Ask the Mods Important Site Questions (V2)

@Background Pony #21E6
Putting full account functionality behind a wait period isn’t the silver bullet you think it is, and condescending nagging from a random besserwisser is not going to sway established site policies and approaches.

Is there a wa to report someone if their going by a background pony account?

i keep encountering the same BGP whose stuff keeps getting deleted becuase they keep breaking the rules, but idk if there is a way to report the BGP themselves

@ichiban iceychan 1517
Just file a report against one and include all posts you think are the same person.

@Mikey
will do

I actually think removing the ability to comment anonymously would have a tremendously positive effect on the site as a whole. It would start by changing the perception of the site in the eyes of assholes. See, derpibooru’s perceived image has always been closely linked with anonymous imageboard culture. Even if changing the commenting rules might seem like a small change I would argue it would be a massive shift towards functioning like an actual art community instead of a faceless art dump site that encourages anonymous posting.

I also find fault in the logic of removing anonymity being something that is somehow both a small inconvenience for assholes but a massive barrier for casual users. In your own words it takes “seconds” to set up an account. Sites like e621, furaffinity, and deviantart all somehow manage to have large userbases that can navigate setting up an account to comment. Its almost a bit insulting to imply that someone who wants to comment on an image here can’t scale the lofty heights of creating an account, considering this is a fanbase full of technologically literate nerds anyway. Twilight would be ashamed.

Overall the argument against removing anonymous posting seems an incredibly defeatist one. “Ohhh, people will be assholes anyway so why bother?”. Its really weird to see a My Little Pony fansite seemingly succumb to its own shitty userbase in such a way. Why are you settling for being a urinal for trolls when with a few simple changes you can begin to rectify these long-standing issues? Its like you’ve literally given up.

Anyway, consider this a +1 for removing anonymous comments.

@wootmasterflex
It takes a lot more effort to set up alt accounts on Discord and we’re both very aware that people still set them up just to start shit.

The vast majority of site interactions come from logged in, non-anon users. The vast majority of interactions from anon and unregistered users are wholly legitimate and positive. Your perceptions and opinions on the matter are wrong.

@wootmasterflex
@The Smiling Pony
My two cents from my limited experience.

Background ponies: I remember far more comments that contributed something good to the site from them than comments that didn’t contribute or contributed negatively.

Registered users: most of the problematic posters I’ve seen on the site actually had an account, so forcing people to register doesn’t strike me as solving anything.

Side note: being able to unsubscribe myself from my own uploads means I don’t have to even notice comments if I don’t want to. That’s one way to avoid having to deal with ‘asshole comments.’ It’s also a nice change from DeviantART where I get drowned in notifications every time I upload something and can’t turn them off no matter what.

What exactly is your criteria for “legitimate and positive” comments? For example, would a user saying “based” in reply to a picture that glorifies nazism be considered “positive”? After all its an affirming comment! You say my perception is wrong but I’ve seen graveyards of anon comments under pro-LGBT artwork and also under nazi propaganda. Your criteria for what qualifies as a legitimate comment seems to ignore the context that comment takes place in.

@Roseluck
Merely unsubscribing to not see negative comments falls right in line with the defeatist attitude I described previously. You’re not actually solving the issue, you’re just covering your eyes and pretending it doesn’t exist.

Speaking of which: Will you guys ever actually delete all the nazi stuff from your site, or have we all settled on simply hiding it behind a filter and politely pretending it doesn’t exist?

@wootmasterflex
Nice cherry-picking and intentional misinterpretation.

The vast majority of unregistered users and users using as-anon contribute positively to the site, and you know exactly what it is I mean by that. That you don’t want to believe it or acknowledge it is your problem, but it doesn’t reflect reality at all.

@The Smiling Pony
If they contribute positively and it takes, again in your words “seconds” to sign up, why not simply eliminate anon posting? Your argument that it would punish those who contribute positively doesn’t line up with your previous logic that its the easiest thing in the world to make an account.

@wootmasterflex
Oh, so this wasn’t actually about unregistered posting? My bad.

@wootmasterflex
People that are motivated to shitpost will not be stopped by the few seconds it takes to set up an account, and those people are a tiny minority of unregistered users that use the site.

Meanwhile the vast majority of unregistered users are people that simply want to say they appreciate an image or drop a comment about their fan theory, and even upload something they found elsewhere they think is neat, will find registration an impediment. And those are the overwhelming majority of unregistered users. The additional, unnecessary requirements to just say “This is really nice!” would be enough to stop many from bothering at all.

Forcing registration for simple interactions would turn away far, far more “good users” than it ever would “bad users”, for zero gain at all to anyone. So what would be the point? The satisfaction of knowing that a shitposter had to resolve a captcha?

No. Putting up those sort of fences only turns away good users, bad users don’t even notice them.

@Roseluck
A lot of these issues are interlinked and are the result of moderation decisions that don’t actually address the core issue. So many anon commenter graveyards on nazi pics wouldn’t exist if the pictures in question weren’t actually on the site in the first place.

Do you have any data to back up your claim that requiring account creation to post would drive away this pool of “good users”? Because as it is now this is just conjecture. You’re giving all the benefit of the doubt to the shitposters and none to “good users” somehow incapable of navigating an account creation page.

My primary issue is that you’re banking your argument on a hypothetical (good users will be driven away by the laborious account creation process) while also arguing that “bad” people find the process easy.

Can you unequivocally prove that removing the ability to anon comment would obliterate positive interactions?

@wootmasterflex
My actual $job involves UI/UX design and tracking BI for site and application registration and onboarding funnels, so yes I do know what I’m talking about. For derpi specifically we’ve also looked into how many interactions of what types unregistered perform vs registered as-anon and registered named.

I’m not sure what “proof” you want; an A/B test? Focus group tests? An audit of interactions and bounce rates over time? None of those things are going to be done for something that’s fairly obvious and settled, just so you can state the methodology was wrong and you’re still right, anyway.

@The Smiling Pony
I don’t think your methodology is wrong, I think your intent is wrong, for the record. For some time now you’ve wavered back and forth between being a faceless no-holds barred archival site and a community site that has actual principles and stances.

If your goal is to chase interactions at all cost, to make the line go up, then I can see where you’re coming from. Your job supports that. As a twitter user I’m intimately familiar with the notion of utilizing user data to slavishly chase interactions at the cost of the actual health of the community.

But personally I don’t give a shit about bounce rates or onboarding funnels or whatever tech jargon is used to codify human interaction into mechanical terms. I care about having a coherent community that doesn’t cater to the whims of shitposters just because “well they’re going to act bad anyway”. I understand you disagree with my opinion but there’s a difference between disagreeing and saying its flat-out wrong. That requires you to actually prove that removing anon commenting would affect the community negatively. Either provide the data or simply say “well I don’t wanna”.

And yeah, we would have to actually agree on what “negatively” meant. For example, what is the percentage of anon comments deleted for rule violations compared to non-anon accounts?

@wootmasterflex
Not every idea someone brings up is good or worth the time and effort explaining and demonstrating why it isn’t.

@The Smiling Pony
Yeah, that’s what I figured. Thanks for the discussion, good luck with the site!

We value user privacy. This is why anonymous posting isn’t going away. Oftentimes people want to comment on things and not risk twitter people or 4chan folk (or any other person seeking drama) harassing them for what they say. Any comments made in such manner are still subject to moderation and must follow our site rules. If such comments break the rules, punishments and warnings are issued as necessary, in a discrete and responsible manner.

The only reason I see for people asking us to remove it is to facilitate prolonged and/or offsite harassment of users for expressing their opinion on things <drama seeking person> might not like.

If this is not the right thread to ask the following question, is there a thread for asking questions about which forum is the most appropriate for a given topic?

It seems to be either generals or general discussion, but I can’t seem to find any meaningful difference between the two. They both contain general topics as well as forum games.
Art Chat doesn’t work because that one is for visual art related to the show. Likewise, it’s not Fanfiction. Posting these threads to any of the other forums would clearly be off-topic.

Such as “Last post wins”, “penultimate post wins”, and any thread that would be at home on /r/counting.

wheres my duck badge

For the record, I haven’t done any mod shit in a long while, direct or policy-wise; I just manage the ad queue and vote on seasonal featured images.

@PUBLIQclopAccountant
General Discussion was meant as a forum for any topic, but focused on a narrow thing; like a specific book or a quick question. Basically threads that wouldn’t have many pages.

Generals was meant for long-running topics, like literature in general, discussing another fandom, or the usual joke/meme and forum game threads.

Unfortunately the distinction was never apparent enough and never really enforced. On the upside it’s harder for threads to fall off the first page and into the memory hole after a day of inactivity.

Yes, it’s confusing, sorry…

@Niskelis Philli
AFAIK duck and other “warning, this user is a troublemaker or outright troll” were discontinued a couple years ago. Galaxy brains equated being flagged for repeatedly insulting others at the drop of a dime or posting blatant bait images to being given yellow stars in nazi Germany.

@The Smiling Pony
Thanks for the clarification. Now to search for old threads to bump before making new ones. At least Generals and General-Dis both are fast-moving forums, so I’m less likely to monopolize the first page inadvertently.

I’m surprised the duck badge wasn’t retired because users deliberately earned it as a badge of pride.

@PUBLIQclopAccountant
People deliberately trying to be ducks tended to be banned. The badge was a warning to others, not a reward.

@Ciaran
Matter of opinion.