Staff will discuss how to proceed. In the meantime, chatops who receive questions about applications should just explain that due to a spammer, apps are currently not being accepted.

Edit: Annnnnd they self-deleted. Keep an eye out for further fuckery.

After some discussion in SSSC this morning, I'm going to build a little tool to assist with quickly providing relevant boilerplate crit. You'll be able to select the things wrong with the piece and it will output the final comment. I do need some assistance on the desired categories and comments.

• Increase the usage of 'Autocrit' and boilerplate responses, particularly when the drafts are miles away from viable.
• Put some burden on the submitter to answer some questions ahead of any crit being performed. What is the concept in a nutshell? What are you wanting to evoke in the reader? Get a baseline of information that must be included in a draft or even just an idea to be reviewed. The submitter really should be putting more effort into their work than the crit staff are. Threads that do not answer the basic questions in advance are locked and told to try again with all the stuff we need to get a real idea of what we're reviewing. We do not have to make the process overly burdensome, but there should likely be more accountability on the part of the submitter than there is now.
• Raising the barrier to entry by some amount, but not via a queue system. Something that would more strongly challenge potential members on, at the very least, their reading comprehension and willingness to read required materials. This could be by going closer to how the site worked in previous years, where there were multiple articles that constituted required reading. We could intersperse several sets of instructions across each of them.
• Requiring first-time submitters to either use I&B, get vetted, and submit a draft for review, or have them pass a more complex test that would show their ability to read and write at or around a college level and exempt them from this process.

Things I don't like: The suggested allowing of non-members to comment. I think the reasoning against this has been thoroughly expanded upon, just adding my dissent as well.

So, I've been looking at the recent flood of drafts and noticed a common theme among most of them. The majority of new-user drafts are low-quality attempts to get their idea included in one of the SCP-based games. This likely stems from Mark, Pewds, et al. doing reviews/let's plays. Now, don't get me wrong, I've seen users who rode the wave of the Markiplier Incident from a few years ago become high-rated authors. This is not the norm, obviously.

I think the best way to fix the issues of SCP game shoehorns would be the requirement to post your concept to the I&B forum before putting it in the drafting forum. This would allow us to say whether an idea is just going to turn into a generic monster or not without having to read through an entire draft. Possibly this could be the case for the first 2 to 3 months on the site. This would give newbies the chance to learn without having to force more experienced users to go through the process any time they want some feedback.

I've long-since thought that the application could easily be brought back to something a little more substantial, like the old days, albeit not nearly as harsh or difficult. Just enough to make new users prove that they're worth the trouble.

Well, to be honest I would not be where I am now if I didn't cut my teeth in the forums. I have also seen quite a few users start out without much experience, but with some guidance (and a staff post or two) they became great assets in the idea forum. While it is definitely true that many users just cause problems and then leave after a month or less, there are also users who like me who improve over time and (possible even) become staff. And processing apps like this would also take a fair amount of time to do properly. So it could cause even more problems for the admins who have to read through these and accept them. We either need more admins, or less applications for something like this to work properly (at least from my point of view).

There isn't really a good way that I can see to predict whether someone is going to be Totally Excessive Work, Not Excessive Work, or Work But Worth It, at time of joining/application.

So, I've been looking at the recent flood of drafts and noticed a common theme among most of them. The majority of new-user drafts are low-quality attempts to get their idea included in one of the SCP-based games. This likely stems from Mark, Pewds, et al. doing reviews/let's plays. Now, don't get me wrong, I've seen users who rode the wave of the Markiplier Incident from a few years ago become high-rated authors. This is not the norm, obviously.

Second observation here is the application process. With such a simple process, anyone can skim the Rules pages, find the passcode, plug it in, wait a day, and tiptoe freely through the tulips.

I've long-since thought that the application could easily be brought back to something a little more substantial, like the old days, albeit not nearly as harsh or difficult. Just enough to make new users prove that they're worth the trouble.

But frankly, most of the drafts that get posted are drivel that even the writer didn't put any level of serious thought or energy into.

This, right here, makes me think that a solution is right around the corner, and I hope my idea can help.

ETA: Of the 63 full crits I've done in the last 30 days, maybe about a third of them really showed promise. Just my two extra cents.

Now.

What if forum crit was to set a schedule for its members? A time allocated to each member of the team when they should be helping out on the forums. Part of the issue, aside from just burnout and other things, are that critstaff simply don’t have the time scheduled or planned to crit.

Obviously, such a schedule would be flexible, but holding ourselves accountable for certain times of day/the week to be doing crit might help everyone be more active.

If that doesn’t work, we can also try setting a baseline amount of critique forum crit members need to accomplish to remain on the team (barring outside circumstances and such). Something like 1-3 drafts a week minimum?

edit: This was a very random and spur of the moment thought that I had, and I am aware it has nothing to do with the queue system above

The most immediate way to provide relief that a few people in admin chat came up with was to restructure the application process, changing the site permissions so that anyone with a wikidot account can comment but only those who are site members can create threads and edit/post pages.

Bad idea. This just makes it that much easier for trolls to run loose in the discussion threads.

2.

I put forth the idea of requiring that new authors submit concepts to the Ideas and Brainstorming forum before they can make a draft thread for a sandbox draft.

Zyn has put forth this idea twice; as the captain and primary worker on Forum Crit, she knows what she's talking about. If you're going to admin fiat anything, admin fiat this requirement. Here's how it could work: first, authors would be required to receive a positive response in the I&B thread for their idea, and then link their I&B thread in their draft crit thread as proof. Any threads that don't fulfill this requirement could simply be locked, and users that attempt to spam such threads could be disciplined.

3.

3. Locking the forums for a day every week would improve our ability to catch the forum back up to a good place, give forum staff a chance to relax, would not cause much trouble for staff or users if it didn't work out, and would could be easily reverted.

This is a great idea that is, again, supported by the captain of Forum Crit. Let's lock the forums once per week for a month and see how well it works to stem the flood on the crit forums. If it works well, we continue the program. If it doesn't work well, we open the locked day up again. As far as I'm concerned, if someone doesn't have the patience to wait for a day, then they don't deserve to have their article critiqued - and more than likely it wouldn't have been worth the effort to do so, elitism be damned.

4.
I fully support a queue system. Let's systemize it the same way we systemized Deletions so that we don't get 100 people coming in once a week and instead get a steady, controlled flow of new users. Extreme growth has been a matter of some concern for some time now and I'm fine with testing this as a way to help control that growth without causing outright stagnation.

As one of the primary drivers of the autocrit discussion, I think it’s also worth discussing a potential shift in forum crit objectives. Right now, the current objective is to ensure all drafts get replies. While this is something that is an easily measured metric, it also means that significant forum crit effort goes to drafts that probably won’t make it anywhere.

We should begin considering alternative metrics that don’t place so much stress on forum crit, as the current system will continue to be an eternal effort that no amount of incentive will ever solve in the long run.

The part of this I would like for everyone to see here, more than anything else, is that this idea can easily be reverted with almost no issues. So if there is enough support for this idea, we can try it for a half a month. Then we can see if there are more cold posts or complaints about the system. And if it turns out that this idea is not working as planned, it can be reverted without giving anyone much (if any) more work.

I’ll be posting my thoughts on the main issue later.

After the cliche contest and holidays, I can maybe take some time and work on doing at least forum crit a week. That might help.

On another note, I know our enemy is the dual-headed monster of growth and decline, but would limiting the amount of people who can post on the site to established members for just two weeks really kill us or our reputation that badly?