6 ms·

I ran an official fan site once, for an EA title of all things. Doing this I learned some neat tricks to limit the amount of administration required. One thing

by iinnPP 4y ago

I ran an official fan site once, for an EA title of all things. Doing this I learned some neat tricks to limit the amount of administration required. One thing that stuck was that there is a huge benefit to maintaining a specific section for garbage posts. Sticky threads existed titled: Potentially offensive/spam? Post it here. Everyone used it and followed the very few rules of the spam board. I rarely had to move anything. People would even use links to their rants as replies to regular threads, clearly identified so that people could avoid it if they wanted. I also did the same for another hobby forum I ran in highschool. With 3 mods and one other admin we were able to keep a forum completely clean for years with ~2 million monthly unique visitors. I do believe Twitter is about to do something similar.

xiphias2 4y ago
It looks cool, but right now there are 2 sides of the same coin. Maybe one would need a ,,victim / possibly being offended'' section as well.
- jabroni_salad 4y ago
  If being an AO3 regular has taught me anything it's that some people are just incapable of watching out for themselves. You can put all the warnings and tags on your writing and other people can configure their profile to automatically hide anything with warnings and tags that they dont like. You can tag yourself as 'dead dove do not eat' to specially indicate that none of the abhorrent shit in your tags is there ironically. You can make your post privileged so only registered members (and the site has a waiting period) can even see your fic exists, filtering out bystanders. Readers will STILL complain that you 'subjected them' to a noncon cannibalism fic as if they somehow did not have a clear roadsign at the top.
- iinnPP 4y ago
  You don't let people be offended by it. There's no "offensive" reporting, only illegal content reporting. The people who want to post edgy things will go there. The immediate result is that every other area of discussion becomes less "violent and offensive." People who are offended in the garbage pile get told not to go to the garbage pile. The offenders however, get told to keep their garbage in the pile. Nobody gets censored. Nobody gets offended (without ignoring the warnings.) The entire planet cools down. I have no idea if it would work at Twitter's scale though.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
colinmhayes 4y ago
The issue with this is that the "garbage" posts are the ones that maximize engagement. Twitter and all the other social media sites are showing them on purpose. They're trying to maximize engagement, why would they decide to quarantine the most engaging posts?
- criddell 4y ago
  > why would they decide to quarantine the most engaging posts? Maybe as a private company, they can start to think beyond shallow, short term metrics.
  - quesera 4y ago
    > Maybe as a private company, they can start to think beyond shallow, short term metrics. Only if Musk operates Twitter as a public service, at a personal expense of at least $700MM/yr. ... Elon's debt service for the purchase exceeds $1BB/yr, for an unprofitable business with $600MM of revenue. If he cuts operating costs by 50% while maintaining revenue (not likely but possible, surely Twitter has too many people today. or last week anyway)... then he personally loses ~$700MM/yr for the privilege of owning Twitter.
    - colinmhayes 4y ago
      Twitters revenue was 5 billion last year.
      - quesera 4y ago
        You're right. I misinterpreted the source -- which on re-read, is a bit of a dog's breakfast: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/30/technology/elon-musk-twitter-debt.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/30/technology/elon-musk-twit... ~$600MM of "cash flow" (I think they mean EBITDA) to service the $1BB debt, so he's about half-way there, before reducing operating costs below 2021's $3BB.
- iinnPP 4y ago
  People post in the garbage area all the time. It saves a lot of moderation work and everyone from my experience seemed better off for it. Venting can be quite therapeutic but without an audience it isn't as effective. Also, the community developed a bit of a stigma towards people with garbage posts outside of the designated area. Politely, in order to not themselves be stigmatized.
geenew 4y ago
That sounds like an application of an old aphorism I once heard: "every good filing system has a 'miscellaneous' folder". Could maybe call it the Godel folder :)

by iinnPP 4y ago

xiphias2 4y ago

It looks cool, but right now there are 2 sides of the same coin. Maybe one would need a ,,victim / possibly being offended'' section as well.

jabroni_salad 4y ago
If being an AO3 regular has taught me anything it's that some people are just incapable of watching out for themselves. You can put all the warnings and tags on your writing and other people can configure their profile to automatically hide anything with warnings and tags that they dont like. You can tag yourself as 'dead dove do not eat' to specially indicate that none of the abhorrent shit in your tags is there ironically. You can make your post privileged so only registered members (and the site has a waiting period) can even see your fic exists, filtering out bystanders. Readers will STILL complain that you 'subjected them' to a noncon cannibalism fic as if they somehow did not have a clear roadsign at the top.
iinnPP 4y ago
You don't let people be offended by it. There's no "offensive" reporting, only illegal content reporting. The people who want to post edgy things will go there. The immediate result is that every other area of discussion becomes less "violent and offensive." People who are offended in the garbage pile get told not to go to the garbage pile. The offenders however, get told to keep their garbage in the pile. Nobody gets censored. Nobody gets offended (without ignoring the warnings.) The entire planet cools down. I have no idea if it would work at Twitter's scale though.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

colinmhayes 4y ago

The issue with this is that the "garbage" posts are the ones that maximize engagement. Twitter and all the other social media sites are showing them on purpose. They're trying to maximize engagement, why would they decide to quarantine the most engaging posts?

criddell 4y ago
> why would they decide to quarantine the most engaging posts? Maybe as a private company, they can start to think beyond shallow, short term metrics.
- quesera 4y ago
  > Maybe as a private company, they can start to think beyond shallow, short term metrics. Only if Musk operates Twitter as a public service, at a personal expense of at least $700MM/yr. ... Elon's debt service for the purchase exceeds $1BB/yr, for an unprofitable business with $600MM of revenue. If he cuts operating costs by 50% while maintaining revenue (not likely but possible, surely Twitter has too many people today. or last week anyway)... then he personally loses ~$700MM/yr for the privilege of owning Twitter.
  - colinmhayes 4y ago
    Twitters revenue was 5 billion last year.
    - quesera 4y ago
      You're right. I misinterpreted the source -- which on re-read, is a bit of a dog's breakfast: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/30/technology/elon-musk-twitter-debt.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/30/technology/elon-musk-twit... ~$600MM of "cash flow" (I think they mean EBITDA) to service the $1BB debt, so he's about half-way there, before reducing operating costs below 2021's $3BB.
iinnPP 4y ago
People post in the garbage area all the time. It saves a lot of moderation work and everyone from my experience seemed better off for it. Venting can be quite therapeutic but without an audience it isn't as effective. Also, the community developed a bit of a stigma towards people with garbage posts outside of the designated area. Politely, in order to not themselves be stigmatized.

geenew 4y ago

That sounds like an application of an old aphorism I once heard: "every good filing system has a 'miscellaneous' folder". Could maybe call it the Godel folder :)