Alright after much discussion, this year's town halls all have responses. This discussion will be open for the next week and if any issues are brought up, we will try to address them, if not, this will be the final responses.
04 mirror: https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/forum/t-16960613/2024-preliminary-town-hall-responses
Non Resolvable
Yall are going to get a lot of complaints and such, so first i just want to say that i really appreciate the mods and staff, this wiki is beautiful and you all keep it that way <3!
No issues, wiki's fantastic and I hope it stays that way! For whoever that reads this, have a nice day!
(And if you are Psi, please don't optimize me)
Thank you and no promises.
Resolved
There's a glitch where if you use this site's search function (the CROM one), when you open a page that was linked in that search page and click its "search" button, it won't do anything. This applies to pages that are reached in the same tab as the search tab (if you right-click the search result and open a new tab, that new tab has a working "search" button).
This has been fixed. Crom now works as intended.
Can we get the Annual Community Survey results released?
It is out! The link is here: https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/2023-survey-results
This anonymous form can only be filled out once, apparently. So please fix that.
Fixed
Q/A
I have a friend that wants to start a podcast about the supernatural and would also like to talk about SCP. Could he do that or would he need permission?
In short you can do whatever as long as your work is released under CC-BY-SA, check here: https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/licensing-guide for more details. If your proposed work is analysis, critique, news or parody it is covered under fair use and you don't need to release under that license.
The wiki itself, I believe, is incredibly well thought out, I do have one suggestion though. There are a few comprehensive lists; of Sites, MTF, K-Class Scenarios. I believe that if there was a sort of area to look at the comprehensive lists, it would make research and writing a little easier, like if someone needed to know what is held at Site 9 or where MTF Epsilon-9 was stationed, they could find both of those rather easily.
The Universe hub: https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/universe-hub should have what you need there. Though I should note that this will not be fantastically useful as the wiki has no set canon.
Contests
I'd like to see more transparency regarding contest organization. A contest schedule could do wonders (even just an internal one if you want to keep hype), and possibly voting for which contest you'd like to see on the Wiki.
I don't know if I'm alone in this opinion or not, but it does feel like there is almost always some form of contest going on the site. It makes it feel a bit less special, I can miss this contest because there'll be another one in a few weeks kind of thing. I personally can feel discouraged from posting an article during times a contest is running, since I doubt I will get any readers at such a busy time. That's not an issue normally, but with so many contests happening it has come up more often. This could be a case of just my schedule not lining up with the sites, but in case it isn't or others feel the same I thought I'd mention it.
I can say you are not alone on this. I was thinking the same thing, and I think it was somewhat epitomized when WRATHCON was originally supposed to take place in June. We need a break from events, we don't need one every month.
I feel like there are too many contests and/or events, and I feel like that was seen in the enormous backlash that wrathcon received when it was announced. I'm not the most veteran when it comes to posting things to the wiki, but in my time regularly interacting with the wiki and posting things (which is around 9 months), I've seen the Art Exchange, followed shortly after by 8kon, followed shortly after by the Visual Arts Contest and the unofficial Spring Cleaning Event simultaneously (or pretty damn near simultaneously), then pridefest, and before this event was finished, Wrathcon was announced. And even though this contest was pushed back, it's my understanding that it overlapped with pridefest due to another event that would happen immediately after wrathcon.
I want to say that I don't think all of these events are bad. AE is great and it's a long standing tradition of the site; I have no complaints there. And Pridefest and the Spring Cleaning Event were both very good. And I know that most of the writers in the site don't particularly care about the art contest, but there's a lot of people who are authors and artists. The problem I have and the problem I've seen echoed by many voices is the fact that all of these constant events cause fatigue. People want to participate in them, because they're fun and drive engagement and give people things to read, but too many things happening too close to each other quickly turns this excitement into exhaustion. Plus, 8kon was full of controversies and community drama, which were only compounded by wrathcon's announcement. And this just adds to the overall fatigue, which is what I felt when Wrathcon was announced.
So, what I'm seeing here is that the community likes events (as I said, the noncompetitive events we had this year were great), but doesn't seem to like the pressure and the drama that comes with contests. I don't know how what the path is to remedying this, but maybe less contests a year, or ones that don't incentivize pitting authors against each other so much (team cons and things like goblincon, for example), seems like a good solution.
As per a recent 05/04 thread, we have decided to cut down the number of contests from 3 per year to alternating 2 and 3.
Personally, I think it's been too long since we've had a team contest. Secondly, I think hosting a contest specifically made for new authors would be fantastic for the community as a whole, and -JP's idea of making it an annual event could be great imo.
Hard agreeing with UNC on the idea of a contest schedule or roadmap of some kind. It'd be neat. Also on the front of a form of annual Newcon. It'd be a good way of having new authors get some proper visibility they might not have achieved otherwise.
I think more events in the non-contest format could also be something of worth. Obviously there's the Art Exchange, and I'm not saying we bring back Pridefest every June (although I don't think encouraging the community to be proud during the month would be a particularly bad idea), but just… more non-contest events. The aforementioned Newcon could be something like this, bringing more of a spotlight to new authors' works as a whole rather than turning it into a literary fight for top place. Maybe we don't get a Halloween contest this October and get Spookyfest instead. Something like that.
Finally, more contests and/or non-contest events that disallow the SCP format or heavily encourage the use of Tales or GoI Formats. Entirely biased because those are two categories of articles I particularly enjoy, but I think we've seen enough SCP-exclusive contests to where the others may be deserving of some time in the spotlight.
I like contests that have multiple independent thematic categories like Goblincon did! That creates more options for participants, less competition within categories, and more winners at the end, which seems like a recipe for more fun all around.
On the topic of contests, I do agree that we might be holding them a tad too often (especially when they overlap as it can lead to subpar works or author / reader burnout), but one thing I'd personally love to see are contests that help bring together offsite and onsite fandoms, or authors and artists in ways that are fair and fun for everyone. Some examples:
- taking inspiration from the classic "SCP Fuel" posts from back in the day, we have image prompt contests of some sort. Either a pool of CC-compliant images/artwork that people could select to write about, or smaller contests with only 1-3 images for everyone to write a story around. The winner gets to include the image in their post or something.
- putting more emphasis on contests for non-mainlist articles and content such as tales, GoI formats, -J/-EX pieces, and/or mixed media could be a really good way to shake things up.
- having a stickied poll or suggestion post on r/SCP for contest themes, or a madlib-style community voted phrase to act as a text prompt of some sort. Simply getting an idea of what everyone wants to see in a contest could be fun and interesting.
Events that do not primarily orient around creation would be nice, what ever that may entail. Also a fan of Billith’s idea.
These requests have been noted.
In -FR, recently, for our last contest, Staff used a process that allowed to hide the number of upvotes and downvotes on a page. Since I know the subject of ratings is discussed often and there's the whole thing about anonymity and shit, I think using said process as an experiment for a contest could be a good first step to try?
As per an 05/04 discussion we will likely be hiding votes for the next Kcon. We have also considered other alternatives for contest security, such as project scramble, which have been deemed nonviable..
If a single contest is linked to multiple individuals facing disciplinary measures, and none of those people are members of staff, maybe the issue is the contest.
Staff needs to apologize for Wrathcon.
The contest team needs more oversight in order to prevent a repeat of bad contest ideas like Wrathcon from happening. Maybe the theme for the next contest should be decided by site-wide vote instead of by a bunch of folks who don't seem to know what the community wants?
If a contest causes multiple prominent authors to become upset, either at the premise or the content posted, maybe staff should admit that it was a mistake and apologize.
The issues most people raised with wrathcon largely involved the scheduling and the framing of the announcement, which absolutely were fair criticisms. the actual contest itself went completely smoothly with none of people's initial concerns raised relating to effect on social climate or rule enforcement becoming issues, and ultimately had zero lasting effect on the site
Discord
Disallow people under 18 in the Official Discord. The amount of spam bots who are in there on a daily basis posting smut is a massive legal liability.
We do not see the spambots as a liability as we have entirely filtered them out with more aggressive filtering measures.
The staff (more specifically the staff on discord) has been very ignorant in regards to kindly redirecting comments to the correct channel (which has been proven hard to navigate due to multiple channels only being slightly different or having similar purposes) and answering questions that require more than a one sentence answer. I asked a few questions about a channel and only got a description of the channel when that was not the question and when I tried to clarify I was ignored completely. As a mentally disabled person in the community (this was relevant to the questions I asked), it was very disheartening to see this and I do not feel welcomed.
The moderation team often receives several versions of the same basic questions multiple times a day, and as a result brief, to the point answers are often used to respond while not interrupting chat. These answers are not given with the intent of making users feel unwelcome, but rather to respond to the question.
While we cannot control how our tone in these messages is interpreted, we will strive to make our responses feel more welcoming and strive to ensure that users do not get ignored if they ask follow up questions.
Articles
I think that all of Harmony's articles (that aren't already in rewrite!) should be deleted as soon as possible, or at least be given some limited timeframe to rewrite them within. It's been over three years, and only about a fifth of them have been rewritten—and basically none of her tales. Unless something drastically changes, this process will simply never be completed.
We held a vote in 2021 to decide what to do with Harmony's articles, and the overwhelming consensus was to keep them.
I also think that the Decommissioned articles should be reinstated. (To be clear, although this paragraph is longer than the previous, I think this is an order of magnitude less important.) As far as I can tell from the outside, their deletion was, in practice, a half-baked attempt to bury the past, with little to no actual practical benefit beyond saving face (if any of their authors are still within SCP's orbit—let alone had any input, direct or indirect, on the decision—that'd be news to me); I think an explicit statement on the hub that the practice was inappropriate, not condoned by current staff, and discontinued for a reason would have served the same purpose as well if not better. (And ironically, their impact on referential integrity is probably significantly greater than that of Harmony's articles on average, if perhaps not in total—but these things aren't practically possible to measure.)
We have no plans to restore the Decommed articles. We don't see any real need to bring them back.
As the wiki grows, concern over the amount of content and the quality thereof comes into questions from time to time, what are the options for quality audits we have available aside from the draconian purges of old?
Staff currently sees the current deletion policy as sufficient here.
I suggest to delete articles that can't achieve more than +30 in a month after being posted
We currently have no plans to change our deletions policy, and encourage all community members to vote on articles according to the article's content.
The current and continuing inaction regarding AuthorBright's articles is an unacceptable case of gross negligence from staff, and puts forth a message that staff would rather let the work of a guy who used said work to groom and exploit minors stay in its place of prominence on the wiki instead of doing anything about it.
What I propose is simple. Put every single thing (Sans the authorpage or any potential staff posts) by AdminBright up for rewrite. It lets staff keep all of Bright's stuff on the site like they want but it removes the content including, like what Djoric mentioned above and some other uncomfortable content Bright has created.
AuthorBright's works are still on the site despite it being well-known that they use them as a vector for their grooming of minors. They need to be summarily deleted, loss of connections be damned, and replaced so as to further memory hole AB's influence in the community.
Staff are looking into this question in depth, please bear with us a little longer. This is a very complex issue and we really don't want to cause even more problems.
Navigation/Discovery
There have been a lot of attempts to make non-SCPs, especially tales, more accessible, but I don't think they've been enough. In particular, I think that it's important to not just make them accessible, but keep them accessible. It's very easy for a perfectly fine tale to be written, hang around on the New/Top Rated Pages feeds for a month or so, and then—especially-but-not-exclusively if it has fewer explicit ties to the wiki's universe beyond itself (links, character/GoI tags, being part of a canon), which can potentially make it nigh-unfindable—proceed to languish in utter obscurity. The discrepancy gets more pronounced the further you go back, and the relatively recent reformattings of the Tales & Series Hubs have done little to help balance that, naturally being ordered newest first (and not without reason).
My own suggestion (foolish as it might be to make one, given that relevant members of staff have already put way more thought into this kind of thing—if I were more confident, I suppose it would go on the Proposals And Policy subforum) would be reformatting the Tales By Date pages to be more condensed—perhaps defining something like a "Series I Tale" as a tale written prior to the start of the SCP-1000 contest and listing them in a similar format to the SCP mainlist, like The Wanderer's Library's Wings but with fewer frills—linking them all directly & separately on the sidebar, just like the different Series hubs, and (ultimately independent of the rest of this) moving "Stories" above "Feed".
We're working on a way to make sorting by year more compact, and will take the series sorting under advisement; but it should be noted that the Series chronology is basically arbitrary time markers when applied to Tales (as opposed to WL, which is sequentially defined by it) and can be easily confused with the existing SCP Series Tales Edition.
(On a side note, there is more tales than any single person can reasonably read in a lifetime, so while we are trying to improve sorting and discoverability as much as Wikidot allows, that some pages may remain obscure is an inevitable occurrence for the foreseeable future.)
I feel like Internet Outreach could be doing more to promote articles in offsite spaces, specifically twitter. I've seen plenty of promo posts going up on Facebook, but when it comes to promoting articles on Twitter I feel like I only see it happen during Kcons and Pridemonth. This is great, but I'd love to see things like a daily article promotion or the like to help encourage the discovery of newer or more modern works.
Running the Twitter has been an ongoing issue, since a large majority of the Twitter's posts and activity are handled solely by 
Yossipossi (outside of Pride Month, which has thus far been mostly handled by 
pr0m37h3um). While we've added more users to the subteam in the past, they have largely been inactive, leading to burnout from Yossi (who frequently highlighted articles on the Twitter and posted at least twice a week). In the future, we will attempt to be more structured and post more regularly, as there is renewed interest in bringing up the Twitter's activity. Increased article promotion and initiatives to highlight SCP artists, authors, and content creators more are on the agenda for future improvements to the account, though no specific roadmaps have been created at the time of writing.
Disc Issues
There is an old issue that has bothered me for some time now, and while I have tried to address it in the past unsuccessfully I thought it bore mentioning again. I am concerned about inter-branch vote tampering and review bombing. When it has happened in the past there was no action able to be taken due to the complex nature of inter site relationships, but it has been years now and I was hoping to see if there was now any kind of possible solution.
This is a complex issue, because it is difficult to differentiate between "review bombing" and simply having a translation of the work be posted on another Wiki, drawing negative attention to the original article from a large number of people at the same time. Several branches encourage their users to vote on translations based on the quality of the translation, and go to the English Language Wiki to express their opinion on the original work. It should be noted that it's likely that posting the translation will result in upvotes to the original instead, this isn't purely negative! As long as the votes are an honest expression of people's opinion on the article's content, this is not against our site's rules.
However, if there is evidence of brigading, e.g. people encouraging others to downvote an article without reading it, that would be against site rules. Disciplinary action could be taken based on this evidence, including banning the individuals involved from the English Language Wiki, but given that this would likely take place in a foreign language on another wiki's community spaces it may be difficult for Disciplinary Team to prove.
We do not have a process for automatically mirroring Disciplinary complaints across all branches, but rules violations are communicated to the members of other branches for them to respond to as they see fit. Generally AHT bans are mirrored across all branches, but an issue like this would be more controversial, as the Staff of another branch may not agree with us that there is sufficient evidence of a rules violation.
There's been a lot of obvious cases that got cracked down on, but having rubbernecked the AI cases on O5 every now and then, a good portion of the "potential AI" just seems to be bad articles that would get naturally deleted. Considering that there's almost no way to 'prove' that you wrote an article yourself, and that the best proof would the degrading process of going through and show all of the poor writing mistakes you made that ChatGPT wouldn't (spelling mistakes, etc), it seems like there could be a lot more mercy in that project.
There are a few different ways that we identify AI-generated content. For obvious reasons, we're not able to get into exact specifics about the "tells" that are unique to AI-generated articles. Broadly, AI-written articles generally combine perfect spelling and grammar with dull concepts, poor structure, excessive wordcount-padding, and an overall lack of a coherent narrative.
There are hints in terms of user behavior as well. To "show all of the poor writing mistakes you made that ChatGPT wouldn't" is easy when an article was written using the recommended procedure of drafting in the sandbox and we generally look for that very early in the process of investigating an article suspected to have incorporated AI-generated content. We also have a policy of only revoking a membership in cases where we're confident that an article was AI-generated. Some threads in the AI-Records forum on O5 are for records-keeping only—in those cases, staff take no further action beyond documenting the report.
Tech
My Complain is the Greenlighters their role should be shown here.
Automating this would be difficult, and keeping such a list updated would be more work than anyone on staff is willing to put in for relatively marginal benefit.
Are there any updates available on Project: Foundation? Is there any way non-staff can contribute to the project? Do we have a timetable or roadmap for the project's completion?
Can we have an update on this Wikijump thing you're trying? Last thing post about it on the blog was in 2023. Signed, a former DND Wiki contributor.
Project Foundation's goal is to produce an independent platform for Wikidot sites, the current leading effort of which is to produce the Wikijump software platform. As a fundamentally international project, this effort is not limited to SCP-EN staff, anyone with an interest is welcome to ask questions or contribute. The work is proceeding, with a recent blog post explaining the project plan. More specific information on the status can be seen by looking at the Jira board, the git repository, or through discussion in chat.
No issues, but a desktop/mobile app would be fantastic
While this would be a nice addition if we had the resources, it is not necessary because the web version of the site works fine on mobile, and development time is better spent on more critical projects.
Crit
In general, and I understand that as an unestablished user my word may be of some disrepute, I feel that the quality assurance mechanisms of the site are not objective, nor do they make a pretense at objectivity.
There are many well rated and well liked pieces by established authors that I feel would be soundly criticized on the draft forum and subsequently downvoted if a new voter were to submit it, even verbatim, to the draft forum. The standard that new authors are held by is extremely, extremely high. This is not a view that stems from my personal experience, but is a view expressed by dozens of aspiring authors I have talked to on the main discord and elsewhere. This would normally not be an issue, if it were not for the fact that once a user by whatever means establishes a collection of about 10 or so pieces, and becomes rather well known in the community, this standard of quality seems to decrease dramatically. Now, I cannot list any specific pieces, as it is not my place to criticize specific authors, but I *will* say that this is a pattern that becomes apparent *especially* when considering format screw articles, tales, and contest entries.
New authors are also held to a standard of originality that established authors outright ignore.
"This is just SCP-XXXX but worse" is a common response on the draft boards to articles submitted by new authors, even though there are numerous articles and tales on the site that rehash and explore the same specific premises, oftentimes submitted by the same clique of active authors.
Literary quality is subjective. I understand that. One's perception of literary quality can be affected by dozens of factors, including the reputation of the author. I understand that. However, this site is a collaborative fiction board, not a literary magazine. I object to the inherent hierarchy that is assumed by the review process, which is in most cases not based in any external review other than a rubric by consensus that is established and inherited through seniority. Keep in mind, I am talking about the draft forum process, *not* the actual downvote/upvote system, although the draft forum process does heavily influence the critical first votes that an article receives.
Critically, compliance with the draft forum process does not necessarily improve the objective literary quality of an article, but rather ensures that the article complies with the standard of the most active downvoters/upvoters that browse the new pages feed which are oftentimes heavily biased in ways that I have already discussed.
To summarize, the current draft forum process is heavily biased towards established authors, and is also extremely unfriendly towards new authors.
All feedback is innately subjective in nature. Reviewers, much like any reader, are going to offer critique and feedback through their personal lens with their personal thoughts and opinions. We cannot control this, nor should we.
When you see a comment like "this is like x existing SCP but worse", typically they come alongside an explanation as to how it's like an existing SCP. Very rarely have we seen comments that simply leave it at the comparison, most reviewers are using this comparison to help you as the author develop out your concept further to avoid being too similar. If you see a reviewer that fails to include this bit or that you feel is not being productive with this comparison/in general, contact staff.
Generally speaking, though, if you don't agree with the feedback you're getting from a reviewer, we invite you to contact another reviewer. Feedback should come from multiple sources anyway, no single person's word is enough after all!
When it comes to the concern that new authors are being held to a standard that established authors aren't, we as a team aren't sure we agree with this assessment. It might simply be a confirmation bias situation, as established authors don't tend to actually get feedback via the forums and instead do so via private channels. As a result the average user doesn't actually see these feedback sessions, which are often more intense and involved than the ones that happen in the forums. It can feel like new authors are held to a higher standard as a result, simply because the feedback for established authors tends to be behind closed doors. In the end we remind everyone that everyone has the same vote at the end of the day— a new author's up/downvote weighs just as heavily as a site admin's. That also means your feedback is just as valuable, just be sure to elaborate on why you do or don't like something.
As always we encourage new authors to familiarize themselves with writing guides/essays and more modern SCP articles before attempting to write their own. This is a reading site as much as it is a writing site, and if you want to be successful, reading as much as possible is always a good move.
I'm not going to comment on matters of new-users-vs-old-users or standards or elitism, but I think you're onto something there towards the end, and I want to expand on that with some of my own thoughts about the review process here.
There's a certain type of new-ish Scp that's kind of bad, but not so bad that it would stick out like a sore thumb if it were to be moderately successful on the site. Interestingly to me, some of these articles sink while others swim, despite having (in my eyes) roughly the same amount of merit. Usually, the only major difference I can find is in the author post: the author of a modestly successful mediocre article will almost always highlight anywhere from five to a dozen reviewers, while the authors of failing mediocre articles (like me!) tend to have only a handful, if any.
I didn't really understand this at first: what does it matter whether an article was mediocre to begin with or whether it got there after after hours of workshopping when the end result is the same? But then I realized that I was missing a large social component of the review process: If you solicit people's advice before posting, and then follow that advice, you can let them know when you post the article and thank them in the comments. Since they've already read your article and left their own fingerprint on it, they will probably upvote it, and possibly comment positively, before most other people have a chance to form an opinion.
So, to sum it up: mediocre Scps stay on the site when they get a lot of reviewers before posting, but wither when left to their own devices. I don't have a strong opinion on whether mediocre articles should live or die, but in the absence of any broad social commitment to one or the other, we get a mix of both, decided by something irrelevant to the actual quality of the article.
I don't feel qualified to offer any solutions for this — I may have lurked for over a decade, but I only actually started engaging recently. But I hope that by putting words to this issue, I can help other people decide whether it's something worth fixing, and if so, how to do so.
To be direct, we aren't sure how we are supposed to address this as staff? It doesn't count as malicious upvoting, and as stated to the first comment all tastes are innately subjective. Just because one person dislikes an article, this doesn't mean another user shares that opinion. It's quite possible (and likely) that individuals upvoting articles they reviewed simply like the final version, even if you personally don't care for it. This also just isn't a universal truth— there have been plenty of articles posted to the wiki that get downvoted by people who reviewed them for whatever reason.
In the end, though, this isn't something we as Critique Staff can nor should address. We don't control people's voting habits. All we can say is that if you personally dislike something, downvote it and maybe leave a comment as to why. Just remember for every article you can't stand or are neutral on, there's likely someone else who really enjoys it.
Please actually address the concerns from the 2023 town hall RE: the fact that staff continually uses front-page features to self-promote. It was literally one of the only points from 2023 that never got addressed, and doesn't exactly make you guys look great.
The featured box is given as a reward for crit flights who successfully complete a run as thanks for their thankless efforts doing forum critique. Allowing people to spotlight their own articles is just a little incentive to encourage them to participate. Whether people actually read the feature or not does not factor into this. For any specific complaints about a crit staffer, please forward them to the relevant captain/vice-captain(s).
NOTE: This response was drafted by the Critique Team in response to last year's town hall. It was not properly ported at some point in the process, and Data Analytics failed to include it in last year's responses as a result.
General Staff
Is there an internal culture of policing the excessively gossipy, acidic, or otherwise antisocial behaviors within staff towards the general userbase, and, if so, what does that look like and are there any plans to develop more positive habits in this regard?
We do try to hold staff members accountable, the primary members here that are the source of this complaint have either left staff or have been removed from staff. This is a process that can sometimes be slow and we are trying to improve that in order for staff to be held more accountable in their interactions that are not purely on site.
Furthermore while staff used to have a recap team that would summarize events happening in staffchat for the sake of transparency; the recap team was disbanded due to being far too much work for everyone involved, a good number of the recap team have moved up to becoming admins and are focused on ensuring staff transparency and fighting this when it comes up. This may not be a satisfying answer, we do welcome suggestions on how to improve it without the workload that was recap.
Town Halls
Whenever the Town Hall ends, when will the next Town Hall be held?
We aim to have these events be once a year
Is it impossible to discuss the policy at the Town Hall?
Users are free to discuss whatever they want at town halls
Firstly: The fact that the 2023 town hall took almost half a year to have its issues addressed, with some questions still going unanswered almost a year later, is completely unacceptable and made staff seem aloof, apathetic, and frankly incompetent. Please answer concerns in a more timely manner this year.
We are doing our best to address town halls in a timely manner.
Next time you do one of these, please consider not holding a town hall at the same time as a major (and incredibly idiotic) contest. This shows a major lack of communication internally on the part of staff.
This has been noted and will be resolved next year.
Posting this survey only a few days before another major contest feels like an effort to do less work, if I'm being honest. This should be extended.
Given the dramatic fall off of responses in the second week, we decided not to extend the town halls.
Other
One thing I'd love to see is more resources on the site helping writers collab, since it can be tough to find fellow users to do that with if you've never done it before. I personally think it would be cool if there were site tools like a new "help wanted" forum category where people can show off new or ongoing projects where they're looking for assistance from a co-author. That could also be useful for soliciting other kinds of help that go beyond crits, like photoshopping, voice acting, etc.
We see the discord as the best place to do this, making friends with other authors is the best way for this to happen.
The wiki needs to take an explicit stance against conservatism, cops, and fascism, to make it clear that glorifying those ideals are not welcome and make this community a truly safe space. Have the statement be on a permanent part of the front page so it is non-missable.
We have added similar statement to the about page, under code of conduct: https://05command.wikidot.com/forum/t-16897693/discusion-about-the-scp-foundation-and-guide-for-writing-upd
We were against such a direct statement on the front page, as to the average reader it makes it look like we are pro those things and are trying to cover it up.
Extended complaint
To be honest, I don't even know why I bothered writing this anymore.
In 2023, staff took five months to address the concerns from the various Town Hall threads. Several points went unaddressed, and what concerns were addressed were replied to with a mix of dismissal or empty promises. The only response to the 2023 Town Hall posted on the site is listed as a “Partial Response”. It feels like more of the same will come this year, but I feel like I need to be heard.
Someone suggested I post this anonymously, but if this is going to be dismissed, I want to be able to stand by my words rather than have them be expunged completely.
In short, I feel that the majority of staff is ineffective– not necessarily malicious in intent or character, but incapable of carrying out their duties, for one reason or another. Consider the fact that the Technical Team hasn’t given an update on Wikijump since November of 2023, but approves new themes on a regular basis, despite any technical or aesthetic issues. These themes then barely get used, when editing CSS on individual pages can accomplish the same thing.
Then we have the Discord Team. The SCP Wiki has been an 18+ space for several years, ever since an incident where a user I considered a friend was chased off of the site by a pair of predators. Despite this, the official Discord is open to anyone over sixteen. This is even with the fact that there is an unceasing influx of bots and spam accounts which upload 18+ images and links, potentially creating a gargantuan legal liability for the site.
The portion of the staff which moderates the official SCP subreddit actively creates more work for itself. They could post an FAQ which lists the most common topics which are repeated ad nauseum (i.e. “who would win in a fight between SCP-XXX and SCP-YYY” “Is SCP real” “why am I getting downvoted?”) or have a megathread for said questions, like other fandom-centric subreddits do.
The Community Outreach (“CO”) team is the most visibly ill-equipped to do their job. I’m trying to be charitable here, but CO has been juggling dozens of balls, and subsequently dropping them hard enough that they register on seismometers. To reiterate: 2023’s Town Hall took five months to be responded to, and the 2023 community survey, which was sent out much earlier in the year, was only posted this month. In the case of the former, it was only ever a partial response. I understand that staff has a life outside of the site they need to prioritize; however, the fact that the responses started out public on O5, before being hidden, and finally being posted in an incomplete state, despite a discussion thread being opened to answer the unaddressed points, tells me something went very wrong in terms of oversight.
Speaking of oversight: the Contest Team lacks it. As a part of CO, Contests have zero oversight from the rest of the team. This is because other team members want to be fair, and not have an advantage by knowing themes ahead of time– which, to their credit, is how a healthy website should operate, but it’s a double-edged sword, as this lack of oversight has led to Wrathcon’s preview turning into what can politely be called a mess.
Wrathcon first overlapped with a Pride-themed event, when the original tagline was “PRIDE IS DEAD”, and now it is overlapping with this very town hall. The left hand literally does not know what the right is doing, and cannot know what it is doing, in order for this and other contests to stay fair. But on the site inherently are not fair. Works win largely on the pedigree of the authors and the quality of their marketing and presentation. This isn’t even getting into the fact that, rather than listen to sensible suggestions like “reduce or shut down applications during a major event” or “prevent mass marketing pushes” in order to counter widespread voter manipulation like we saw both during the 6000 and 8000 contests, their primary solution to counter it involves creating a series of at least 100, but up to 500, dummy accounts to obfuscate the actual vote totals, literally making more work and tying themselves in knots in order to avoid addressing the core issues that cause contests to be unfair.
Then there is the Disciplinary Team. Disc claims to be responsible for punishing rule-breakers, troublemakers, and shit-stirrers. However, in the last year, between the deluge of AI posts overwhelming them, the problems encountered during 8kcon, and the complete lack of both a captain and a vice captain, they’re incapable of addressing what should be the Wikidot equivalent of someone getting a ticket for going 80 in a 25, let alone disciplining users who have histories of leaving hostile but low-effort crit, or insulting other users in such a way that violates Rule 0, or anything that doesn’t involve actively endangering other users and their works, especially when it comes to those who are established on the site.
I don’t want to throw around accusations of corruption willy-nilly, but staff, as a whole, have a severe optics problem at the moment. Several of the most toxic users on the site (and yes, I am including myself here) are authors that have been around for at least half a decade, and repeatedly show behavior which is disruptive or inflammatory, often having AHT records, Disc/Non-Disc threads that are several pages long, or have damning charges on them that less-prominent users have been banned for… and yet see next-to-no consequences for it, because they’re either on staff, they’re friends with staff, or they’re considered too big to fail, and there’s concern that banning them will cause them to direct traffic away from the site somehow.
I know what corruption looks like. I live in Ohio, a state where the governor literally helped his own son get onto the state’s Supreme Court, where said son helped ensure that wildly unconstitutional, cartoonishly gerrymandered electoral maps will be in use for the next decade. I don’t want to think that staff is corrupt, but when prominent users are continually given a free pass, that only leaves me with one other conclusion: somewhere along the line, there was a shift in staff culture, and that shift has resulted in staff prioritizing engagement with the SCP “brand” (for lack of a better term) over keeping the community well-organized and welcoming.
Again: the Site is an 18+ space, but the Discord allows sixteen-year-olds. There’s been a glut of events and contests in the last twelve months, several of which are overlapping to the point of fatigue. The contest team seems to refuse to do anything to actually try to make contests fair. One user didn’t do all of this– this was a slow, systemic change, and the end result is an SCP Wiki which is attempting to emulate the mistakes which have, in the past, resulted in the declines of institutions ranging from online games such as Runescape and Neopets to hobbyist communities such as GameFAQs to once-great comedy and commentary websites such as Cracked.
While this focus on engagement has resulted in some positives, such as a shift to Discord and other platforms over outdated IRC servers and an increased emphasis on the artists in our community, I feel that, overall, it’s led to some of the most chaotic and most poorly-realized staff decisions in the history of the site. I was told that the plan to have Wrathcon and Pridefest overlap was decided on over a year previously, and nobody thought that was a bad idea until the backlash occurred? What happened?
Prioritizing engagement over functionality and safety is why authors with five-digit vote totals have to threaten to dox other users, or act like a jackass for almost seven years, to face any sort of discipline. This is why we are having a glut of events and contests, while the root issues that make said contests non-viable are being unaddressed. This is why the r/SCP subreddit is flooded with the same low-effort posts on a daily basis. This is why licensing takes ages to address improperly-attributed derivative works.
It’s not a conscious decision in most cases, but it is still a decision that gets made. Something shifted, and now, staff is determined to run SCP more like a brand than a community of hobbyists. We’re no longer the indie writing website, we’re a certified internet juggernaut, and we’re showing all the signs of acting like a corporation, just without paying anyone.
We change our logo for Pride month, we pay our creators in exposure, we promote a few big performers ad nauseum, we allow serial shit-stirrers to stay in the ‘company’ because they’re good at what they do. All this for the sake of a few extra clicks, which is especially ironic, considering that Wikidot is such a fucked platform that most pages made after Series 6 don’t have accurate view counts.
I realize that staff is entirely a volunteer position and they are not compensated for their work, and are having to herd a fandom that’s of a size that would make most major film studios jealous, which has been built on the free work and goodwill of thousands of authors over the last decade and a half, and of course the immediate response to someone going Karen mode and demanding immediate change is going to be getting defensive and attempting to assure users that something is being done. That said, “staff getting defensive and assuring people something is being done” seems to be not only the default response, but the only one. That is what is genuinely getting my dander up here.
I have a strong belief that people who are in positions of authority– ranging from elected leaders to, yes, members of a wiki’s moderation and staff– have a responsibility to better their community, and staff is currently failing to do that. There are constant reassurances that things will be better, that solutions are incoming, that justice will prevail, but staff is an ivory tower at this point, one which is willing to send down a messenger to hear what the community has to say, but behind the mail delivery slot, it feels like there might as well be a shredder.
1. Are choosing to be staff and accepting whatever promotions and nominations are foisted upon them.
2. Are failing to do their assigned duties a good 75%+ of the time.
3 Aren’t accountable to anyone except other staff members.
This needs to change. Members of the old guard who are unwilling or unable to do their duties need to step down. Vacancies in captainships and vice-captainships need to be filled. Users who have been immune to discipline just for being prominent need to be subject to disciplinary measures (again, I am including myself in this). There does not need to be an event every month. Staff needs to stop prioritizing engagement and resume their duties of actually improving the site, or there may very well not be a site to improve. If you want to know how prioritizing engagement over a safe, welcoming community turns out in the long run, just ask Twitter.
Consider the fact that the Technical Team hasn’t given an update on Wikijump since November of 2023
Progress is happening there even without updates being given: see the tech team section of this document for more details.
Despite this, the official Discord is open to anyone over sixteen
We see that having the discord being 16+ so that we are the place those users are in as opposed to being in other discord servers where we cannot moderate, our fanbase is mostly under 18 and we would prefer to keep them
the fact that the responses started out public on O5, before being hidden, and finally being posted in an incomplete state, despite a discussion thread being opened to answer the unaddressed points
We are aware of this and have gotten much more aggressive about ensuring fast and responsive town halls. The community survey was a cascade problem where issue after issue turned up causing a substantial delay, this should not happen again.
prevent mass marketing pushes
The causes of vote manipulation were not due to marketing pushes in our investigations. In addition this is basically unenforceable and a massive overreach of staff powers.
reduce or shut down applications during a major event
This was discussed in the 05 thread and disliked by both staff and the broader user base.
Then there is the Disciplinary Team. Disc claims to be responsible for punishing rule-breakers, troublemakers, and shit-stirrers. However, in the last year, between the deluge of AI posts overwhelming them, the problems encountered during 8kcon, and the complete lack of both a captain and a vice captain, they’re incapable of addressing what should be the Wikidot equivalent of someone getting a ticket for going 80 in a 25, let alone disciplining users who have histories of leaving hostile but low-effort crit, or insulting other users in such a way that violates Rule 0, or anything that doesn’t involve actively endangering other users and their works, especially when it comes to those who are established on the site.
The Disc team has undergone a major restructuring to fix this, we now have two captains to help alleviate this as an issue.
The portion of the staff which moderates the official SCP subreddit actively creates more work for itself. They could post an FAQ which lists the most common topics which are repeated ad nauseum (i.e. “who would win in a fight between SCP-XXX and SCP-YYY” “Is SCP real” “why am I getting downvoted?”) or have a megathread for said questions, like other fandom-centric subreddits do.
An FAQ is being worked on, however most of those questions are against the rules anyhow and people who do not read rules tend not to read FAQs.
