Wiki and Forum Policy - General Discussion

The next one will be worse, because there’s no longer a way for users to provide feedback via this thread. At this point the most effective form of feedback on staff activity is probably letting the toxic thing fester then reporting it to Google.

Yeah it feels like a more honest approach would be to lock this thread with a message of “TV Tropes no longer allows public feedback, criticism or discussions of moderator activity”.

I’ve asked very specific questions several times and had nothing back. It feels like at this point the team are adopting a “No clarity, only thumps” approach.

Oh, I see the header got changed again to change what was once something like “general moderator discussion” to “clarifications on policy” without anyone saying anything. Very open of you. But the real irony is that the past several posts have largely been policy questions, which is what the new OP specifically allows, and yet thumps are being threatened?

There are genuine policy questions asked here and here that I think deserve an actual acknowledgement, especially because as points out, people have been asking these specific policy questions the entire time and it appears to just be going ignored.

Neither of the posts I linked deal with moderation behavior or how you moderate, they ask how users are supposed to act in certain situations. That’s pretty clear from the posts so I don’t see how that’s relevant to my main ask. Though I do appreciate you saying the quiet part out loud that we’re just no longer allowed to talk about moderator behavior at all. It’s good to know where we stand, especially because now I genuinely wonder why we should even have this thread at all.

Edited by STARCRUSHER99 on Sep 17th 2023 at 7:44:45 AM

I said this on the Discord, but it bares repeating here: I think the problem is in the very nature of our forums and how they relate to the rest of the site.

TV Tropes is supposed to act as a wiki, and the primary purpose of the users is to build it up. The Forums allow for proper communication on issues throughout the wiki. However, the Forum topics include a wide range of topics beyond the Wiki, include RL convos, show topics, and games. Because of these site also acts as a community. And that's where the problem lies.

The mods are here for the most part to mod a wiki, but modding a wiki and modding a community require two different approaches. But the mods often take the same approach to modding the community as they do the wiki. Imposing law and order whenever necessary is needed on a wiki, but can be harmful to a community. Indeed, the issue people had with Fighteer was not with how he modded the rest of the wiki but how he interacted with the community in the Forums. And it appears the admins are taking the same approach, doing wiki modding as opposed to community modding.

I really don't want to say this, but TV Tropes might eventually have to decide whether or not it's a wiki or a community, because this dissonance has damaged the community aspect of it.

Can the thread be renamed? If we’re not allowed to discuss the current state of moderation in the Discussion of Moderation thread, the misleading title is bound to invite some of the promised thumps.

I'll respond to this, because it is a very important distinction. We discussed this offsite as well, if you recall.

TV Tropes started as a wiki. That's always been the face, the moneymaker, the draw. Over time, the forums accumulated lots of interest from people who wanted to, as you said, build a community. Nothing wrong with that.

But when the community starts taking up the majority of the moderation effort — when it actively detracts from handling the wiki side, or starts making demands that affect how the site itself operates, it needs to be pulled back.

As with the Yack Fest incident a while ago, we have no interest in being the bad guys, breaking up fights when people can't get along. TV Tropes is a business. If it comes down to an irreconcilable conflict between them, we'll toss the parts that aren't contributing to the bottom line.

Edit: Under consideration.

Edited by Fighteer on Sep 17th 2023 at 7:57:58 AM

I have to agree that the wiki should take precedent, it is after all why this site exists in the first place.

Can we maybe change the header too please, so it doesn't say it's for discussing moderation?

Sure, that's reasonable. Done.

Just for clarification, I'm not going to get answers to my questions, am I?

Could I request though that some policies get put into clear text somewhere easily accessible? Like, what the line is for a user making multiple posts in a row, how long a digression can go for before being considered a derailment, do the grammar rules extend to the forums, stuff like that.

Stuff like that where, as far as I can tell, it’s not actually clearly laid out anywhere and it’d be really useful so certain things could be toned down without needing to involve the mods with a clear thing to point to.

Agreed, it's easier to follow the rules when the rules are clearly laid out somewhere.

Thirded; I think this is a reasonable ask that would substantially reduce user confusion and thereby reduce the moderators' workload.

There's one thing I want to say here that I didn't before, when the issue with Fighteer arose last time.

Personally, I saw a large thrust of the argument being that Fighteer is sometimes "mean" in the course of doing his Mod duties. I never had any experience with that myself, but I believe it. However my issue had nothing to do with his behavior as a mod and everything to do with his behavior in the Forums. He repeatedly antagonized broad groups of people he decided "deserved" it (which in this case were fans of anime and JRP Gs, or as Fighteer called them "weebs") in places like the Zero Punctuation thread.

I brought up a few times that this behavior was, essentially, in violation of Rule #1. I receieved a non-response that basically amounted to 'yeah, yeah, I hear you and I do not care."

So while others may or may not argue that Fighteer is a "bad Mod", my issue was simply that he behaved in ways that would never have been tolerated if they came from regular users (at several different points, he expressed a kind of malicious glee that Yahtzee would bash games other users liked. I pointed out that actively rooting for other users to be upset was uncool, and I got a "It's the thread about Yahtzee, so I'm allowed to be a jerk.") and he was very aware of the dispensation his status afforded him. It's largely the reason i avoided the ZP thread while he was still active.

I completely understand that this is no doubt going to ignored too, but I didn't say anything last time, and I regretted that, so I thought I'd state that now. The fact that he's coming back at the same time as everything else is happening is sort of like a red flag on top of a flashing alarm.

A related question: If a mod acts out of line in a forum discussion, are we still to holler them the same as a non-mod?

My understanding has always been that a moderator is not a moderator when they're an active participant in a discussion, so we respond to them the same as any troper and holler the mods to deal with it.

In light of recent events, has that changed?

PushoverMediaCritic: No, alas. These are really internal matters, a bit like PMs are supposed to be.

eta: sgamer82: Yes, you can holler them like any other troper.

Edited by SeptimusHeap on Sep 17th 2023 at 8:20:17 PM

I'm a bit late into the discussion here, but I just want to say a few things:

1) I think the cooldown on posting for slow mode is too long. 12 hours is just too long of a waiting time. I think 6 hours is a more reasonable waiting time.

2) I think that both admins and mods should be more clear and careful when responding to the users because the recent incidents got significantly worse because of such a bad response to the first attempt of inquiry.

3) I think thumping and banning aren't a good response for further inquiries because it just cause confusion and throw fuel to the fire.

Will I get a response to paragraph 3 of this post?