Hey,
I don't have time to read your entire post right this second but I took a glance at it and you raise some valid points. I'll try and give you a proper response in the next few days, I'm just a bit busy right now.
I don't have time to read your entire post right this second but I took a glance at it and you raise some valid points. I'll try and give you a proper response in the next few days, I'm just a bit busy right now.
Alright.
So let's start out with the fact that I do agree the comments sections do get pretty hostile in recent times. It's not like I haven't been at fault regarding this sometimes. And that is not okay.
That said regarding the Coleworld702 situation, shitposting is still shitposting and while Disgaeamad's response was rather crude he's in the right in this situation (in my opinion of course). The comments section should be used in constructive manners and not like a random 4chan thread. Even if he didn't intend to come off as a random /a/ or r/anime user it's seen that way and honestly just makes people look bad.
Which leads me to your question regarding why some of your posts were deleted, I personally don't know who deleted your posts in those Kabaneri uploads, but I honestly believe it wasn't malicious intent as much as it being seen as cluttering up the comments with relatively off-topic questions. I'm sure if you sent Ashita a message with your thoughts in a private channel (irc, twitter, booru PMs) he'd have responded in a thoughtful manner.
And finally, I do not think any of the staff is so far up their own butts that they'd be arrogant enough to not acknowledge their mistakes. Heck there's usually lots of friendly ribbing between staff members when this kinda stuff happens though this might not be seen a lot in the booru itself.
If you have any more questions feel free to contact me on irc, twitter or my booru inbox. But I'm sure more staff will see this later in the day so if you'd like to talk to them instead please wait for their replies.
So let's start out with the fact that I do agree the comments sections do get pretty hostile in recent times. It's not like I haven't been at fault regarding this sometimes. And that is not okay.
That said regarding the Coleworld702 situation, shitposting is still shitposting and while Disgaeamad's response was rather crude he's in the right in this situation (in my opinion of course). The comments section should be used in constructive manners and not like a random 4chan thread. Even if he didn't intend to come off as a random /a/ or r/anime user it's seen that way and honestly just makes people look bad.
Which leads me to your question regarding why some of your posts were deleted, I personally don't know who deleted your posts in those Kabaneri uploads, but I honestly believe it wasn't malicious intent as much as it being seen as cluttering up the comments with relatively off-topic questions. I'm sure if you sent Ashita a message with your thoughts in a private channel (irc, twitter, booru PMs) he'd have responded in a thoughtful manner.
And finally, I do not think any of the staff is so far up their own butts that they'd be arrogant enough to not acknowledge their mistakes. Heck there's usually lots of friendly ribbing between staff members when this kinda stuff happens though this might not be seen a lot in the booru itself.
If you have any more questions feel free to contact me on irc, twitter or my booru inbox. But I'm sure more staff will see this later in the day so if you'd like to talk to them instead please wait for their replies.
I don't tend to moderate the comments section, but I guess I should address your doubts as you keep mentioning me. That Bahi episode was quite a mess to moderate, honestly, as users jumped the wagon when he kept ghostly-tweeting screencaps. The original uploader, HachiKirra, first uploaded the complete scene which included Bahi's work, but also another animator's work. So, when he realized this fact, he asked me via PM (I don't bite and I even reply!) if he could re-upload the scene splitting the animators, which I agreed. So, when users kept wrongly tagging Bahi in post #22745 I just asked for it to stop (it's even confirmed by him that he didn't do that part). I honestly didn't see your question back then, and I had already discussed this topic in the sakuga channel, so I kinda assumed that the discussion was done.Hitorio said:
http://i.imgur.com/1KXQxjO.png
http://i.imgur.com/eumFZR9.png
The first link is context. The second link contains my deleted post - the final straw that motivated me to finally bring this topic up on the forum due to observing a consistently disagreeable pattern.
This particular deletion disturbed me because I didn't see a legitimate reason for it.
I asked for clarification on why Ashita, a member of the site (I don't know Ashita's position. Regular user? Mod? Something else?) told everyone, for an unidentified special reason, to not tag a post in the way that seemed intuitively correct. We knew Bahi did the scene, but Ashita told us not to tag the scene with Bahi's name, so I asked why. The concern I expressed in this post was not an abrasive, flamebait-ish antagonizing of someone. It is a question about the rules/procedures. Leaving that question unanswered is something I can accept if mods are so busy that they don't have time to check every post and clarify tagging procedures to a user. Deleting the question entirely is an action that makes little sense to me, and the possible reasons for it that immediately came to my mind were angering to ponder at first (I cleansed those feelings out of me before posting). If a person asks a question that possibly exposes a nonsensical decision of those to whom the question is asked, and then the person that asks the question is silenced, it's never a good sign. But then if the answer is simple and easily explained, why not answer instead of deleting the question? It's rather suspicious to me.
This particular lack of communication from site leadership to site user is a degenerative type of relationship.
Which lead us to post #25100. When I saw your question I thought you were just a really really bad troll. I mean, if you watch the genga and then click the link to the parent post, it leads you to Bahi's post. A post which is correctly tagged, where you can't read any comment whatsoever and it is fucking identical to the genga. There isn't even one cut from the artist unknown post. So I didn't understand why you were trying to start a fight and I decided to delete the post instead of replying in such a manner that would you feel embarrassed. My bad I guess.
And that's my part, I'll leave the other queries to the other mods.
You should probably stop thinking of the internet as a whole and particularly this comment section as a place where people come with good intentions to debate. The site gets linked all the time on communities were trolling is the favorite pastime, and throwaway accounts coming to mess around aren't uncommon. All the staff is tired of that, and that's why they delete any short and dismissive comment - particularly ones among the lines of "X is bad unlike Y; Z should stop being wasted there". 4chan has already managed to turn all animation arguments into pointless duels. Won't happen here. That's one of the few Actual Policies we have when it comes to this.
To illustrate the point, just a few days ago I was talking with a Steven Universe staff member who was amused about a certain subset in this site quickly dismissing any modern piece of western animation. The comments individually weren't a huge deal and could be interpreted as not hugely antagonistic, but he was perfectly right in noticing that trend. Moments like that make me feel like we'd be better off without the system to begin with. If it weren't for the very rare worthwile argument and because they're extremely useful to leave sources for the cuts, I'd be glad to get rid of comments altogether.
Anyway, can't speak for what happened in those cases, but as far as I can tell it was all different people. I'm not hugely worried about policing which mod does what because comment deletion is as vanilla as moderation gets. Antagonistic ones are dealt with without paying much attention to it. Sometimes unnecessary chains of long resplies are deleted because they make the Latest Comments unusable so people might miss the actually important sourcing replies. Jokes, even ones by the staff, get nuked sometimes. And entire threads are lost when uploads get remade with a better source. Don't think of the replies as a permanent forum discussion because they sure as hell aren't.
To illustrate the point, just a few days ago I was talking with a Steven Universe staff member who was amused about a certain subset in this site quickly dismissing any modern piece of western animation. The comments individually weren't a huge deal and could be interpreted as not hugely antagonistic, but he was perfectly right in noticing that trend. Moments like that make me feel like we'd be better off without the system to begin with. If it weren't for the very rare worthwile argument and because they're extremely useful to leave sources for the cuts, I'd be glad to get rid of comments altogether.
Anyway, can't speak for what happened in those cases, but as far as I can tell it was all different people. I'm not hugely worried about policing which mod does what because comment deletion is as vanilla as moderation gets. Antagonistic ones are dealt with without paying much attention to it. Sometimes unnecessary chains of long resplies are deleted because they make the Latest Comments unusable so people might miss the actually important sourcing replies. Jokes, even ones by the staff, get nuked sometimes. And entire threads are lost when uploads get remade with a better source. Don't think of the replies as a permanent forum discussion because they sure as hell aren't.
These replies clarify quite a bit for me and those who might have the same questions as me. :)
Know this, though: I will never be embarassed by getting corrected. I welcome it and want to learn. Mistakes come before knowledge, and confusion often comes before clarity. If you had decided to respond to me back then - even while heatedly thinking I was a bad troll, we both would've probably walked away peacefully satisfied - and me a tad more informed.
Now that I'm more aware of how staff members view each particular channel of communication, I'll be sure to utilize each of them for their separate, compartmentalized purposes - comments, forums, PMs, Twitter - what have you - to make my experiences with this site/community(?) more fluid.
Hm. I see I might've come across as naive to you, kViN. I don't unrealistically think that everyone's here to comment with good intentions, but I have [seen enough cases of fighting fire with kerosene on this site and others] and have [personally prevented or put out many fires with peaceful approaches in my internet history] to know that the approach to people I described in the opening post can only improve the scene here - not make it vulnerable. This is not to say that you'd become a pushover and not take administrative action when needed, but you're likely to much more effectively discern the good-intentioned people from the trolls and further interact with them accordingly.
Appreciated. *thumbs up*aers said:
Hey,
I don't have time to read your entire post right this second but I took a glance at it and you raise some valid points. I'll try and give you a proper response in the next few days, I'm just a bit busy right now.
Thanks for shedding some light on this. You revealed to me that I had a confused and incomplete understanding of the Kabaneri re-uploads. For the record, I just hastily copypasted my comment from the longer Kabaneri upload onto the newer, non-Bahi one without realizing the nature of how the re-uploads had been split up.Ashita said:
I don't tend to moderate the comments section, but I guess I should address your doubts as you keep mentioning me. That Bahi episode was quite a mess to moderate, honestly, as users jumped the wagon when he kept ghostly-tweeting screencaps. The original uploader, HachiKirra, first uploaded the complete scene which included Bahi's work, but also another animator's work. So, when he realized this fact, he asked me via PM (I don't bite and I even reply!) if he could re-upload the scene splitting the animators, which I agreed. So, when users kept wrongly tagging Bahi in post #22745 I just asked for it to stop (it's even confirmed by him that he didn't do that part). I honestly didn't see your question back then, and I had already discussed this topic in the sakuga channel, so I kinda assumed that the discussion was done.
Which lead us to post #25100. When I saw your question I thought you were just a really really bad troll. I mean, if you watch the genga and then click the link to the parent post, it leads you to Bahi's post. A post which is correctly tagged, where you can't read any comment whatsoever and it is fucking identical to the genga. There isn't even one cut from the artist unknown post. So I didn't understand why you were trying to start a fight and I decided to delete the post instead of replying in such a manner that would you feel embarrassed. My bad I guess.
And that's my part, I'll leave the other queries to the other mods.
Know this, though: I will never be embarassed by getting corrected. I welcome it and want to learn. Mistakes come before knowledge, and confusion often comes before clarity. If you had decided to respond to me back then - even while heatedly thinking I was a bad troll, we both would've probably walked away peacefully satisfied - and me a tad more informed.
Uznare
Thanks to you two for outlining some context and history describing what mental angle staff members approach comments from.kViN
Now that I'm more aware of how staff members view each particular channel of communication, I'll be sure to utilize each of them for their separate, compartmentalized purposes - comments, forums, PMs, Twitter - what have you - to make my experiences with this site/community(?) more fluid.
Hm. I see I might've come across as naive to you, kViN. I don't unrealistically think that everyone's here to comment with good intentions, but I have [seen enough cases of fighting fire with kerosene on this site and others] and have [personally prevented or put out many fires with peaceful approaches in my internet history] to know that the approach to people I described in the opening post can only improve the scene here - not make it vulnerable. This is not to say that you'd become a pushover and not take administrative action when needed, but you're likely to much more effectively discern the good-intentioned people from the trolls and further interact with them accordingly.
I don't think it's as simple as trolls vs people with good intentions. Over the last few hours we've had someone talking about jacking off to yutapon and a slightly agressive question about whether people have standards too low when it comes to Mob uploads. Both are by users I've seen around and that I'm sure meant no harm. I didn't touch them myself and you can still find them easily, but if anyone in the moderation team had decided to get rid of them I'd understand it completely.
It looks like you don't include the guy talking about jacking off and the annoyed guy under the category of people with good intentions. I would do so:
To clarify, when I speak of people that I'm describing using the words "good intentions," I don't necessarily mean such a narrow spectrum of people like "those that communicate with the specific brand of tact, social empathy, and clean verbage so as to achieve a harmonious, nutritious discussion with site members." I'm also including the two people that you referred to.
Example 1: Whether or not the jack-off comment could be seen as relatively repulsive or not is a very... personally subjective consideration. A person's reaction to sexual jokes in general massively depends on their cultural training - how one's local society would like to circulate the idea of sexual topics among its people in order to guide its people's behaviors in the way that would allow for the most optimum state of living by which the society may grow and advance as an organism. There's no inherent vibe in sexual references themselves - only those we create when we interpret them with our individual mental filters.
I personally interpreted the comment in a purely positive fashion; I understand that he was just using the jack-off metaphor as a vessel to communicate the idea of pleasurable stimulation, which Yutapon's animation allowed him to experience. I see the beauty in the metaphor (might be hard to imagine; lol).
Example 2: Akin to a double-sided coin, there is an unfulfilled desire attached to every moment of anger. Two people could've felt the same way that he did: "I have no interest in these unimpressive animations; I feel that it degrades the quality of the booru as a whole, and I wish to see only the animations that I deem impressive." But he expressed this thought through an upset state of mind. I don't think that this makes him an accidental cancer or anything. If someone just talked to him in a way that satisfied his concerns and allowed him an understanding of the value of the cuts that he deems low quality, his desires might change and his annoyance might disperse.
With this in mind, approaching him with the knowledge that his intentions aren't poisonous would still produce a positive effect.
To clarify, when I speak of people that I'm describing using the words "good intentions," I don't necessarily mean such a narrow spectrum of people like "those that communicate with the specific brand of tact, social empathy, and clean verbage so as to achieve a harmonious, nutritious discussion with site members." I'm also including the two people that you referred to.
Example 1: Whether or not the jack-off comment could be seen as relatively repulsive or not is a very... personally subjective consideration. A person's reaction to sexual jokes in general massively depends on their cultural training - how one's local society would like to circulate the idea of sexual topics among its people in order to guide its people's behaviors in the way that would allow for the most optimum state of living by which the society may grow and advance as an organism. There's no inherent vibe in sexual references themselves - only those we create when we interpret them with our individual mental filters.
I personally interpreted the comment in a purely positive fashion; I understand that he was just using the jack-off metaphor as a vessel to communicate the idea of pleasurable stimulation, which Yutapon's animation allowed him to experience. I see the beauty in the metaphor (might be hard to imagine; lol).
Example 2: Akin to a double-sided coin, there is an unfulfilled desire attached to every moment of anger. Two people could've felt the same way that he did: "I have no interest in these unimpressive animations; I feel that it degrades the quality of the booru as a whole, and I wish to see only the animations that I deem impressive." But he expressed this thought through an upset state of mind. I don't think that this makes him an accidental cancer or anything. If someone just talked to him in a way that satisfied his concerns and allowed him an understanding of the value of the cuts that he deems low quality, his desires might change and his annoyance might disperse.
With this in mind, approaching him with the knowledge that his intentions aren't poisonous would still produce a positive effect.
Hitorio
Experiences, Questions, Concerns: Site Leadership Dealing With Comments
I'm going to link examples of what I consider to be disproportionate aggression from leadership-to-user and of comment deletions that don't seem to make apparent sense, then I'm going to outline my thoughts on how I view both of these trends on a fundamental level, then invite discussion on it in an analytically-receptive mode that encourages mutual understanding.
http://i.imgur.com/30ERf4e.png
My first experience of this sort on the site.
I didn't screenshot comments routinely back then, but I screenshotted this one because, due to the underlying tone of aggression in kViN's posts, I anticipated a greater chance of my comment being ignored and deleted than us coming to an agreement in civil fashion.
http://i.imgur.com/HXZwB0z.png
A user named Coleworld702 said that he thought Yutaka Nakamura's skills were being wasted on Concrete Revolutio and that it'd be cool if he were to work on Hero Academia instead. His comment was deleted, then he was addressed with a disproportionate level of flame/energy.
http://i.imgur.com/PTUKaPV.png
A user quoted my first comment and added some words about intelligence also playing a strong factor in the progression of an artist's skills. I liked the post and thought it was relevant to the discussion. I saw it deleted hours later before I could praise the guy - whose username I forgot.
http://i.imgur.com/1KXQxjO.png
http://i.imgur.com/eumFZR9.png
The first link is context. The second link contains my deleted post - the final straw that motivated me to finally bring this topic up on the forum due to observing a consistently disagreeable pattern.
This particular deletion disturbed me because I didn't see a legitimate reason for it.
I asked for clarification on why Ashita, a member of the site (I don't know Ashita's position. Regular user? Mod? Something else?) told everyone, for an unidentified special reason, to not tag a post in the way that seemed intuitively correct. We knew Bahi did the scene, but Ashita told us not to tag the scene with Bahi's name, so I asked why. The concern I expressed in this post was not an abrasive, flamebait-ish antagonizing of someone. It is a question about the rules/procedures. Leaving that question unanswered is something I can accept if mods are so busy that they don't have time to check every post and clarify tagging procedures to a user. Deleting the question entirely is an action that makes little sense to me, and the possible reasons for it that immediately came to my mind were angering to ponder at first (I cleansed those feelings out of me before posting). If a person asks a question that possibly exposes a nonsensical decision of those to whom the question is asked, and then the person that asks the question is silenced, it's never a good sign. But then if the answer is simple and easily explained, why not answer instead of deleting the question? It's rather suspicious to me.
This particular lack of communication from site leadership to site user is a degenerative type of relationship.
When people in general get shut up by a person or entity and don't know why, an array of negative effects manifest.
(Edit: After reviewing this post right before submitting, I noticed that my latest comment in the third link I provided - this post https://sakuga.yshi.org/post/show/12242 - was deleted as well, which only adds to my points.)
...and then there's the aggression. See the following post that I already linked for a short summation of my perspective regarding this: http://i.imgur.com/UQ1ymon.png
Realize that, when you create a site like this, you attract users from many different corners of society and the internet. Each of them have a different way of expressing appreciation for something, for expressing their disappointment in something, and use different lingual dynamics to relate to their peers than you do. A phrase that you're used to hearing many times in your community might have a very different vibe in another community, and members of these differing communities may meet on one site. This is why it's so important to have the mentality of understanding other peoples' perspective, which is a fundamental strength to have in general.
If you find that someone's communicative methods clashes with your perspectives, or if you just find them ignorant on a subject they have a strong opinion on, I 100% guarantee that the course of action that would most strongly align with your greater interests is to understand the person, then to amicably inform them of the nature of the difference between your perspectives and the effect that that person is having in relation to you. I don't recommend being counter-offensive to the users of your site. You are hurt if the flame is one-sided on your end or if both parties are flaming.
It's because of these dynamics of sakugabooru's social scene that I consider the comments section to be so stifling.
It feels like going to a foreign country and having people hiss at you because you didn't bow correctly or slurp the tea properly; it's the kind of thing that has me considering not leaving comments at all. I still do leave comments because those one or two hypothetical interested users might scroll past and get something useful or relatable from them.
Typically, I'd simply leave the site and not make a potentially-disruptive post like this, but what sakugabooru offers is way too close to my passions for me to seriously consider that.
I use patreon to give $10 per month - which is infinitesimal - but the thought behind it is that I want to support the development of this site because it's a wet dream for a sakuga fan. I'm an animator that's going to go pro, and I get so much inspiration, study material, and secondhand wisdom from the dynamics of deeply skilled Japanese animators. Sakugabooru is scrumptious, and it's a common ground where sakuga fans and animators from different places on the internet intersect. I know a buncha fellow animators on this site.
Every time I see that front page, though, my enthusiasm dies a bit when I think of the mentality of some of the leadership.
Here's my honest thought about some of these situations, which I'd like to be corrected on if I'm wrong:
(Note: "You" as it is used below refers to whoever's relevant to the statement - not to every person I've interacted with in the context of this post.)
-I assess some level of egotism in being both [a staff member of this site] and [being knowledgeable about the Japanese animation industry and its animators] that couples itself with a belief that, if you were to acknowledge that you misunderstood someone you had conflicting perspectives with, you would view the knowledgeable and high-ranking image you base your pride on as having taken damage... which is a fear of yours.
-You actually, though not necessarily on an overtly conscious level, enjoy arguing with people and antagonizing them - and seem to leap at the chance to do so, which is made apparent when the people you antagonize have an intensity level of 5 while you have an intensity level of 30. This enjoyment of conflict might be because that sense of ego and togetherness with your friends may be strengthened and validated whenever you clash with contrasting people you view as the "enemy."
I am also not the only one that thinks these things.
What do you think?
Also, given my history on this site of being misinterpreted, I ask that - before you respond - please read carefully with the intent to understand my perspective and not superficially skim over the text while reflexively thinking of ways to rebut a post of which you might have an incomplete understanding just to try and end the discussion. At the very least, I request that you ask questions if you're unsure about what I mean instead of possibly arguing against phantom points I'm not making. I will respond with honesty and an openly-analytical mind.
As always, the goal is mutual understanding among all parties - solution-directed thinking.