Poll on the Direction of the Current Proposals

@Frosku  
That’s only part of the issue. Others have already discussed the problems with self-selecting polls. They are not scientific in any fashion. It’s like if I put out an internet poll saying “click here to vote on if you like X.” People who have very strong feelings about X might click and vote, but a lot of other people who have an opinion might not even bother. It doesn’t do anything to accurately reflect general opinions. It’s more about registering the thinking of people who are highly focused on a particular issue and extremely opinionated about it.

@Background Pony #EF6B  
I mean it was obvious from the start that the losers of the poll would try to discredit it, but the reality is that it’s the best data we have.

@Frosku  
They tried, and it wasn’t particularily effective.

@Background Pony #EF6B  
Nah they could randomly sample active users, with a private poll.

@Barhandar  
They’re still trying.
 
It started with attempting to brigade the vote from Twitter, that failed.
 
Then they started adding up all of the options except “no change” as “anti-Aryanne” votes, even though the actual proposal explicitly allows Aryanne.
 
Then those votes together ended up below 50% of the total, so now they’re going with “the sample is biased”.
 
The reality is quite stark: about 7% agree with the proposed policy and think it will be applied fairly, and this number has barely budged whether it was based on the staff votes or, as I assume more recent votes indicate, the proposed new wording. Over fifty percent of 900 people agree with no change at all (I suspect there would be a sizeable chunk of those voters who would support a move towards less censorship), and that statistic doesn’t change when you account for older accounts only, artists only, etc.

@Frosku  
If I got to a trump rally, and then have a poll on ‘Do you approve of trump,’ I cant then conclude that the majority of Americans approve of Trump. This is the problem with self selected populace
 
At best, you can say the majority of derpibooru Site and policy forum users want for the rule to be reverted. That’s still a little questionable given the self selection for answering, but its probbaly closer to the mark.

@GyroTech  
I mean, this is an image site. I question that the vast majority of users regularly peruse the forums.

@GyroTech  
I think you just made my point by calling Derpibooru a “Trump rally” in this analogy. Derpibooru users are overwhelmingly in favor of light-touch moderation, and it’s outside agitators trying to change things that no one actually gives a fuck about.

@Frosku  
I didn’t call this a trump rally. I’m just making a really obvious example. But you know, feel free to be disingenuous if you like.
 
@Shimauma  
Exactly, that’s what I’m getting at. Its not really a useful poll cause it doesnt represent the actual user base. We cant actually say anything about the userbase from it.

@Frosku
 
I think they were referring more to this section of the Forum as a trump rally. And maybe that is a good comparison. We already know that tons of 4channers really love this nazi/racist stuff, and there are a shit ton of them in this forum, so if you open up a poll in this forum saying “do you want to keep nazis and racists” it isn’t a big surprise you’d get 50% saying yes. I’m kind of surprised honestly that the number isn’t higher, but also surprised that the people opposing nazis and racists even showed up enough to register that other 40%.

@GyroTech  
Neither do any of the pro-censorship artists DNPing or even Twitter REEing
 
The fact of the matter is that this poll is a comparitively small number of people who use this site. Unless everyone was forced to vote, there wouldn’t be any way to accurately gauge what the majority feel…and this poll knows that. At best, its an exit poll. A general gauge of how people feel.

@Background Pony #EF6B  
I think it’s fair to say that the Site & Policy forum is likely to attract people who care about site policy. We can reasonably assume that people who haven’t been here after 7 years of Aryanne being on the site, after the thread has been boosted on Twitter & Tumblr multiple times, really don’t have strong opinions either way.

@Background Pony #EF6B  
Without brigading from either side, it was 115 people want to go back to old rules, 78 want to censor.
 
I wouldn’t put so much stock in “da ebil channer overrepresention”cope theory

@Datte-Before-Dawn  
Have you done any random polling about that? How can you really say one way or another?
 
Further more:  
Exit polls are actually randomly sampled to achieve what they have. They dont interview everyone coming from the poll.
 
But you could randomly sample this site, like I said, with a private poll from moderators to a random sample of users. Probably only include accounts after a certain date, and with activity within the past 90 days or so.
 
@Frosku  
I dont know why that’s a reasonable assumption to make. They probably have a preference about whats hosted ont eh site, even if they dont express it. We dont have any data one way or another.

@GyroTech  
I can dig that

@Datte-Before-Dawn
 
It’s not a theory. It is a fact that there is a significant contingent of 4channers hanging out in this forum. I don’t think you can reasonably dispute that.
 
 
@Frosku
 
Like I said earlier, there is a hot button issue being discussed. People who are super passionate and tend to hang around in the forum are likely to vote in polls and such. My opinion on the poll wouldn’t change if it was 50 - 40 the other way. I think the DNP actions are more relevant because they don’t rely on people battling in a forum, they actually affect the content that will appear on the site.

@Background Pony #EF6B  
I’m not a huge fan of the DNP actions. I think DNP should always be a last resort when everything else has been tried and failed, because it punishes the users, not the mods. It’s also essentially cancel culture / boycott. Threats to pull Patreon $ would be a better measure of stakeholder sentiment in my opinion.

@Frosku  
I mean, a big part of freedom is choosing who you associate with. If they don’t want to be associated with something then that’s on them. You’re telling them to stay with a place that they personally think is actively harmful, whether you do or not. Freedom of association is part of ‘free speech.’ Free speech does not include insulation from social consequences.

@Frosku
 
Patreon money is important, but site content is more important. People can figure out ways to fund a site without Patreon. If all the good content from the site is deleted, then it’s game over.

@Background Pony #EF6B  
There was never any meaningful threat of “all the good content” being deleted, though. Artists, as a whole, are more in favor of free speech than the user base at large according to the poll.

@Background Pony #EF6B  
I mean, it was funded for years before patreon, through recurring and one time paypal/bitcoin donations.
 
@Frosku  
Also that’s very subjective. It could and probably is very likely that a number of people’s favorite content is leaving.

@Frosku
 
If there was no concern about the good content being deleted from the site, the staff wouldn’t have gone back and forth so many times on the policy. All of that was absolutely a reaction to the DNPs.

@Background Pony #EF6B  
There’s a significant presence of “Channers” in the fandom as a whole. It did start there, afterall. Not on Twitter, not on Reddit, not even in Tumblr.
 
But there is a significantly higher portion of people in total who value in the freedom of artistic expression. This is a sentiment felt by people along the politics spectrum.
 
You are the outlier

@Background Pony #EF6B  

 
They aren’t relevant, because exactly what you said
 
They are not actively part of the site. They do not use it every day like we do. What they do have is the power of outrage and easily manipulated mobs they can scare into action with on Twitter. This is a fact. Check Woot and Dilarus Twitter.

@Datte-Before-Dawn  
This is actually a really important point. You absolutely do not need to be right-wing to value freedom of expression. In years gone by, it was right-wing puritans with blasphemy laws and moralizing who were the greatest threat to free speech. Today, it is the regressive aspect of the left.