ci5hq Resignation

[przed]

Those of you not in Pros fandom can safely ignore this.

To those of you in Pros, I am, reluctantly, resigning as co-mod of ci5hq. (I would have done this days ago, but for the fact that I've been sick as a dog since Thursday.)

In part, this is because as the mom of a rapidly growing little girl with increasing personal and professional demands on my energy, I've been realizing I have less time than ever to devote to fannish pursuits. I need only to work on things that bring me joy, and increasingly that is not ci5hq.

Primarily, however, this comes down my now former co-mod's decision to move to using prosficspoilers for warnings on the community. I have two main issues with this choice.

First is the fact that in spite of her much vaunted respect for other fans, byslantedlight did not show the same respect to me, and made this change without either consulting whether I agreed with this decision or even informing me of this change in policy on the comm. I am similarly making my decision without consulting her.

Second is the fact that I most emphatically do not agree with this change. Forcing users of the comm to post warnings and spoilers to a separate community is unworkable and onerous. Unworkable, because in spite of the mod's assertion to the contrary, providing only a link to the prosficspoilers comm in the original posting will mean that the specific warnings for that story will swiftly become lost in the spoilers community. Onerous, because to make it all workable the original poster will have to create their own post in the spoiler comm, then link back to it, a layer of effort that seems to me completely unnecessary when simply putting a warning at the end of the story or posting, under a cut would seem to meet the requirements of most members of the community. Creating this new layer seems to add no value except perhaps sparing the sensibilities of the very few (2 out of 35 respondents on a poll byslantedlight conducted herself) who are offended by the very existence of warnings. And I say that as someone who doesn't feel the need for warnings herself, but can respect that others do.

That it has come to me making this decision saddens me, because in large part I helped create ci5hq in response to the arbitrary, draconian, and inconsistently applied posting rules of the former mod of the_safehouse. To see similarly arbitrary rules on a community I helped create causes me great dismay, and I cannot any longer remain as a mod.

I will also not be posting on any other comm that has this policy, which means I will no longer be posting on the_safehouse.

Increasingly it has become clear to me that the only truly friendly LJ comm in Pros fandom is teaandswissroll. The mods there are welcoming to all Pros fans, and do not impose arbitrary, unworkable, or unnecessary rules. teaandswissroll is definitely becoming my de facto home base for Pros on LJ.

I have made a number of friends in Pros fandom. I hope I will continue to be friends with many of you. But if any of you feel you need to remove me from your flist in light of this decision, I completely understand.

Take care everyone.

Comments

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

Rules
In keeping with the laid back views of your moderators, we don't want to have hard and fast rules. We do, however, have a few suggestions:
Flames are bad. While you may not agree with everything you read on ci5hq, please show respect for the opinions of other posters and commenters, and keep discussion civil.
Posts and comments should be about some aspect of Pros.
If you're posting about a story, whether rec or new fic, it would be helpful if you could use this header at the top of your post:
Title:
Author:
Link to story or zine/ProsLib info:
Pairing:
Further story information found at <*lj comm="prosficspoilers"*> (delete asterisks for code to work)
Short review: (1 to 3 sentences) If you want to include a longer critical discussion of a story, or a whole zine, please put it behind an <*lj-cut*> tag.

Bold emphasis mine for this comment - as stated in the user info, there are no compulsory rules, and we've asked people to please post the header, not tried to say that they must (I note that the policy for spoilers is compulsory at T&SR, however)

And as you say, if people don't like the way one comm works, they can indeed post somewhere else instead - that's how ci5hq came to be in the first place, as P says in her post above.

[callistosh65.livejournal.com]

I note that the policy for spoilers is compulsory at T&SR, however Maybe, but it does not involve posting and linking to another comm to do it..

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

You don't have to post to another comm at CI5hq either, if that's what's worrying you! It looks like that wasn't clear enough in the original posts/discussions proposing the new policy (I think we missed your opinions on the idea, there?) There's absolutely no onus on an author to post to Prosficspoilers - the onus is on the people who want spoilers to arrange them, and Firle (the mod) has said that she's happy to post them to her comm for people to see. I'm sure she'd like help, if you're a supporter of spoilers!

People who don't like spoilers don't have to do anything, at any point, whether they're authors or readers. People who want spoilers simply click twice - once on the comm link, and once in the tags list on the title of the story they're looking for. It seemed easier than asking people to learn html code for blacking/whiting out spoiler information, particularly as people have complained as well about our use of trailers rather than headers. All we can do is try to compromise to keep people happy - and I did ask for comments and opinions on the workability of this in posts at CI5hq. There was very little response and I don't think any was against the idea - so I was under the impression that people were happy enough to try it. I can't read minds, unfortunately - if people have strong opinions, or worry that something's unworkable, they need to tell me so! There were four recent posts about this (links in my comment to przed), and very few of the people who've commented here participated in the discussion about the policy, which is a shame if they have such strong feelings.

[callistosh65.livejournal.com]

I think we missed your opinions on the idea, there? Am I supposed to feel guilty about that now?? Sorry, I don't. I don't have to give my opinon at any given time. I can express it whenever I feel it strongly - and I was more interested in the perceived 'splitting' of Pros at that time.

Now upon learning of przed's resignation and why, and seeing it pop up as rules on the user info pages, I feel it strongly.

If it *is* optional, then I would suggest you consider making it clearer on those user info pages.

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

No, of course you're not supposed to feel guilty about it - I'm just sorry that such strong opinions as I'm seeing here weren't expressed when discussion was requested.

Wording is a funny thing - people often read what they think they should read, rather than what's actually there. "Suggestion" and "would be helpful if" mean exactly what they say they mean, and were always intended to...

[partners4life.livejournal.com]

I just recently saw the changes to the_safehouse and left the community I have been a member of for years because of the change. I am pro warnings, but respect that others do not share my views. I, however, agree with przed that making an author or reader jump through another step to read warning/spoiler labels on another community is not for me.

I run communities, I understand you cannot please all members but currently I find the best way to appease both sides in the warnings debate has been to put warnings behide a cut or under a highlight in the story notes. This way if you don't like to be spoiled, you don't click the cut/highlight. And if like me you want to be warned for rape (the only thing I want a warning for), you click on that and check it out. I thought that compromise was working fine on the_safehouse, sad to see the policy changed.

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure how clicking a mouse twice is seen as "jumping through another step"? That's all anyone needs to do.

Blacking/whiting out was offered as another suggestion - but that involves people/posters/reccers etc learning html code in order to post, which I thought was far more complicated than asking them to click their mouse twice.

I was perfectly happy with the system we had - warnings were placed in trailers at the end of a story, but you wouldn't believe the complaints I had about that too - it's too much effort to scroll down for the most part.

I'm not aware that there was any compromise at The Safehouse - as far as I know warnings were always front and centre at the top of a story and above a cut, where no one could avoid them. At CI5hq (and discoveredinalj) we at least put them at the end of a fic so that people could either scroll down to find them or else read the story without being spoiled.

[partners4life.livejournal.com]

You are always going to have complaints about anything you do as a mod. If when you started the_safehouse there were specific warnings rules about posting, unless there was some sort of new technology advance to make that rule obsolete, then I would have left things as they were or at least conducted a new poll about the topic, not one that was done nearly 3 years ago.

As I said an LJ cut seemed to me to be the easiest way to compromise about warnings on fic. You could have removed any warnings from the subject line and left the warnings in the body of the post as an even greater compromise for the no spoilers people.

And of people cannot cut and paste this code (see below) for a warning, why would anyone think authors are now going to join another community, post a warning over there, then go back to The_Safehouse and put that link in their story? If people think scrolling & LJ cuts are too much work, I foresee this new policy not working either because it is just not clicking on a link, it requires someone making a post on the spoiler community first, then linking back to the_safehouse.

To me it just seems easier to join a Pros list that doesn't have these complicated hoops to jump through - which I did.

Warning: (skip (#skip.titleofstory)) Warning text goes here.
()

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

I think there's some confusion here - I don't mod Safehouse! The issue arose at, and the comm I'm talking about is ci5hq. But to respond to your points:

it is just not clicking on a link, it requires someone making a post on the spoiler community first, then linking back to the_safehouse.
Yes, but this is the part that would be done by the spoiler community mod (who volunteered to do it when the idea was first mooted) and by those members who are interested in helping her out. The beauty of it is that it doesn't have to be done by the person making the rec/story post - it's down to the spoiler comm to create the spoilers. In other words, those who want them make them. This might be the person who posted the rec/story, but it doesn't have to be - that's entirely up to them. And rather than people complaining that some authors won't include warnings for their stories (eg, I won't), or that warnings weren't provided for older Prosfic, they can simply provide spoilers to the comm themselves.

So authors/reccers only have to cut and paste the header, if that's all they want to do. And people wanting warnings/spoilers only have to click to go to the spoiler comm - once the mod has got it up and running, everything would be smoothly done.

There's advantages to lists and to lj as well, and no doubt in a few years there'll be advantages to the next type of social forum - the world keeps turning, and to be honest I don't think it's worth getting too upset about... As I said above, I thought it worked perfectly well to have warnings etc in a trailer under a cut, but hey-ho!