[Discussion] Community issues + moderation

[kasumicc.livejournal.com]

I thought it would be good to bring this to discussion. For a while, I've been hearing people having issues when posting to this community. Either their posts remain forever in moderation queue or, for one reason or another, their post just won't get in.

I really don't know if it should be blamed to Livejournal, or to some setting in the community itself. But I find this rather worrying. This comm already gets a minimum amount of daily posts compared to some years ago. And the fact that these issues are happening only helps to the comm inactivity. Which brings me to another point: the comm's moderation. It's true that with such low activity, there's no need for permanent vigilance anymore. However, as this community still keeps a daily activity, I do think it's necessary to have a mod around, someone who has the time to check once a day or so. Not just to solve the post queue issues, but also, to reinforce some rules from time to time. Because I do see at times posts that break a rule or two (ex. questions that should go to aph_request instead, mature entries not being locked, etc), but in all honesty, no one takes issue with such things anymore.

And that makes me wonder if there's any point on keeping the actual rules anymore. These rules come from another time, and many of them are meant to lessen comm spam. Comms such as hetalia_events and aph_request were born for this. But said spam is nonexistent today. I'm not alone on thinking that having a decentralized community is rather inconvenient now, and bringing these posts back to the main comm shouldn't have a significant effect on your f-lists, as fandom nowadays does have little activity compared to some years ago. So I personally think that the comm's rules should undergo some revision, at least.

So that's it. Feel free to share your thoughts on this~

Comments

[sidneyfireblood.livejournal.com]

The rules should be have another look over as with all communities and not just this one.

Every once in a while a community needs to look back on their rules and go "Oh hey! Maybe we should change them"

I wouldn't know which ones would need to be changed since I haven't posted in here, but maybe you should think about it.

And I didn't even know there was a restriction on posting here. Heck, I think I just watch the community and I may not actually be in it. There are a lot of communities that I just watch because of posting restrictions and such.

So it should be up to thise who are mods and frequent posters and not just me.

Hope this helps.

[kecen.livejournal.com]

If you're just watching this community, you're seriously missing out.
There are many members only posts, including many doujinshi and "adult material" and downloads.

[osoroshia.livejournal.com]

The posting limits are, actually, 100% on Livejournal.
:/ They brought that in a while ago, when I guess there were a lot of spam attacks. So by default, any post to any community that contains a certain amount of external links, will fail.
I'm honestly not even sure posts that get hit with this problem can be seen by moderators.

It's the same with how at one point, comments couldn't contain pictures hosted on certain sites; they'd appear as screened to the commenter, go to the OP's email inbox, but never actually be visible to anyone else. Even OPs can't reply to them.


But, yeah, this comm itself is lacking active moderation. And even when I've seen mods replying anywhere, it's only ever been to pictures being 1 or 2 pixels too big. There's never any response to more important things.
What ever happened to the whole rule that RP requests made outside of the RP request post would be deleted?
:I Rules can only exist while someone's there to enforce them.


While it goes against what you're saying, and it's terrible when the community list is already so massive, I really prefer different comms for specific things.
You come here, you see everything. No order. No organization. Even half the tags are still "do not use" instead of deleted or replaced.
Thanks to the lack of moderation, some things aren't even close to on topic, either; Just recently, a user posted a sales ad here, had one Hetalia-related item in total, and didn't even link to it. :I

The rules themselves give this community the ability to handle six things:
-Discussions
-Fanart
-Fanfiction
-Doujinshi
-Media Downloads
-Translations

Even news isn't possible anymore, because of external links.
They need an entire rewrite of the rules to handle anything further, or have to start directing all other forms of posts to communities that are actually made to handle them.

[kasumicc.livejournal.com]

I agree we need specific comms for some things. Problem is that we seem to be using them the wrong way. We do have a community for doing requests yet everybody comes to post them here. Do we forget about that comm, or do we reinforce the rule saying that requests aren't allowed here? Do we keep out the discussion posts for events, or do we bring them back here where they belong (as I feel they do)? On the other hand, we've never been able to agree to keep RP or selling posts out of here. It's such a mess.

[uozaki.livejournal.com]

If there was any dividing to be done, I'd prefer fanworks in one comm and official stuff in another. I think questions would be ok in the Official comm, although there could be a strongly worded GTS note in the rules, because seriously. And except for the spam issue, I never understood why events needed their own page. I guess *just* for the spam.

Then again I suppose I'm probably the only one who's NOT here for the fanworks, so I should just figure out some way to filter my flist so I don't have to scroll through all of it. (Any thoughts on HOW?) Having everything in one place does make things easier.

[osoroshia.livejournal.com]

@__@ No, I'm with you entirely.

Fan stuff's half the reason I don't like the main comm.


There's supposedly a way to watch only specific tags. But. Even then. People don't tag correctly.

[lovelycudy.livejournal.com]

When you select your watch settings you can select which tag you want to follow. In your case, I guess it'd be "official". It works. There are some comms where I only follow one tag and I only get email notifications for those.

[lovelycudy.livejournal.com]

I prefer a centralised comm where things are posted. I can't seem to understand how hetalia_events works, for example, so I don't know if there's been any blog update. I wasn't aware of any modding issue, though.

[osoroshia.livejournal.com]

The event comm would make more sense if it had been brought in for an event that had actually had an announced end. :/
It's become just some pointless chat room, now, since fandom can't seem to understand it's over.

But basically it's event updates, since the last time an event happened in the main comm, the mods freaked out at everyone for posting too often.
Normal blog posts are still main comm material.

[hoshiko-2000.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I found hetalia_events confusing as well :/. I just find it a pity that ridiculous amounts of spam meant that events had to stop being held in the main com. People having fun and celebrating is one thing, but the spamming in previous events did cross the line in to being excessive and ridiculous.

And as for the event itself, it seems to have been 'indefinitely postponed'. Himaruya's apparently been ill and stressed by ridiculous amounts of work by the sounds of things, so yeah, I can completely understand it.

[bosscookie.livejournal.com]

Thank you for saying it! I honestly have gotten the feeling the past few months that no one even cares about this community anymore. Not even the moderators. There are things that are posted that are clearly against the rules of the community and a few years ago would not have been tolerated. It just feels like no one cares anymore and it is just causing a bunch of inactivity and the downfall of this place.

[sarepthegreat.livejournal.com]

I think the main concern should be finding active members to take over as new moderators and examine the current rules. I don't think we should splinter up the comm more than it already is. As it's been stated, it's not like there's been so many posts that it takes more than just scrolling through a few fic posts to find entries you are looking for. I think we just need to figure out what posts should be allowed and a few people to remind others to tag entries and member lock entries that contain mature content and download links. Active moderators could also see posts that go into moderation queues. I know a few comms have had LJ automatically turn on weird settings so it would be good to have someone who could keep an eye on those.

I also think it would be nice to have a few more community posts on the main comm. As long as it doesn't get into too much spam it would be a nice way to get to know other comm members.

[misty-rain.livejournal.com]

^^^^^ This is my feeling entirely.

Just my two cents, but I honestly wouldn't like to see the community further split up; I enjoy seeing fanworks posted here with everything else, especially as there is so little official news presently coming out. It makes the community seem more active, and the active atmosphere is why I like this Hetalia community so much. I agree that some renovations might need to be made in the comm, but I don't think it's so bad that fan works need to be removed when there is currently minimal posting as it is.

[yuuago]

Just going to second this.

Splitting up the comm more than it currently is would be unnecessary, due to the current activity level.

What would be really useful would be - as you said - active moderators and a re-evaluation of the rules.

... And now that you mention it, more community-oriented posts would be nice. I always enjoyed those back in the old days, actually - they were a great way to make friends in the fandom.

[yuuago]

A lot of the issues with moderation queue relate to Livejournal itself. Kalmarunionen has been having the same problem with posts that have external links going to queue even when the comm's settings have things set to be posted automatically.

I've always found decentralization to be rather inconvenient, and would prefer things to be more centralized than they are. (Then again, I've never been crazy enough to have the comm on my Flist!) I think that with active moderation, having the comm centralized would work very well, because there is less traffic than there used to be. And with active moderators, it would be possible to keep everything neat and organized and tagged correctly - and that would mean that people who are only interested in official things would be able to keep up with that through tracking tags, or just viewing the tags.

As for the rules, it definitely wouldn't hurt to review them. The profile could use a bit of sprucing up, too.

I guess the main thing is, though, is that we need active/present moderators. (Especially to handle the queue issue. Man, is that ever annoying.)

[misty-rain.livejournal.com]

I fully agree; excellent ideas.

[jammerlea]

Also adding a vote for the addition of active mods. I'm rather fond of some of the rules. Large images and videos that are not under a LJ cut are a pet peeve of mine. Multiple images (even thumbnails) not under a cut are another. (The less I have to scroll, the happier I am, lol). Actually, I like pretty much all of the rules, they just need more enforcing.

I also agree the tags could still use a bit of reworking. (Those are tough though.)

Some of the LINKS on the side need fixing, the Hetalia wiki link is no longer functional since they moved. The Scanlations Index is no longer being updated (we have a more complete Scanlations section at Hetarchive now). The link to my Community Masterlist needs to be updated since I registered a unique domain name. Are the Scanlation Claim/Request threads even USED anymore? I see there have been some scanlation requests made within the past year, but none of them have been answered. o_o; The FAQ thread seems neglected as well.

As for splitting content... I'm fine with fanwork and official content being together. Official updates aren't too frequent at the moment, so the fanwork helps keep things going. I AM rather fond of hetalia_sell, aph_request, hetalia_events, and possibly hetalia_wank for helping keep out some extra clutter, but they could use linking. I really think that's all the splitting we need. (hetalia_daily is also super useful and deserves a link.)

That's all I can think of at the moment, I might add more input later...

Definitely would love some active mods.

[yuuago]

Good gods, I hadn't even noticed that the links on the side were out of date, too. Yes, going to +1 this - that is definitely something that needs attending to!

(Agreed that the selling comm etc should be linked, too. I rather like that those hings are separate, whereas stuff that's directly related - fic + official stuff - is posted to the main comm proper.)

[deegeeak.livejournal.com]

The only thing that drives me crazy is seeing the same weekly posts by RP coms. Nothing against them, but I see the same posts for the same coms, over and over and over again.

[jammerlea]

I'm so used to this, I don't mind it terribly as long as they don't post them just a few days apart. A week is fine. It's hard to keep the RPs running sometimes, so I can't blame them for advertising here. A few of the ones that post ads regularly have been running for a decent amount of time (like Lolocracy and Wiztalia).

[kamikazemusume.livejournal.com]

Others have already said it far better than I could hope to, so I'll try to keep it brief:

- I agree that the rules need at least a look over and probably an update with regards to posting, but I do feel that aph_request, hetalia_sell, and hetalia_wank are important for keeping this comm as clutter-free and user-friendly as possible. So a small amount of decentralization is okay, I think.
- IMO, more than anything else (aside from more official stuff going on), this comm needs more active mods. I mean, it's fine if the current mods feel they've grown apart from the fandom or something, because that happens, but they really should appoint some new people if they're feeling like they're probably going to move on or have already done so. It's just the responsible thing to do, I think.

_{... also, I may volunteer to be one of the new mods (if we can get a hold of the old ones and they decide to appoint new people), since I check the comm fairly frequently and have been trying to find a way to give back to this wonderful fandom that I love so very much...}

[haro.livejournal.com]

I feel like the main thing that just needs to happen is moderators doing some simple, easy moderating. People post, and because their posts have links in them not on lj's 'whitelist,' perfectly valid posts end up languishing in the moderation queue and not ever getting approved. Anything that links to, for example, mediafire, goes into the queue. There are usually less than ten posts a day, but off topic posts, posts with big images, etc. still slip through.

Definitely if the moderators can't do that, they should probably assign some new mods. Adding stuff to the whitelist and approving posts would only take a couple of minutes out of one's day, as would replying to OT posts and telling them to move them, asking to shrink down images, etc.

[sarepthegreat.livejournal.com]

Okay, I've sat on this and read the comments on this entry and here's a summary what I believe most of us wish to see.

- More centralized community. Prune links to include only active comms.
- Bring events back to the main comm. Link outside sources for people who wish to spam. Maybe block comments on the event entries on the main comm?
- Have active mods to maintain entries, links and organize community events.
- Review current rules.

Now, here's my own views. I think we should pick a team of three mods so that if they have to decide on a matter, there can't be a tie. Maybe vote on who should be picked, maybe have the old mods pick though that may be a little optimistic. The mod responsibilities should be these, split between the three:

- Maintain and review official release entries (Someone who is good at navigating the official sites and can state whether info is true or false)
- Maintain and review fanwork posts for rule following (Ensuring people follow frequency of posts rules and the current no OC rule)
- Maintain and review ad posts (Make sure rps/sales/comms advertised are following community guidelines and are relevant)
- Design graphics for the comm (LJ layouts, profiles and moderator icons)
- Review entries for tags, cuts and proper entry format

And, uh, I'll volunteer myself for a moderator position >///>

[lovelycudy.livejournal.com]

I think you got it right. I'd add: clean the tag list. There are too many "do not use" tags, they need to go.

Have the mods shown any sign that they are alive and seeing this?

[anubismito]

I'm agree with you. The only thing is that Hetalia_Events comm is now a "chit chat" community, at least until Himaruya updates the events (thing that I think impossible for the next weeks, due to all the things that he has to do, he took a hiatus from Internet).
I think the same about the rules and I also thing thast bringing back the Hetalia requests to this community is OK, I use to forget this community, but all I remembered is that I sometimes requested things or helped, but lately Isn't easy to enter to it due to my lack of time. Having "All in one" could be nice (the same as "Hetalia_doujins",-even though I'm not sure if it's an extension of this community-, I lately download the DJs from here).

I think we still need to keep some rules, though, like lock the adult content, doujinshis and official items downloads. Not that for official information... But I think that official scanlations, music, selling official items-unless they had an official permission- and so on should be locked for members only.

Just some days ago (on thursday), I tried to post some Hetalia news 3 times, It was impossible since it had an external link. I only could publish because I "disguised" my entry, I wrote it first without the link, and then edited the entry and I could add the link and the image... But it's a bit annoying do it =_=;;

It's like we can't do anything with it, because all the news contain external links, -_-;

[kasumicc.livejournal.com]

hetalia_doujin is kind of a redundant community, I think...because content in there is usually crossposted in here as well. It's probably meant for people who don't want to follow the main comm yet they want to keep track of doujins. It's proving to be useful now, though, since doujin posts are getting stuck in here but they do get posted in hetalia_doujin. Anyways, hetalia_doujin isn't part of the community's decentralization since doujins are still allowed in here. It's just an extension and its existence doesn't really create any issue.

Oh, definitely. Some of the actual rules SHOULD be kept. I rather meant, the rules that should be revised are the ones that have to do with what can be posted here..

[tarafishes.livejournal.com]

So how, exactly, would we appoint new mods? Doens't a mod need to do that? I agree that I'd prefer to keep most everything on the main comm--there are a few too many separate comms for things that don't need to be elsewhere. To deal with the external links issue, has anyone tried making a post and not linking, but simply including the url in the post(as opposed to using HTML to make the text into a link) to work around it?

If we're doing that, I wouldn't mind being a mod, I keep close enough tabs on the comm already and I'm free most all day and every day, so keeping an eye on everything wouldn't be a problem(the only problem would be that, until June 21, my account isn't allowed to see things tagged as mature content, but I have other accounts to use as a workaround for that.) I probably wouldn't be one of the ones to redo/review the rules, but once they were in place I'd be able to help enforce them pretty easily.

[kasumicc.livejournal.com]

I wasn't proposing to go as far as appointing new mods ourselves, since only a mod can give mod permissions to another person, anyways. I just wanted to collect opinions since while I feel this comm is in need of some moderation, people don't have to necessarily agree. And while many people do agree that we're in need of active mods, we can't do a thing if the current mods don't take notice of this.
There are probably ways to work around the link issue, but that doesn't change the fact that things would be easier if there were an active mod around to fix it when needed, I think...

[mizu-takishima.livejournal.com]

Bah, sorry I didn't get a chance to share any input OTL

But I agree with what you guys are saying, gotta have a few more mods, organized tags, updated links and just...we need to handle future events better than we did before xD'

speaking of mods though, have any of them replied to whoever all was sending messages? Did we decide on new mods yet? Just curious really, I can't mod a comm to save my life orz

Onto updating links, here's the new wiki incase anyone wants to put it up there: http://hetalia.wikinet.org/wiki/Main_Page I'm sure its the real deal this time!

[jammerlea]

We haven't made any decisions on who might mod, being that we can't do anything without an old mod to help out. okfan apparently got a reply from wiccat, but she's busy, so it may be a week before she can help us out. I'm still trying to get a hold of youkofujima. We'll see how it goes. =w=

And yeah, that's the correct wiki link! I hope we can update that stuff!

[piasharn.livejournal.com]

...late as usual.

Agreeing with most of the people here about better moderation, tags, and whatnot. I'm not a big fan of splitting up the main community into smaller ones for fanwork, doujinshi and the like. They're easy enough to scroll past as long as lj cuts are properly used, and since the fandom isn't as active on lj as it used to be, there really doesn't seem to be a need for it.

(Side note: I don't hate Tumblr, but I really wish so much of the fandom hadn't moved over there. It's almost impossible to have a conversation there, and the only way to comment on an entry is to reblog it, so if you don't have an account, there's no way of leaving a review of a fanfic or artwork or anything. Gah, it drives me nuts!)

I do have an idea for possibly helping to keep the com streamlined, though. Over at sailormoonfans there's a "Sunday Trading Post" (note: these entries are locked so you have to be a member to see them). One of the mods makes the post every Sunday, and anyone who is selling or trading makes a comment to the entry with a brief description of what they have and a link back to the sales post on their journal.

Maybe we could do something similar here? Have a sales post on one day of the week (not necessarily Sundays, obviously, and we don't necessarily need to member lock the entries if no one feels it's necessary). Perhaps another day there could be a RPG post, and anyone who is advertising their RPG could leave a comment there. Or if someone has an idea for an RPG and they want to see if anyone else is interested, that sort of thing. That way, people could still advertise their sales and RPGs and whatnot, but it wouldn't clutter up the main com so much, making it easier to find official updates, scanlations, events, and so forth.

Just thought I'd throw the idea out there for people to think about.

[kasumicc.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's exactly how I feel xD You don't really have to scroll too much these days anymore.

Ooooh, that's actually a cool idea. I'm familiar with the Sunday Trading Post myself, and it works nicely. On the same matter, the Free for All Friday would be a cool addition in order to provide activity to the community. There's always the possibility that it'll turn into a spamfest, though...
The weekly RPG advertising was proposed in a comment up there, and I think it would be great.

[gehageha.livejournal.com]

eh.. i can't read allows there comment,
but will this be affecting the member? i mean, i'm not a very active user... and not used to post in LJ. (my english is bad)
so i just want to ask will this changed of rules, will make members reduction?

but if this change only about to make comm more organized, i'm agree :)

[kasumicc.livejournal.com]

Rules only have to do with posts, not with members or membership~