there are no rules in kintsugi

Your feelings were not an afterthought. I'm going to leave you to it for now I guess. I hope you feel better soon.

 

That makes sense.

I'm curious about this. Had you noticed the content warnings other people often used in the time you've been here?

Okay. But what if it's not "necessary"? What if it's up to you to decide what you can and can't deal with, and if you can't, you can just say "okay, if you think it needs a cw, feel free to add one"? Or you can argue with us. Because I am really big on trying to preserve user autonomy as much as possible, and by most people's standards rather more than is a good idea.

We can totally add a thing about content warnings to the protocol guideline stuff. But! I think you're still expecting a forum that isn't this one. Like, for one thing, as of this writing, we don't have anyone on post moderation who hasn't asked to be on post moderation. We've had people on post mod temporarily without actual permission and engagement, but it's never been a lasting thing.

I'm offering situations that are technically within the scope of what you described, but are very different in other ways. Personal vent threads are still public threads!

Nope! I do not have such an expectation, and no, we won't necessarily moderate to reflect that expectation. We will consider it. In this case, you were super upset by that, so I didn't go edit it more or whatever, because clearly in this case the distress to you was a big problem. And that's the key thing: There's basically nothing that we'll do "regardless of any OP's feelings on the matter". There's probably situations where we'll act first, ask questions later... But we'll still ask the questions and talk to people and try to work things out. In short, OP's feelings will continue to matter. So there's a ton of case-by-case going on here.

Okay, so the thing is: I totally get this, but in this case, it's not that there's actual definite rules which are mostly unspoken. (Okay, rigs has a point about the spambot rule.) It's that we really are talking about a different kind of thing than the rules you're thinking of. I have spent my whole life hating it when people won't tell me the rules, so I understand that, and I'm not doing that thing. I'm doing a different thing which is more confusing but less innately incompatible with autism.

 

Ah, okay, this defines 'rule' as Seebs is using. In the context of f&g's questions especially, I think they're somewhere between the if-x-then-y and the social rules definition, closer to the social rules usage. But slightly in that in-between space because a lot of forums will try to pin down the social rules in a hard and fast, consequence-based way, and also because surprise modly post editing can have a very punishment-flavored feel to it, especially if you're already starting from a bad place and not primed to look for the most charitable explanation.

So some of the stuff is already being addressed up above, like thinking Bel was making a regular old yes/no request, and not being aware of the guidelines thread. But in terms of future issues, if they have more questions, I get the feeling that it's more like when I get upset because of the 'tisms and there are a million social rules that I'm tripping over on my own, and when I ask questions, people are acting like there aren't rules at all and what am I talking about? And from where I'm standing, that's obviously untrue, and asking me to believe that is kind of insulting.

I'm really exhausted and probably not completely parsing all the conversation that's been happening up above, but if f&g has any more questions about forum rules to address, it might work best to approach them as questions about the forum culture and general social guidelines (maybe unspoken) that result from that, and particularly what sorts of deviation from those guidelines are likely to result in pushback from the mods.

 

Oh, the joys of posting and catching up from mobile. Some of this I managed to cover in my last post, but if you try to approximate a definition of 'necessary' that isn't dictionary-perfect, but is more a mashup of what the forum expects, what people in the forum will get upset about, and what will draw mod attention and/or action, I think that's more the line they're asking about. Which is still a very fluffy, hard-to-define line, and it's still open to debate, but it narrows down the parameters enough that a response might not be DEFINITE, but it will still help them define the bounds of what is Accepted, etc. All very fluffy social terminology, but from the other side of the conversation, it's hard to bring things down from philosophy into practical usage.

 

The first addressed concern was the very real emergency of the possibility of having multiple suicidal people on my hands because of one suicidal person's untagged suicide planning.

After trying to make sure that cascade wouldn't happen I had the ability to pay attention to you in the specific. Ensuring that you were the only one I had to pay attention to was as much for your sake as it was for others'.

 

Okay, this is hard, and I'm not smart today, so I'm gonna sort of try to express a thing.

I don't have an expectation that people will content-warn stuff, in general, because I have observed that this is not consistently a thing. I do have an expectation that, in general, people will be amenable to content-warning type things if other people request them. Like, that they won't specifically be offended at the suggestion that there should be content warnings. But even then, it's not that it's necessary, it's that it's probably a pretty good idea unless you have a strong reason to object.

So, lemme use an example from conversations I've seen elsewhere, adapted a bit.

Situation #1: User A mentions having been raped. User B is upset because they would have preferred a spoiler tag or something. User B fusses, User A responds "lol no tags are bad".

Situation #2: User A mentions having been raped. User B is upset because they would have preferred a spoiler tag or something. User B fusses, User A freaks out. They've just gotten out of an abusive household where it was extra super forbidden for them to ever talk about the thing or refer to it or mention it, even in contexts like "no, I do not want to go out for dinner with the person who raped me". It is a huge trigger for them to conceal this information in any way.

In situation #1, I might well say "you know what, tags are important to other people, i don't really care much about your dislike for tags". In situation #2, I might say "okay, but could you try to keep from bringing it up in the recipe thread?"

In situation #1, we're comparing a user's actual triggers to another user's mild distaste for a slight inconvenience. In situation #2, we're talking about actual triggers all around, and I'm more inclined to try to find a way to be accommodating, or consider a compromise solution of some kind.

So what I think I'm running into is... From my point of view, the fact that I can come up with a case where I might well say "okay, you have a legit reason to refuse to spoiler this, I'm not gonna argue with you about that right now" means that I don't really have a generic expectation that people will always content-warn stuff. I do have an expectation that they'll usually do it if someone asks politely, I guess?

So I'll at least add something about content-warning to the guidelines post. Possibly not tonight, I need to think more and my head hurts.

EDIT: I still owe you a more coherent response on the "same or different question" thing but I cannot brains today. Feel free to nag me if I space it off.

 

I am tired and have started drinking with no immediate plans of stopping or being a real person at any time tonight, so I'm throwing this out there because it seems the time and place and I'm the one who does the FAQ.

There is currently a technical how-to for how to warn for triggers in the 'community basics' section of the FAQ. I had assumed this implied that triggers would be something to consider in participating in the community (I am sometimes very, very allistic). Should there be a FAQ explicitly stating that the use of trigger warnings is expected as a general principal in threads treated as communal?

Alternately, if the implication is sufficient, should there be a line in the 'read this first' thread suggesting that more community guidelines can be found in the FAQ?

 

Seebs is working on how to word that sort of thing @Chiomi, because there are large cases where trigger tagging by means of spoilers isn't likely to be necessary at all, and therefore not expected and overly burdensome on the posters. ITA threads (mostly), vent threads (sometimes), etc.

Spoiler warning for self harm discussion in the communal Self Harm Megathread is not expected, for example.

Spoiler warning for discussion of rape in general isn't necessary in the Rape, Sexual Assault, and Harassment Megathread but graphic descriptions of it do need spoilered, as stated in the opening post. It's contextual.

 

No, not really. We don't have and won't be able to create a comprehensive list of Triggering Topics To Be Spoilered. It's still contextual, much like with the "triggering posts in the status box" discussion from a while back.

 

Pretty much, yeah.

A request to add a spoiler or let a spoiler be added isn't quite the same as death by explosion but other than that, spot on.

And it's more like "try not to step on them but if you do it's not a big deal" because hopefully no one dies in the process. Hopefully.

 

It also triggers people's scrupulously and leads to people posting less due to anxiety. It's why we haven't had a big rule thing about it in the past and just hoped people would work with us on a case by case basis. Which we still intend to keep doing, just with a note about that in the guidelines it seems.