Note: The thread currently has a limit of one post every two hours for non-mod users. Currently, this is hard-coded by the admins, but there are plans to give mods the ability to toggle it without admin intervention. After mods are given the ability to do that, the time limit may be further reduced or removed entirely.
This thread is for discussing the following topics:
- Questions and clarifications about the site's rules and policies pertaining to wiki editing, forum posting, trope launching, and so on.
- If you have an idea for a thread on another part of the forums but aren't sure if creating it would be allowed, feel free to ask here.
This thread is not for any of the following:
- Reporting complaints or concerns about specific moderation decisions (e.g. suspensions and thumps). Report these directly to the admins via the contact form
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- Queries about locked On-Topic Conversations (OTC) threads or banned discussion topics. OTC has its own moderation discussion thread here, and the latest statement on the locked US Politics thread and other banned OTC topics is here. Bluntly, when certain OTC threads and topics have repeatedly caused problems, we're not going to provide forum space to discuss them again until the moderation toolkit is equipped to handle those conversations.
- Cut List challenges and queries (they have their own thread here).
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Posts that use this thread in place of the sections listed in the bulleted list above are off-topic.
We're aware that the Edit Banned thread has a Non-Indicative Name, due to it also covering non-editing suspensions. We're not sure whether the name for that thread can even be edited without breaking the special coding that keeps posting restricted to mods and suspended users, so we're leaving it alone for now, because better safe than sorry.
(Edited Mar 28 2024, adding bullet about OTC and amending layout a little)
Edited by Mrph1 on Mar 29th 2024 at 10:55:20 AM
Admin
Shaoken is correct, we will not be splitting US politics into smaller threads. It’s locked in general. Find another site to discuss those things. Tropers have shown us that they cannot discuss politics without constant mod intervention.
Edited by kory on Mar 28th 2024 at 9:54:47 AM
Now monitoring Wishlist and Bugs
Movie and TV Goddess
I agree with @Silasw about posting up topics that were locked somewhere where people can see these topics. Maybe, there can be a thread where there's a list of specific topics like US Politics, Cancel Culture and Antisemitism to name a few examples, that were locked or should not be discussed on the threads so that way, there wouldn't be so many people opening up threads that were already locked.
Edited by Rabbitearsblog on Mar 28th 2024 at 11:05:05 AM
I love animation, TV, movies, YOU NAME IT!
One-Track Mind (he/him)
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Are you referring to this by any chance?
he/him
&
That's just been updated and reformatted a little to reflect the latest situation.
I'll edit the pinned post on this thread to link to it (it currently goes to kory's statement about unlock conditions, which is also covered by the OTC post) and we'll link to it from the other OTC pinned welcome threads.
Redmess
Oh, sorry Kory, I forgot there already was a decision on that. Well, I don't really mind either way.
Optimism is a duty.
Movie and TV Goddess
Oh! Thanks for linking that!
I love animation, TV, movies, YOU NAME IT!
The Draftsman of Doom
Hearkening back to the edit war (?) discussion…
I remember I once tried to avoid an edit war when someone removed (disambiguated) red-links for work pages.
I know we don't generally pre-emptively disambiguate, but I still don't think it's necessarily a bad idea, especially for unrelated works.
Rawr.
Professional Forum Ninja
I have an article that's about the use of AI in war,but it's also about the Israeli-Hamas war, would it be able to be discussed as long as we keep the topic away from the war itself?
"We're all paper, we're all scissors, we're all fightin' with our mirrors, scared we'll never find somebody to love."
Redmess
I think that should be fine as long as you keep strictly to the AI aspect.
Optimism is a duty.
The Draftsman of Doom
he/him
We've posted an update regarding OTC moderation to the dedicated OTC moderation thread.
In summary:
- Some people commented on that thread (and on this one) suggesting that moderators should take more action to address problems with specific users (those who get repeated thumps), rather than resorting to thread locks that impact everyone.
- We're going to follow that suggestion and see if we can use this approach to keep OTC running smoothly.
Please post any follow-up comment or discussion to that thread, not here.
autistic aro opal gemstone
1. Should we add Donald Trump to the list of indefinitely banned forum topics due to how notably controversial/inflammatory he is?
2. Do users ever get summarily bounced? As in, a user gets bounced for a single offence without any prior thumps, suspensions, or warnings?
Edited by opal6561 on Apr 13th 2024 at 6:54:04 AM
Am I that troper? Maybe, maybe not, the world will never know.
It's a redundant point so long as the US politics thread is closed, but that'd be a bad idea. If Trump is the candidate for President then it'd be kind of impossible to discuss U.S Politics if you couldn't discuss the ex president.
Although having time to think on this we should be having this conversation in the self moderation thread in OTC
Edited by Shaoken on Apr 14th 2024 at 4:44:36 AM
he/him
As I understand it:
Some users have been summarily bounced without warning. It doesn't happen often, but it happens — normally only to relatively new accounts. The cases I can recall are:
- People sending bigoted abuse (e.g. racist slurs) in PMs or adding similar content to the wiki/forums.
- Spammers and vandals who have no interest in genuinely using the site.
- New users who are believed to be sock puppets for ban evaders. This only happens when we're pretty sure it's a match.
I don't know if there's ever been a formal agreement on this (other mods might know), but aside from ban evasion it generally only happens if the account has done something extreme and they have no real history of genuine edits or normal interactions with other tropers.
If someone goes on a full homophobic rant or starts abusing other users 10 days after they register, we may just bounce them.
If someone does the same thing after a year of editing the site and/or posting on forums, I think we'd try to go down the Edit Banned route and/or talk to them first, even if a bounce looked almost certain.
Also, current policy is that if we immediately bounce in this way, we don't announce it in Edit Banned afterwards.
Ban evaders are the exception — if they had a suspension under discussion, we'll post in Edit Banned to confirm they're now bounced. If the previous account was already bounced or deleted, we'll generally post in the Ban Evader Reversion thread so that any problem edits can be investigated and fixed.
(Mod hat deliberately off, as this is my understanding, not a formal statement from the team)
Redmess
That seems like a reasonable policy, yes.
Optimism is a duty.
Lost in Space
That's basically correct. I should point out that using TV Tropes, or any private website for that matter, is a privilege, not a right, subject to revocation at any time for any reason.
As moderators, we apply policy and make decisions in a way that we judge to be best for the site overall, not what makes individual users happy. That said, keeping users happy is generally healthy for the site, so we make an effort to be transparent and fair when judging these situations.
It takes an egregious, flagrant action to get summarily bounced.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
🌸
how am i supposed to add the names for the characters that are shown in an image (as in adding a note to indicate the characters featured on the image), was trying to do it with the image for Sakura Wars 3 but idk how the characters are located...
Edited by SpongeBobFan2004 on Apr 14th 2024 at 6:08:15 AM
the Retromancer
I don't quite understand the question, but it doesn't sound like a policy question (Ask The Tropers would be better if it's not a policy question). If you want to list characters on the cover, you can just edit the caption.
autistic aro opal gemstone
I did hear one time an anonymous user sent a troll flag to Content Violation Discussions claiming that Non-Human Non-Binary had fake identity and anti-white racism, and ~MacronNotes summarily bounced them even though the user in question had been editing for three and a half years.
Lost in Space
That sort of behavior falls under our hate-speech carve-out. There is zero tolerance for it, and it may indeed earn a summary bounce at the discretion of the mod team. We usually consult with each other before making such a decision.
(she/her)
I am not sure if it was necessarily to ping me for this but yeah I bounced that user for the above reasons when I was a mod (don't remember if I consulted other mods or not).
Edited by MacronNotes on Apr 17th 2024 at 1:23:06 PM
Macron's notes
Wrong thread somehow
Edited by megaeliz on Apr 24th 2024 at 7:52:22 AM
🌸
Is it possible to replace images that are located on a folder section, or we would have to discuss it first...?
Edited by SpongeBobFan2004 on Apr 28th 2024 at 3:44:04 AM
the Retromancer
If you mean like Characters/ pages, yes image changes require consensus.
I proposed something similar and got slapped down by Kory immeditely, so I think there is no interest from the admins on the matter.