I can't seem to find it past the notification on top? Or is that all we get to go off of? I don't even know what the changes were, let alone what they entail.
Updated by Aacafah
Topic: Where's the mod thread talking about upload guidelines update?
Posted under Tag/Wiki Projects and Questions
This topic has been locked.
whispangleisthebest said:
I can't seem to find it past the notification on top? Or is that all we get to go off of? I don't even know what the changes were, let alone what they entail.
A new rule was added very recently on our Uploading Guidelines.
- Promotion of Real-Life Harm, Crimes, or Exploitation: Do not submit posts that promote or encourage real-life criminal activity, non-consensual harm, or exploitation of people or animals, including through the use of iconography or other types of symbols. These themes may be depicted in posts as long as it does not promote real-life activity.
See also, topic #62264 & topic #62286 for ongoing discussions on what that entails.
thegreatwolfgang said:
See also, topic #62264 & topic #62286 for ongoing discussions on what that entails.
I suggest that the announcement links to one of those threads or that diff, because as it stands it's announcing a rule change in a 1,500-word document that most of us are not intimately familiar with.
knoxtheroo said:
I suggest that the announcement links to one of those threads or that diff, because as it stands it's announcing a rule change in a 1,500-word document that most of us are not intimately familiar with.
A. Those were not created by staff, & only one predated the announcement.
B. It's a wiki page; you can just look at the version history & select the appropriate diff.
knoxtheroo said:
I suggest that the announcement links to one of those threads or that diff, because as it stands it's announcing a rule change in a 1,500-word document that most of us are not intimately familiar with.
I mean, to be fair, you are expected to have a very thorough understanding of our Uploading Guidelines as an uploader, but I understand what you mean since the announcement doesn't really mention what exactly got changed.
I also wanted to know what mysterious content got banned. The first place I checked was the forums, and I saw the iconography threads, but missed the statement that they were the subject of the ban. (I see the post now; perhaps I was too early?) I was already pretty clear on the uploading guidelines but couldn't figure out what the change was. It didn't occur to me that the uploading guidelines were a wiki page and that I could view the diff, as the wiki-related tools are in the nav bar and not part of the page content. Thank you for making this post and clarifying what the actual change was. I'd appreciate a more specific announcement in the future ("new entry" and "bad faith content" are very vague).
thegreatwolfgang said:
I mean, to be fair, you are expected to have a very thorough understanding of our Uploading Guidelines as an uploader, but I understand what you mean since the announcement doesn't really mention what exactly got changed.
Understanding the rules is one thing, but remembering exactly how the rules were written so that you can pick out an unspecified change is very unreasonable.
I don't understand the hesitance in just adding something like "promotion of real-life harm" to the announcement, or just to link the diff. It's not like there's a character limit.
knoxtheroo said:
Understanding the rules is one thing, but remembering exactly how the rules were written so that you can pick out an unspecified change is very unreasonable.I don't understand the hesitance in just adding something like "promotion of real-life harm" to the announcement, or just to link the diff. It's not like there's a character limit.
My assumption is, they may not wish to bring attention, and potentially bad actors, to the problem by giving a detailed post about it. That ship may have sailed already, though. I expect people are talking about this already.
knoxtheroo said:
Understanding the rules is one thing, but remembering exactly how the rules were written so that you can pick out an unspecified change is very unreasonable.I don't understand the hesitance in just adding something like "promotion of real-life harm" to the announcement, or just to link the diff. It's not like there's a character limit.
...why do you need to know what changed to follow the rules? It's not that long; you can just scan through it. Besides, as already noted, there are tools available to pinpoint these changes.
strahaspilot said:
My assumption is, they may not wish to bring attention, and potentially bad actors, to the problem by giving a detailed post about it. That ship may have sailed already, though. I expect people are talking about this already.
I'll remind you that the number of people actively searching for this info is far less than the number that passively read the news update.
ⓘ Note
To those that are highly invested in such matters, almost every single special page that's just styled text is actually a wiki page being dynamically inserted into the page. Some examples include:
- All help pages
- For these, you can add .json to the URL to find the corresponding wiki page. E.g. the API help page is at https://e621.net/help/api; add .json to get https://e621.net/help/api.json, which will show you the wiki page is e621:api.
- e621:takedown for takedowns
- e621:terms_of_service for ToS/ToU
- e621:privacy_policy for the privacy policy
- e621:contact for the contact page
This is for a few reasons:
- Transparency: Just like with all wiki pages, if something changes, you can see the revision history.
- Simplicity: If a page doesn't need more capabilities than DText can provide, it's not worth the extra work to hard-code it.
- Less restrictions on changes: If a page was hard-coded, that means we'd need to take the site down to change it. Using a locked wiki page lets staff change them as needed; way less of a pain for everyone.
- Flexibility: By just rendering a wiki page as DText as needed, we can use & reuse these easily; for example, in addition to its wiki page of e621:rules, the Code of Conduct is available as both a help page and a static page, so we just have both of them point to the same wiki page. Another example is actually that small blurb at the top of the page to flag a post; yup, even that is a wiki page, & same goes for the blurb for replacements, but not for reporting a post(/user/whatever); that's currently hard-coded.
If you're curious, you can search the wiki to find these special pages; almost each & every one of them has a prefix of either e621: or help:. Though the only exception I've seen is the uploading guidelines (which can be found through the help page instead), if what you're looking for doesn't show up for those searches, you can also search for it directly; e.g. searching *discord* will bring up e621:discord, the wiki page used for the page to join our Discord server. For the help pages, you can add .json to the URL to find the corresponding wiki page; for example, the API help page is at https://e621.net/help/api, so adding .json will get you https://e621.net/help/api.json, which will show you the underlying wiki page is e621:api.
aacafah said:
...why do you need to know what changed to follow the rules? It's not that long; you can just scan through it. Besides, as already noted, there are tools available to pinpoint these changes.
I don't really know how to best respond to this. You've had several people here and on Discord say that they found it difficult to locate this information. I'll break down why:
- A site-wide announcement was made alluding to changes to rules on what can be uploaded to this site, without specifying what.
- Your users (presumably the ones that care about uploading things) go to the new rules to find out what changed.
- They are met with 1,500 words, which they might have read at some point in the past, but now they need to spend 5 - 10 minutes to read through it all again. And they might still not notice the change, because humans are bad at picking out small changes.
- They now either: (a) leave the page, because who cares that much about a free porn site; or (b) go to your Discord or forum to ask for the nth time what the change was
- Your conclusion is that your users are not using the site correctly, because they should know that it uses a wiki on the backend, and that wikis have a change history, and that they should have just go find the right diff -- which, by the way, is not even the latest diff, because Spe made a minor spacing edit afterwards.
If the change is worth an announcement, then presumably you wanted users to know and learn about it. If you don't care if your users know about it, then why make a site-wide announcement? It's a really odd position, when it would take just a few moments to edit the announcement, and add a link to the right diff in there, saving your users (many of whom are non-technical, I might add) some time.
knoxtheroo said:
If the change is worth an announcement, then presumably you wanted users to know and learn about it.
We've addressed this; if you're still confused or have lingering questions, you can DMail me, but it seems no one else has anything to say on the matter, so let's close this out.
knoxtheroo said:
...Your conclusion is that your users are not using the site correctly...
I have never & will never say users are using the site wrong; it's the responsibility of the designer & site staff to inform users on these matters, and to decide both what's shown, and what isn't.
We made an announcement to notify users so if they care, then they can find out for themselves, and if they don't, then they probably don't need to worry about it.
knoxtheroo said:
...they should know that it uses a wiki on the backend, and that wikis have a change history, and that they should have just go find the right diff...
I pretty obviously don't think this is common knowledge if I created a detailed write-up explaining it; I specifically isolated it from the rest of the message so I could link to it later from by profile page because I know most are unaware of this. The only reason I learned this is because I help write the site's code as a developer; of course most people don't have that experience. I'm arming those with interest in such matters with knowledge for the future; I do this all the time (see a prior example, plus the work I put into the search cheatsheet & multiple other help pages).
knoxtheroo said:
...which, by the way, is not even the latest diff, because Spe made a minor spacing edit afterwards.
Since it appears to need repeating, you realize I linked directly to the correct diff, & did so after that edit, right? Unless I had it queued up before that (spoiler, I didn't), I'd have probably had to find it myself, thus finding the later edit.
You don't need to explain that it would be easier for people if we put the change in the news update. We didn't do that for a reason, & one that's already been stated. As you noted, if we saw this as a problem, we could & would just change the announcement. My point is that it's not heavily obfuscated, so there's little harm in not facilitating people finding it for those that are interested; if they really want to know, they'll find out with not much effort.