Board Policy Discussion

[Alicorn]

This is a new board, and it appears to be attracting cool people and good topics! I am super pleased. However, all communities on the internet can become breeding grounds for drama. Please use this thread to discuss problems that might happen, and what might be done about them; and any other reasons to have board policy on anything.

[Bluelantern]

Very basic stuff would include Content? what is okay to post here? the language to use? Are we going to use trigger warnings?

I don't think anyone is going to post a link to a graphic adult-themed gif that can cause a epileptic attack (at least not without warning), but better not risk it.

I am sorry if this is too vague.

[Shoal]

preference for people to not post flashy epilepsy gifs -- they can push me into a migraine if i'm already close to one. (and they can kill a person with epilepsy)

[Adelene]

My ideal situation re: gifs would be to not have any moving stuff on the board itself, and to expect links to such things to be marked accordingly. I'm not sure that'd be considered a reasonable request, though. (I have a problem with moving images being distracting/hypnotizing even when they're not flashy, which is usually manageable but still inconvenient.)

[Alicorn]

I'm willing to disable animated images - I'm pretty sure I've successfully disallowed them as avatars - if I find a setting to do it. I'm certainly willing to enshrine it in policy and kill any I spot.

Language: I'd prefer everything be in English so I can keep track of it. I am alas monolingual. If you mean swearing and stuff, swear away; if you mean slurs, don't be a jerk.

I feel like the content of my stuff is sufficiently full of all common triggers that unless someone shows up here having read literally nothing but Earthfic, they will be sufficiently warned; someone correct me if I don't have the internal geography of trigger-warning-needing-people straight in my head.

[Adelene]

Thanks. :)

I don't think trigger warnings work how you think they work? But more to the point as of right now there's nothing in particular stopping people from hitting my 'forced psychiatric/medical treatment' one, and that might be a handy place to start for setting precedents if you want to.

[Alicorn]

I'm uncomfortable with a policy that requires scrupulous warning for unusual triggers, though if people want to do it I'm not gonna stop them. It seems like it could spiral out of control and make the marginal commenter go "fuck it, that's too many things to keep track of". This board has existed for a weekend and already has nearly thirty registered users; it could get bigger. If someone's triggered by the color orange or somebody's triggered by wasps and so on and so forth, I don't want to minimize their distress, I just question the wisdom of making perhaps as many as several hundred people take the extra cognitive steps of "is there anything triggering in this? should I check the Big List Of Things? is this close enough to count? does that person even visit this section? if I mess up do I get banned or something?" that could too easily end up in board-killing levels of "ah, fuck it".

[jalapeno_dude]

I am not someone who gets triggered by things, but I think you may not be being sufficiently sensitive here. Having just read the Luminosity liveblog you linked, discussion of Radiance, for example, will definitely be triggering for "unloving parents", and that's hardly an unusual trigger. Same for Effulgence and pain/self-mutilation/abusive parents...

Maybe the best way to do it is to have a separate forum for each work (or subforums in Storytime) and use the description string for each forum to list TWs. Then there won't be a need to police individual posts/threads.

[Alicorn]

Some of the most interesting meta is about comparing/contrasting, though. That trades poster diligence in warning for mod diligence in categorizing, which I suppose is an improvement, but definitely imperfect.

I don't object, of course, to warnings on stories themselves - How To Read Effulgence has a bit about that. That's a one-time cost for an arbitrary number of future readers, not an ongoing maintenance job.

My suspicion is that people with common triggers are simply not likely to enjoy my work enough to inhabit this forum - if someone is triggered by unloving parents wouldn't they drop Radiance like a hot potato mid-chapter, not seek out a fan community?

[Bluelantern]

Language: I'd prefer everything be in English so I can keep track of it. I am alas monolingual. If you mean swearing and stuff, swear away; if you mean slurs, don't be a jerk.

I meant swearing and "stuff". I don't think you will get a sudden influx of people that won't speak english in this forum. Personally I will try to translate if I need to speak in portuguese. Não se preocupa. Don't Worry.