[DISCUSSION][PROPOSAL] Moving all draft critique to the forums.

[DISCUSSION][PROPOSAL] Moving all draft critique to the forums.

C-Graph 05 Oct 2023 19:48

The following is a proposal made in our official Discord server by one of our Admins, ghostchibi. As it is a change that would affect both site-only and Discord-only users, it has been decided that the discussion should be moved here. Again, this is only a proposal, and this post is not meant to indicate that it is an official change to the site.

The proposal¹:

On-site forums might as well be a nuclear waste disposal site with how little traffic they get. It’s kind of goofy that the on-site forums of the wiki are the least likely place to get critique for posting pages to the wiki. It’s also extremely difficult to navigate discord threads to find specific comments sometimes, because the point of discord is to chat. I feel like we can alleviate a few issues in one fell swoop by moving draft critique to the wikidot forums.

The Concept:

• Use the draft critique forums for all draft crit.
• The checkmark system—a system that has looser posting standards but is exclusive to the Discord server—may still be used. Critics leaving a checkmark must clearly indicate in their post that they are giving the draft a checkmark, and of which type of checkmark². It is the draft author’s responsibility to keep track of the checkmarks. Users are still allowed to do draft crit in Discord DMs, Wikidot PMs, etc., but the critic must post a summary of critique and edits in the forum thread for their checkmark(s) to be valid.
• The sandbox forum, sandbox-critique, and, sandbox-cwitique-2 channels would be archived and no longer usable. Users would be told to post in the critique forums.
• The stickied threads in the draft critique forum will be deleted and rewritten to give current info on how critique, greenlighting, and checkmark clearing functions.
• The idea-critique and idea-cwitique-2 channels will remain.
• The site-forum-feed channel would remain as a way to inform users of new draft threads.
• The rule of one thread per draft per person will still apply, with an allowance of one extra thread per person exclusively for co-authored drafts, i.e. you may not post two threads for two non-co-authored drafts.

The Pros:

• More usage of the actual wiki.
• More users encouraged to join and participate on the wiki directly.
• Wiki-only users will have access to critics and greenlight-process users (GLers, GLTs, GFTs).
• Greater difficulty in spoofing/faking checkmarks.
• Easier access to previously sent draft crit for authors.
• Less channel bloat on the Discord server.
• Easier access to policies and advice on drafting by sticking the appropriate staff-written thread, rather than expecting users to dig through discord channel pinned messages.

The Cons, and ghostchibi's arguments against them:

• Forums do not offer fast/easy back-and-forth ⬅️ Most critique consists of large chunks of text being sent by the critic, followed by the author making the edits. By the time the draft reaches a stage where rapid chat-type communication between critic and author is useful, it’s basically ready for posting. If this is inconvenient, hop on Discord, finish up there, and garner your last checkmarks (and/or greenlight).
• No pings on forums ⬅️ Role pings are practically useless. Direct user pings are the only way to get a response anyway.
• Harder to get attention on the forums ⬅️ Forum threads have a description that can be added to the thread. This description section should be utilized. Many people simply put “read my draft” or “new draft” or something along those lines in the description, giving no indication of what is in the draft. Use your resources wisely.
• The wiki itself blocks access to some users ⬅️ We may ask people to act as messengers for users who can’t access the actual wiki forums, as long as those users aren’t blocked for disciplinary reasons.
• Users need to be wiki members to receive draft critique ⬅️ You need to be a wiki member to post pages at all. Why not join the site before you start writing?

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After a bit of discussion within the Discord server, ghostchibi provided an alternative, which is pasted below:

• Alternative to archiving the sandbox channels on the Discord: archive only ⁠sandbox forum and sandbox-cwitique-2, leaving sandbox-critique available for rapid-fire crit. All other crit should still happen on the wiki’s forums, and crit that happens in ⁠sandbox-critique still requires a summary on the wiki forum thread for checkmark validity.

Please leave your thoughts in a reply below. Should enough interest be garnered, an internal/community vote will held as a means of deciding whether the current system will be kept as is or changed to adhere to all that was stated above.

Footnotes

1. Slightly paraphrased to accommodate Wikidot CSS.

2. Whether that be Concept, SPaG, or Format.

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One more step till the next step…

Last edited on 05 Oct 2023 19:51 by C-Graph Show more

Re: [DISCUSSION][PROPOSAL] Moving all draft critique to the forums.

C-Graph 05 Oct 2023 20:00

Noting that my personal stance is one of neutrality. While I do certainly like the idea, I can empathise with both sides of the argument and, as such, find all outcomes of this proposal satisfactory.

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One more step till the next step…

Re: [DISCUSSION][PROPOSAL] Moving all draft critique to the forums.

Univ - Wise Explorer 06 Oct 2023 11:43

I disagree with this proposal. In my opinion, discord is a much easier, more organized, and useful way of receiving critique. This is due to things like the ability to post images, ping, website speed, accessibility, aesthetic and organization forum posts, etc. I believe the cons outweigh the pros in this proposal as those pros can be achieved in other ways rather than scrapping the superior way of getting critique on discord that the community is so used to.

Yes, I agree it is really important that we increase activity on-site and that the people without discord also get critique. There are other ways that you should consider to achieve this goal. Maybe this can be achieved by assigning green lighters or critics to focus more on critiquing this Wikidot. As for increasing activity on the site, have staff make Wikidot forum posts for instance "What's your favorite entity?", and promote it on the discord server and encourage people to go to the site and leave their opinions. Another idea may be to give a role or some other kind of award to people who frequently to different articles, leave a +1 or -1, and justify their rating in the discussion. In conclusion, there are a lot of ways you can tackle this issue without having to scrap the discord way of receiving critique which I believe is a lot better.

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- Univ

Re: [DISCUSSION][PROPOSAL] Moving all draft critique to the forums.

Nikuchan 05 Oct 2023 19:55

I've already expressed my opinion fully in the forum, but the short answer is, I'm against the proposal. There are too many factors it would ignore, and we can try to work on fixing the crit system and find a compromise to please both sides.

Re: [DISCUSSION][PROPOSAL] Moving all draft critique to the forums.

ghostchibi 06 Oct 2023 05:25

The various proposed changes to the crit system revolve around changing the requirements for posting pages, and lack sufficient attention in how to specifically make sure that the proposed system also reaches the site-only users. They’re good ideas for what they’re focusing on, but none of them substantially tackle how to increase critique on the site forums. The ones that get the closest do so because they lower the amount of crit required, but this means little for a user who is receiving *no* crit vs *not enough* crit.

Re: [DISCUSSION][PROPOSAL] Moving all draft critique to the forums.

ghostchibi 06 Oct 2023 06:06

Putting my responses to rebuttals made in the discord server:

The forums are too slow for my critique style.

This is what the alternative method of using discord then summarizing the critique intends to cover.

It’s too hard to search a forum thread to look back at critique.

Wikidot forum threads follow a certain pagination rule, from my observation, where a new page on the forum thread is made after ten new, non-reply posts. Replies to posts will always appear under their parent post, and theoretically this nesting can go on forever (until the indent gets so wide that the messages are impossible to read). This means that if you properly create a reply chain, the exact page on the thread where a post appears can be tracked. You could use this to your advantage to make “sections” if critique such as one post chain for grammar, one post chain for concept, etc. Or, if this would make the reply chain too long, you could chop it up even further between posts.

While wikidot search won’t work on forums, you can always use the “search in page” function. Most modern mobile browsers (so, anything that isn’t a ten year old release of Safari) also have this function.

Summarizing critique is tedious./I can’t remember a whole crit I did on discord to summarize it properly.

You would be writing a three to six sentence paragraph to describe what your critique consisted of. You would not be giving a line-by-line play of the critique.

It would be easy to lie about crit.

It is also easy to lie or misuse (mistakenly or not) on discord. We have had incidents of self-assigned checkmarks, low-effort critique checkmarks, collaborators giving each other checkmarks, checkmarks without any critique whatsoever, and “check for check” style critique in the discord server. It is also possible to cross-check a sandbox’s edit history with a critic’s posted summary, by checking the date of the critique summary post with the changes in a sandbox and judging whether the supposed critique ever happened. Something like this would be a worst-case scenario following multiple incidents from the same user, and I feel that this would reasonably never really come to pass.

People would only be punished if they’re caught lying or cheating the system. Why would anyone choose to follow the rules if there are no consequences?

Because there is one very inescapable consequence to skimping on crit and trying to skip ahead: downvotes. Critique functions to improve a page. If someone cheats the critique system, there is a high likelihood that their page will not get past the first 48 hours with a positive rating. Even pages cleared via checkmarks indicating the required critique was made have hit deletion threshold at times.

I feel like I can confidently say that nobody on this site would be able to cheat the critique system and coldpost to the site without a noticeable downgrade in quality. Quite frankly, if you can cheat the crit system and post a page of such high quality that it arouses zero suspicion that the crit clearing your draft was fake, you wouldn’t be doing that because you’d be getting a greenlight from a greenlighter instead.

Re: [DISCUSSION][PROPOSAL] Moving all draft critique to the forums.

PenOrSaber1 06 Oct 2023 11:26

Being a person who largely uses the forums for critique, I am for this proposal.
Addressing the points made by Univ-Wise Explorer:

the ability to post images, ping, website speed, accessibility, aesthetic and organization forum posts

It is also possible to post images in the forums, so that isn't a problem. There are forum notifications and you can directly contact a user, so that issue is neutralized. Wikidot forums, internet speed wise, hasn't been an issue for me, wouldn't know about discord. If you were referring to the critique process speed, then that is what this proposal is for. As for accessibility, not everyone can get on discord (me being one of those people), while everyone can get on the forums if they so choose. Aesthetic stuff doesn't really matter in the actual posting. In the forums, you can look at the dates of the posts and they nest by the time posted, so it's also pretty organized in there.
Regarding what you said about getting rid of discord:
They aren't necessarily getting rid of discord entirely, but getting rid of two of the channels and moving most of it to the forums. If you truly need to get on discord, then there will still be one channel, but overall, it would be better to get on the forums.
Regarding what you said about achieving the pros other ways, specifically assigning greenlighters to Wikidot:
Many greenlighters may not want to work in the forums and they get to choose what they want to do. One user can't force another to do something they don't want to do.
As for your suggestions, I think the award is a great idea, but the questions may not gain any popularity. Not everyone may feel like going and answering the question in the forums when they could just as easily answer it in discord or not want to answer it at all.

Now, for my own reasons for being for this:

• The greenlight process on the forums is currently extremely slow and concentrating both greenlighters and writers into the forums would help speed things up immensely.
• Forums are a lot easier to access for many users than discord, although many currently choose to use discord.
• Writing critique would be a lot easier since everything would all be on wikidot. You wouldn't have to swap between two different platforms.
• Guides are more accessible; literally two clicks away.
• Personally believe forums would be more organized than discord
• Staff could probably monitor it easier than discord.
• There would be less posting involved with critique in the forums, I imagine, since the author can make a post with the link to their draft and critics can make and edit one post over time, like I do.
• All of Ghost's pros.

Can't think of anything else.

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Just a high schooler who thinks he is good at writing. Likes working on a lot of stuff, ranging from writing for the Backrooms Wiki, to providing critique, and reading. ~ Pen.
"The truth is the truth. What changes is what we know about it and what we're willing to believe."
- Jonathan Maberry, Rot and Ruin

Last edited on 06 Oct 2023 16:44 by PenOrSaber1 Show more

Re: [DISCUSSION][PROPOSAL] Moving all draft critique to the forums.

BlueSignet 06 Oct 2023 23:14

While I was initially open to moving all critique onto the forums, I am inclined to keep a balance between the two for a couple reasons.

1. Notifications are easier to get. Even on discord, critique is notoriously slow. Unless you are subscribed to the forum notifier, you won't get any notifications. And even then, you either have to comment or physically add it to your list of notifications. It's less of a hassle than getting @Critic in the Discord.
2. Frankly, we can't force anyone to do anything. Many active critics in the Discord have said they won't be critiquing on the forums; only through Discord DMs. That's fine, but harder to keep track of and adds to the problem of "I don't see anyone else doing it. Why should I?" Also, active critics are rare even on the Discord, so I don't want to alienate them completely.
3. Critiquing on mobile is so much easier on Discord than on the wikidot. I've wanted to throw my phone across the room multiple times when the text box zooms off my phone screen because it's not centered correctly. Or I've lost half a page of critique because I closed the app, and then the page reloaded. The fact of the matter is that mobile is easier and faster to access than desktop, and that's not something we can change unless wikidot changes.

However, I recognize that the experience for a forums-only member sucks. No pages in the last 3 months have been greenlit from forums people, and our current system was made with Discord in mind. Honestly, if we can't have a good experience for our forums-only members, then why have forums at all? (Obviously, this an extreme decision, and should be treated as a suggestion, not something that will be enacted in a day).

My solution is to create a list of people on the forums who are willing to be contacted for critique. It would be helpful to get a list of those willing to critique (who aren't greenlighters). And while it's somewhat controversial, we should be encouraging a culture of critique for critique. Any writing group that meets in real life does this, why should we be any different? We have a Critique Guide now. We should start pointing that out to people.

Re: [DISCUSSION][PROPOSAL] Moving all draft critique to the forums.

PenOrSaber1 07 Oct 2023 12:56

I was agreeing with what you said until I got right here.

Honestly, if we can't have a good experience for our forums-only members, then why have forums at all? (Obviously, this an extreme decision, and should be treated as a suggestion, not something that will be enacted in a day).

Definitely extreme; if they get rid of the forums, forum-only members be unable to receive critique. Furthermore, there isn't any need to take drastic measures just because something currently doesn't work. It doesn't mean it can't be fixed if it isn't working out right now.
In addition, I believe that some members who only use/can use forums would leave if the forums were deleted. There would have to be an accessable alternative, otherwise staff may see a decline in users who join the site and are already on it.
I really like this suggestion:

My solution is to create a list of people on the forums who are willing to be contacted for critique. It would be helpful to get a list of those willing to critique (who aren't greenlighters).

Mainly because if it is enacted soon, it means having a list of current people who are active who are willing to work in the forums. It could also be used as a way to gain more greenlighters if these critics do well over time. It would be a way for users who aren't ready to be greenlighters or trainees to work on self-improvement. All you would have to do to apply is send a pm to someone on the critique team. Of course, that means that the people on this list would have to be decent at giving critique. So, I would suggest make it required that these people have to send the link to the articles they are critiquing as they critique them so staff can get somewhat of an idea of how good it is. I'm not saying that they have to be perfect to stay on the team, but it should be obvious the user put effort into catching errors and is trying to improve other user's articles.

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Just a high schooler who thinks he is good at writing. Likes working on a lot of stuff, ranging from writing for the Backrooms Wiki, to providing critique, and reading. ~ Pen.
"The truth is the truth. What changes is what we know about it and what we're willing to believe."
- Jonathan Maberry, Rot and Ruin

Last edited on 07 Oct 2023 13:12 by PenOrSaber1 Show more