On February 28, 2024, a discussion thread was started in the public staff discussion channel in the staff discord by psychicProgrammer regarding a user complaint by the Third Law canon authors ch00baka, Tsercele, and Anorrack. The conversation was open to all staff members and administration was pinged for input.
The complaint consisted of the stated belief that the decision by staff to mandate edits to the Third Law canon hub to ensure compliance with site rules was entirely based on hypothetical situations that never came to pass, was based on an overly vague rule that was not applicable to the wording in the canon hub, and unfairly singled out Third Law compared to other ‘restrictive’ canons such as Unfounded and Aces and Eights. They claimed that the canon is not restrictive and that the motivation behind the wording was to ensure new contributions engaged with the previous material before they are posted.
The discussion began with staff pointing out that all canons are subject to the site rules and if there are other canons that violate the rule regarding open contribution, they will also need to make changes to maintain their canon statues. Just because it never came up as an issue doesn’t mean their hub is compliant with established canon rules, and also the Third Law canon was only the first to need to make edits.
It was mentioned that a potential reason for no complaints being made against the canon guidelines is that users have admitted in the past they would prefer to simply steer clear of Third Law altogether and not even attempt to contribute in order to avoid conflict. A staff member agreed, citing their own experience with being gatekept from the canon by its creator some years prior.
It was also mentioned that the issue of Third Law’s canon hub being noncompliant with site exclusivity rules had been previously brought up among the MAST team. The disposition of the MAST team at that time was to have a requirement to get greenlighting by established canon authors changed in the canon hub to a recommendation.
The conversation then turned to the validity of comparing Third Law’s restrictions to the other canons mentioned in the complaint, Unfounded and Aces and Eights. It was ultimately agreed upon that the cited restrictions in Unfounded and Aces and Eights were integral components of the canon’s setting and did not restrict new writers from contributing. Having specific themes be incorporated into the setting of a canon is not the same as, for example, requiring greenlights. Similar to how SCPs follow a format, the thematic setting of a work is simply how canons function.
Discussion continued with some dissent about whether recommending a greenlight is exclusive, with an alternative proposal of allowing Third Law to change its status to a more exclusive tale series put forwards. It is at this time that psychicProgrammer was asked to recuse himself from the conversation as an active contributor to the Third Law canon in order to maintain impartiality.
The final disposition of the staff discussing the topic was that the Third Law canon did violate site rules regarding exclusivity and canons by recommending a greenlight process before posting, with the implication that an article posted without such a process would not survive in the canon. It is understandable that the complainants would feel upset by what is perceived as singling out and staff telling them how to run their canon, but that does not change whether Third Law is in compliance with site rules. Other non-compliant canons have or are expected to recieve similar messages regarding edits to their hubs in the near future. Therefore, the previous request to change the wording of their canon will stand.