NO VENTING ALLOWED IN VENT THREADS

Hello! First off, I don't want this to come off as a contradiction of other mod decisions to try to talk about this with you in the wiggler, but the impression I'm getting is that the use of the wiggler was very alarming to you, and I can understand why you'd be reluctant to hold a conversation in that location.

An establishing idea for this forum, which was NOT an full success, was to see if it was possible to run a forum without any moderation or hard rules at all. Again, this didn't work, which is why there are mods at all. But moving forward, there was still a conscious attempt to avoid establishing hard and fast rules to the greatest extent possible. This is not something that everyone has equal levels of comfort with. Some people get anxious about their ability to follow strict rules, while others get anxious about stepping over invisible lines and getting punished for it.

So, when mod things like the pear wiggler were established, the goal was that mod actions (like wiggling a post) would try to be taken in nonpunitive ways as much as possible. This is another goal where perfect success isn't possible. If someone is posting in their own vent thread and something gets wiggled, it's hard not to feel like you're being punished! You said something in your own space, and someone told you, no. I completely get why that's very upsetting.

Now, something that a lot of mods will try to do if they have the time or energy is to explain why something is being done, or to offer alternative paths forward to the person in question. Because of the lack of hard and fast rules, we know that not only can these actions feel like a punishment, but they can also feel arbitrary and unfair, and this only gets worse if you're already having a hard time for other reasons. We do try to mitigate those negative effects when we can, making you feel this way is definitely not a goal, or something we like causing.

In this case, while I cant offer you a solid rule to hold onto, I will say that putting a spoiler tag and warning for something like 'wishing death' will do a lot. If that was in place, I would argue not to wiggle a vent thread post like that. If you would like concrete guidance and that would make you feel better about using this space, I would say that wishing death on others is one of topics it is safest to keep to vent threads and warn and spoiler tag for.

The goal in that is not to silence you, it's to reduce risk of accidental additional harm. I understand that you've been hurt or you wouldn't need to talk about this at all, but the goal of the mod actions is to mitigate risk of additional harm. If someone enters your thread to see what's been up with you lately, that's one additional layer of buffer they have to click through, and a little more warning for what they'll see. We don't want you to be hurt, and we do want you to be able to vent your emotions and receive support, but mod actions like these are attempting to balance the risk of harm being unintentionally spread further.

This may still be vaguer guidance than you'd like to hear, but I don't want to speak too much further without consulting other members of the mod team. But I also don't want you to feel like you're being singled out, treated by a double standard, or ignored, and it sounds like those all might be issues right now! Mod presence on this site is a bit more irregular than it used to be, but if you have questions about specifics, any mods online will be able to answer questions privately in the howling void or the wiggler without anyone but you and us being able to see. Asking if it's okay to say X in such-and-such location is absolutely a valid use of those subforums, and we'd be happy to help out.

 

okay so-- the thing about this forum is that you are quite literally allowed to say most anything you want and we probably won't step in. the line between probably okay and not okay tends to lie somewhere around wishing harm on others or yourself. i've explained this as carefully and clearly as i can, and am happy to continue to try if you need further clarification.

please note that there were a few days between your posts being live and then being wiggled. if you think you're being silenced, we're doing a pretty bad job of it.

 

Personally, I couldn't care less what gets put in a vent thread, but some of our users read peoples' threads to keep up with what's what and sometimes that content can get triggering. I can't speak on their behalf, but I can offer some insight into how things usually work here.

There's never been a hard, exacting guideline on what crosses the line, but topics I'd say would be best off being spoiled include things like, to name a few...child abuse, animal abuse, sexual assault, suicidal thoughts...Basically, taking a few seconds before you post something to think "If this was on Tumblr, would people be upset to see it without a warning beforehand of what they're going to read?" is a solid byline to abide by. Kintsugi is formed largely off Tumblr culture and the vast majority of the userbase and its expectations comes from there.

Things that generally are not okay and will wind up in the Pear Wiggler regardless of spoilers are things that wish harm on other people, threats against other members, and blatant attempts to trigger people.

All things told, the "secret words" are less words and more topics, the majority of which you can skirt around by clicking this button in the post preview ( , in between Media and Drafts, which both look kind of like floppy disks) and scrolling down to spoilers. The end result should look something like this:

Spoiler: I Am A Spoiler Title

Spoiler Contents Here.

 

if basic spoiler tags in consideration of other forum users goes against your ethos, i'm unsure if this forum is the right place for you.

your posts haven't been deleted: they are saved for you, you can access them freely at anytime.
we will not and cannot draw up a list of every word and phrase that could ever be wiggled because all of this is solely a case by case thing. but if you are calling for the death or harm of yourself or others, you are likely to be wiggled if specific warnings are not given.

you are free to have your opinion, but mine is that people should be free to scroll this forum without having to read about how badly another user wants them dead. simply clicking on a random vent thread is not sufficient warning.

you can always come back and refer to this thread, or your wiggled posts, if you're unsure where the lines are. or ask one of us just to be sure.

here is an example of what we're asking for:

Code:

  my day sucked today there's what happened:
[spoiler= CONTENT WARNING HERE] content being warned for here! [/spoiler]

 

The things I listed are basically the same in their underlying rationale.
"Don't wish harm on people, don't threaten people, don't trigger people" can be broken down to...These are all ways in which people are harmed. I'm not going to pretend there aren't other ways where concerning things could be posted - like if someone decided to post a gore image or something, just as a random hypothetical - but from what I understand reading the backlog what got at least one of your posts moved was the lack of a spoiler over a post that was reported, which leads me into my next part: Why people click into threads and there still needs to be a redundancy...How to put this...

Imagine someone scrolling through a thread for no reason other than they're concerned at how that person's doing, and then the thread they're looking at has the person put down that they want to off themselves and put into detail who they want to take with them or whatever. This hypothetical person has struggled with suicidal thoughts their entire life and seeing something like that pushes them closer to the edge, whereas if it was underneath "CW: Suicidal Thoughts" or something like that, then they have the option of deciding, at that crucial moment, to stop there.

I can't really give you a concrete explanation as to why people decide to read on in topics that could upset them. It's human nature to be curious, worried, or whatever emotion could temporarily override fear or panic, and I'm sure it differs by person. Sometimes it's as simple as wanting to be caught up on what's going on with somebody they're concerned about and then reading something they can't handle at that moment.

The spoiler tag/content warning might not make sense to you because you have a strong stomach - I do too and sometimes I find the metric of what, exactly, is problematic to be troubling to pin down. I can't really give you a chart to show you where severity lies because that'd require exhaustively polling every single person on this website and attempting to come to a consensus. At the end of the day, it's a system that's held up by people being considerate for other people, and it's hard to say where goodwill ends and rules begin.

What I do is that whenever I'm talking about a subject that I think could be troublesome in the slightest and I'm mentioning it more than a surface-level thought - like saying "Oh don't talk about sexual abuse" (short, simple, never goes beneath the surface of those two words) - I censor myself whenever it goes beyond there, just to be safe, because I really don't want to ruin other peoples' days. This might be presumptuous of me to say, but I doubt you do either; I don't think you'd be so upset if you didn't think there was an injustice being done here (which, hopefully, we can patch over somehow).

I apologize for the difficulties in communicating going on here. I'm going to step out of this thread for now and pose a few questions to the mod team.

 

Okay, so, when you signed up, did you see the thing about

I think that "[people who do X] deserve the death penalty" is sort of unambiguously saying that something someone did makes it okay to treat them like trash.

Here's my counterpoint question for you:

Do you actually have any trouble at all distinguishing between "[X] deserve to die" and "things that are not particularly offensive or upsetting"? Like, are you genuinely and sincerely confused here? Or are you just mad because you want to say that because you're really mad at those people and you don't think it matters whether it's offensive or upsetting or whatever, because you feel it strongly and want to be allowed to hurt those specific people, who don't matter?

Because if it's the latter, I think actually the mods are doing pretty much what they're supposed to be doing. And if it's the former, I am not sure where to go here because I genuinely can't see how this is in any way subtle or confusing. We've had cases where it was pretty hard to understand what was at issue. This isn't one of them.

I'm not really interested in playing stupid games like claiming that "[X] deserve the death penalty" is not meaningfully calling for them to be killed. Saying that it should be done by state power and not by personal action doesn't actually change anything. That was a ridiculously implausible argument when I used to see it from homophobes arguing that gay people deserved execution, and I don't think I'm inclined to take it any more seriously now.

 

Something like eight or nine years ago, probably! I made a discord in 2016 to join the external modchat, and I wasn't the first moderator brought on board. As it happens, even seebs, the forum owner, is under manual moderation when they want to post, because there were some issues with them unintentionally upsetting people, so at least one additional pair of eyes look at everything they post before it goes public. The post above, one mod said they thought it was fine but wanted additional confirmation, and I came here to manually hit post, and then it became visible.

And because even though the initial forum concept wasn't possible to be PERFECTLY executed, we still try to land at least somewhat close to it. It's the concept the forum was founded around, and even if it's not possible to 100% pull it off, it's still the foundational idea.

 

okay, so you have trouble separating what could be upsetting and what isn't. the unfortunate truth here is that there is no 100% solid answer. what upsets and triggers one person may not affect another separate person at all. the good thing is, however, context matters, and so does the way these words are presented. spoiler tags with a content warning allow people who are just stopping by a chance to consent to see something that could be very upsetting to them.

but for general reference: wishing death on other people is usually not something most people tolerate, anywhere, at all. the only places you wouldn't find push back on this are likely very reactionary spaces. we can use that sort of thing as a baseline if it helps, and ask that wishing death for other people be spoiler tagged, so other people can make an informed decision on whether to read or interact.

given that we don't know you or how you will use this forum, it's hard to give you a concrete answer as to what is okay to say without warning, and what isn't. i could not possibly guess anything you say, nor the context of it.

no one said that. please note that a lot of the members of this forum are autistic, seebs included. we're trying to understand what you need and how to communicate most effectively with you.

 

Up to this point I haven't taken moderation action on a single thing you've posted, but you really don't give the picture of someone who wants to work with people, the way you twist everything to be an insult and how you scream about how we're all horrible people.

You've communicated a total unwillingness to work with the things being presented. The "plain English" you demand has been put forward. Hell, you just cited it. But you're taking the guidelines that pretty much everyone else abides by as requests to be denied, so I'm afraid I'm just going to have to play whack-a-mole when/if you try to break them. Before you try to claim that they haven't been presented, they just were. They're the things you're denying.

They are the safe framework that prevents content from getting wiggled. If someone sees something that disturbs them and it hasn't been tagged, then it goes in the Wiggler. If it's been tagged and it isn't genuinely horrid, it stays.

You probably think I'm rubbing my hands together with glee at saying that, but honestly? I'm upset. You're reaching out in other threads and I think you're doing fine at actually talking to other members. I really want you to fit in.

Harm - upset - whatever you want to call it, it can be mental. I think it's bizarre to come to a forum with a heavy focus on mental health and then try to deny that, because abuse and the sheer problems a human can have can be just as bad mentally as it can be physically. If I can extrapolate from what little I've read of your posts, you're depressed and trying to find ways around it. I get that. I suffer from bipolar and anxiety disorders; they dictate how I spend my life and if I tried to summarize my regrets we'd need a few full forum pages. A lot of the people here have been through a lot, and little things can jostle them into unstable states of mind - relapses, almost, or maybe even literally in some cases.

I'm not trying to demand your silence. I'm trying to ask that you add one line of code for the sake of other peoples' comfort - and that's all it is. Other peoples' comfort. You might notice, if you re-read my post above, that I personally do not care about trigger warnings in relations to things I read. I do them anyway as a courtesy. That's literally all we're asking. It's not to "silence" you, it's not targeted at you; there are currently 2,242 messages in the Pear Wiggler. Of those, four, I believe, are yours at present. This isn't some new thing targeting you, it's been how things've worked for years.

There's not really anything to be done if you don't want to acknowledge us as people in the first place instead of screaming about "vermin" or whatever. Until you're actually willing to consider other peoples' feelings, I don't think there's a way to work with you.

So here's what my approach is going to be:

Casually? Absolutely nothing.

If your posts get reported and actually contain content that could've been handled better, I'm throwing them in the wiggler. If your posts get reported and don't contain content that needs to go in the wiggler, I won't put it there.

Right now, I don't think many of them actually do contain any problematic content. In fact, I think that aside from what got us embroiled in this mess and the associated posts here, you seem to be doing fine elsewhere. That's good. I hope that continues.

I really hope you can find the mental health help you're looking for, but this might not be the place for you if you don't care how many people you upset in the process. If you change your mind about how you want to talk to people, I'm willing to talk. I won't be trying again unless I'm actively approached because I genuinely don't see the point of it when I've said all I can really think to say and you're still insisting it's not enough.

I genuinely hope one of the other mods can somehow get you on an equal playing field, but I can tell this is out of my ballpark. It's why we have more than a few people - some of us are better at certain things than others, and I'm feeling that this is beyond me. Good luck, sincerely, and I hope that either this works out for you somehow. I might chime in on your bipolar thread with my medications sometime later, but if you'd rather I not do that, that's fine too.

 

the word reactionary in this context would mean places like 4chan, or places that tend to lean very heavily right wing. they tend to have much more lax rules about saying whatever you wish, but don't tend to offer that same sense of community that we do. so it's a bit of a trade off.

it's not an order by any means. you are free to post whatever you want to say, as the mods are free to wiggle what they think might really hurt someone. by asking you to spoiler tag something, we are offering a compromise that allows you to post the words you are fighting so hard to say out here in public so long as other people have a momentary chance not to read it.

calling names and throwing misogyny around isn't going to be super helpful. is there a reason you want to bring gender into this conversation?

we have been communicating in plain english. i'm not sure what more you need here. posts are wiggled on a case by case basis with the goal of minimizing splash damage.

again, you are free to post anything you want to say. a spoiler tag is just a compromise. you can deny any request given of you, sure. but that isn't going to stop me from wiggling your posts if i deem it appropriate for the safety of other members. i have tried numerous times to offer you a place to discuss my decisions in front of the other mods. we are not a monolith, we make mistakes and will fact check each other as needed. you could have asked for someone else to look at your posts to see if i was off the mark. you could have asked me specifically to be entirely hands off regarding your posts. you could have communicated any manner of things at any point, but instead have resorted to screaming and slinging around insults. i can tell there is a lot of pain here, and i'm sorry that you seem to be going through a lot, but at this point the ball is in your hands.

harm is not solely a physical thing. this is a forum focused around mental health support---i'm not sure what to say to you if you think harm outside of physical injury doesn't exist. i personally have caused a lot of harm to others via "words on a screen" by being an explosive asshole online, as others have caused harm to me via a text based format. a lot of people here have been wounded by other people's words online, directed at them or not.

we want to help. you aren't allowing us to. i don't think there's much more of a conversation to be had at this point.

a quick note-- you seem to be escalating whenever i specifically reply to you. if you would like me to leave this discussion and allow you a space to speak to the other mods and users without my input, i am more than happy to be very hands off beyond what gets actively reported to us.