[DISCUSSION] Changing Our Mindset

Summary:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eventual_consistency

[DISCUSSION] Changing Our Mindset

OptimisticLucio 05 Jul 2022 12:16

Mirror mirror on the wall

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I want to talk about a common mindset that seems to rear its head in most of our processes, both public-facing and not: The idea that it is imperative to have nothing bad ever happen.

At first you might go "of course we wouldn't want bad things to happen, what's the issue?" but that's not quite what I'm referring to. The issue is the thought process that if nothing bad ever happens, it is preferable to any other system where something bad may happen. For example: Our greenlighting system is designed to ensure no bad articles hit the critique threads. Our joining process, in particular the passcode, is designed to ensure no users who join have skimmed the rule pages. Sticking on IRC was done, among other reasons, due to IRC having a higher bar of entry (seriously). All of these processes ensure something "wrong" never happens in our systems.

Unfortunately, all of this comes at a price: less good stuff happens. Just because something isn't bad it doesn't mean it is good, and designing our systems around loss prevention makes us forget to use our systems to improve the user's enjoyment of the site. We kept the sandbox under lock and key because of one troll, while sacrificing the usability of the sandbox for hundreds of users. We've stayed on IRC to not have more annoying users on the official platforms, and made it so that no one wants to use our official chat platform other than a handful of users. We've made dozens of guides "required reading," leading to new users feeling like the site is impossible to join and incredibly elitist.

We need to drop this mindset wholeheartedly, and start using systems that allow bad situations to happen, maybe even a lot of them, if they give our userbase a net gain.

This mentality of "take risks if it'll help overall" can be seen everywhere: in system programming (as linked in the thread description), in competitive games (such as fighting games or magic the gathering), and almost anywhere else that deals with risk/reward. There are of course certain areas where avoiding any bad situation is preferable, but that's only when any loss is so great it cannot be afforded. I do not believe having a coldpost reach -10 is critical to the site's functioning to such a degree we have 30 preemptive systems to avoid such an occasion.

This thread is here to discuss my post here, see what people think, and hopefully move onward with a stronger idea of what we want to see from our site.

Last edited on 05 Jul 2022 12:17 by OptimisticLucio Show more

Re: [DISCUSSION] Changing Our Mindset

OptimisticLucio 05 Jul 2022 14:41

It's been requested that we put a hold on this thread until the complaints thread finishes, so… For now, staffers reading this, hold the phone.

Re: [DISCUSSION] Changing Our Mindset

Meserach 05 Jul 2022 13:02

I agree with this, with the following incredibly strong caveats:

• All loosening of entry barriers (of whatever variety) must be accompanied by a preceding significant increase in person-power in the areas most likely to be affected.
• The expanded staffing needs to be in place at least a month or two /before/ the entry barriers are lowered/loosened, to let the new staff be properly onboarded.
• For overall site entry, this means more people on Disc and more people with moderator permissions, at a minimum. Problem there is that current staff practices make both of these staff subsets much harder to expand, compared to other teams. As such, this may need to wait on overall staff restructuring, to make "moderator" as a site permission more widespread.
• For entry to authorship and crit spaces, this means more people on the crit team (or additionally/alternatively, systems that encourage more crit to be coming from the community)
• For entry to chat spaces, this means more recruitment if moderators to those teams. The embryonic Discord team has made progress on this very recently as part of its slowly ramping up, staged strategy. I'd like to see such "staging" used for other barrier-lowering plans.

As the site gets bigger, staff needs to get bigger with it. I don't have the numbers available to work out what kinds of ration are reasonable, but I do think it makes sense to observe that the ratio of users to staff is a lot higher now than it was even five years ago. That isn't sustainable and is a recipe for burnout and frustration on all sides.

This also means abandoning a mindset where any one person or even a small set of people can understand everything that's going on with the site (let alone the community) at any given time. More needs to be delegated, and less can be consensus based, and roles at the "top" of the heirarchy need to be considerably broadened in membership (so more people with power and purview are available and empowered to address problems), narrower in scope (so any given individual has less to think about and fewer things to juggle), or preferably both. We will need to be open to quite radical ideas on staff restructuring.

Re: [DISCUSSION] Changing Our Mindset

OptimisticLucio 05 Jul 2022 13:19

About your caveats: You are still assuming, for the most part, that the majority of work will come from staff. This change in mindset isn't just a simple "lower entry barriers to the site," it also includes rethinking existing systems to make them more freeform. Your comment about allowing more community crit does show you're aware of what I'm saying here to some degree, but I still want to emphasize - we should allow more freeform systems that, while they do not promise consistent quality, ensure the systems will be alive and overall helpful. We can't do everything, nor promise perfection.

Like, I'm in favor of more staff, but a lot of the work we do can be cut down significantly. (For example - I still think our monitoring of individual sandbox pages, beyond just edits to collab pages, is pointless at this point.)

Total agreement on the final paragraph.

Re: [DISCUSSION] Changing Our Mindset

Leveritas 05 Jul 2022 13:52

I completely get where you're coming from, but can we feasibly change these systems without opening the floodgate to underage users and having run after members giving each other bad crit?

As a reviewer, the greenlight system has been a godsend. The amount of times I had to redirect someone to the idea forum because the idea of their murder monster wasn't workable was huge. The issue worsened with other users saying ''hey, we don't use the number (#) anymore and you should use meters instead of feet'' instead of addressing the core issue that their ''Slender but with sharp teeth that has a smile'' wouldn't go over well.

The wiki has a quality standard, and while I do agree that we shouldn't create intentionally confusing systems (agreed on the IRC thing, thank god for Discord), but there's nothing inherently wrong with having barriers to entry. If you're not patient enough to read a join page thoroughly, you likely won't have the attention span to listen to feedback, for example.

Forum crit is swamped with users needing feedback as it is, if we also have to run after users giving each other misleading feedback (unintentionally) the workload will increase even more.

I do not believe having a coldpost reach -10 is critical to the site's functioning to such a degree we have 30 preemptive systems to avoid such an occasion.

The greenlight system is less about avoiding -10 posts, but rather to minimise reviewers wasting their time. When an idea makes it to the draft forum, it's going to be a workable idea, because two authors have faith in it.

We've made dozens of guides "required reading," leading to new users feeling like the site is impossible to join and incredibly elitist.

Yeah, we should really look at what we can get rid of in that front, it looks intimidating. I wouldn't go as far as calling it ''impossible'' but it's a lot. Having said that, we should look if it just feels elitist or if it actually is, like the password for example. It's not elitist to ask for a password, but the required reading could probably be shaved down a lot. We might want to remake ''how to write an SCP'' while we're at it.

Last edited on 05 Jul 2022 13:58 by Leveritas Show more

Re: [DISCUSSION] Changing Our Mindset

OptimisticLucio 05 Jul 2022 14:03

but can we feasibly change these systems without opening the floodgate to underage users and having run after members giving each other bad crit?

Gonna be a little harsh here - You're responding to a thread criticizing a mindset, by utilizing the exact mindset I'm criticizing. The idea of the post is "yes, more bad stuff will happen, and that's fine." The floodgates will be opened, and that's ok. We can find other ways of dealing with them that aren't disallowing entry. Like if you disagree with that mindset that's totally cool, I'm just not entirely sure how I can respond to this question more than I did in the main post, yknow?

Additionally, the majority of your post seems to be specifically about the greenlight system rather than the general idea being proposed, which… I'll be honest, with the discussion in staffchat about greenlight specifically, I feel like I'm not the person who can accurately make calls on how to fix it. I'll take your word there.

Re: [DISCUSSION] Changing Our Mindset

Leveritas 05 Jul 2022 14:38

Additionally, the majority of your post seems to be specifically about the greenlight system rather than the general idea being proposed, which… I'll be honest, with the discussion in staffchat about greenlight specifically, I feel like I'm not the person who can accurately make calls on how to fix it. I'll take your word there.

Yeah, it's the one thing I'm confident I can definitely comment on, hah.

We can find other ways of dealing with them that aren't disallowing entry. Like if you disagree with that mindset that's totally cool, I'm just not entirely sure how I can respond to this question more than I did in the main post, yknow?

Disallowing entry aren't words I'd use, more of barriers to entry. The IRC thing I agree on, but the password is a pretty simple and low hurdle in my opinion.

Re: [DISCUSSION] Changing Our Mindset

ManyMeats 05 Jul 2022 14:07

We need to drop this mindset wholeheartedly, and start using systems that allow bad situations to happen, maybe even a lot of them, if they give our userbase a net gain.

So, you didn't try to assert that this was objective reality so my response here is not "to" you, but I need to point out that this is a value judgment and one that I do not agree with beyond a nominal overlap. There are absolutely valuable nuggets in what you said about keeping in mind our duty and purpose is to improve access to and interaction with content and community. However, it is not simply our goal to enable as many people as possible, our goal is to enable specifically the kind of thing we want to accomplish, and to do so in the most sustainable and high-quality way.

Our solutions must be problem-oriented. Anything else is either philosophical in nature or a value judgment, and those types of discussions inform policy approaches, they do not and should not set policy because doing so is reckless (on any and all ends of this).

Re: [DISCUSSION] Changing Our Mindset

OriTiefling 05 Jul 2022 16:18

Noting that there is an ongoing discussion in staffchat regarding this topic in relation to crit spaces, and notable points will be ported here when it wraps up (hopefully sometime tomorrow).

Anyone else interested in helping improve the crit process- take a look at the Draft and Ideas Forum guidelines and try to identify areas that seem to confusing or complex, and let us know!