[Reserve Admin Advisory Post.]
I would add to Photo's standard. 914 is not ectoentropic… "except when it is", IE, unless that element adds a significant creative detail to an otherwise high-quality entry.
(We shouldn't strictly enforce guidelines not originally intended by the author without some 'outs', and I feel that allowing technical wiggle room that's allowable under the original SCP's standards should be good enough, and helps consistency.)
Should we remove entries that are technically following the guidelines and in-universe rules, but are a boring read? If yes, does a pruner get to decide that or should they ask for a second opinion?
Yes, absolutely remove entries that are a boring read (and aren't early entries that were influential or cool-at-the-time-but-now-are-overplayed — those should stay). This is IMO hugely important for quality control.
However, yes, the pruner should ask for a second opinion. I'd suggest mocking up some kind of process for it. The unofficial process I used to use, years ago, for the Log of Anomalous Items, was as follows:
- An admin/mod can just remove entries, but should explain their justification in a public post so that a couple other staff can disagree-and-reinstate entries if they so wish.
- Regular staff should get a couple second opinions (AKA a small group to help the person out while they pruned)
- Users can request for entries to be reinstated, and staff will consider these requests on their own timeline (since this often requires quality editing from said staff member).
None of that was ever made official, and parts should be tweaked. Using staff level as a differentiation is pretty clumsy. I'd instead suggest writing up a guide to pruning based on creative editing and including cool ideas; generally second opinions are useful for "hey, this does nothing for me and I think it's boring, but you [person with different tastes, not just a rubber stamp BFF of mine], give me your take on this before I cut it", and therefore second opinions are almost always useful.
Do we allow pruners or regular members to edit an entry like this into something more interesting?
Absolutely. This is vital, IMO. Staff should have final discretion on entry editing. Caveat: Please include long-time writers in the process to ensure that entries aren't just edited to coincide with the current 'flavor of the month' standards of realism (which gradually change every year, at minimum).
Note, this is how the 682 log and Anomalous Items log used to work (and maybe still does, but I haven't checked in the last year or longer).
Is it fine to remove 'notes' at the end of tests that make the in-universe personnel look like college students instead of professional researchers?
Absolutely, but consider editing them for professionalism instead (and then removing them anyway if they are boring and don't add flavor or context).
Do we just decide to leave it to the discretion of the pruner because dealing with guidelines like this are more work than they solve?
Well, guidelines help a lot. At least they would for me, a notorious second-guesser. I would make guidelines that leave a lot to pruner discretion, which is what I essentially suggest above.