of the forum, so I think it would foster a lot of good will if we could have some acknowledgement that stuff like this won't happen again.
Edited by STARCRUSHER99 on Sep 11th 2023 at 10:11:51 AM
I suppose the essential question is does the administration consider this thread's very nature to be ridicule, in which case public discussion of any concerning moderator or administrator behavior is forbidden.
Edit: this thread's original nature, before the pinned post was unilaterally updated by Kory.
Edited by nombretomado on Sep 11th 2023 at 7:19:25 AM
I think that, to be blunt, we may need to go further and get an explanation of why Kory remains an admin, let alone the one-stop shop for user questions about moderator actions, despite failing to demonstrate the talent, the inclination, or the temperament to engage with a thousands-strong volunteer-based collaborative project. This was a catastrophic first outing for a job role that relies on maintaining user engagement with and trust in the site's internal systems, and only serves to demonstrate how bad an idea it is to narrow such things down to a single point of failure.
If you're going to demonstrate that you have adequate safeguards in place to prevent one dude from power-tripping while steamrolling over user complaints, then swiftly and promptly getting rid of the one dude power-tripping while steamrolling over user complaints seems like it would be an excellent start. This is a nearly two-decade-old website that owes its existence and vivacity to people from across the Internet, not The Kory Experience starring Kory.
Edited by Iaculus on Sep 11th 2023 at 2:29:14 PM
What's precedent ever done for us?When I found out about this thread (fairly recently, despite being on the site for over a decade) I was genuinely impressed. Having seen other communities where moderators and administrators did tend to shut down any criticism (both valid and invalid) without any space for good-faith concerns, this forum thread was a breath of fresh air. But having that uglier, toxic admin culture of "shut up, follow the rules, don't ask questions" brought in here, and this thread possibly being shut down as a result, does not sit right with me.
This is not a free-for-all thread intended to ridicule the administration, if it was it would've actually been locked long ago. The moderators here have a level of trust with the users, they know this is not what it's for. Can we get that trust back? Why does Kory no longer trust us? Why did he think it was worth changing this thread's intention entirely? And for the sake of what, exactly? It hasn't made anything better, if anything it's made things far worse, and caused so much friction and tension among the users and moderators themselves.
Those are my concerns, and I hope the admins etc. can understand why so many are speaking out against this.
I think we should have unbounces be more clear, and have the one being unbounced be given a thorough talk before being given the chance.
An unbounce in my eyes is really major, as it overrules something meant to be permanent. In the case of Ag, I believe he shouldn't have just been told to not do it again or else he'd get banned. At the very least, he should be told that hating someone for who they are, something inherent that cannot be changed, simply isn't good.
While there is the other issue of Ag lying about his identity, right now I think the focus should be on how stuff works as a whole rather than one instance of it if unbounces via admin veto may happen again.
Edited by CardboardBot on Sep 11th 2023 at 5:48:37 PM
Checking in on this account after leaving the site, MAN that is a cringy forum post history. Daaamn. Never again."praise in public, and shame in private"
Personally, if I've screwed-up, I wouldn't hide it and show that I've learned to avoid it.
What my concern is, is that we had a well-established and working Who Watches the Watchmen? situation. This thread wasn't just for abuse, nor anyone was ridiculed here. If a mod makes a mistake while on mod duty, this was the channel to ask other mods for their opinion if it was alright or not, since they have direct experience with same duties. If the community isn't satisfied with moderator's team response, we talked it out and mods often end up agreeing with the userbase's argument.
We could report to admins anytime a mod is misbehaving, but 1. It's slower than asking another online mod 2. We don't know the admins personally 3. Admins have showed to disagree with long-established rules. So it's diffcult to think as a good idea.
I don't mind if admins can call shots, but not with "We can do whatever without a notice" attitude.
Edited by Amonimus on Sep 11th 2023 at 5:58:50 PM
TroperWall / WikiMagic CleanupStill haven't received a good answer for why we should trust the people who unilaterally unbanned a vitriolic transphobe to deal with abuses of power
HAPPY HALLOWEEN FOR MARIAEchoing the unbounce concern. Bounces are big decisions and need conclusive explanation to be reversed, but most of all they need an admission of wrong, and this first unbounce didn't display much of that prior.
Echoing rest of thread on concerns about mod discussion. Our dynamic is rare and perfectly functional. No need to swap it.
The pessimist sees a dark tunnel, the optimist sees a light, the realist sees two lights and the engineer sees three idiots.Hey Dev Klay, thanks for the response, I understand the basic idea, but I hope the admins will still strive to be transparent about complaints about the mods and decisions about them, even if they wish to deal with it more directly without our input.
I should also note that this thread was never intended to ridicule mods, and I hope the implication is not that the issue with Fighteer was merely a protracted round of ridicule.
Edited by Redmess on Sep 11th 2023 at 5:00:01 PM
Hope shines brightest in the darkest timesIt's disturbing to me what's happened here. Admins stepping in to change policy on a culture that has been built without them is a bad look. More admin communication is good, but frankly, the administration missed the boat on a lot of how TV Tropes has been built by the userbase, and they should have some respect for those structures because they weren't there working on how this site runs for such a long time. At the very least, it is wholly inappropriate to exercise admin fiat on policy with absolutely no discussion with the people who will be affected or the moderators who worked to get you a presence here again.
This thread is a civil (passionate, but civil) place for the community to keep its superiors in check, and the way that is achieved is through numbers and the voices of the crowd. Nothing would have finally happened regarding Fighteer if the whole thread didn't stand up and demand accountability from him and the other moderators. If we're only supposed to report grievances privately, then issues and grievances won't be publicly known and there will be less hope that anything will be done. We made change on this thread last time because Fighteer had a public record of incidents and people were able to hear each other's voices. Unfortunately, I also struggle to believe this new admin outlook has to do with civility. From the way kory behaved, it seems like the admins just want to take a more active role in the site which they had been distant from. That can be fine! But without any kind of discussion, warning or consensus, unilateral policy changes from a power we can't challenge comes across, intentionally or not, as tyranny.
I think the recent mess has soured me completely on the prospect of the admins taking a greater presence in policy and culture. We wanted development help to improve the site's mechanics, but now we have seen admins steamroll TV Tropes culture, and we have no reason to believe they can't continue doing so against the will of the users and mods, unchecked. This was a bad start to an increased admin presence.
What assurance can we possibly have that the admins are not going to continue to make unilateral changes like this? That they will actually care for the culture and userbase and moderators that have been building this site for years?
Edited by 8BrickMario on Sep 11th 2023 at 7:58:44 AM
Speaking of Ag Prov, it's been discovered via his posting history that he's actually not a 60 year old Republican, but a much younger person of English origin. Ag Prov's unban for past transgender bigotry was predicated on Kory accepting this lie otherwise, and Kory's refusal to consult the mods of this stie about something they could have verified themselves is part of why he isn't trustworthy.
And Kory's own past on this site doesn't paint a good picture of his sympathies for trans people either. When asked by some of the users in the past if he could code a method for adding pronouns for forum profiles, he refused because he wasn't the "Pronoun Police".
I'm not interested in saying outright that Kory himself is a bigot without harder evidence, but this behavior of his in light of unbanning Ag Prov really needed to be brought to public attention regardless.
And I will echo the sentiment that it's not good to move forward with the idea if many users are expressing worry about the site's direction, namely that it doesn't make them feel "safe" on "included" anymore.
Yeah, 'praise in public, shame in private' is not a policy that's remotely compatible with a volunteer project as large and open as TV Tropes. When you're relying on the unpaid work of thousands of engaged, enthusiastic Internet denizens on a site that's lasted for decades, it's your job to show that the rules are enforced by people and systems they can easily understand and trust. That means visibility and accountability, responding to user feedback, communicating clearly, and making sure that mistakes and abuses are clearly and publicly corrected so the damage they do doesn't fester away as part of the site culture. Mods and admins aren't just enforcers of the rules, but examples of good conduct for both new and veteran tropers to learn from - and that, unfortunately, makes it all the more urgent and necessary for them to avoid becoming examples of bad conduct.
What's precedent ever done for us?The forums are part of TV Tropes, so the Administration will correct issues where we see them. Public discussion is fine, as long as it remains civil and there are no personal attacks. I unfortunately have read too many messages in this exact forum that are degrading and just down right rude. That is why the “intention” of this thread has altered. We aren’t doing away with it and y’all can still have discussion. However, any serious issue needs to be handled by one of us (administrators), as we are the only ones able to deal with it. I understand that this wasn’t the case in the past, but we are around now.
Kory doesn’t make choices like this. It’s not his decision to tell the users that if there is a serious issue, then bring it to him. That’s his job and it’s what he was told to do. Please refrain from bashing an administrators name for doing his job.
The case of Ag Prov is over. The moderation team banned this user without a warning. This user apologized both publicly and privately and had promised to not misgender again. I would say this is clear proof that he isn’t a “transphobe”, but rather someone who doesn’t understand fully. If there is ANY account of him being a “transphobe” in the future, he will be banned immediately, that’s how it should work.
If anyone else has any other inputs or questions about this discussion, they can message me directly. This thread will immediately go back to its purpose (civil discussion about Moderator actions). If there is more fighting, then we will unfortunately have to do away with this thread, as it shouldn’t be happening. Please be respectful to all members of the site, and if you have a serious problem, contact us.
No, I'm sorry, but this is a terrible ultimatum to this problem.
I will not, because Kory has proven himself roundly incapable of handling this situation with diplomacy. If the initial issue was "praise in public, shame in private," or the whole deal with the unbounced troper, then Kory "doing his job" snowballed this into another issue entirely.
Trust is a thing you have to earn with a community. You have not. Rather you've summarily destroyed it.
I and many other users no longer feel comfortable contributing in an environment like this. What part of that is so hard to understand? The problem is no longer "who watches the watchmen," it's "who watches the guy who watches the watchmen?"
Edited by Scraggle on Sep 11th 2023 at 9:14:22 AM
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I'm sorry if this isn't possible, but would you be able to provide example of thread posts that you deem as being too hostile? It seems like there's a disconnect in what most of the user base is seeing as acceptable and what the admins see as acceptable.
Edited by plakythebirb on Sep 11th 2023 at 11:11:40 AM
Welcome To Ideals' WorldI'm not sure what part of today's discussion comes across as non-civil. People have valid concerns and the only answer you're giving us is akin to "shut up".
I'm done here.Why exactly should we contact you with a serious problem when you're giving no indication that this incident has caused any long-term change in how situations will be handled despite how clearly disastrously it was handled and despite the multitudes of user concerns that are simply going unaddressed? Like I said above, the issue is how this incident has damaged the trust in the administration and this response simply isn't helping. People actively feel unsafe on this site because of the team's actions and are literally deleting accounts - how is this a sign that things are getting better with your intervention, especially when you're doing things like putting "transphobe" in quotes as though the term doesn't actually exist?
Edited by STARCRUSHER99 on Sep 11th 2023 at 11:13:44 AM
