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I've updated the public doc that summarizes the CEA Online Team's OKRs to add Q3.1 (sorry this is a bit late, I just forgot! š ).
Hey Holly, it sounds like youāre frustrated by how people in EA are engaging with the idea of a pause. Iām sure thatās really hard, and Iām sure I donāt know even a fraction of what youāve gone through. I know youāre doing this advocacy work because you care a lot, and I really appreciate that. You know that I personally support your work.
However, Iām worried that this thread is becoming unproductive, and risks making the Forum feel like less of a safe space[1].
In particular, my concern is that you are criticizing @Denkenbergeršø directly in a way that appears to come from nowhere. @Denkenbergeršø doesnāt say anything about their personal views on a pause before you respond with:
But honestly all I hear are excuses. You wouldnāt want to help me if Carl said it was the right thing to do or youād have already realized what I said yourself. You wouldnāt be waiting for Carlās permission or anyone elseās. What youāre looking for is permission to stay on this corrupt be-the-problem strategy and it shows.
In my opinion, this sort of accusation without evidence erodes the Forumās ability to be a safe community space for important discussions. If it's the case that I'm missing some context and you have personal beef with @Denkenbergeršø, then I donāt think the Forum is the appropriate place to hash that out.
To be clear, I think the following are broadly fine and often good (assuming adherence to our Forum norms):
So Iād like to suggest that you take a step back from this thread. If you find yourself getting frustrated at others on the Forum elsewhere, Iād suggest taking a break from those as well.
Youāve written some of the best posts on this Forum, and the Forum Team greatly values your contributions. At the same time, I also think itās important that the Forum continues to be a productive discussion space.
A relevant quote from our āModeration principlesā post:
The Forum should be a great and safe space: weāre working on hard problems, and the internet can be rough! We donāt want arbitrary barriers to keep people from joining discussions on the Forum, we donāt want people to be miserable on the Forum, and we want to promote excellent discussions and content.
- Civility and charitable discussion - the Forum should feel like a breath of fresh air and a refuge of sanity. When you join a discussion on the Forum, you should be able to reasonably expect that the other people wonāt twist your words, wonāt call you names, etc.
- Safety - if users feel unsafe on the Forum ā theyāre being threatened, or theyāre worried that if they post, theyāll have to fend off trolls on their own, etc. ā thatās our problem. We need to prevent this.
Thanks Jason! Luckily, which posts get categorized as "Personal blog" is public information (I think it's easiest to skim via the All posts page), so I would be happy for people to check our work and contact us if you think we've made a mistake. If you take a look now, you'll see that very few posts have been moved there so far, and I don't expect the rate to change very much going forward.
2. My guess is that the vast majority of new users don't even know what "Personal blog" means, so I'm not sure how demotivating it will be to them. As I mentioned in another comment, my guess is that getting downvoted is more demotivating for new users.
3. I think that's a good idea, and I'd be happy for users to flag these as mistakes to the moderators, or just DM me directly and I can return a post to the Frontpage if I agree (I have the final say as head moderator).
Thanks Ben! š
(Toby's title change was basically just the two of us trying to figure out how to better communicate his role to external people, it's not related to his level. He has a fair amount of autonomy in his role, and I thought "Content Manager" didn't properly reflect that. Also I personally could never remember which of "Content Manager" and "Content Specialist" was the more senior title... š )
Ah yeah sorry I was unclear! I basically meant what you said when I said "at their discretion, but starting conservatively" ā so we are starting to take "quality" into account when deciding what stays in the Frontpage, because our readers' time is valuable. You can kind of think of it like: if the mod would have downvoted a post from a new user, the mod can instead decide to move it to "Personal blog". I think it's possible that this is actually less discouraging to new users than getting downvoted, since it's like you're being moved to a category with different standards. You can check our work by looking at what gets categorized as "Personal blog" via the All posts page. :)
I expect this will affect only a small proportion of new users.
Mini EA Forum Update
We've added two new kinds of notifications that have been requested multiple times before:
I hope you find these useful! š Feel free to reply if you have any feedback or questions.