NOTE: Recap are a team who log and report discussions that occur on the Discord Staffchat of the -EN branch of the SCP Wiki. We make a note of all conversations that occur across over the month, identify those that are of interest to the site’s usebase at large, and provide recaps / summaries of these discussions. Each recap has gone through three review stages: the Recap team signs off on one-another’s recaps, then we show it to the Admins and Captains on Staff, then we show it to the rest of staff. We endeavor to provide recaps that are readable, comprehensive, but not a slog to get through. Sometimes that’s easy, sometimes… not so much. If you’re having trouble with understanding what’s going on in any of the recaps, if you want any further information, or anything like that, please don’t hesitate to get in contact with a member of the Recap team to have a chat, or to comment feedback below!
Table of Contents
Topic: LadyKatie's Wildlife Report | 2022/01
Summary: LadyKatie educates staff on the wonders of the animal kingdom.
Recap: LadyKatie provides a series of nature vignettes in recognition of the success of previous LadyKatie's Wildlife Reports.
3 January:
Today in Wildlife: I saw a group of buzzards sunning themselves on a neighbor's roof while driving home today. While not the prettiest buzzards and other carrion birds play an important role in the ecosystem, and that makes them wonderful and special. So take a moment today to appreciate your carrion birds for the important role they play.
5 January:
I saw three deer in the lot across from my house, one of which was a buck with antlers. They shed those in late winter/early spring.
6 January:
spotted today: a greater sandhill crane! They're migratory birds, and are about 4 feet tall with a 6 foot wingspan (which I did get to see because I stopped to take a picture of them, and they flew off)
HarryBlank responds: "Oh man, that's some variety right there"; "We must've gotten a bigger budget after getting renewed."
LadyKatie wants SirSlash to know that them saying "Wildlife Recap's the best part of Recap" is the reason behind "the more thoughtful wildlife recaps" of January.
21 January:
"the cold rain's made animalspotting difficult, but yesterday I saw a red-tailed hawk on my way home from work! These little guys made a successful bounce back from endangered status along with a few other species with forest regrowth the banning of hunting them for sport and DDT being outlawed. Lots of things are better off with DDT being outlawed."
HarryBlank thinks this is excellent. LadyKatie agrees: "Yeah! They left the endangered species list in 2008. Recent, but wonderful. And proof that these laws work."
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Topic: FAQ Rewrite Discussion | 2022/01/04
Recap: EstrellaYoshte states she's going to post a discussion on a rewrite of the site's Frequently Asked Questions page, but checks first that there are no objections. Three hours later, she posts a link to the new discussion post, and UncertaintyCrossing ports it to the #staff-announcements Discord channel. The discussion lasted for 5 days, and the changes were implemented with minor edits on the 9th.
05 Link: http://05command.wikidot.com/forum/t-14420739/
Mainsite Mirror: https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/forum/t-14420742/
Estrella waited for 3 hours before posting the discussion.
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Topic: Poisoned Slot, Wikidot, and Wikijump | 2022/01/04
Summary: Staff discuss the appearance of another poisoned slot, as well as various wikidot bugs. There is mention of the "Wikijump" project, which has been looking for new team members.
Recap: Vivarium notes that another SCP slot, 5258, has been “poisoned”. He notes his belief that the article was deleted according to the new policy, designed to avoid “poisoning” more slots. Hexick notes that this has occurred shortly after Michał Frąckowiak, founder of Wikidot, had a period of brief activity on Wikidot. Various staff members mourn the loss of another slot, and DrBleep mourns the fact that her username remains attached to the placeholder page for slot #5257. Alexander notes this as another reason to look forward to Wikijump. In response, EstrellaYoshte notes another bug that has cropped up: frames appear to be blocked if hosted on wdfiles (wikidot’s file-host site). This issue has had wide-ranging impacts for the wiki, impacting specific wiki pages, as well as modules.
Joreth expresses surprise that Frąckowiak had returned. Yossipossi notes that his appearance seemed to “break wikidot in a new and novel way”. Siddartha Alonne asks whether he said anything, Yossi says he didn’t, and that Frąckowiak likely doesn’t care about Wikidot. According to Yossipossi, this change was likely made to “downsize wikidot”. According to Estrella and Yossi, Frąckowiak has in the past caused tags to disappear, before fixing this issue.
On a positive note, Yossi also notes that Wikijump has “promising candidates” for additions to its team. LadyKatie notes this is a positive aspect of the Tech Trust, citing it as a way to “speed up wikijump” by gaining some more web developers willing to work on the project.
This discussion took around 6 hours.
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Topic: Recap Jira Board | 2022/01/06
Recap: aismallard notes that a Jira board has been created for the Recap team, which is intended to become the new centre for the creation, drafting, and vetting of recaps. aismallard says she needs to set it up, and that after the team can begin using it.
This took a minute to be announced.
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Topic: HTTPS Conversion Guide Discussion | 2021/05/01
Recap: aismallard posts a link to a discussion thread on the topic of a new guide. This guide explains how to link to the Wiki, and how to edit pre-existing links to follow these guidelines. There are no responses to this message in the chat, and the discussion continues largely without issue.
On the 13th of January, this guide is posted to the Wiki.
05 Thread: http://05command.wikidot.com/forum/t-14421804/
Mainsite Mirror: https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/forum/t-14421822/
This announcement was a single message.
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Topic: Adding JakdragonX to Recap | 2022/01/05
*Summary:* Pr0m37h3um gathers opinions on a potential new recruit to the Recap team. Responses are mixed, but overall positive and/or trusting of pr0m37h3um's judgement. An argument ensues over one staffer's response, but it is resolved shortly.
Recap: Pr0m37h3um asks staff if anyone has “any thoughts on JakdragonX as a potential candidate to Recap?” Bleep is hesitant due to maturity and impulsivity but defers to recap’s judgement. Hungrypossum mentions that “Jak's had some moments in discussion pages” but then points out that this is not uncommon and that recap could probably use the help. Pr0m37h3um argues that Jak has come a long way and gee adds that “jak has had one of the best redemption arcs of all wiki users tbh.” Lucio, Hexick, and Vivarium each express support with considerations that “Worst case jak gets demoted if they end up being a bad fit,” “Jak has improved immensely over the years,” and “I trust your judgement prom” respectively. Edna Granbo, however, has some hesitations as she states “I still do not like jak at all, so I have no fuckin idea if they should be staff or not” along with a qualifier that “This is probably more of me being a petty bitch but idk.” Based on the overall support, Pr0m37h3um adds Jak to recap team post-december recap. Whitney, ROUNDERHOUSE, and FabledTiefling also express support for JakdragonX, stating (respectively) that he “is one of the kindest people I know I can full heartedly say I trust the guy,” “he’s good people,” and “I have full faith in Jak's ability to operate politely and professionally in this environment.”
GremlinGroup then asks Edna Granbo to “let me know your reasoning? Is there something important about Jak that could influence his staffwork?” Edna Granbo responds to GremlinGroup that “I just don't like them so I avoid them 100%” and GremlinGroup asks “So there isn't any reasoning?” Edna Granbo answers that “No, I have no idea about him at all other than how he was whenever the fuck Like a year ago or whatever.” GremlinGroup thanks Edna Granbo and she continues that “If people are vouching then I don't care, I'm just saying that I do not like them at all” and confronts GremlinGroup that “if you have a problem you can just say it instead of being condescending.” GremlinGroup responds that “I'm not trying to be condescending; I asked if there was anything we needed to know about Jak, you said you dislike him but don't care as long as he is vouched for” and Vivarium reminds Edna Granbo of “the expected decorum we wish to see from staff. If you have a problem with a user on a personal level please do not bring that into staff channels when he is brought in. We gotta work together with civility.” Edna Granbo responds to Vivarium by stating “Yeah I'm not a fucking dumbass, I'm not going to start shot for zero reason.” Alexander tells Vivarium that their reminder to Edna Granbo “comes off as just a bit condescending” to which Vivarium says “It might have. I'm just making sure the expectations are stated.” Edna Granbo responds to Vivarium’s explanation with “Do you think that I don't know the expectations of staff? When I've been here for years?” And Vivarium explains that they “would do the same regardless of who I was talking to. I just noticed a bit of hostility coming from you when Greebo asked a follow up question and that concerned me briefly.” gee chimes in to suggest that the current discussion does not need to be happening, suggests a break, and Vivarium leaves to play Mario Kart.
Edna Granbo responds one minute later saying “Put on my nondisc that I'm a cunt or whatever, I'm not gonna deal with people being condescending to me about stupid shit.” Pr0m37h3um attempts to ease the tension by explaining that “if it eases your concerns, Jak has genuinely improved since his first ventures onto the site. If worst comes to worst, we can always remove him from the team, but I do not imagine that will be necessary. His induction to staff will allow recap to breath a little easier and will hopefully allow you to ease your apprehension regarding him” and Vivarium tells Edna Granbo that “literally this is hostile. I'm not condescending you and I'm sorry if it came off that way.” ROUNDERHOUSE then enters to point out that people were not “being intentionally condescending so much as confused by the visceral reaction which obviously could come across as condescension.” Edna Granbo takes two minutes to calm down and then apologizes to GremlinGroup and Vivarium.
This discussion took place over two hours.
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Topic: December Recap Review | 2022/01/04 - 2022/01/08
Summary: Staff ostensibly review the December recap, in between jokes and tangents.
Recap: pr0m37h3um starts the Recap Review thread for December of 2021, noting: "this is the earliest we've had a general review start!"
stonefish requests: "Anytime you’re quoting someone quoting something else, as with me and the copyright rulings, the interior quotations should be changed to single quotation marks for ease of reading." HarryBlank disagrees: "the quotations are so verbatim I am leery about changing even the punctuation, as we make literally zero other alterations unless absolutely necessary with square brackets." He acknowledges that the point seems minor, but "normally when one "is quotating 'and then quotating'" one isn't doing so in the context of keeping minutes."
Vivarium notes that he's often quoted in the recaps; "I'm not sure how to feel about it." Harry calls him both "Verbosium" and "a quotable notable," clearly linguistically devastated after helping to produce the recap. He notes, more seriously, that "December and November are unusually quotation-heavy because that's faster and we were swamped and undermanned to a truly obscene degree." He also stresses that the quotations are "parsimonious" as "all repetition is cut."
JackalRelated laments that he has not been quoted. stonefish suggests he "Say more cool controversial things" and Harry promises to start a fight with him. Jackal takes the initiative: "Silent Hill 1 is better than Silent Hill 2." Harry responds with "Shut your blackboxed mouth," confirming his creative drain. Alexander recaps this as "User jackalrelated makes an objectively false statement, and HarryBlank responds vehemently," and HarryBlank remarks: "Wow that does sound like me." Jackal prefers "User jackalrelated spit facts and Harry… has an opinion."
There is a brief crisis as HarryBlank asks for the link to the recap document to be pinned, and nobody can actually do that until ManyMeats shows up to be a hero. "Yeehaw," they yeehaw.
OptimisticLucio provides a series of corrections, which HarryBlank attends to.
stonefish wonders what parts of this recap will make the SCP Declassified Discord angry, and GremlinGroup asks them not to paint all SCPD users with one brush. GremlinGroup also notes that Recap tends to get high-level engagement from a small portion of the community, who read through the whole document. GremlinGroup notes that it's "nice to know we have some consistent readers outside of staffchat!" Lucio agrees that SCPD has not "gotten riled up against recaps so far." gee opines: "scpd like recaps bcs they get to know what goes on." stonefish acknowledges that "Most people are chill." GremlinGroup explains his concerns: "Hopefully you understand if I'm touchy about characterisation of SCPD; misunderstandings in that arena have led to considerable slowdowns the past year." stonefish agrees, but "as someone who was a regular user of SCPD", before joining other communities and Staff, they "think #meta-scp-discussion is one of the biggest generators of undue anxiety and ill will in the entire community space. I understand why it’s there, but visiting a space just for wiki drama, and seeing how invested people are, has never left me feeling good." They acknowledge that this may be a personal issue. GremlinGroup agrees that SCPD can "get a little overwhelming at times."
GremlinGroup asks: "In general, folks, make sure to attend to whether the phrase you're correcting is a quotation, and whether the correction you're making is an American-English correction." Americans sure do think they're the centre of the world.
CuteGirl rightly castigates recap for noting ROUNDERHOUSE going on leave but not that she had COVID-19; "Blatant favouritism and my dogs are once again not featured." stonefish goes to bat for said dogs.
pr0m37h3um thinks the recap is postable tomorrow; GremlinGroup reminds him that this is not how the schedule works, and he agrees. HarryBlank will be "happy enough that it goes out on time for the first time ever." GremlinGroup agrees, and takes full credit. HarryBlank agrees with this. GremlinGroup attempts, unsuccessfully, to retract his claim. HarryBlank begins to take credit for only LadyKatie's Wildlife Report, then remembers that promotions are advancing and attempts to claim most of the recap. stonefish comments: "wow Harry i cant believe you wrote 90% of the recap for real thats crazy man do you have like ten fingers on each hand." This leads to HarryBlank realizing he doesn't type with his thumbs and having a mild existential crisis.
CuteGirl shares pictures of her dogs. stonefish calls them "Good dogs!" and Athenodora calls them "nice puppers."
When the recap is one day from posting, Vivarium remarks: "Idk, looking at this again and it looks really bad. Recap team needs to do this all over again, but twice as long." Pedagon has the answer: "I nominate Vivarium for this task."
Recap Review completes its transition to a third staffchat casual channel.
HarryBlank wants a second opinion on a recap Optimistic Lucio thinks isn't worth including. Nobody bites because they're talking about whatever. pr0m37h3um once again gets the review period length wrong, and is again corrected by GremlinGroup. HarryBlank eventually gets his second opinion, from stonefish, and a third from LadyKatie, and it is agreed to remove the relevant recap since it's not actually relevant.
Everyone is ready for the post! Everybody is excited, and nobody can justify why. The moment arrives!
pr0m37h3um forgets to post, because he's playing Death Stranding.
He does eventually get around to it, posting on 05command and the mainsite.
Alexander discovers that his first major appearance in a recap is the sad story of how the milk tag fixed a tech issue. HarryBlank replies: "You're welcome." Alexander gives thanks.
This discussion took place over the course of five days.
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Topic: Transparency of Disciplinary complaints towards Staff | 2021/01/06
Summary: GremlinGroup starts a conversation about how Disciplinary complaints towards Staff members are logged. It's revealed that they are only logged publicly if disciplinary action is reached, and that the private logging of inconclusive complaints was done within an improperly-blackboxed Disciplinary server. Discussion turns to solving this lack of transparency.
Recap: GremlinGroup starts a conversation about transparency by asking if “there some kind of consistent guide that decides whether a Disc complaint is published or not?” Gee responds by sharing that an answer to this question was briefly discussed in the Disciplinary Team discord server but defers to a formal member of Disciplinary Team to answer the question more fully. Conwell explains that the disciplinary team had “received complaints last year that we were not using non-disc to note complaints like this, so we have been striving to do better on that for transparency. Even if its to note that we received the complaint and made the decision it was wholly without merit.” GremlinGroup expresses support in this initiative and then asks if disciplinary team would be “open to making prior complaints against staff transparent as well,” which Conwell defers to aismallard for a formal response. Staff then get distracted by a discussion of if the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines technically contain viral material or not.
An hour later, aismallard replies to GremlinGroup stating that they think making prior complaints public would be a good thing, but, due to not being logged anywhere, it would be difficult to do this without having a record to work from. In order to make prior complaints public, staff would need to “assign one or more people to basically trawl through disc-ord's history and collect all of them.” GremlinGroup expresses understanding of the amount of work this would require but adds that they had been involved in two prior scenarios in different capacities (as complaintee and complainter) that they would “like to see being publicly logged” since they had requested as much at the time and were told that “since no disciplinary action was reached, they were not deemed sufficient for logging.” GremlinGroup adds that this struck them as “odd, considering that simply logging an action would be good for record-keeping, an issue that is now rearing its head” and Pedagon adds that they would support this initiative since it is what they had “been told repeatedly is the point of a non-disc record separate from the disc-record” and that they would be “really happy to see it get used as such and the history filled in.”
aismallard responds stating that there are two aspects of logging disciplinary complaints to consider: “Logging for public consumption” and “logging internally for staff” which, “because Disc-ord was improperly blackboxed, the second option was effectively the same as no logging” since “staff was in the dark about what Disc was doing and how it was handling (or mishandling) cases.” To this, GremlinGroup suggests that “a public log of complaints against staff is in the best interests of the userbase at large” which aismallard replies to with agreement through stating that “If we ensure all complaints, however valid or frivolous, are at least available to staff, they can be contested if there is disagreement” although with a concern that “a policy of logging all complaints unconditionally on O5 could become a platform for people to have random unsubstantiated nonsense hosted in an official space.” Vivarium expresses agreement with aismallard’s concern while gee0765 argues that it is “just the standard bad faith actor argument.” GremlinGroup shares that they had thought of that concern as well, sharing that “if you put a system in place which requires best practice from everyone, it'll be vulnerable to bad-faith attacks” but that they “don't think it means it's not worth chasing up. Unless something is clearly, obviously frivolous (which would take a lot of evidence for me), I think it's worth logging. If the staff member in question has done nothing incriminating, there's no harm in putting the rejected complaint on the website” and that “A complaint made in bad faith, but treated like a good-faith complaint, will only ever result in disciplinary action if such action is deserved… (so long as those involved in handling the complaint are also acting in good faith. hopefully this will not be a problem again).” Aismallard expresses a desire that formalizing such a policy be done by putting it to a discussion/vote rather than being solely the decision of discipline team.
Vivarium responds to GremlinGroup by stating that “if we log the complaints internally in a way that all staff (JS+ or OS+) can see it, it solves the issue in a way that allows us to not log every complaint publicly” and shares a concern with making all complaints public outside of staff that “I don't think we should post clear bad faith actors on O5. Keep in mind I only mean when it is absolutely clear the complaint is either frivolous to the point of nothing, and trolls.” GremlinGroup argues that the way to prevent "the negative side-effects of logging all/most complaints would be something that informs a reader, from the get-go, whether the complaint was rejected or followed up on. Put the thing in a collapsible marked "REJECTED", like tag requests are. + Open Rejected Complaint (Reason: Insufficient Evidence).” Vivarium and GremlinGroup then agree that “Most if not all complaints no matter how small should be logged publicly but we should allow for cases in the extreme so we aren't forced to” with the latter adding that “it should be really really close to all. I don't care how big the staff-complaints blackbox is, it's still a blackbox.”
An hour later, Pedagon asks for clarification from Vivarium of if, in their prior statement, they had been referring to cases where the event results in a disciplinary thread or just in cases of “false accusations akin to defamation.” Vivarium confirms that they had been meaning the latter, where “it is super obvious” in “extreme cases of bad faith” and that these cases would still be logged internally within staff.
This discussion lasted 4 hours.
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Topic: Suggestion for -ARC Move, and Wikiwalk 4.0 Discussion | 2022/01/06
Summary: A discussion surrounding the idea to move -ARC articles to another wiki concludes with staff generally agreeing it’s a good idea, but putting it off for now. The discussion then changes focus onto Wikiwalk 4.0, which seems to be an obstacle for progressing to other staff initiatives.
Recap: After it’s noted that the list of Moderators on SCPClassic, an unofficial archive site for older deleted articles, is out of date, discussion begins on whether this site could be utilised better by the community:
Vivarium suggests that the site should be used and publicised in “a more official way”, and GremlinGroup brings up a recent discussion on the existence of -ARC material on the main site. His suggestion is to replace the -ARC link on series lists with a link to SCPClassic. He notes that it has already been suggested, in the discussion thread, that -ARCs be moved to SCPClassic.
Vivarium is for the idea of maintaining SCPClassic more officially, and DrBleep agrees that it “Might be a good idea to expand the scope of SCP classic”. However, she notes that many of the articles on the site have been rewritten or deleted from the main site.
stormfallen notes that SCP classic isn’t a staff-managed site, given that its front page refers to it as an “UNOFFICIAL BRANCH”. He notes that, given thedeadlymoose is an administrator of the site, it may not be difficult to make the site official, however doing so could add more responsibilities for staff. stonefish is in favour of the idea, as are Siddartha Alonne, and gee0756 (who adds the caveat “if it’s just an archive”). Optimistic Lucio appears to be in favour, responding “GOD FINALLY”, and offers to help with the move “purely out of a rage towards -arc”. While some staff have begun discussing how to go about this move, DrBleep brings up that Wikiwalk 4.0 is ongoing, and thus it would be a bad idea to spread MAST too thin.
Lucio recommends taking out “the small fry”: “stuff like basic Classic policy”, and Bleep agrees that this could work. However, she is in favour of more thinking time, “terms of the viability, structure, policy, and approach to maintenance.” Noting Lucio’s enthusiasm to begin moving -ARC pages, Vivarium points out that assisting in Wikiwalk 4.0 would help speed up the process. Lucio agrees but feels he wouldn’t be able to assist the endeavour.
Vivarium notes that he wants to make some changes to the Wikiwalk process, but the greatest obstacle to these changes is Wikiwalk 4.0. DrBleep states further discussion is required to identify what needs to be done to meet Vivarium’s goals. He responds, saying that he mainly wants to improve recruitment and participation for the team; the team needs people who can finish Wikiwalk 4.0. After this, the team would be able to incorporate the User Curated Lists page, work on hub upkeep, and “move away from the large scale linking projects”, as in recent times crosslinking articles at posting has become more common-practice. Optimistic Lucio requests to help in some of these goals, while Vivarium states that the goals he’s listed will have more specific aims and satisfying payoffs upon completion.
DrBleep agrees with Vivarium’s points, saying that she was hesitant for Wikiwalk 4.0, but pushed for it because it was historically popular as a staff incentive. Vivarium responds, saying that “The site changed”, and that the current writing culture is already much more inter-connected than in previous times. He states that Wikiwalk should be focused on “initiatives that facilitate targeted ways of discovering articles.” Bleep agrees.
This discussion lasted for two hours.
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Topic: Wanderers' Library Posting Freeze | 2022/01/07
Summary: ROUNDERHOUSE announces that the Wanderers' Library has frozen the posting of new articles while a navigation policy is discussed. A week later, this policy is implemented, and a new WL contest is announced.
Recap: ROUNDERHOUSE provides a “minor news update” for the Wanderers’ Library: nearly 1,000 articles have been submitted (and survived) on the site! As a result, they are removing the permission to post for a week while discussing how to improve navigation through current and future articles. He links to the announcement post.
This announcement is a single message.
On the 14th of January, the freeze is lifted, a new navigation policy is implemented, and a contest is being held to provide “key numbers” in the second Wing of the site.
Congratulations, WL! Here's to thousands more!
Announcement Link: http://wanderers-library.wikidot.com/forum/t-14458967/
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Topic: Vivarium Joins the Disciplinary Team | 2022/01/07
Recap: Dexanote announces that Viviarum has joined the Disciplinary Team.
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Topic: Opensea Licensing Issues and NFT Discussion | 2022/1/07
Summary: Staff react negatively to news of Untitled 2004, other SCP images, and SCP artwork being minted as NFTs. Later, Staff discuss whether an announcement about the issue should be made.
Recap: Athenodora seeks out a member of the licensing team; a user in #site-17 reports that Untitled 2004 has been minted as an NFT on Opensea. Naepic expresses frustration over the terrible user interface design of the NFT marketplace site Opensea. ROUNDERHOUSE states that one of his articles, Amoni-Ram, has also been minted on Opensea, but that it was successfully removed within about 2 hours of submitting a report.
The following day, Alexander posts a link to a tweet made by shaggydredlocks: https://twitter.com/Shaggydreds/status/1479652545182240769
Stonefish makes a post lamenting both the grifting off of SCP artwork and the low-effort nature of said grifting. LadyKatie says that she hates NFTs.
The next day, jackalrelated posts a screenshot of the Opensea page for the Untitled 2004 NFT. They ping members of the licensing team and Alexander provides the link to the page for EstrellaYoshte. Alexander and jackalrelated express disgust over the NFT's listed price (1 WETH or 3,128.49 USD at the time this was said) and Dr. Whitney posts a link to other NFT images of SCP-173. They discuss SCP-173 NFTs further, and HarryBlank sarcastically thanks moto42.
Approximately 7 and 1/2 hours later, Naepic states that they are aware of the Untitled 2004 NFT, and have filed a takedown notice. Optimistic Lucio remarks on the blatantly illegal nature of many NFT minters, and Naepic laments the futility of legal action in this case. Naepic intends to make an announcement on O5 "later today or tomorrow" but Limeyy doesn't believe it should go to O5. Naepic feels that at minimum, Staff should have a conversation with users about the issue and that making an announcement without considering responses makes it look like Staff is simply "wiping our hands clean of the situation", then clarifying that "we are, but this sort of passivity doesn't feel right to me". Limeyy states that "Our userbase knows NFTs are bad and most our authors are in agreement on that" and that bringing up the issue would only "tell yet more people that SCP NFTs are a thing". Optimistic Lucio agrees with Naepic's sentiment about passivity, but also agrees with Limeyy that discussing the issue will only exacerbate the problem. gee points out that "we didn't do an 05 for ppl who got their art stolen by youtubers" and Limeyy states that an O5 announcement would trigger a repeat of a previous incident.
Vivarium apologizes in advance for bringing up a topic that is unrelated to NFTs (to the unspoken relief of all involved), and discussion of the topic is not resumed later.
On January 12th, Naepic announces that the Untitled 2004 NFT has been successfully taken off of Opensea.
This discussion took place sporadically over a period of three days.
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Topic: Promotion Dates | 2022/01/08
Summary: Admins discuss the specifics of dating the promotions process.
Recap: DrBleep realizes that the promotion schedule denotes specific days with no reference to where those days fall in a week, and suggests altering the schedule to be week-based. She doesn't think this needs an in-depth discussion and asks to do it with Admin Fiat with Fiat Review. ManyMeats believes the change is reasonable as it does not conflict with the spirit of the policy, and notes that a "policy polishing" process, which does not presently exist, could make future policies more "future-proofed." GremlinGroup wonders why days versus days would be less confusing; ManyMeats responds that "most people frame their agendas around days of the week." Staff debate whether one approach or the other makes more or less sense. GremlinGroup feels that "this is mostly just a change so we have consistency" and isn't sure that justifies a change. gee0765 agrees that "the advantages and disadvantages are both insignificant and cancel each other out." EstrellaYoshte suggests using both: "a hard early date/deadline as a reminder, and the following week(s) to sync up schedule and aggregate everything." Dexanote says he considered this a problem originally but "couldn't articulate" the issue; he prefers Bleep's "general ranges" for "flexibility." Conwell, Vivarium and aismallard all agree with Bleep.
Three weeks later, after prompting by Recap, DrBleep clarifies that the change was done due to fiat by consensus. It was subsequently logged on 05command.
This discussion took approximately six hours.
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Topic: JakdragonX Joins Staff | 2022/01/08
Recap: Pr0m37h3um gives notice that they have officially brought JakdragonX onto recap team and will be inviting him into staffchat. As part of this process, pr0m37h3um asks to be given an active invitation and spawns a short discussion about keeping an active invite available at all times to save time for team captains who do a lot of recruitment. Ideas are discussed of giving captains invite permissions, keeping a rolling invite in the madcap channel, and pinning a permanent invite into a staff-public channel. This conversation stops abruptly when everyone is reminded that JakdragonX still needs an invite. JakdragonX then joins staffchat officially to a weird welcome of people talking about sausage (which is requested be specifically recapped).
This interaction took five minutes.
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Topic: Disciplinary Exception Update | 2021/01/08 - 2021/01/08
Summary: ROUNDERHOUSE requests an update on the disciplinary process exception and it is stated that the process has been delayed, both by unavoidable real-life issues, and by miscommunications. Despite this delay, the Staff involved are optimistic about the process' outcome.
Recap: ROUNDERHOUSE asks for an update on the disciplinary process exception for Dexanote and DrEverettMann. ManyMeats promises an update within 24 hours.
Vivarium provides the update 23 hours later: "We were going to go with option 2 as the clear consensus, Pedagon and Gee made comments regarding changes, which led to a conversation. The plan is to post a different vote with the clarified options after we figured out some misunderstandings and new ideas that Pedagon had. The only blocker is that moose was pulled away to deal with some irl matters, the threads aren't particularly complicated to make so it will happen soon once the necessary people are around." (Explanation in square brackets added by Recap for clarity.) gee0765 asks where the conversation is currently taking place; Vivarium only knows that the conversation is on hold. aismallard clarifies: "there's been a group chat with myself, moose, and pedagon where we originally discussed the latter's understanding of option 3 [Pedagon's suggestion to do a full investigation but also censure both users in the meantime], which led to use realizing there were a lot of miscommunications, which led to further discussion, and a lot of unexpected progress." (Explanation added by Recap as above.) aismallard reiterates that thedeadlymoose being busy has halted the process temporarily. Pedagon "Can confirm that this is a fantastic conversation which I think will address many of the issues that were discussed as well as address the roots fantastically." HarryBlank responds: "Sounds fantastic."
This conversation took place over two days.
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Topic: -ES/-INT Disciplinary Update | 2022/01/08 - 2022/01/09
Summary: An update is requested and provided on the slow progress of disciplinary investigation for the -EN/-INT incident.
Recap: Siddatha Alonne asks for an update on disciplinary proceedings related to the late 2021 -EN/-INT incident. Pedagon is troubled by the language: "I like how this assumes that there will definitely be discs resulting from that." Vivarium responds: "Oh that shitstorm is far bigger then you know." Pedagon thinks he does know; "I just don't think the way to approach things is to assume a result before one exists." Vivarium thinks Pedagon is reading too much into language. He suggests that Siddartha contact "more senior Disc members" for the update. Siddartha clarifies that his word choice was not intentionally charged: "If disc team is looking into it I just call "disc", that's it." He then pings ManyMeats for the update. Pedagon doesn't want to let go of the wording conversation: "I find the lack of acknowledgement of the power certain words carry to be naive and dangerous when it is things that absolutely carry weight and impact how people will interpret answers and discussions later on. I'm not just fixated on every word. I'm pointing out the implications of certain wording." ManyMeats promises an update in 24 hours.
Siddartha pings ManyMeats again seven hours later, garnering the response "Please give me at least the time frame I indicated." Siddartha had misread.
23 hours after the update was promised, it arrives from ManyMeats: "The ES case's summary is complicated. The short answer is that this is further pending other matters. A more elaborate clarification can and will be made when they can be run through a couple of people involved in the situation." Siddartha responds: "It's frustrating but I understand it needs a lot of time. Thank you very much."
This discussion took place over two days.
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Topic: Charter Discussion | 2022/JAN/08
Summary: Brief summary of the events and discussion.
Recap: Vivarium casually inquires about the status of ManyMeat's Charter Rewrite in #staff-questions, and a few staffers echo the inquiry. Shortly after, Pedagon ports the discussion to #staff-discussion with his commentary that he believes the charter should be a sleek, svelte affair that contains largely static details about how policy is made and staff is run rather than flexible details about the site that policy could change. Vivarium mentions that ManyMeats should be pung as he has been in charge of the charter rewrite that has been ongoing for two years; at no point in the conversation does anyone ping him.
Pedagon proceeds to pontificate on properties of a powerful & pliable Site Charter, such as being able to be updated when needed but designed to be updated as infrequently as possible, with the lion's share of 'staff rules' being based in policy instead. Vivarium counters with the fact that policy can be easily lost whereas the charter remains an eternally consistent reference of certain important powers delegated to staff. gee0765 tosses out that the true trouble touching on the Charter is the high barrier (a supermajority of mods and admins) to changing it, and Vivarium links this to recent inactivity issues. He also posits the following thought: "So the golden question is, what does a charter need to be in order to better serve staff? What are the rules that every member of staff need to know? What are the rules that must never change?".
Both agree that the charter's function should be a base document that policy sprouts off from and acts as a table of contents, but Vivarium feels that beyond that the Charter should be minimalist and intentionally difficult to change as a safeguard against abuse. Pedagon agrees it should be minimalist but argues that the Charter being a 'living document' is the best way to ensure it evolves with policy and with staff. gee agrees that the Charter should have fundamental metaprinciples such as how votes work rather than a record of policy itself. The discussion also veers into how a Charter simply listing staff ranks would be, varyingly, excellent because it avoids being bogged down in current definitions of the roles or useless because it wouldn't define the roles and record their powers/responsibilities.
gee suggests that rather than a charter a better record of site policy should be had. Vivarium condenses his point at Pedagon's request: "We need to rewrite the charter in a way that it only contains rules that staff members must know and utilize to better serve the wiki and utilize it in a way that allows us to make edits easily." Pedagon agrees that a policy list is a good suggestion but should be divorced from a charter. UncertainyCrossing inquires as to what the substantial difference is between a rule in the charter and a rule formed from policy, which wheels into Pedagon clarifying that he agrees with Vivarium broadly but "fully disagree[s] on the terminology and approach which are important aspects of this discussion". It gradually becomes clear that Vivarium and Pedagon have been agreeing on the substance of the documents that staff should be based on but not on what they should be designated as, and that working forward the name is less important than its contents.
This discussion took place over roughly one hour.
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Topic: Art Staff & Plagiarism Discussion | 2022/January/09
Summary: Discussion arises over whether art plagiarism requires specific policy and staffers to address it, whether it should be addressed separately from Licensing at all, to what scale tracing is plagiarism, and other topics relating to art.
Recap: UncertaintyCrossing mentions that staff could use more art voices in staff matters, and Dr Whitney volunteers their knowledge as an artist who has experience with art theft and tracing. UncertaintyCrossing also puts out an open call for any artists among staff to reach out if they'd like to help with 'art policy stuff'. GremlinGroup questions what exactly 'art policy stuff' covers. UncertaintyCrossing clarifies that there have been issues with cases involving art where staff lacked the requisite knowledge or understanding to handle the cases appropriately. GremlinGroup asks for clarification on what 'issues with cases involving art' meant, to which UncertaintyCrossing provides the example of a case in which a user traced stock images as a form of plagiarism and how the case could have been aided by having artists involved in the discussion. GremlinGroup inquires on how, if the tracing was from a CC-compatible source (though both acknowledge it wasn't in the mentioned case), the only change would have needed to be providing appropriate credit. UncertaintyCrossing acknowledges that credit would be "'technically' fine to do but art people are really going to frown on it."
GremlinGroup again questions what 'art people' means and why they would frown on it, and mentions that he thinks taking such a hardline stance against license-permissible creativity is bad. He voices concerns that an arbitrary standard of 'artistic integrity' should not lead to disciplinary action, particularly when the content is permissible by the license. Edna Granbo opines that "tracing is bad". GremlinGroup states that tracing in and of itself is not against the CC license and that staff should not be enforcing standards for integrity in art rather than letting users vote. UncertaintyCrossing counters that he is specifically discussing taking source material that is not CC, without credit, and posting it to the site - definitional plagiarism. He further explains why he is personally against tracing as a method of learning, but cedes that this is a separate matter from the policy. GremlinGroup states that this seems like the sort of issue within Licensing's domain rather than ascribe the responsibility to a nebulous 'art people'. pr0m37h3um inquires for arguments for or against banning tracing if it doesn't violate the license.
UncertaintyCrossing clarifies that prior to the aforementioned case, licensing exclusively handled people reposting art without credit or offsite YouTube situations. There was nothing in the charter forbidding art plagiarism and defining art plagiarism was difficult except for artists, which is who he meant by 'art people'. He isn't in favor of banning tracing wholesale, only on coming down on violations of CC through tracing. GremlinGroup voices confusion on what exactly is particular about art issues that they require specific policy and consultants and cannot be wrapped into Licensing as licensing issues. Vivarium questions whether GremlinGroup feels he has the knowledge and expertise to identify a traced image - he states that he can see the value in individuals able to spot tracing being on Licensing and that this increasingly sounds like a Licensing issue. In between, UncertaintyCrossing and Dr Whitney agree that artists and people familiar with art can more easily identify tracing and build policy to address it. FabledTiefling voices that, independently from Licensing requirements, declaring that all tracing is bad and that all artists agree on this is reductive, but that certain facets of tracing on the wiki can be bad. They point out that many artists recognize the value of tracing to develop skill, and that many experienced artists trace over posed 3D models to help with anatomy.
All members gradually come to the agreement that they all agree. GremlinGroup clarifies that a few of UncertaintyCrossing's statements confused him on the scale of the issue that was being discussed. FabledTiefling voices confusion that a member of art staff turned down a staffchat invite, on the basis that if someone is unwilling to participate in wider discussions that affect their job it could become a problem. UncertaintyCrossing replies to GremlinGroup clarifying his previous statements to the different degrees of art plagiarism and how as a JS in the aforementioned case, attempting to explain the scale of the problem to people who did not understand art plagiarism was frustrating. GremlinGroup notes that any level of art plagiarism would be a transgression of the license and Whitney voices that they feel there is a point at which the case should be forward to Disciplinary; GremlinGroup asks whether Licensing issues tend to go to Disc and is told plagiarism typically gets a nondisc, which he affirms is the same as the current policy. UncertaintyCrossing and GremlinGroup discuss how while all degrees can be plagiarism, having artists specifically to spot it could be beneficial and how comparing art to writing plagiarism is a poor analogy, then clarify that neither meant to come off as aggressive in the discussion.
At this point, Pedagon arrives and questions whether the 'archaic' plagiarism policy has been changed - when it is clarified it has not been changed beyond adding a clause regarding art plagiarism, he states that this policy needs to be changed, including definitions of it, responses to it, et cetera. GremlinGroup links a recap regarding plagiarism from the October 2021 Recap, proving time is a flat circle. Any changes to plagiarism in the charter would have to wait until the charter rewrite, and Pedagon believes that plagiarism handling is a big enough issue that it should be done "before the charter rewrite gets put on hold for another decade". Various staff mention how the charter rewrite has been functionally dead for two years and serves primarily as a large piece of flotsam blocking various other policies from being proposed, and that a change is needed. UncertaintyCrossing voices that he doesn't feel anything needs to be specifically written to cover art plagiarism, as any change to plagiarism will also now cover art plagiarism, and GremlinGroup agrees that the process should be largely the same - asking to cite their sources or it becomes a licensing issue and follows that path of escalation if necessary. GremlinGroup is reminded of a specific image-source issue regarding a recent article and places it into #staff-questions, which everyone had been using instead of #staff-discussion all along.
This discussion took place roughly over 3 hours.
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Topic: External Metadata Attribution | 2022/01/08
Summary: Staff discuss metadata update methods in the age of Wikidon't.
Recap: gee0765 fixes an error in the wiki's metadata attribution page (which stores the technical information regarding who the author of a page is, in cases where it needs to be reassigned or where co-authors are involved). aismallard laments: "Having humans maintain computer-readable data is very fun :( Like this is such an obvious candidate for "the platform itself should being doing this", but alas." stormfallen asks: "is there any way to make the metadata page (or any generic Wikidot page) read from some external database and update when the database does?" He feels it would "make 05 roster updating easier and less prone to Wikidot fuckery making pages out of sync." aismallard and stormfallen discuss likely technical issues, application methods and potential benefits. aismallard feels that "it's probably not very complicated, I just imagine we'll run into at least one gotcha we didn't expect."
This discussion took approximately one half-hour.
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Topic: Random Art Page | 2022/01/09
Recap: EstrellaYoshte is preparing to add a Random Art Page button to the wiki sidebar. They note that there are "no technical problems with this" and ask if they should go ahead and implement it. UncertaintyCrossing cannot grant permission but thinks "it's a wonderful idea." Estrella heads off to the Maintenance and Ancillary Staff Team to finalize, as this is a navigation issue. HarryBlank notes for posterity that LemonBee's suggestion of this button was in the December recap; staff did not pick up the idea, but a user in the SCP Declassified Discord saw the recap of the non-starter and asked about it, which attracted Estrella, resulting in the implementation. Quoth LemonBee: "Hell yeah."
The button is added after a brief discussion between Estrella and UncertaintyCrossing. Everyone is in awe at how quick and easy that was.
This discussion took approximately two hours, one hour at a time.
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Topic: Representing SCPD's meta-scp-discussion Channel | 2022-09-01
Summary: Staff discuss the character and value of #meta-scp-discussion in SCPD.
Recap: Observing the meta-scp-discussion channel in the SCP Declassified Discord server, stonefish claims that users are beginning to worry ("getting wiggy") that the Licensing Team will be deleting their articles, due to events in December. Limeyy responds: "I mean the new licensing captain did plugwalk in and ask to summary delete articles on the first day using admin fiat. It's a vaguely reasonable concern even if it's not the gameplan anymore." stonefish asks how we can allay concerns; "Work out what we're gonna do instead for sure and tell them that," Limeyy responds. GremlinGroup is worried about mischaracterization and charged language: "Gonna have to say you gotta be careful, once again, when reporting the actions and thoughts of a single user in Meta. Poor reporting of Meta's activity has set back a lot of staffwork in the past." He believes users merely want answers. Vivarium muses: "Interacting with meta is like rock climbing. You gotta be careful with every step you take, you gotta take it slow and think about what you do, and it's good to have a buddy just in case shit hits the fan." Vivarium and pr0m37h3um note that the sensitivity in meta is an attribute of all parties, staff and non-staff inclusive. Pedagon takes issue with the overall characterization being made here: "You just need to put the effort in to understand what it actually is and not come in trying to decide what you want it to be. It's a public forum. not a Q&A or a deathmatch. Treat it as people with concerns voicing their concerns either professionally or emotionally and take it in the best light possible. People just are worried about things or have ideas and what to be heard and acknowledged. Don't go in taking things directly as worded and get into fights. Ask questions, get clarifications, and talk to people about what they are wanting or what they are worried about and you have literally nothing to worry about." Vivarium feels this is essentially what he said; Pedagon again disagrees: "mine doesn't paint it as if you have to walk on broken beer bottles until they angrily rip you apart over a slight mistake lol." Viviarum states that this was essentially his experience in "the early days of meta," and notes that he has "learned to love meta and respect it as a place to get people opinions on new policy, but let's not pretend it's a perfect place." pr0m37h3um and Vivarium discuss meta-scp-discussion's improvement since these early days. Vivarium reminds staff that the late 2021 -INT incident was exacerbated by events in meta, as its "distrust, assumptions, and anger heavily impacted the way INT sees us." He also notes the productive aspects of meta for policy development: "Chaos begets order, and order begets chaos. These things are normal." pr0m37h3um notes that meta was responsible for the creation of the Recap Team.
"Anyway TLDR Meta is a glorious source of change and also a shit storm made of fire, but that's just like everything else in life," Viviarum summates.
stonefish accepts GremlinGroup's caution and notes that they expected a worse reaction from SCPD than what they have seen so far.
This discussion took approximately two hours.
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Topic: Frontpage Bulletin | 2022/01/09
Recap: OptimisticLucio asks: "Did anything special happen in the last two~ weeks that we can put on the frontpage bulletin?" EstrellaYoshte has a promising candidate: "I ate teriyaki chicken yesterday"; "Was pretty good." Lucio thinks this is sufficient, and prepares to post a congratulatory notice. Vivarium has a much less important suggestion: the annual Art Exchange for December. Lucio notes that this was already covered. "Hmm," Vivarium muses. "Slow 2 weeks." Estrella again has a suggestion: "we can mention wikidot making changes that screwed over half the wiki." Vivarium has a better idea: "Actually, we could announce the Karma thing and sadden the entire userbase." Lucio notes that we should, in fact, probably mention that outside of just including it in the December Recap. gee0765 agrees, and Vivarium clarifies that he did mean it seriously. He suggests making an announcement. ManyMeats feels said announcement would be under the purview of the Tech Team. No such announcement was made before Recap reached review.
This discussion took less than one hour.
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InactiveStaff
Topic: Discussion of Inactive Staff Leading up to the Promotion Cycle | 2022/01/09
Recap: Vivarium interrupts the end of the discussion about SCP NFTs to suggest that staff “revisit the conversation about our inactive staff members” prior to the upcoming promotions cycle since two staff members have been absent from staff work and discussions in months. Vivarium notes that this needs to be addressed to prevent postponing the discussion. He wants people to know who's been put up for promotions, and their worth. Vivarium suggests that an administrator send a message to the staff members, requiring that they join a team within the next two weeks, or else be removed from staff, as this "needs to be done before promos". Limeyy and Vivarium discuss how one of the two inactive staffers was supposed to reach out a month ago, but hasn't. Siddartha Alonne suggests that the staff member in question should "acknowledge you have no time to be staff and step down” and Optimistic Lucio suggests that, in the case that they do respond, they should be put on a “stricter leash regarding activity levels.” Vivarium explains that this would depend on if a team would be willing to take them and indicates that MAST would not. A brief discussion occurs between Lucio and Vivarium about if it is worth giving them another chance which ends with Vivarium stating that “I'm not a fan of inactive people hopping teams until we finally decide enough is enough. If you do no work, you don't get the privileges that come with being staff.” The conversation ends abruptly with the resolution being a request that DrBleep ferry the request to the admins to deal with.
This conversation took place over 1 hour.
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Topic: Site News Status | 2022/01/10
Recap: stormfallen asks: "So uh, what's up with site news? Is September still being worked on?" Naepic states that it is "on hold" until the Community Outreach Team "figures it out." Siddartha Alonne ports a message from WhiteGuard:
hey all. This was likely becoming apparent already, but with our tendency to get quite behind and my new appointment, I am going to be putting Site News on hold until it is reworked to where we can release them faster without having issues of getting sections complete in time. Thank you for all of your hard work so far. The future news should still be similar to our current product, but we are going to review ways to help it in the future.
stormfallen responds: "Aight."
This discussion took approximately seven minutes.
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Topic: Temporary Un-Poisoning | 2022/01/11
Summary: Staff note that some "poisoned" slots are temporarily available, and a mix-up with regards to poisoned slots occurs.
Recap: After hungrypossum is able to load SCP-5257, which was thought to be “poisoned”, a number of poisoned slots are tested and found to load. After this is brought into staffchat, it is noted that a number of pages thought to be inaccessible are loading on the first, or second, try.
After Roundabout lists a number of pages that he says are poisoned, Alexander asks whether he has the correct list of poisoned pages. It is pointed out by EstrellaYoshte that one of the supplied numbers, 5457, does not lead to a poisoned page. Alexander notes that they are able to access the 5457 slot, and asks whether it would be appropriate to create a placeholder post (as has been done with the 5257 slot). hungrypossum is in support. After Alexander has created this placeholder, Hexick points out that this shouldn’t have been done without permission from the Tech team. Alexander notes that this was a rushed decision, as he believed the page was only briefly accessible. Twenty minutes after it is brought into Staffchat, the 5257 slot becomes inaccessible again. Hexick notes that this is a common occurrence; pages temporarily become accessible, before failing to load again. They opine that the approach should be to never expect the pages to be fixed, and instead treat any signs of improvement as temporary.
The unnecessary placeholder page was brought to the attention of Vivarium, who moves the page out of the 5457 slot, but does not want to risk deleting it on mobile.
This discussion took about 20 minutes.
On the 21st of January, Leveritas notes that the page remains un-deleted, and Deadly Bread deletes it properly.
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Topic: Moving/Joining Staff Teams | 2022/01/11 - 2022/01/12
Summary: Staff discuss how to move between staff teams, and the need for moderators on various platforms. Although it is initially stated that Internet Outreach don't need any new members, they end up taking one on.
Recap: Cedric Stevenson asks: "what are polices on moving between different staff departments on the wiki?" Vivarium responds: "You just ask the captain of the team." Cedric is thinking of joining Community Outreach or Internet Outreach to "help promote the wiki," so Vivarium points him towards WhiteGuard (CO) and Yossipossi (IO). The two of them then praise Yossipossi by means of sarcastically insulting him. This backfires when Yossipossi responds: "I don't actually know if we need new staffers. We're running a pretty tight ship." Cedric asks to be considered if a place opens up. Conwell interrupts to declare that "All new staff are being diverted to Deletions. We'll destroy this wiki one post at a time if its the last thing we do." YossiPossi responds that "The rate of deletions must never exceed the rate of new posts, lest the Wiki be consumed in its madness," which Alexander calls "the law of the conservation of coldposts."
OptimisticLucio reminds Yossipossi that "more people on modqueue is never bad" and Yossipossi muses whether more subreddit moderators are needed. Lucio doesn't think so, but suggests asking Whitenull as "they're the one who's doing most of the reddit work ATM I think." Null responds that members from "AUS/NZ times" would be ideal, as "We in America are asleep then." stormfallen notes that this is a perennial moderation problem across all platforms. Null also notes the need for "someone in EST who can active moderate the first in the morning." Cedric thinks there is a need for more reddit mods, as "The sub is kinda a mess lately." Yossi, Joreth and Null confer, and agree to take him on.
This discussion took approximately two hours.
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Topic: HTTPS and Its Cost | 2022/01/11
Summary: Staff discuss HTTPS, what we pay for, and what we get.
Recap: Cyvstvi notes that he is "getting log-in errors for firefox." aismallard asks for clarification: "You should be logged in on the SCP Wiki, because it's HTTPS, but logged out elsewhere because it's HTTP. Is this correct?" Cyvstvi agrees: "it was working fine across both until literally right now." aismallard notes that this is due to a feature protecting from cross site request forgery (CSRF) attacks.
The conversation turns to HTTPS in general, and aismallard mentions that the switch to HTTPS costs $250 per year. gee0765 is in awe: "wow if just an S is 250 dollars imagine how much the alphabet costs." Roundabout suggests not paying that much, because "That's stupid." stormfallen mentions that the money "also pays for storage and some site settings"; aismallard notes that "even if we didn't need the storage we still have an unconditional need for HTTPS, which costs a flat $250/yr." Roundabout thought the cost was monthly, which it isn't. aismallard continues: "One notable thing about self-hosting is our storage costs go from "we have enough but don't go crazy" to "as long as every page doesn't have a full-length feature film we don't really have any issues."" She then notes that this covers storage, not bandwidth.
This discussion took approximately one half-hour.
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Topic: Login Glitch | 2021/01/11
Recap: aismallard asks whether there have been any complaints about not being logged in when on the main site (such as on a sandbox, or viewing 05command). She also requests that staff keep an eye on these reports, as they should become more frequent. Conwell has received no complaints, but notes that non-staff are largely unaware of his existence until "they get a pm from me telling them their coldpost got deleted." Athenodora has forwarded the message to IRC operators, promising that "We'll be keeping an eye out."
This discussion took place over the course of three minutes.
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Topic: SCP Classic and Productivity Software | 2022/01/11
Recap: OptimisticLucio cites a recent discussion about -ARC articles where some staff users support moving them to the unofficial SCP Classic website. He asks if there's an official statement on the status of SCP Classic, and what it might be. Roundabouts instead replies that they also support moving things to SCP Classic. DrBleep notes: "right now Moose is the only active staffer currently with administrative access to SCP Classic. We're working on getting more people on there, but any motion to do stuff with classic is going to be dependent on getting more staff as a whole established in appropriate roles on the site." Vivarium was confused by Roundabouts' post, causing him to miss Lucio's due to the fact that he's multitasking. Estrella asks him if he uses productivity software, neatly segueing the conversation.
DrBleep remembers the creation of an official staff Jira board, and pings aismallard. Lucio links the #staff-resources channel, and notes that the Maintenance and Ancillary Staff Team also has a Jira board. He offers to show Vivarium how to use it. Bleep prepares to make use of the Jira. Lucio doesn't think MAST needs its own board, though it already has one; he thinks the duplication might be a problem. Bleep thinks the duplication is good, and Vivarium agrees as MAST has a lot of plates in the air. Vivarium muses on MAST's Jira: "a good idea and reason why having a dedicated MAST jira is that we can instead tag the roles with different section tags that way MAST members can at a glance see what their teams need to accomplish."
This discussion took place over approximately one hour.
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Topic: Danny Recap vs. MTF Eta-10 | 2022/01/12
Summary: Alexander is worried about a missing server icon. His team-mates are jerks.
Recap: New Recap Team member Alexander is on the hunt for the icon the Recap Discord server had when he joined, which has since been replaced by Danny Recap, a man with a microphone. He asks around to see if anyone has the original on hand, and everyone on Recap plays keep-away until he becomes convinced the old icon has been lost forever. Roundabout says that they suppose it has, and HarryBlank asks why they answered the question absent any knowledge of the subject. (They don't end up having an answer.) OptimisticLucio wonders why Alexander's so worried; Alexander is worried because "the old one was nice/the new one is based off of one discussion where certain people had the incomprehensible opinion that "some guy" is somehow a better mascot for recap than meerkats with googlyeyes." HarryBlank responds that "Said certain people have the virtue of having written recaps." Alexander acknowledges the point but is still worried about the fate of the icon. HarryBlank suggests that Recap would "have to try pretty hard to be lowering the general standard for staff server logos," displaying a sampler of staff's ugly, off-centre or just plain weird team server icons. Pedagon feels the information has been lost because Recap doesn't record itself; "Real “I was elected to lead, not to read” energy tbh."
HarryBlank finally relents, and asks Alexander:
Have you tried searching "icon" in the server
This is a loaded question lol
It turns out the icon is safe and sound in Recap's server. OptimisticLucio is still surprised by the intensity of this conversation; Alexander clarifies that he was worried because he thought that "a piece of artwork someone made for staff got lost in the process of changing the server icon for a joke." Joke's on him, though: it was just the logo for MTF-Eta 10. Staff now discuss Danny Recap, his origins and characteristics. Vivarium states that he had "shitposted so hard in recap that they made danny recap their icon." Pedagon presents the alternative narrative that "Danny recap was always already our mascot. He just didn’t have human form and was channeled through gee like a poltergeist." Vivarium is troubled by this: "That is really concerning. Did he ask for consent before "channeling" into gee?" Pedagon continues to world-build: "Gee is really just a vessel for many spirits to take turns occupying." Alexander continues to explain the entirely reasonable cause of his concern while the other team members shitpost on main. HarryBlank steps back and reflects:
It has been a journey
We've all had character development
I'm even about to turn heel and betray the team
A satisfying season
This "discussion" took place over approximately three hours.
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Topic: Guide Questions | 2022/01/12
Recap: Leveritas would "like to add some revisions to give the humanoid essay a little freshening up" but needs to get permission from the original author, so he asks if anyone knows how to contact them.
Crickets.
OptimisticLucio asks a related question nearly three hours later: "Redoing the newbie guide ATM, and I’d like the section for new writers to be handled by someone who’s somewhat experienced in the area." Zyn offers to help, and asks for guidance on what's wanted. She suggests taking the "teach a man to fish" approach, as "a lot of what I've been seeing in the recommendations thread is better addressed with "ask in Questions desk" or "Google the forums" or "look at these resources, ctrl+f if you like" rather than walls of text specifics." Lucio will DM her with information. sketchythoughts also offers to help, and will also be DM'd.
This discussion took place over approximately five hours, with a three hour gap at the start.
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Topic: Removing Karma Icons | 2022/01/14 - 2022/01/15
Summary: Staff discuss hiding karma icons, and whether they care, and whether they should care.
Recap: In light of Wikidot's karma update system breaking, stormfallen asks whether the earlier discussion about removing the karma icons from usernames should be renewed. Riemann immediately states "kill gurubox," presumably sore that they only have four karma bars and therefore don't qualify to join. Hexick doesn't see a necessity, as some users value karma and users mistaking karma for authority is rare. stormfallen thinks any cases of the latter is too many, particularly now that karma no longer properly represents activity. Hexick is unconvinced: "I don't especially care either way. It's a dumb little color bar next to someone's username, and nothing really changes whether or not it's there. And you say that it's misleading, but again, it doesn't really change much seeing that karma will still be prominently visible upon clicking someone's profile." Riemann asks Hexick "… don't you have guru." gee0765 practices true neutrality: "this argument really people with 3 karma saying it should go with people with 5 saying it must stay"; "as someone with four karma i don't particularly care either way." Riemann is now more seriously invested, noting they have four bars and are advocating removal.
Alexander asks whether we have known cases of users mistaking karma for authority, and Hexick thinks it happened once: "They didn't think it meant staff, so much as people with low karma couldn't be. That's the only case I've ever seen of something like that." TawnyOwlJones "would prefer karma to stay because I like the colours and I don’t like change. It’s visible on the profiles anyway so we will still have people asking what it is," though it is not fussed either way. JakdragonX wants karma icons to stay, because "I would be sad that my efforts for the wiki, all of my comments and edits and whatnot, would suddenly be a lot harder to gauge." Riemann demands: "Ban Karma." They feel the users who have guru karma are arguing for it to stay for that reason, which they are not impressed by. Staff now go back and forth between "it's a trivial little icon, why do you want it removed?" and "it's a trivial little icon, why do you not want it removed?" for a while, while periodically expressing various levels of disinterest in the entire affair.
Riemann eventually summarizes the reasons to lose it: "it's broken, it's useless at best and downright useless at worst, keeping it does literally nothing, and most importantly, the investment required to remove it is trivial." gee feels that "the only strong argument in favour of removing it" is that it's broken. Naepic is "willing to axe it on the basis that killing it now means we will never have to talk about karma in the future now that it's defunct." aismallard notes that karma "still shows high activity for prior high activity users"; she also notes that this is an 05command kind of conversation. Zyn responds to Alexander's earlier question: "someone PMed me awhile back saying they contacted me specifically because I was a guru"; "there was another kid who flat-out didn't want to talk to some reviewers because they had lower karma." Alexander asks whether the bar being visible might make users think karma is still functional. Other matters interrupt the conversation, which does not resume.
This conversation took place sporadically over nearly sixteen hours.
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[ArtPlagiarism
Topic: Discussion about Art and Text Plagiarism | 2022/01/15
Summary: A lengthy discussion on how plagiarism is and should be treated on the site, and the differences and similarities between art and textual plagiarism. The discussion burgeoned into a thread on 05command. Should you attempt to read the following Recap, it is recommended that you have that thread open, as the Discord and Forum conversations continued in parallel, with the Discord conversation referencing the Forum discussion.
Recap: Being prompted by UncertaintyCrossing’s promotion to Disciplinary Team and a prior discussion about how Wiki Staff should treat art and text-based plagiarism, Pedagon starts a discussion about changing the formal policies referencing how plagiarism is treated and what team handles it. Pedagon states that “If this is a thing that prompted the addition to disc or even something being considered as getting added to disc’s responsibilities I would really like it to be discussed on O5 before we actually start treating art tracing as a discable thing. I’m no artist (as far as any of you know), but I do have thoughts on this similar to prior discussions about plagiarism. The key thing is that I don’t believe tracing or other minor “art theft” things should be under the control of disc and, if anything, should be under licensing. From what I’ve read during the “art army” conversation as well as any other times this issue has come up, people have an ideological gripe with tracing that makes them angry and seek punishment but it is really just an issue of correctly citing and only using CC sources. You might be annoyed by people who trace (just like paint artists get annoyed by digital artists), but I really don’t think there is some inherently wrong thing with it that would put it under disc.”
Pedagon then adds “For full clarity, this is the current policy relevant: > “Plagiarism: Any art you post to the wiki must be compatible with the site's CC BY-SA license (for example: a CC-BY or a Public Domain license). If you trace, recreate, or heavily reference an image, it must also be compatible with this license and you must cite it. Failure to cite your sources in the above cases is grounds for disciplinary action equivalent to literary plagiarism. In addition, artworks which are made by using references non compatible with CC-BY-SA must be modified past recognition from said references.” In case it would help anyone understand the context here. So there’s a policy precedent but this policy has been challenged a lot recently in the part of literary plagiarism being a disc thing so I worry about things”
Jerden responds to Pedagon by agreeing that they “would generally agree that this is mostly a licensing issue, also it seems worryingly subjective” because “Allegedly people can just tell if it looks traced but if you don't have the actual image to point to it seems too difficult to prove to actually be a disc thing.” Jak agrees by adding his thoughts that “Appling it to Disc also assumes some sort of malicious guilt onto the artist — for all we know that artist just doesn't feel experienced to free-draw or maybe is just starting to get into art. Unless some sort of malice can be proven, why should it be a Disc issue?” while gee complains about people saying DISC instead of disc.
Jerden wonders if the wording supplied by Pedagon just needs updating since “Site rules say that plagarism will result in summary deletion but don't specify anything more than that” and Pedagon points to the policy which states directly that “Failure to cite your sources in the above cases is grounds for disciplinary action equivalent to literary plagiarism” and points out that this wording “implies disciplinary action and prior cases involving plagiarism and tracing have been handled much more harshly than summary deletion (as people love to point out when the topic arises).” Pedagon then adds that “Whether this is policy or precedence or whatever, the recent discussions around tracing all seem to swirl around harsh punishment and looking at one specific case for guidance and I just worry about establishing this as a thing we do without full discussion.” Lucio then adds that, in a recent disciplinary case about art plagiarism, the user was assumed to be inexperienced and treated lightly, ending with the artist “retracting the traced art and reuploading it soon with original illustrations” and that “if you're an artist you can tell if something's probably traced, but sometimes it's just weird lineart” but that, in both disc cases that have been encountered due to art tracing policy, “the original traced images were found.”
Jerden then shares that their confusion originates from the art plagiarism policy and standard plagiarism policy which state, respectively, that
Art Plagiarism: Any art you post to the wiki must be compatible with the site's CC BY-SA license (for example: a CC-BY or a Public Domain license). If you trace, recreate, or heavily reference an image, it must also be compatible with this license and you must cite it. Failure to cite your sources in the above cases is grounds for disciplinary action equivalent to literary plagiarism.
Plagiarism: You may not copy any portion of someone else's writing to use as your own work without proper attribution. You may not attempt to pass off another user's article as your own work. Doing so will result in summary deletion of the work.
Due to “somewhat inconsistent - not technically inaccurate” wording. Hungrypossum then adds that “to me, it seems that what's stipulated under the rules (quoted above by pedagon) is clear enough and easy to understand. Disc action doesn't happen exclusively for malicious actions, but also ignorance of the rules, and does not equate to bans (can be warnings/heads-ups by disc members as well), at least to my knowledge.” Lucio also states their belief that, in regard to test-based plagiarism, “AFAIK disc changed their rules on plagiarism, or are in the process of doing so” which Pedagon points out was an “unofficially-official” change. Jerden then quotes the policy that plagiarism is listed as an action that “can result in an immediate permanent ban” which hungrypossum emphasizes that the policy says “can” instead of “will” and that they believe the policy is “case-by-case and takes into account intention and attitude.” Hungrypossum then elaborates that “someone who posts a verbatim copy of another author's work and doesn't attribute it, and has a history of disliking said author is clearly not doing so in good faith” which jerden states would be “worth clarifying how art plagiarism is treated on O5.”
Pedagon then adds that “Whatever the past cases were or what currently outdated policies say, my point is that I do not believe plagiarism of any kind (art, tracing, misattribution, etc) should be under the purview of disc and should be viewed as any other licensing violation.” Lucio requests that the discussion be moved into a thread to free up the channel and Pedagon asks that it instead be moved to 05. Lucio and hungrypossum begin discussing if the discussion should continue on discord or 05 and Pedagon points out that the original request was for it to be on 05. He doesn't "necessarily think saturday morning is the right time to have this massive discussion that crosses multiple teams and policies. My purpose was to get people thinking and have someone start a formal dialogue on O5 when people are ready. I do not believe discord is appropriate for this discussion.” Vivarium joins the discussion, clarifying that UncertaintyCrossing was not added to 05 for any reasons specific to art or plagiarism. Pedagon notes that he accidentally implied this at the outset of the conversation, and clarifies that he was aware of UncertaintyCrossing primarily in relation to previous discussions on art plagiarism. Vivarium wanted to ensure UncertaintyCrossing was “getting credit for his merits”.
Pedagon then continues to explain why the discussion should move to 05 while Jerden states “if different types of literary plagarism are handled differently I think it would be reasonable to discuss the art equivalents on 05” and that “That would require a rough idea of how literary plagiarism is handled now but I think we'd probably agree that passing off another persons artwork as your own is a lot more severe a form of plagiarism than forgetting to cite a source for a traced artwork or a digital asset.” Jerden then asks if they could technically be banned for not attributing all sources in a logo they made, which stormfallen and Lucio point out would be a violation of the site’s license but that this would differ from tracing because, as put by Lucio, “Tracing usually involves trying to pass it off as your own.”
Pedagon replies to this assertion with the argument that in their opinion, "tracing with attribution is the exact same as dodo's collage artwork as long as the tracing isn't just a repost with a new pencil (like something has to have remixed the tracing)” which Jerden agrees with by stating that “I get that tracing does seem like a more obvious attempt to pass something off as your own work, but to me it seems more of a "cite your sources" issue than something that should get you banned” and Lucio argues that “tracing is inherently.. not-remix-y. What you're thinking of is probably referencing, which is closer to the "taking someone else's idea but giving it your own spin" thing.” Pedagon argues back that “Nah. If I were to try to make a massive tapestry and traced a bunch of stuff but added my own flair and style and stuff (but the bones were traced) that would be a remix just like a collage is a remix of cc assets” and Jerden adds clarity to Pedagon’s statement with the example that “you're not good at drawing hands so you trace that as part of a larger artwork - seems pretty remix-y to me.”
UncertaintyCrossing joins the discussion by stating that they were “in agreement with Pedagon that if we change plagiarism to be not a disc thing and more a hey, here's how you correct it, that art just falls under that. I don't think art needs any additional rules when plagiarism is reworked, it'd just fall under the same stuff.” Lucio replies to Jerdan’s example by arguing that “it's not really. Like, if I'm bad at writing containment procedures, I can't CTRL-C CTRL-V someone else's, you know? … Sure I did the rest of the article and that's good … but I still stole a section and attempted to pass it off as my own.” Jerden argues that “As long as you cite your source I don't see the issue” and UncertaintyCrossing agrees that they, at no point, argued that “tracing is "bad" or a lesser art form or whatever.” Lucio then states that “If authors are cool with CTRL-C-ing their stuff then I have a way different pulse on matters than I thought. Like if both are good both are good” and that they had “just felt there was a double standard.” UncertaintyCrossing and Vivarium then state that they too believe that “If you site your sources and follow the licensing it's technically allowed” and that they are “of the opinion that art plagiarism should be under Licensing team purview.” Vivarium then adds that they also believe that, just like MAST does with tagging where violations are corrected and treated as educational, “It should move to Disc if it is an extreme case, but the default should be licensing.”
UncertaintyCrossing adds some context of the history of the plagiarism policy of art by stating that the only reason the policy existed separate to the main plagiarism policy is that, when a case of art plagiarism had occurred, staff realised the existing rules were too focused on literary plagiarism, "so instead of making it a more general thing or specifying licensing, it was just tacked on as an additional rule.” Pedagon is then sent to create the discussion thread on 05 while everyone talks about what Pedagon should write. During this time, Naepic requests that “Before we talk about licensing adopting plagiarism into its scope I would prefer we figure out the boundaries of licensing's current scope first.” Pedagon then posts the links to the 05 discussion thread and the 04 mirror and welcomes anyone to be “the person who wants to argue that tracing a frog in the background of a CC image is deserving of a permaban.”
Shortly after posting the discussion onto 05, Vivarium shares it with all staff and a further discussion sparks among staff in the staff discord. Conwell is the first to respond by indicating that they left their thoughts on the 05 thread as a member of disciplinary team and deletions staff. GremlinGroup shares that they support the idea shared on the 05 thread that “summary deletion sounds like a good plan but for me to be happy there's absolutely have to be a mention that this is pretty much last-resort in terms of not citing sources.” GremlinGroup then expands on this by arguing that “summary deleting something just cause someone hasn't cited sources seems very harsh and can cause problems for them re-posting with proper citation later down the line,” which Pedagon clarifies should hopefully be the current standard licensing policy process and GremlinGroup requests that Pedagon adds this clarification of the goal of the 05 discussion as an edit (which Pedagon does) since, in GremlinGroup’s understanding, “stating that CC license transgressions would be subject to summary deletion isn't accurate to how the licensing team would operate here so like, why say it.”
Dr. Whitney then joins the conversation by outlining their view that they “disagree with the idea that art plagiarism should be a strictly licensing issue when it comes to tracing. Using an image in an article and forgetting to site it in my opinion is far different from physically copying the image by going over it then claiming that work as your own. We have seen the damage stuff like this has done in the past when artists have had their offsite work stolen then it posted onsite and vise versa. It becomes an issue because these ideas can lose their ties to the original owner. As someone who has been in a number of art community’s tracing is not often a one time event and its a behavior that is often repeated multiple times. However if its a one time event where the image is cc and they truly forgot to site that image as cc then I can see where it would just be a licensing issue.” Pedagon points out that ““And forgetting to cite it” is the main issue moving it to being a licensing issue” and GremlinGroup states that “if something is classed as CC then the "original owner" has no say in what their "ideas" are tied to. the license states they can be reused by anyone as long as the work is also cc and the creator is cited” and that “even just claiming art as your own is licensing issue” where they “can't think of any team that's better suited towards dealing with how an image's owner is cited.” Dr. Whitney rebuts that “What if its not cc. Last case we had they used non cc art. I guess the problem there in my eyes is when do we draw the line because in almost any art circle tracing is not tolerated at all. Because often all someone dose is trace and its not just a one time thing and when you pass your traced art off as your own than thats an issue” to which GremlinGroup explains “If it's not cc that's a licensing violation too lol” and Stormfallen adds that “If it's not CC then it isn't allowed on the site; I don't think anyone disagrees there.”
TawnyOwlJones adds that, while it knows “jackshit about art so i don't have an opinion on the art plagiarism side of things but am i right in assuming that if someone repeatedly plagiarises then disc action could be taken? i don't agree with immediate permabans but i'm not particularly comfortable with people who do plagiarise other people's work intentionally just being told to cite it next time. you compare the wiki to school, but there's no deadlines or desperation here nor a penalty for not writing articles so it's not the same” to which Dr. Whitney agrees. GremlinGroup, however, argues back that “It doesn't matter if tracing isn't permitted in an art circle, why should staff be the arbiter of what's onsite beyond it breaking any objective rules?” and Pedagon argues that Tawny is correct in the point about plagiarism being treated “just like any repeated rule violation. But by that point the violated rule being observed by disc would be the repeated ignoring of staff rather than the plagiarism rule itself.” Vivarium and GremlinGroup then both agree that citing sources should be treated similarly to how MAST treats tagging issues, where “If someone does it once and learns from the mistake, no issue, it stays Licensing. If they do it to an extreme amount it should go to disc.” Dr. Whitney responds to this by stating that “The problem is tracing is almost a never one time thing,” to which Vivarium points out the emphasis on the word “almost” and GremlinGroup says that this can be dealt with when it happens. Pedagon and Conwell then ask that everyone ensures that they are posting these thoughts on the 05 thread since continuing to talk on discord is “avoiding the "avoid a massive discussion in discord by having a thread posted on O5" point of the O5 thread. :V”
TawnyOwlJones responds to Pedagon that “plagiarism in itself is bad. it's content theft. i feel like plagiarism should remain under disc (and also maybe licensing) but that there shouldn't be immediate permabans.” Vivarium, GremlinGroup, and TawnyOwlJones then state that they are off to 05 to post their thoughts in the discussion. Whitney continues the discussion by stating that “I would be for a poke my licensing when its a one time cc image that is stolen” to which GremlinGroup clarifies that “you can't steal a cc image you can only fail to cite it correctly.” Vivarium adds to GremlinGroup’s point that “And if they do use a non cc, and its due to a misunderstanding of the license, license should teach them” and GremlinGroup continues by stating that “you must understand that "steal" and "theft" are very charged words that suggest disciplinary action instead of licensing action right.”
Hungrypossum joins back into the discussion by sharing an idea of a “three strike rule, like we have in place for tagging (among other things)” where the user is sent a pm each time. GremlinGroup asks that hungrypossum share this idea on the 05 thread and TawnyOwlJones asks for a final word before posting on 05 that “using a -ND image or whatever is not the same as copying text from other people's articles or claiming someone else's CC image as your own and i feel like they should be dealt with separately.” GremlinGroup points out that this would “also be a licensing violation” due to being “incorrect licensing.” TawnyOwlJones elaborates that “using a non-compatible image is a licensing violation. copying text from someone else's article and claiming you wrote it is content theft as well as licensing violation” to which GremlinGroup explains that “they wouldn't be dealt with the same because an ND image would have to be removed while the other two could remain on site with proper licensing. wiki articles and cc images are published explicitly to allow their "theft" or more correctly usage.” Dr Whitney leaves to share the discussion page with artists in other discord servers and TawnyOwlJones explains that “i'm talking about copying entire paragraphs of other people's work. i know what CC allows but that's not what i'm referring to” to which GremlinGroup points out would “still be permissible with licensing.” GremlinGroup then explains their stance that “artistic merit isn't something staff should stand to judge except in the presence of particularly exceptional circumstances” because “we literally have a group who are here to judge things on the site for their merit and that's the entire userbase.”
TawnyOwlJones responds to GremlinGroup’s assertion that the issue would still be permissible by stating “perhaps, i don't know, but i don't agree with it regardless. it's a cop-out and an arsehole move even if it happens to be allowed by the license and i imagine this policy will have issues down the line when staff refuse to punish individuals for stealing content because it's considered compatible with the license.” GremlinGroup then replies that their perspective of staff is that “staff should be doing as little as possible to dictate the type of content that gets hosted on the site. If it's an "arsehole move" it will get dealt with the people who are actually here to vote on articles” while also opining that TawnyOwlJones’ language is an issue when “using words like "stealing" where "using" would be much more accurate” and that “the content remains untouched in its original place and would be properly cited,” which is permissible because “scp authors explicitly choose to allow their content to be used for these cases when they publish it under the CC-BY-SA license.”
TawnyOwlJones responds to GremlinGroup by stating “i understand that the license allows plagiarism but if i copied one of your articles word-for-word and got more upvotes for it i imagine you'd be angry would you not?” to which GremlinGroup corrects that the licence “doesn't allow for plagiarism it allows for usage of CC-BY-SA content.” TawnyOwlJones argues back that “copying someone's article is plagiarism, even if the content is CC because plagiarism is a moral thing not a license thing,” to which GremlinGroup responds that “plagiarism is passing someone's work off as your own, the example you're positing would have the work being properly cited as the author of the original work allows.” Meanwhile, Dr. Whitney asks for clarification of if GremlinGroup is “only talking about images that are cc compliant then what about in the cases when non-cc images are used is this also licensing issue” and GremlinGroup answers that “non-cc images is much easier to deal with. they'd have to be removed.” To this, Whitney states that, in their opinion, TawnyOwlJones’ claim that plagiarism is a moral thing would apply to issues of tracing art as well. GremlinGroup then expresses his personal stance again that “this would be an over-reach of staff duties into the realm of arbitrary rule-making based on individual standards.”
Whitney then poses the question to GremlinGroup of if he thinks “someone stealing a non cc image then knowing passing it off on there own is grounds for disc” and GremlinGroup responds that this situation would be “grounds for licensing to step in” because “that's literally what licensing are here for.” Vivarium also adds a response to Whitney’s example that “Newbies do this daily whenever they don't properly license their sources.” TawnyOwlJones poses the case where “if i copy a research paper in its entirety irl i'd get done for academic dishonesty even if i cited it. while this is partially a licensing thing, it's also about passing off content as your own even with credit” and GremlinGroup explains that “people would look at it and say "you've just handed me a paper, in its entirety, that isn't yours”” as “they'd see it's someone else's work and read it as such” since “"passing off" would imply not providing credit, tawny.” Whitney then responds to Vivarium by asking “Are they fully aware it isn’t theirs to use and they try and hide the fact they are using it” while TawnyOwlJones and GremlinGroup discuss the issue of if “passing off” and “even with credit” can possibly coexist. Jerden chimes in posting SCP-3145 as an example of an “SCP article that copy pastes from other SCP articles” and asks TawnyOwlJones if it has a “”moral” objection?” Vivarium, EleneeFishTruck, and GremlinGroup combine their brains and work together to bring up SCP-5883 as another example of this situation. Meanwhile, GremlinGroup asks Vivarium for a definition of “extreme” as used in Vivarium’s post in the 05 discussion and Vivarium defines it as “they are asked to site sources and they continue to lie and say it's theirs” and then edits the 05 comment.
In response to the posted SCP articles (SCP-3145 and SCP-5883), TawnyOwlJones argues that “copying someone's scp article, even with credit, is plagiarism. that's where i stand on this. i would argue it's different if it's a clear spin on the idea (same idea and wording but with major edits that distinguish it from the original e.g. an alternate ending) or an agreed collab/rewrite or multiple articles connected and made into something new but copying a single article wholesale is theft and you can't change my mind on that” with DrBleep and Whitney expressing agreement through emoji. GremlinGroup responds by explaining that “it's absolutely not plagiarism by utter definition. you can think it's morally wrong but it's not correct to call it plagiarism” and ROUNDERHOUSE explains that “plagiarism is definitionally taking something and not crediting it with the intention of passing it off as your own work; you can't plagiarism something with credit” while Jerden says that GremlinGroup is “technically correct.” TawnyOwlJones responds to GremlinGroup asking “and what would you have me call it then? since we care about words now” to which hungrypossum answers “a dick move” and GremlinGroup explains that “we don't suddenly care about words, tawny. we're staff deciding policy for a writing website i can't think of many hobby sites that should care more about words.”
hungrypossum then elaborates that “Like technically it's allowed by Licensing standards. That doesn't make it a good thing to do” and GremlinGroup adds agreement along with stating that this point “probably means it's out of scope for the Plagiarism discussion.” Whitney then adds that she doesn’t think “we as a site should tolerate people knowing taking art and using it with the intent of passing it off as their own” and GremlinGroup responds explaining that “we don't, we have licensing for this. that's what they're here for and what they stand against” while Jak and Jerden express agreement through emoji. Whitney expresses disagreement with this view by stating “I think it deserves more than a slap on the wrist but that’s just me and that seems to be where we disagree” and Vivarium responds to this comment that “There is grey area here. You can't just do this one way or the other. You have to incorporate both methods. Take a look at my plan in the O5 thread” (which GremlinGroup expresses agreement to through an emoji). GremlinGroup then adds that “In the past two weeks we've had an article that included an image but didn't cite it. this did exactly what you're suggesting, and yet licensing were able to discern that the image was created by a friend of the author who had forgotten or neglected to cite it as such. proper licensing information was added for the image” and linked to SCP-6097.
Meanwhile, Vivarium shares that they “have worked the tagging mines, and I have sent tagging pms and made tagging C&D. Not every case is the same, and that's why you have to look at each one and decide whether it is a slap on the wrist or yeet to disc.” TawnyOwlJones replies to this by stating that “i agree with this at face value (haven't read your o5 post yet) but there should be precedent for something specific to happen rather than people being malicious/repeatedly stupid and getting "do it properly next time”.” Vivarium responds by sharing an example that “let's say a noobie tags an article evil kill demon. In that case we send a PM and warn them” and that “If someone tagged 1000 articles with a slur, we move to disc” while GremlinGroup asks “What's wrong with allowing people another chance to do something properly?” and “why assume "malicious stupidity" maliciousness / stupidity (mis-parsed your message) when you can assume plain old misunderstandings?” Vivarium then adds that “It's the same with plagiarism. context is important.”
TawnyOwlJones responds to Vivarium’s statement that “If someone tagged 1000 articles with a slur, we move to disc” by explaining that “this is exactly what i'm trying to say. if someone rips off an article wholesale, that would be disc's purview and not licensing’s?” Vivarium answers that “It would at minimum be a non-disc, which Licensing would handle. Disc if it is believed a punishment is in order,” GremlinGroup responds that “I can possibly see the argumen that, being a re-host of the same content on the same site, it's "contentless", allowing for summary deletion. if it contains anything other than just the article wholesale, I wouldn't be in support of deletion or any staff intervention, really. Unless that additional content is just something douchey or whatever, the stuff that'd get intervention anyway. like, hell, at that point even site crit could have to get involved if the situation was that someone had included an article in their "how to write" essay, and decided to mercilessly attack its quality” and hungrypossum adds that “I don't think a summary deletion would be needed since people would downvote it before you could say "this is a duplicate article”.”
TawnyOwlJones replies to Vivarium stating that it "does believe a punishment would be in order for that, but you're disc and i'm not so i'm content with that. i'm more than happy for plagiarism as we're talking about it here to be a case-by-case thing as tagging is but i want it written in the policy that disc action is at least a possibility” to which GremlinGroup advises that Tawny look at Vivarium’s 05 post. Hungrypossum responds to TawnyOwlJones stating that “It will definitely be a possibility, most likely with a case-by-case analysis of extreme cases” and GremlinGroup shares a quote from Vivarium’s 05 post that “Disc if the infractions are extreme1 1. Cases where the offending party continues to claim ownership of content that is not theirs and other clear malicious forms of plagiarism.” TawnyOwlJones responds to hungrypossum’s assertion that duplicate articles would be downvoted by saying “disagree. i don't think people would notice unless it was a really well known article.” Hungrypossum disagrees with this stating “Somewhat disagree, someone is bound to notice or at least say "hey, this looks oddly familiar”.” TawnyOwlJones then responds to GremlinGroup’s suggestion to read Vivarium’s 05 post by stating “i have, i'm just clarifying what i mean. i also want to have it include copying the entirety of someone's article, explicitly stated or implied in the policy that that is against the rules.” GremlinGroup states that “I really do think the case could be made for "contentless article" but also in order for this article not to violate licensing, it'd have to be stated outright that it uses content from another SCP article. if it wasn't stated it'd be in violation and have to be dealt with that way first, so staff would be made aware.”
TawnyOwlJones responds to GremlinGroup with the clarification that “i guess my question here is if a copied article isn't cited, are you going to go to disc, delete the article for being contentless/a duplicate, or just tell the author to cite it? does this change if the original author objects to their article being copied? or is that case-by-case?” GremlinGroup answers that “that's worth considering, although I do believe it'd be rather an edge-case scenario. My argument for action, if any, would be deletion on the grounds of being a content-less rehosting of another article. hard to say, though, because this is one very specific what-if standing in the way of a wide-reaching policy discussion. what I can say is that the original author should really have no say in the matter. while they might feel affronted, they signed up for it when they posted under the cc license” and stormfallen also responds that “If there's no original sentences in the work, that's a summary deletion and probably a non-disc If it's a mix of original and uncited-existing, then probably a grace period and a PM for the author to cite. If they fail to or outright refuse, deletion and (non-)disc.” Vivarium also chimes in to add that “There is room for common sense discissions in this structure. If tagging didn't do that, Plague would have a Tagging C&D” and hungrypossum leaves the discussion with a meme. TawnyOwlJones then explains that “all i want is for this to be hashed out before it happens and if possible stated or implied in the policy that disc action may result for rule 0 violation if someone rips off someone else's article entirely” to which GremlinGroup agrees with “Yeah honestly I've said all I wanna say on 05. Tawny I recommend you bring this example up on the thread. If nothing else, your opinion and people's discussions will be something to point to in the unlikely situation this is brought up.”
As people say goodnight to hungrypossum, stormfallen adds to their prior point that “Although I guess if all the unoriginal parts of the work are known to be CC-compatible, then technically Licensing can just add the relevant licensing info like they do for images. Still feels like a dick move though” and “But frankly if someone posts a work where half of it is provably not their own and they don't cite it, I'm sideeye'ing the half which isn't on the site already very hard” while Vivarium adds that “Context is important. Imagine if Harry's 682 article was posted by a nobody.” Pedagon then places a cap on the conversation by reminding people to post on the 05 thread as “Lots of thoughts here that could have definitely been put on O5 as their own things or in direct reply to other people! Remember: O5 is for more than just voting and final thoughts! You definitely can ask questions and put incomplete thoughts on O5”
Thirty minutes later, Pedagon reignites the discussion by letting Conwell, Whitney, and Vivarium know that he has replied to them on 05. Vivarium responds in discord to Pedagon’s comment on 05 that he is witholding his thoughts on plagiarism as currently infractions based on textual plagiarism are being roughly translated to a team focused on images. Jerden then responds to Vivarium stating that they feel the policy should be consistent, but need more time to think about that, and Vivarium rebuts that defining art plagiarim is "easy", while "text requires nuance."
While Conwell indicates briefly that their response can be found on the 05 thread without bringing it into discord, Pedagon asks Vivarium what the difference is between art and text plagiarism. To this, Vivarium explains that the Licensing team typically deal with images, and that adding a responsibility for textual licensing without further thought would be "lazy". Pedagon agrees, saying he was under the impression that the only difference between the two would be how the plagiarism is verified, rather than how it is dealt with. He stresses the importance of considering the work put in, and points to his conversation with conwell on the 05 thread. To this, Vivarium agrees, saying he feels comfortable stating his opinion on art plagiarism due to its simplicity, but needs to think more about textual plagiarism. He believes that integrating textual plagiarism into Licensing's responsibilities will require perspectives from the team's members and leaders. Meanwhile, Whitney indicates that she has also left a reply on 05 clarifying her points.
GremlinGroup briefly clarifies further that “The cc license has no bounds on what's required for something suitable for CC BY SA to be used. There's no "remix" requirement", meaning such a subjective requirement can be avoided. Whitney explains that she thought Pedagon had asked why she was opposed to tracing based on an artist's perspective, she was "trying to explain that not really argue anything.” Pedagon clarifies his intent that he was wondering about it from an "art perspective." He states that the conversation should be focused on both what must be done, and what should be done: "we might be able to make it a licensing thing with minor annoyance but if this is like a thing™️ where there’s something about tracing that is especially taboo then it’s worth discussing too.”
GremlinGroup thanks Whitney and Whitney offers to “provide tracing examples with my own work if u want to see that for more understanding on what I mean.” After GremlinGroup asks if these examples are of on-site work, Whitney states they are not, they are examples of her off-site work that was traced and used in a YouTube thumbnail. She is bringing them up to provide a visual example that she is comfortable using (as opposed so anyone else's art that has been traced). GremlinGroup responds to Pedagon that he “can't imagine that someone would release art under cc and then not expect it to be used like it's cc, though” since the examples he's seen Whitney discuss int he past were of non-cc art being traced. Pedagon agrees, stating that their purpose is “trying to understand.”
Pedagon wants to acknowledge that the present discussion is focused on an on-site rule, which would have no bearing on art theft on other platforms, such as YouTube. Whitney wonders how much traced art the others have seen. Pedagon says he's seen plenty of traced art off-site, but has only seen it on-site twice. He clarifies that this stark difference is why he's focusing on the Wiki, as it's what staff policy can directly affect. Whitney acknowledges this, stating "No i get ya. We have had a lot offsite and from my understanding all they can really do from that end is ask for credit and if thats not given it might be able to be taken down.” Pedagon agrees with this, saying it's a separate valid issue, and that his focus is on on-site issues. He defines a separate conversation "between non-cc stuff being traced and posted as cc, cc stuff being posted as non-cc, and cc stuff being traced and properly posted as cc.”
Whitney then asks if staff could “have different reactions for cc vs non cc. Its hard because we have people just throw the scp logo into their art without drawing and that is a licensing violation technically but id never say that deserves disc on the other hand we have had people fully trace wiki art without credit and repost it onsite which id say deserves non disc at least so there is a grey zone." She says that things can't be done on a case-by-case basis, because there need to be examples to point towards.
Pedagon asks for clarification of what Whitney means by “throw the SCP logo into their art without drawing”, asking how that would be a violation of licensing. Whitney answers Pedagon that “People will grab a drawn logo and put it on their art someone made that logo so I believe technically u should credit it even the base line scp logo.” Meanwhile, GremlinGroup states that “if it's non cc then it's not allowed on site. like that's pretty much final it's literally the license. If they're not crediting something then the first step would always be to request that they credit it, no? it would be the point where they start actively resisting licensing's request that disc would even be considered. if the issue isn't that they're breaking the license by posting non-cc art, it's that they're breaking the license by not properly attributing that art. neither of those are disc-worth until you get the the point that they're obstructing licensing.” Yossi then joins the discussion and suggests that “we should shoot anyone who plagiarizes in the face.” This is assumed by Recap to be a joke.
Pedagon then adds that he thinks “we are mixing a bunch of issues here. There’s 1) people violating the license by not giving proper credit, 2) people posting license-invalid art on the wiki and violating the license, and 3) people tracing cc art. These are three different things and the first two are essentially already dealt with” which Whitney agrees with and GremlinGroup suggests Pedagon add to the 05 thread itself as part of the top post. Whitney then states that “rom my perspective while yes its a licensing issue from an art perspective I think a little more should happen then its just removal hence why I lean more to disc. It makes me very uneasy having people in the community who trace and its not really publicly addressed for the reasons I mentioned in my post on o5. I dont mean out right ban.” GremlinGroup argues back that “is this really a stance that staff should take, if it's not one of pure licensing? I mentioned earlier that I believe staff should have minimal influence on the content that's posted to the site. ike obviously positive nudges are much more tolerable than negative ones, hence why contests are largely positive for the site.” Finally, UncertaintyCrossing joins back into the discussion to state that they will leave their thoughts on 05. The discussion ends abruptly here.
On the 16th, UncertaintyCrossing responds on 05 and posts in staff chat that they are largely in support of the general sentiment expressed, and that their 05 post attempts to "shed some light on why art tracing is seen as such a bad thing," which is "fully for context." UncertaintyCrossing "tried to give multiple perspectives - both as a digital artist, as someone who's helped teach art classes, as someone who's taking art classes, as someone who's worked in industry, and as a staff member," and attempted to differentiate and explain the views of these various groups. Uncertainty acknowledges that this may not be particularly relevant for how plagiarism is treated, but has attempted to provide context. GremlinGroup states he's going to respond to that message with an outline for a possible solution which addresses most, but not all, of the concerns espoused. He follows up by explaining that he believes more can be done to explain the Wiki's license to newcomers and first-time posters, to ensure they are aware of the license they are releasing their art / writing under.
Stonefish then posts that they “don't know if I can have a valid opinion on this topic actually” and responds in the Discord to GremlinGroup's forum post: “To answer your concern without disrupting the 05 thread, I think it's impossible for us to enforce the actual language of the policy without considering the moral considerations we share, which is personally rooted in my own belief that we do actually meddle in the content of the wiki, both officially (removing Non-CC images and deeply offensive content), unofficially (intolerance of NFTs or OnlyFans promotions), and in grey areas (consideration of adult pages), and that. based on all evidence, is a beneficial thing for our community at large. Plagiarism, like copyright infringement, is one of the few areas where the black-and-white language of the law must give way to one's own personal convictions and deeply held considerations, whether they be a hardline stance banning any violations or a careful consideration of each individual case. As we argue what language to put in our guidelines, we need to also consider how we will enforce those guidelines” and “Yes, it's, as Lucio put it, "a moral standpoint rather than license-allowed-wise" but to me they're inseparable.”
To this, GremlinGroup states “I'm aware of all three of those categories, and in favour of pretty much all of them. That's why I didn't say "we shouldn't influence content" i said "staff should do as little as possible". We do a lot already” and gee asks stonefish to post these thoughts on the 05 thread. GremlinGroup then responds to stonefish’s 05 post that “So far the "intolerance in NFTs" point hasn't come through all that strongly, given we've not done anything apart from follow the CC license, right? the takedowns were issued to someone who wasn't properly citing authors / artists.” Stonefish agrees with this and adds “that's why it's sort of an unofficial policy to my eyes. we wouldn't like it if we had an author mint a line of tokens after their work and plug them on the discussion page but it's not strictly against the rules” and that “I still feel that we ought perhaps to do more, and I recognize I am perhaps alone in that opinion on my team and elsewhere on staff.” GremlinGroup then asks stonefish what is meant by an “unofficial policy" and stonefish explains that they mean “Something we feel strongly about that is not in official policy of the wiki, and so might frown upon or otherwise discuss without taking an action. It's not quite "meddling" so much as it is a desire to meddle.”
UncertaintyCrossing then chimes in to explain that “the response we've been giving on IO (with advice from licensing) to people asking about NFTs is that there will never be an "official" NFT from the SCP wiki, but as long as people follow licensing they can do what they want with images or tokens or whatever. There won't be one from us / we will never endorse one / they can't say it's endorsed by us, to clarify. I don't know if that counts as an example of "unofficial" policy but it might since it's clearly something like, we would never do, but still allow (offsite, in this case). but just for added context on that front because i have had to send out that message recently haha.” To this, GremlinGroup responds “that's what I figured. I think "unofficial policy" kinda runs counter to itself. "Unspoken rule" is more commonly used but again I don't think it's ever fair to run a site off of rules the userbase isn't privy to.” The discussion then moves on into a discussion about OnlyFans.
On January 17th, hungrypossum points out a comment on the 04 mirror of the plagiarism policy discussion thread on 05 (https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/forum/t-14459661/discussion-the-future-of-plagiarism-policy#post-5178637) in order to have someone respond to it. Hungrypossum shares their perspective that “plagiarism bans would be commuted for events that would fall under non-bannable offenses after the policy rework.” Lucio agrees that “if we decide it's not an issue anymore, I saw we revert the bans” and hungrypossum adds their agreement to Lucio that this would be “on a case by case basis since not all events would be unbannable right out the gate.”
GremlinGroup adds that “each ban should be investigated” and Vivarium adds that they “feel like that will require a comprehensive look at all past plagiarism cases which will be a hefty task, but I can safely assume we will be retroactively removing bans in cases where plagiarism was the only offense and it's clear it was non malicious." He adds that this has been done for past cases, and so is likely to re-occur. GremlinGroup agrees by stating that “it's absolutely worth addressing them yeah. Even if just to say "a ban should not have occurred for this" for each” and “you won't always be in a position to unban someone for other reasons but even then that specific ban shouldn't be recorded as such.” Hungrypossum then suggests that the conversation wait until more people involved can chime in and Vivarium guarantees that “if the policy I changed, as a member of Disc now, I will help and make sure past disciplinary action is thoroughly looked over.” Jerden joins in to add that “It seems that for now the only conclusion is that we think that any rules change should be applied retroactively, so we'd need a better idea of what the rules should be going forward before you start reviewing old cases” and hungrypossum agrees, stating “oh definitely, that's Step 0. Can't apply new standards to old cases if there's no new standards. But it came up as a question, so it's good if it's brought to staff's attention.” The conversation stops here.
The discussion above occurred over roughly 8.5 hours on the 15th, 30 minutes on the 16th, and 1.5 hours on the 17th.
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Topic: Karma Announcement | 2022/01/15
Recap: EstrellaYoshte asks: "can we announce on front page news that karma machine broke." They also suggest a possible statement from the Tech Team on the forums. OptimisticLucio suggests: "Probably better a forum announcement that’s linked on the FP, because you won’t be able to fit the whole explanation there, and people would want to discuss it." Alexander suggests a link in the news module, and Lucio agrees: "Post on the Announcements forum, put a TL;DR on the front page news module." Athenodora asks whether the site FAQ mentions karma; it does not.
This discussion took less than one half-hour.
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Topic: Firefox Login Glitch | 2022/01/15
Summary: Staff discuss an issue that isn't.
Recap: OptimisticLucio brings up a Wikidot issue relating to logins and asks if it's been announced on the English branch yet. Siddartha Alonne notes that it has not, and that most other branches have. Lucio isn't sure that it requires action, since the issue merely causes a web browser to forget your password. Siddartha Alonne says that users should not use Firefox because of the issue, and should also change their passwords. Lucio cannot see why password changing would be required as no security issue is obvious; if there is one, he'd like to hear it. Siddartha quotes the post, where it is explained that changing your password will fix the issue in Firefox. Lucio acknowledges this… then discovers that the issue was actually already fixed, two days ago. He asks that this information be passed on to the other branches.
Siddartha responds: "Oh."
Roundabout reports: "In -ES it was recommended that all users change their passwords"; "However it isn't necessary within the SCP wiki because we have the https domain; it's still recommended because most users use a lot of sites." Lucio notes that there is "no sudden reason" to change one's password outside of periodic best practices. (Emphasis in original.)
This discussion took place over approximately two and one-half hours.
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Topic: Collab Log Entry Removal | 2022/01/15
Summary: Staff remove an entry from a collab log, then determine why they could.
Recap: Zyn has received an anonymous complaint about content on the Technical Issues collab log, as while "There's a lot of gross, unfunny content here" there's some particularly unpleasant sexual humour in a few entries. Zyn agrees: "I personally feel like we can/should remove the first two entries. They contribute nothing positive to the piece, definitely shouldn't be the first things people read when they look at the page, and really are not acceptable humor." GremlinGroup asks if the page is under staff purview; if so, he is in favour of removing the offending entries. UncertaintyCrossing and Jacob Conwell agree. Zyn removes the entries, as well as other entries referencing them. GremlinGroup again asks if the page is under staff purview. Jerden opines: "I think all collaborative pages are unless there's an active user maintaining them." stormfallen notes that the maintaining user was last active on the site "almost exactly a year ago." Zyn has made an admin post on the page's discussion page, and notes that "the matter was brought up in october 2021… surprised no one saw it." Vivarium presents the name of the user who maintains the page, and notes that it does not fall under the purview of the Maintenance and Ancillary Staff Team. However, "If the entries are determined to be worthy of removal via rule breaking reasons they can be removed." Zyn notes that "It's extremely inappropriate content, so I personally feel we're okay here" and Vivarium agrees. GremlinGroup asks: "What kind of rule breaking material is covered?" Vivarium responds: "I'm not sure, but those logs fall under that." GremlinGroup presses further: "So if it wasn't mast that did it is this admin fiat or something?" He is looking for a reasoning behind the actions that were taken. Zyn finds the rules:
Collaborative logs: You are free to add original content to open collaborative logs. These pages are tagged as "collaboration". Content may be removed by the page owner or the Maintenance and Ancillary Staff Team (MAST). Please do not fix unauthorized or bad edits — contact the original owner or MAST about additions that you feel are inappropriate or low-quality. Alterations to the structure of a collaborative log are not permitted.
gee0765 says that "these dont break any rules they just suck"; "idk if we can remove things that suck"; "seems bad." GremlinGroup asks whether Zyn is on MAST; she is not, though she thinks this may be an oversight as she does a lot of site maintenance work on a daily basis. Vivarium corrects: "She is an admin and is in the MAST channel. By default she is in MAST and can make MAST edits." GremlinGroup acknowledges this, and asks if "explicit reasoning is required." He reiterates that he was in favour of removal, but wants clarity on the process. Zyn notes she left her reasoning on the thread, and Vivarium says reasoning is important when a page does not fall under MAST's purview. "Logs under our purview can be pruned based on internal metrics and do not require explicit reasons." Jerden has a follow-up: "what does make a collab log fall under collab log pruning purview?" Vivarium points him to resources in the MAST server. GremlinGroup believes that "Site rules give mast control." Vivarium finds that iffy, saying he "was under the impression logs had to be handed to us before it us under our purview." GremlinGroup agrees, noting that "we had a whole ass chat about how to improve the staff handoff of Collab logs." He is interested in the "weird misconception that it has to be handed to mast." Jerden will ask about it in the MAST Discord. Zyn asks if the log's author needs a PM; Vivarium thinks it does, and agrees to send it himself.
This discussion took less than one half-hour.
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OnlyFansLinks
Topic: Questions about OnlyFans links | 2020/01/16
Recap: A staff member follows up on the discussion about art and text plagiarism by asking whether linking an OnlyFans page on one's author page would be acceptable under the Donations Policy. This question prompts confusion, and worries that the staffer's intent is to spawn another “banning presidents discussion.” UncertaintyCrossing suggests that the resolution would probably be flagging the link as leading to nsfw content and putting an adult splash on the author page itself. GremlinGroup then identifies that a similar discussion already occurred in December and links the question-positer to read the corresponding recap (Recap of Offsite Links Discussion). The staff member interprets this to mean that a link to OnlyFans would be permissible with an NSFW warning, as well as stating the cost/payment required to access the page, and GremlinGroup states that they are “not certain that's the non-conclusion that was reached.” The staff member claims that they agree with GremlinGroup since no conclusion was reached, but if they had, they would assume the rules would follow typical donation rules, and adult content rules.
Pedagon tells the staff member that he would not assume those rules until a non-hypothetical discussion has occurred. He recommends that, should this be something someone wants to do, "an actual serious discussion around the NSFW/donations/advertising policy will need to occur without the guise of humour" and without being stuck in hypotheticals. He doesn't believe it's "smart to just make the claim that these would be our policy just from two short nonsense discussions.” Pedagon then expands on his point, saying that if the staff member is aware of anyone who wants to link their OnyFans page, it should be discussed seriously, but until then the suggestion comes across as a "nonsense joke". The staff member states that it is not a joke and they "half" want to do this themself. Pedagon responds to this by advising them to “please prompt a real discussion on O5 to discuss this instead of approaching it as a hypothetical or it will continue to be treated as a joke along the lines of banning presidents.”
This discussion took place over 30 minutes.
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Topic: Humanoid SCP Essay Crit | 2022/01/18
Summary: Leveritas seeks critique for an update on the Humanoid SCPs essay from 2012; it is suggested he reduce the new essay's reliance on the old one.
Recap: Leveritas posts a request for critique on attempt to “freshen up” the So You Want to Write a Humanoid SCP Object essay, for structure and pacing. Optimistic Lucio offers to provide critique but notes that he’s also produced guides with pacing issues. After Leveritas posts the link, Jerden notes that it feels “too referential”, but doesn’t think there are pacing issues. His advice is to reduce the essay’s reliance on its predecessor.
A day later, Optimistic Lucio echoes Jerden’s feelings that the essay is too reliant on its predecessor, rather than being standalone. He also notes that the majority of the essay is dedicated to preventing poor articles, rather than guiding the creation of good ones. His recommendation is to create a rewrite from the ground up, rather than attempting to adapt the prior work.
This discussion took place over two days.
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Topic: Image Archival | 2022/01/18 - 2022/01/24
Recap: Naepic plans to start an 05command/mainsite mirror discussion about "encouraging users to web archive their image sources" in order to prevent people "retracting" the Creative Commons license retroactively (which is not actually something they're allowed to do) and making images unusable. He does not intend this to be compulsory, merely advice for best practices which will be provided to authors via PM. He asks if there are concerns; Edna Granbo and GremlinGroup express approval. Several days later Naepic posts an announcement with a link to the promised 05command discussion: here.
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Topic: Charged Language in Staffchat (1) | 2022/01/18
Recap: Multiple staff members are discussing disciplinary record-keeping for two different users, and Pedagon takes issue with the use of charged language by Edna Granbo and Roundabout to describe the behaviour: "it is just making me quite uncomfortable to be talking about a user like this after there has been so much work on improving how we talk about people in official staff-work spaces." Roundabout responds: "But, it is true. The user has been insulting other people pretty often, so that's just the first way I could describe their behavior." OptimisticLucio agrees, but also agrees with Pedagon that "throwing comments like that on users is what got us into the previously toxic mindset we had in chat." He notes both "normally agressive and passive agressive comments" are being made. Pedagon responds directly to Roundabout: "The first way is often not the best or proper way and this is a professional space to talk about things facing the site." Edna and Roundabout agree.
This discussion took approximately two hours.
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Topic: Department-Con Announcement | 22/01/21
Summary: ROUNDERHOUSE announces Department-Con, and concerns with the "Bribe the Judge" joke award are addressed.
Recap: ROUNDERHOUSE links the Department-Con contest page and notes that a front page announcement will be required. ROUNDERHOUSE notifies Zyn, to which Alexander responds "I could be wrong, but I think MAST's navigations team would be the people to ask." ROUNDERHOUSE disagrees, stating that "mast's nav teams handle nav layout and arrangement" and "little stuff like this, usually zyn updates the front page."
Zyn responds, requesting for a front-page blurb from ROUNDERHOUSE. She additionally asks ROUNDERHOUSE if the aforementioned blurb will be apart of the News block or a standalone announcement, to which ROUNDERHOUSE confirms that it will be standalone. Optimistic Lucio responds to ROUNDERHOUSE's answer and requests that the blurb is placed on the Front Page news block. He further notes that "we moved the news to be the top of the page for that purpose so we don’t need to make new blocks every time there’s a contest." LemonBee12 states that "I feel like contests deserve their own blocks" to which Optimistic Lucio disagrees. He elaborates that "The news are already the first thing you see when you open front page other than the big 'WARNING this place is [yada yada]'" and "making it a fancy block is cool and all, but can make some contests more visible than others if we don’t make unique blocks for them, and can create issues if we have two contests on at the same time."
ROUNDERHOUSE comments that he believes contests deserve their own standalone announcement block, and that "we can make a unique block, it takes like five minutes and rudimentary CSS skills - and two contests is a rare enough occurrence." ROUNDERHOUSE provides Zyn with a front page blurb, but she requests if the "Bribe the Judge" joke award can be removed from the Department-Con contest page. She continues, "that kind of thing easily sets the precedence for easy abuse, since contest organizers would be able to get easy canon/character tags out of it" and recommends "maybe go the NaNoWriMo chicken achievement route?"
EstrellaYoshte seeks confirmation on whether the "Bribe the Judge" award is a joke, and Zyn continues by saying the award "gives someone in a position of authority extra viewership." ROUNDERHOUSE responds to EstrellaYoshte in the affirmative, and comments to Zyn that "someone made a similar report (albeit anonymously) and while i don't agree i figure that if two people have concerns about it its probably rubbing up into problem territory. i'll remove it and just add something to replace it later." Zyn replies by saying "we can keep the award, just swap out the character for something that doesn't favor any one author's content over anyone else's" and refers back to her previous recommendation. ROUNDERHOUSE refuses the recommendation before removing the joke award from the page. Zyn moves forward with adding the Department-Con announcement blurb to the Front page.
Discussion takes place over the course of 2 days.
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Topic: Announcements and Unofficial Contests | 2022/01/22
Summary: A user tries to announce an unofficial contest, and staff figure out who's meant to post in the Sitewide Announcements forum.
Recap: stormfallen asks whether making new threads in SCP Foundation Sitewide Announcements is "intended to be limited to mod+" as a user is attempting to post about their unofficial contest. GremlinGroup explains the contest the user wants to run. gee0765 notes that, if the category is only for staff use, its summary should be updated. DrBleep begins to suggest that it's locked so that only moderators can post, but second-guesses as she spots a number of non-moderators (staff and non-staff) have posted in it. She can't can't help at the moment, as she's playing Pathfinder, which is "for nerds" according to LilyFlower. Bleep lets that stand.
ManyMeats wants to know what change is being proposed: should site members be allowed to create topics, or should the summary be updated? aismallard asks whether the Community Outreach Team gave permission for the contest; ROUNDERHOUSE believes WhiteGuard was pinged, but doesn't know if he approved it. WhiteGuard asks what the contest is about, as he "never understood precisely," which sounds to aismallard like formal approval was not received. GremlinGroup asks how SCPD was able to make its two unofficial contests; Elenee FishTruck explains that SCPD staff contacted the contemporary Community Outreach captains "a month or so in-advance for Memecon." aismallard further clarifies: "Woedenaz coordinated with Taylor (then CO co-captain) for months, first with viability checks, then regular updates, and then a final check at the end. Unfortunately it was only at this point that Procy (the other co-captain) became aware, and blocked the contest, and it wasn't able to be deployed on April 1st." She adds that "Normally I would say looping in one co-captain is the same as talking to both of them, and perfectly acceptable on Woedenaz's part, but in this case unfortunately the ball got dropped hard on the other side."
Zyn believes the change should be to the forum description, as allowing the category to be open to all resulted in non-staff making announcements for new articles, requesting help, or discussing SCP-related topics, all forum posts that are more suitable elsewhere, thus making "more legwork" for staff to move these threads to those places. She also "thought that to prevent this again, when we did the split to page announcements/site announcements, the same setup would be in place?" She further provides information on how unlocks and thread changes work: admins can unlock a category, but moderators can move threads. The typical approach is for a non-moderator to create the thread elsewhere, and have a moderator move it to the announcements category. Finally, she agrees with ManyMeats that no change will be made until Community Outreach assents.
This discussion took place over approximately six hours.
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Topic: Adult Content Policy | 2022/01/23
Recap: Croquembouche has a question from the Japanese branch: "do we have a definition anywhere of what adult content (i.e. requiring a splash page) actually is?" EstrellaYoshte responds that case-by-case consensus is the method, and adds that staff is presently "establishing an adultery team to handle it." hungrypossum remarks on the high quality of that turn of phrase. GremlinGroup elaborates that the new team "will define, categorise, and otherwise maintain the existence/application of adult splashes." Croquembouche promises to pass the information on. LilyFlower and Siddartha Alonne briefly discuss the need for splash pages, and the progress of the ongoing minimum age raising.
This conversation took approximately one and one-half hours.
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Topic: Secure Facilities Locations Revamp | 2022/01/23 - 2022/01/24
Summary: Jerden workshops the new Secure Facilities Locations page.
Recap: Jerden posts a link to an 05command discussion post regarding a revamp of the Secure Facilities Locations page. He notes that its map component still needs Tech team approval, and also that Edna Granbo is "the only person to raise an objection." He's "unsure if we were able to address that by explaining things better but if there is an objection I suppose this would need to be voted on before we could post this to the wiki?" Zyn suggests moving elements on the page for usability, particularly for new writers, suggesting prioritizing the glossary of terms. Jerden feels that "most of the definitions were a bit unnecessary and that people were more likely to use the page to look up a specific Site rather than the definition of "Humanoid" which was why we went for the new order." Zyn states that this is the page she links users to when they want that information, and therefore asks if it's available elsewhere. Jerden notes that it's still there, it's not not up top; "I do see your point but I really dislike having all the definitions before any of the actually interesting content." Zyn thinks a link to the content would be sufficient if it can't be made prominent; she also suggests that a balance should be struck between making the page "informative or entertaining" as she feels new readers will find this layout "unapproachable." Jerden feels frontloading all those terms, as in the present version, would make the page unapproachable. He thought examples of Sites would be more useful than definitions. He nevertheless agrees to "add the Site/Area definitions to the intro text." Jerden, Zyn and Estrella further workshop the code, location and wording.
This discussion took place sporadically over approximately ten hours.
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Topic: International Press Agency | 2022/01/23
Recap: Siddartha Alonne asks whether -EN should have a representative to -INT's International Press Agency to "give our news to other branches." He doesn't feel anyone presently fills this role, and notes that he, WhiteGuard and ROUNDERHOUSE are in the relevant Discord server. Optimistic Lucio thinks we "Probably should; would help with the whole "-EN and Everyone Else™️" mentality," but he suggests that the Ambassador Team should be deciding this internally. Siddartha suggests Community Outreach should also be involved. UncertaintyCrossing notes that "our site news is on hiatus" but still feels someone from Site News should also comment on this. WhiteGuard notes that "Site News is about to take on a Press Release format than the standard monthly basis, so this is something we could easily do."
This discussion took approximately five and one-half hours.
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Topic: Wikijump Link | 2022/01/23
Recap: Hexick asks for the link to the Wikijump Discord server. Cassandra Prime provides it, noting her belief that this is acceptable practice in staffchat. Optimistic Lucio assures her that it is. aismallard clarifies: "You can send it in DMs but don't post it somewhere public or permanent please." Cassandra acknowledges this, and suggests that "you may want to clarify that under information on the Wikijump server, since I may not be the only one not to have been too sure about that."
This discussion took approximately three and one-half hours.
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Topic: Advertising Game Server on Forums | 2022/01/24
Recap: Roundabout has found a user advertising their fan Minecraft server on the forums, and asks if this is allowed. LilyFlower asks not to be quoted on her response, which is "Not usually without asking." Siddartha Alonne notes the user supposedly had permission to make their advertisement on -INT. Jerden states: "This feels like the kind of thing that should be allowed in the Games and Hobbies forum IMO." (And that's where the post is.) Ethagon agrees. Roundabout asks Siddartha: "Did you ask about whoever gave them permission?" Siddartha says permission was given by a Master Admin, leading the user to believe posting again without asking would be fine. Roundabout replies: "I'm sure most of them haven't logged in Wikidot for days." Siddartha replies: "What." Roundabout meant the Master Admins. Siddartha is not less confused: "Wdym they haven't logged?" Roundabout responds: "I don't think they're really active." Siddartha offers the assurance that they are. Assistant Null, a subreddit moderator, asks if the thread still being up means advertising on the reddit is also okay — they're being asked as well. If she gets a response, it's not in staffchat.
This discussion took place over less than four hours.
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Topic: Unused Files on the Wiki | 2022/01/24
Recap: Siddartha Alonne has discovered an unused file in an article's filespace, and asks if this is "normal." aismallard replies: "It may be a licensing thing, the file is kept but not on the page if it's not compliant until it's replaced." She doesn't think this seems to be the case, on reflection, but suggests asking the Licensing Team. EstrellaYoshte mentions that this is relatively common across the wiki. aismallard clarifies that Siddartha is asking about this page specifically. Roundabout mentions that this is relatively common across the wiki.
This discussion took place sporadically over more than two hours.
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Topic: Announcements and Unofficial Contests 2 | 2022/01/24
Summary: Staff continue to discuss unofficial contests, and ideas for official ones.
Recap: The user from the Announcements and Unofficial Contests recap above has come into the official IRC's #site17 help channel to ask about the contest they wish to run. DrFullham forwards this to staffchat. Zyn asks if Community Outreach has been contacted yet, and suggests that the user contact Whiteguard and Naepic. She also notes that "We've already got a contest running." stormfallen mentions that WhiteGuard was contacted, and Zyn asks if WhiteGuard had replied with an explanation of how to proceed. Whiteguard is writing the reply right now, as he was "waiting on a second opinion from Naepic." Siddartha Alonne comments: "I assumed contests proposal when a contest is already up would be declined automatically?" Zyn wonders how prizes would work, as "Usual prizes for contests are front page features." This reminds her to ask ROUNDERHOUSE how many feature slots the Department Contest will require. WhiteGuard doesn't have any problem with the proposed unofficial contest, though he is unsure what attention it will receive while the official one is also running.
Yossipossi likes "this idea of community-run contests. I think we should try to pursue a more holistic and community-tied approach to staff as opposed to staff dictating contests (except for stuff like xkons)." Apparently he was talking about DeptCon, because he didn't remember that its organizer, ROUNDERHOUSE, is in fact a junior staff member. Yossi therefore calls himself "deadbrained" but stands by the overall sentiment. Zyn doesn't feel the contests will necessarily conflict as the proposed one is "a different flavor" due to its lighter nature, as with April Fools' Day. Fullham suggests that he has seen "people not liking the deptcon rules" and therefore a solo contest might be good to have at the same time. Zyn has "no issue with it so long as the logistics are worked out." stormfallen presents logs from #site17 where the user is becoming frustrated that discussions are taking place without their involvement; stormfallen is also becoming frustrated and feels he can no longer respond. Staff feel that this issue should have been raised by the user in advance, as this is a busy time.
WhiteGuard has responded to the user, giving permission for the contest to be run. WhiteGuard notes the user expected certain contests to be run annually; Siddartha Alonne is "very against that. Contests are fun 'cause you don't expect the theme/it has particular rules. Having a contest on the same theme every year would become extremely boring by the third year IMHO." This receives general agreement; ROUNDERHOUSE notes that "this is why jamcon went from one of the most-loved contests to one of the most reviled in the space of 3 years," among other reasons. Zyn and ROUNDERHOUSE discuss the prize features for DeptCon as the conversation progresses in other directions; DrBleep opines that "Jamcon became hated because it flooded the site with a few high quality execution short-form articles, and a bunch of mediocre material that was a slog to get through because of the limited nature of criticism available to be given, and it absolutely hammered staff every year who were responsible for regular maintenance." ROUNDERHOUSE agrees that this is a problem when the contest is run annually. gee0765 feels that "jamcon should be single theme 24 hour deals announced randomly every couple of years." Staff discuss ideas for new contests, leading to the suggestion of contests to, in Jerden's words, "give art a more prominent position on the site." This produces Dr. Whitney immediately; she proposes a contest concept. The chat flow shifts to deal with another issue, however.
This discussion took place over more than five hours.
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Topic: Adult Splash Question | 2022/01/25
Recap: Dysadron asks: "I was wondering which team was heading up the work on adult splash pages, and who within that team is leading on it? (Specifically the policy and process, not the implementation)." stormfallen believes the Maintenance and Ancillary Staff Team is responsible. Dysadron asks if stormfallen himself is involved; stormfallen is not, and thinks Vivarium and GremlinGroup were "working on getting it set up." Dysadron thanks him.
This discussion took approximately one half-hour.
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Topic: MightyMcB on Reserve | 2022/01/24
Recap: TheMightyMcB announces that he is transitioning to reserve status, and links the relevant 05command post. He states: "It's been an honor, friends."
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Topic: ProcyonLotor: -INT Ambassador? | 2022/01/26
Recap: Siddartha Alonne notes that ProcyonLotor is still marked as an ambassador despite leaving the -INT Discord. OptimisticLucio asks if this is an 05command updating issue. Siddartha has asked the Internet Outreach Team if they could find out whether ProcyonLotor is, in fact, still an ambassador as Siddartha has seen no message from him either way. No resolution on this matter is posted to Staffchat.
This discussion took place over four and one half-hours.
During AdCap review, LadyKatie clarified that ProcyonLotor was present in the server for licensing queries, and was given this role as it was the closest approximator of the permissions he needed in the server. She also noted that the role would be removed soon.
During General Review, LadyKatie noted that ProcyonLotor had left the -INT server, and thus had no roles to be removed. During this review, stormfallen checked whether ProcyonLotor should be listed as an Ambassador. LadyKatie confirmed that he should be removed from that page.
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Topic: Charged Language in Staffchat 2 | 2022/01/27
Summary: Staff discuss appropriate language and tone for discussing site users.
Recap: After Edna pings Chat Staff to make a report about a user in IRC, Pedagon takes issue with the use of charged language by Edna Granbo to describe the behaviour. He states he is uncomfortable with her manner, which he characterises as “harsh tone and approach”, suggesting that there should be a greater separation between reporting rule-breaking and “talking shit or venting”. He suggests that Edna’s approach felt more like her venting and shaming a user in front of staff, rather than submitting a report about their behaviour, which he believes is unprofessional. Siddartha Alonne agrees, and Edna apologises if her language makes Pedagon uncomfortable but takes issue with being labelled unprofessional.
Siddartha responds, saying he believes if a staff member is too “biased” they should present their report, then step back to allow other staff to judge that report. Edna feels her language is being policed without fair reason, and provides examples of worse language she could have used in her report. Pedagon says he’s not bothered by her use of swearing, and doesn’t consider himself “tone police”. He says he’s specifically taking issue because Edna demonstrated awareness that her report was coloured by her mood, and says that her report assumed intentions and bad faith and thus would have unfairly affected the “general staff view” of a specific user.
DrBleep steps in, agreeing with Pedagon. She advocates for avoiding “injecting our current state of emotion” into complaints. She says that venting or stating emotions would be appropriate in a private report, but that doing so publicly is “unproductive, colours the conversation, and makes other people uncomfortable.” She recommends that staffers temper complaints to be professional and as unbiased as possible. If this is not something a staffer is able to do, Bleep recommends asking another individual to help convey a complaint. Yossipossi derails the conversation by wishing everyone a good day and talking about his pants getting wet.
Pedagon asks Edna to reconsider her messages without focusing on the swearing, asking her to recognise the hostile and charged nature of her report. He notes that in his previous complaint about charged language, he suggested ways to rephrase that changed entire messages, rather than single words (such as swearing). He ends his message with the hope that the complaint was taken as a “learning moment”. Edna Granbo acknowledges his message.
This discussion took place over approximately three hours.
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Topic: Public or Private Ban Lists? | 2022/01/28
Summary: aismallard workshops methods of recording and reviewing bans after Wikijump.
Recap: aismallard explains that "On Wikidot the ban list is accessible to admins only, and bans are made public via O5. But on platforms like MediaWiki, bans are public." She asks whether bans should be public when Wikijump takes place. "My initial thoughts are that they should, with two fields for public and private reason. This way we can persist sensitive info (e.g. age), but still provide a public reason for each ban via the platform itself." stormfallen asks: "Is there any way to publicly list accounts banned for being underage without revealing to any reader that said accounts are underage?" aismallard replies: "That's my idea behind public/private reasons. We can figure out a usable public reason for underage that doesn't out users as being not of age."
Pedagon asks: "Would there be a way to hide the list but let people search it? Like put the name in and it says banned or not but not just have them all compiled. I feel there is value to letting people find out if the person who just messaged them is banned but also to not have a running list of all names." aismallard replies: "This makes sense yeah, especially to avoid emergent harassment against people whose names appear near the start of the list." He agrees: "Exactly. It gives power to current users to feel safe but also to those who were banned for things and we don't want following them forever." aismallard has a new question: "should we display kicks/revokes? This wouldn't be a static list like bans, but a feed like new pages, since there is a 1-to-many relationship to kicks unlike bans."
Estrella asks: "What is the benefit of having it public, compared to drawbacks." aismallard feels the benefits are "More platform transparency, making it so people don't need to ask staff if x or y happened"; she is uncertain about drawbacks. Cassandra_Prime asks: "In this hypothetical search functionality, would it be, like, a page exists per user that has been banned/kicked, with reason/date listed and one is redirected to that page post-search?" aismallard responds: "Not sure why separate pages makes sense. I'm thinking just of a modal where you enter a name, if it's a valid user an entry appears underneath it"; "then if you search someone else it's replaced."
This discussion took place over less than one hour.
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Topic: CedricStevenson Break | 2022/01/28
Recap: CedricStevenson is taking a week-long break from the site to recharge and reorient. He promises: "I’ll be critting harder then ever when I get back." aismallard wishes him well, as do twelve people's thumbs.
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Topic: Nutfall | 2022/01/28
Summary: The peanut's days are numbered, and staff prepare to drink or drown.
Recap: Yossipossi makes an announcement:
Yossipossi makes the unexpected (to general staff at least) announcement that the Licensing team is finally ready to remove a non-compliant image from SCP-173 page. They explain that it is the final non-compliant image on the wiki that Licensing is aware of, and that its removal was required both to future-proof the site, and to ensure that it is compliant with its own CC-BY-SA 3.0 license. Yossi states that they have a policy draft, ready for posting to 05command, and have consulted with the heads (and other experienced members) of the Licensing team extensively. She states that she’s ready to post the policy to 05command, should there be general approval for it.
HarryBlank asks: "I wonder if some minor additional language emphasizing that this isn't Kato's fault, and his generosity in allowing the nut to stay up this long, might be good"; "Just so we bear the blame and he does not." LilyFlower replies: "We'll have that in the public announcement dw." HarryBlank is not satisfied, as "05command is publicly visible." Yossi agrees that it can be mentioned; a spectre of ProcyonLotor arrives, "asking you to please please mention it on the 05" since "Until the public statement is made 05 is the public statement." Yossi duly adds it. ProcyonLotor's ghost rests easy. It's added as a footnote; aismallard feels this could be handled more strongly, as "Saying "graciously allowed" in the main body reinforces that he is not the bad party, and then you follow up that this isn't his request." Staff note that the fallout from this event will likely be exceptional. aismallard notes that "That's why we're proceeding very carefully to ensure the rollout is smooth and we minimize the backlash."
LilyFlower notes that the image will not be replaced, merely removed. FabledTiefling considers this a positive, as "I'm not sure anything would be able to replace that original."
LadyKatie offers to host "a little party" and "design hats." Naepic offers to buy alcohol, but LadyKatie would rather have shoes. On a less light note, she points out that Nutfall will need to be discussed with -INT "because they have to break the news to their branches too."
On 30 January, Yossipossi makes the 05command post.
This discussion took place over approximately three and one-half hours.
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Topic: Underage Author Edits | 2022/01/28 - 2022/01/29
Recap: EstrellaYoshte asks: "is it fine if i edit an article per an underage author request." Zyn asks what the edit is; Estrella explains that it's CSS, and HarryBlank clarifies that the edit is "extraordinarily mild." Zyn suggests asking the Tech Team, as "Tech would be handling requests like this in the future, they should know about any precedent set."
This conversation took place sporadically over two and one-half hours.
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Topic: Promotion for Recap-only JS | 2022/01/29
Summary: Edna Granbo posited the question of whether members of Junior Staff who are only members of Recap should be eligible for promotion to Operational Staff. Several staff members agreed that the process and eligibility should be no different than for other teams.
Recap: Edna Granbo posted in #staff-sensitive-discussion questioning the benefit of promoting JS only doing staffwork for Recap team. Upon the request of several members of Recap team, the discussion is quickly ported to #staff-discussion on the basis that nothing is really sensitive about it. It is clarified that the only JS member only on Recap is GremlinGroup. Several Recap members, including Pedagon, HarryBlank, and captain pr0m37h3um, challenge the premise, saying that many teams do not strictly require OS, and that nothing about recap work makes it inherently less-valuable for promotions. Alexander points out that HarryBlank assumes the question was intentionally denigrating the value of recap team, which Alexander believes to be inaccurate. HarryBlank does not think it is. Edna states that OS on other teams are able to influence site policy within their spheres of influence, and that a better solution would be to let Recap see #sensitive-staff-discussion (which they already can). HarryBlank and Pedagon posit that Recap staff members are, by virtue of their duty, incredibly knowledgeable on staff discussions and policy evolution, and that having a team that is expected to do the work without a chance of promotion has no tangible benefit.
Edna notes that her phone battery is low and she may disappear, but that she does not expect members of recap to have an understanding of crit or licensing, making them pointless as OS. HarryBlank feels this stems from a misunderstanding of Recap’s organisation, operation, and purpose. Pedagon quotes a portion from the Recap proposal to substantiate his claims that Recap has a vested interest in promotion of its members for a more comprehensive summary of staffchat, and Elenee points out that it isn't expected that JS on one team have in-depth knowledge of another team to be put up for promotion. DrBleep, HarryBlank, ROUNDERHOUSE, and GremlinGroup agree with her and each other for several minutes in tandem. A side discussion springs up about the value of the current promotion system in general, sprung by Alexander asking what power Wikijump has to change the Wikidot barriers that staff structure is built around. ROUNDERHOUSE notes he has discussed with thedeadlymoose about radically reshaping promotions to be more akin to confirmations and removing the cultural expectation of promotion, and Pedagon says he has had similar discussions with DrBleep.
Some two hours later, thedeadlymoose arrives in chat with a statement nearly a thousand words long, summarized to the best of the recapper's ability: the team system, which is already partially broken, will collapse further if there is an expectation that Junior Staff must do work beyond one team, doubly so for Recap as they are understood to be overwhelmed at the moment. If that expectation is normalized, then it is better to throw out the team structure entirely and look to alternatives. They add that in their experience, finding a fair and practical alternative is exceptionally difficult and tends to result in high burnout popularity-contests. They also feel that promotions as they are have become a broken system that result in Junior Staff having to do far more work to prove their worthiness than mods and administrators, which causes a repeating cycle of burnout once their position in staff is assured by being promoted to OS. Moose does not wish to return the system to how it was before, but they do wish to find some balance by incorporating the best aspects of the old system with the best aspects of the current system.
They additionally apologize for any spelling errors due to using text-to-speech, which immediately clarifies a lot of things in Harry's mind. The substance of Moose's thoughts are lost in the wash of people shocked at their ability to type at 500wpm.
This discussion lasted for approx. two and a half hours.
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Topic: Wikijump Invite | 2022/01/29
Recap: aismallard posts a #staff-resources link to the Wikijump Discord server for staff use only, as well as additional resource links relating to Wikijump, which are public:
Wikijump Blog: https://www.wikijump.org/
Wikijump Jira: https://scuttle.atlassian.net/jira/software/c/projects/WJ/issues
Wikijump Confluence: https://scuttle.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/WD/overview
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Topic: Charged Language in Staffchat 3 | 2022/01/30
Recap: Multiple staff members are discussing disciplinary record-keeping for a user, and Pedagon takes issue with the use of charged language by Edna Granbo and HarryBlank to describe the behaviour. He addresses them separately. He asks Edna to avoid personal attacks and mockery, noting that "There are many other ways to say the exact same message without crossing lines." He tells Harry not to make broad claims without providing evidence, and notes that evidence should be provided to the Disciplinary Team instead of staffchat. Harry is "certainly aware" that his statements seemed excessive, though he claims to have extensive evidence which he will provide to the Disciplinary Team when appropriate. He acknowledges that "I have not phrased my concerns in the most sanitized way possible" and does "agree that we don't need to use charged language to express these concerns; the evidence is damning enough when phrased pseudoclinically." Edna does not respond before Recap reaches review.
This discussion took approximately two and one-half hours.
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Topic: Adult Splashes on New Pages Feed | 2022/01/30
Recap: LemonBee notes that adult splash pages appear in the new pages feed on mobile view and asks if they could stop doing that, since the list therefore shows both splash page and real page. aismallard fixes the issue, explaining that it was caused by mobile view having only one list of articles, which lacked the selectivity of the ones on desktop view.
This discussion took approximately one half hour.
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Topic: Discussion of Recap’s role in discussing Disc Cases | 2020/01/30
Summary: Recap team are requested to cover the discussion of a single user’s actions with regard to disciplinary response. Recap members suggest that they are able to cover it if it’s mentioned in Staffchat, but that this is primarily the responsibility of the Disciplinary team, and doing so would require anonymization of the user in most cases.
Recap: Following a discussion about the actions of a disciplined user, Athenodora asks Recap Team if there would be any difficulty in including said discussion in January's Recap. gee0756 states that Recap does not typically cover sensitive matters such as single-user cases. Athenodora knows this, but she wants the case to be documented to avoid any possible paranoia around staff's handling of the incident. gee responds that this issue would more fall under disc’s responsibilities. Athenodora continues that it would be “similar with the DISC-J thing", suggesting that it would be of interest to the Wiki's community to know how to best communicate with staff during disciplinary cases, without turning to extremes. Optimistic Lucio asks how often those extremes are turned to, and Athenodora cites three incidents "in recent memory" without further detail. She wants to ensure that people are aware that the Staff body is approachable, and that they hear about such incidents from Staff rather than by word of mouth.
A brief discussion occurs between Lucio, Athenodora, and Siddartha Alonne about the specific case and the case of Disc-J with a goal of determining if the situations could be compared. Lucio ends the discussion by expressing concern, suggesting that covering individual cases could lead to ostracisation, or playing into the hands of the users who would mistrust staff due to this unfair treatment. Athenodora asks for Recap to correct her assumption that individual cases can be covered with sufficient public interest and sufficient protections for the individual. Alexander states that Recap is capable of covering such cases, but that they do not plan to cover the specific case due to the lack of sufficient concerns. Pedagon adds that he is in favour of disciplinary cases being transparent and handled properly, but that this would be the responsibility of the Wiki's Disciplinary team to "make their rationales for their actions public and transparent." GremlinGroup and gee express agreement with Pedagon’s argument.
This discussion took place over 1.5 hours.
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Topic: Recap Jira Porting and Delay | 2022/01/30
Recap: GremlinGroup announces that he has ported the Recap to-do list to the Staff Jira. At the time of announcement, there are 63 Recap topics, and 15 have been completed or reached the critique stage. He announces that (as appears to be almost-unbreakable tradition) the Recap for January will be late.
This announcement was a single message long.
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And so we bring this recap to a close. Thanks for sticking around, folks!
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