Proposal: #site19 Overflow

Summary:

The Model Year 2019 version!

Proposal: #site19 Overflow

ProcyonLotor 19 Jun 2019 02:12

So, a recurrent problem for current active operators is the "politics discussion". The seemingly endless discussions about "what politician sucks/rules today" or "which system is best" that always end in a stop order, whether because it completely overtakes chat as three people froth at each other to the detriment of all other discussion, or because it devolves into petty insults. Speaking personally, they're an absolute nuisance as they basically have to be watched constantly, and can often run for a half-hour or more. In addition, these are frequently accompanied by irritation from users not interested in discussing politics, of which there are many.

While banning political discussion would solve the issue, a problem comes in in that these discussions are usually not inherently problematic. And a ban on political discussion itself would be simultaneously overbroad and likely lead to uneven, subjective, and perhaps even biased enforcement.

The current solution is a flat halt on discussion once it becomes rude or is deemed to overwhelm chat. I believe it would be fairer to our users to offer an overflow chat to redirect these discussions towards. Current "precedent" is a temporary room is created, but that has… literally never been done by an op issuing an order, in my experience. An official place for this to go would lead to clarity for our users and operators and honestly be fairer on users involved in discussions they believe interesting and important.

This room should operate under the exact same ruleset as 19¹, and have the exact same chatstaff. Discipline will be shared between this chat and 19.

This is not a final proposal by any means. Points of discussion I am interested in hearing (in addition to "is this something chatstaff is interested in pursuing") are:

• Whether the room should be permanently open to all discussion, open to self-redirected discussion on "overwhelming" topics, or solely open at operator discretion following an op order.
• Whether chatstaff presence in the room is mandatory or optional for each operator.

As this is a chat matter, I am only seeking input from chatstaff, including half-operators.

Thoughts?

Footnotes

1. Minus, perhaps, the "no discussions that overwhelm chat" guideline, for reasons I hope are self-evident.

Last edited on 19 Jun 2019 02:33 by ProcyonLotor Show more

Re: Proposal: #site19 Overflow

(account deleted) 19 Jun 2019 02:21

I voiced my concerns in opchat on how this could turn into what would essentially be 19 2.0 and only add more stress for the operators, but the discussion has made me open enough to this as an idea and I will be helping out as much as I can.

My opinion is that this should only be an overflow and not a secondary-general chat.

Last edited on 19 Jun 2019 02:25 by (account deleted) Show more

Re: Proposal: #site19 Overflow

AbsentmindedNihilist 19 Jun 2019 02:17

As I said in chat, I fully stand behind this as long as we are not required to pay the same amount of strict attention to conversations going on in the overflow as we would in actual chat - which has been stated in opchat to be the case, so I'm in favor.

Re: Proposal: #site19 Overflow

Jazstar 19 Jun 2019 03:18

I think that this is a good idea. It could also be applied to other potentially controversial topics, religion being the first that comes to mind. I think that it should be up to each current op to decide whether they wish to be present in the chat, but I also think that all future hops should be required to be there. Current ops didn't sign up for a second chat, but I think that new ones should be aware that joining the team means monitoring two chats.Having said that, I do agree with Niles in that it definitely doesn't need to be monitored as closely as 19, with the obvious exception of when ops are called, or when an op orders a conversation to move there.

I also think that this chat should give priority to overflow, but at the end of the day, it should be open to all topics of discussion. Unlike Tay, I think that it could be useful to have it as a secondary general chat, and if an op directs a conversation to it from 19, the secondary room should be informed and maybe active chatters told to take their conversation to 19 or pms until the discussion is over. As SCP continues to grow, so to will the number of people in 19. Having this as a permanent secondary chat will hopefully allow for a less hectic 19 during busy times.

Re: Proposal: #site19 Overflow

MaliceAforethought 19 Jun 2019 09:13

I think the idea of a secondary general chat is an issue in its own right, since it would mostly be created for different reasons than these. Rushing into something like #site19v2 at this stage seems like a recipe for overworking ops — a second general chat would need the number of chatstaff to increase, and major alterations to the chat guide, and generally a lot of other stuff that seems unnecessary given that what we want at the moment is just an "overflow" chat. There are a lot of issues exclusive to "new general chat" that I don't think we really need to deal with here; if staff want to open it up in the future, I'd support that, but right now I gather we're looking for a solution to a specific problem.

Tl;dr: I support this, with the same opinions as Tay and the same caveat as Niles.

Re: Proposal: #site19 Overflow

The Pighead 19 Jun 2019 10:03

Even if I'm not on the chat very often, I support this proposition, mostly because I don't want to came one day in chat and see people who insult each other because politics. After all, we know perfectly that politics sucks, in general.

Re: Proposal: #site19 Overflow

RJB_R 19 Jun 2019 12:56

So re-making neutralzone with the #19 operators running things?

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Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you!

Re: Proposal: #site19 Overflow

ProcyonLotor 19 Jun 2019 15:04

I'm not interested in a specific debate chat. A lot of the discussions at issue are less debates and more… people loudly agreeing with each other in a circle.

Re: Proposal: #site19 Overflow

LilyFlower 19 Jun 2019 16:30

Let's just use guntalk

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~🌸~Flower Power~🌸~

Re: Proposal: #site19 Overflow

RJB_R 24 Jun 2019 12:12

That’s a polite way of putting it. I’ve got the #site77 channel sitting vacant if y’all want to make use of it.

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Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you!

Re: Proposal: #site19 Overflow

Uncle Nicolini 19 Jun 2019 13:45

Qualifying this with a big ol

"I am not a chat op and I barely even go into 19 as is, BUT…"

… I think this is a fine idea. Every time I do decide to poke my head into 19 there's always the same tiring political conversation going on. I'd be more inclined to use 19 if there's a place to herd those discussions towards.

Re: Proposal: #site19 Overflow

fieldstone 19 Jun 2019 14:42

I like the idea of a place to redirect political debate and so on to a other room, both because it keeps 19 free for writing/scp related discussion and because I like the idea of a place for people to talk about those subjects even if I don't want to be part of it.

post got kind of long

In practice I think if the room requires operators to send people there specifically, it won't get much use - people will just shut up about the distracting subject rather than go to what is essentially a time out box, which is fine but doesn't seem like a real change from what we have now. I think the only way it would see enough use to be effective is if it were open for people to move themselves into (with or without staff prompting) when they want to talk politics.

Inevitably you would have a subset of users that spend more and more time in that secondary environment, until you have a group that hangs out there more or less exclusively. This outcome seems essential to the room working for its intended purpose (people actually taking their contentious conversations into it and continuing there), but as far as moderator workload goes it would effectively create a smaller and nastier secondary 19.

Having a second room to oversee would add to the quantity of moderator work but I'm more concerned with the type of moderation required there, which would by nature be more difficult to navigate. You'd almost have to have a different set of rules/expectations from 19, because it would just be weird to set up a debate room and not let people actually debate there - so it would be more pressure on the operators, and for this reason I don't think ops who already signed up should have to be in there if they don't want to.

With all that said, I'm personally interested in how this kind of experiment would turn out and would gladly help run it to the (very small) extent that I can. It does seem like doing it effectively would be a pretty big project for the team as a whole and merits asking tough questions about whether it would be worth the effort in the end.

Last edited on 19 Jun 2019 14:45 by fieldstone Show more

Re: Proposal: #site19 Overflow

salvagebar 27 Jun 2019 20:38

On the whole, I think this idea is worth a try. I'm late to the discussion, so everything specific I might have to say has already been brought up.