Streamline the description system

[Skadi]

As a longtime fantasy RP'er, I roll my eyes at the idea that "it has to fit the lore-- because personality." Are dragons sapient beings or not? And thus are they not capable of making their own decisions about morality and worldview? Or is it because I'm born as a black dragon, I have to act almost exactly like other black dragons and don't get any choice or free will in the matter? This essentialism bothers me on a worldbuilding standpoint, and is incredibly pointless. It's also exactly the kind of boring nonsense that prevents subversion and alteration, and difference in backstories. Hell, my argument is that my dragon was stolen by a wizard who has raised them in a different environment-- would that not change who the dragon would fundamentally be? Maybe someone did chaos magic on my white dragon to make them a mindless murderer, and the white dragon inside of them is horrified at what they've become. I'm not saying I have a dragon with that backstory, but you get the idea.

 

Fitting the lore for magic and powers, sure. I'll give them that. I don't really care because I don't really interact with a lot of other users in a role play setting so someone having a super sparkle mary sue dragon does not affect me in any way. But sure, have that. But I hate the idea of sapient creatures having to have the same style of personality because they look the same. That's not how sapient creatures work, and I'm tired of it.

 

Anyway support more description mods, and I support relaxing the lore guidelines around descriptions.

Edited November 28, 2021 by Skadi

[Lagie]

On 11/9/2021 at 10:01 AM, Infinis said:

IMO the best solution is description mods - a dedicated group of people who JUST do description modding, not forum modding in addition to it. Don’t need to alter description requirements and spreads the work out. 

Support! (and still allow current mods to approve as well.)

[CottagecoreKobold]

Oh my, months? I could swear I remember it taking a few days or a week or so when I left, and that was still a pretty long time to wait. Now I feel awfully silly for checking a couple times a day! Yes, that seems absolutely infeasible, and really discourages what should be one of the building blocks of a dedicated fanbase--the chance for players to write lore and be creative with their dragons.

 

I'm not even completely sure what the purpose of this severe caution is, to be completely honest. Dragon descriptions seem to be very hard to stumble onto by accident, especially when compared to, say, your average forum post. Spam and abuse are much, much easier to post here than there, and more certain to be read. It must be over lore consistency, but for what? No, genuinely, what is the benefit of maintaining lore consistency on descriptions nobody currently sees? I do wish dragon descriptions were more easily viewable--say, with a page on the front of the website letting you casually browse, or at least letting you sort a scroll by whether or not the dragon is described--but since they aren't, what difference does it make if a given Guardian Dragon is described as loving to race zeppelins? Who's actually going to read it and be taken out of the site's immersive worldbuilding? The writer's friends to whom she links it?

 

The system isn't just outdated because the site got bigger and the logistics became untenable--it seems to me that it's outdated because the site never really managed to keep up with the scale of its membership when it came to the convenience of description browsing, and so tightly moderating descriptions just doesn't make sense anymore.

 

To be clear, I'd love to see that change. I loved using this site to write little storylines when I was younger. And if it does change, moderating descriptions to follow lore seems a little more fair. But if this is the description system's final form, it really doesn't please anyone. I don't get to easily browse dragon descriptions and steep myself in the lore of the world, but I also don't get to easily post my own descriptions and show them off to others.

 

In my opinion:

The site needs description moderators with a simple handbook for "fits lore, appropriate" and "doesn't fit lore or isn't appropriate", and it needs some sort of system for browsing the descriptions of others. Maybe even a chance to vote dragon descriptions up or down, like a little story-hosting system, to make it easier to find quality reads. Maybe a random browsing option that can be set to only track the descriptions of recently active users. Maybe, as the OP proposed, you fold the "description moderation" in with the upvote/downvote system in some way, though I worry this would encourage bullying behavior. I think the actual ability to moderate descriptions should be left up to a smaller set, but it certainly should be more widely available than it is now.

 

Many of these changes may be difficult to implement, but I think they'd actually really open the site up to creative expression and give users more reasons to log in every day. Waiting months to see a description go up actually discourages creativity and lore engagement in users.

 

Who's going to care about your beautiful sandbox if they don't feel allowed to play in it?

 

EDIT: It occurred to be after posting this that if you simply treated the descriptions like a forum - allow users to post as they please, but make them easier to browse, and allow other users to report bad behavior to moderators - spammy or abusive descriptions would become a lot easier to address (obtaining a describable dragon takes time, especially if you keep having to start from scratch after getting banned!). It would also save the hardworking moderators an awful lot of time and labor, I'd think! There could be a high-priority "Spam/Abuse" option and a low-priority "Inaccurate Lore" option, with the latter relegated to a pile the moderators could sift through much more gradually.

Edited December 24, 2021 by CottagecoreKobold

[HeatherMarie]

39 minutes ago, CottagecoreKobold said:

 

I'm not even completely sure what the purpose of this severe caution is, to be completely honest. Dragon descriptions seem to be very hard to stumble onto by accident, especially when compared to, say, your average forum post. Spam and abuse are much, much easier to post here than there, and more certain to be read. It must be over lore consistency, but for what? No, genuinely, what is the benefit of maintaining lore consistency on descriptions nobody currently sees? I do wish dragon descriptions were more easily viewable--say, with a page on the front of the website letting you casually browse, or at least letting you sort a scroll by whether or not the dragon is described--but since they aren't, what difference does it make if a given Guardian Dragon is described as loving to race zeppelins? Who's actually going to read it and be taken out of the site's immersive worldbuilding? The writer's friends to whom she links it?

 

On-site descriptions cannot be compared to forum posts. A forum is a form of social media, where people *expect* to see other people's ideas and opinions and interact and talk with each other. DC is not a forum and should not be compared to one. The actual DC site has overarching lore that plays into many different aspects of the game, and descriptions are supposed to fit with that on-site lore. As they are now, descriptions *should* fit site lore. If, for instance, 'description' was changed to 'story this user made up about their dragon' (as I mentioned in another post), it would be more understandable to relax the rules. But right now, the function they serve, they need to follow lore. 

 

Also, while it's true that a casual user may not randomly see many descriptions, it's not really my experience that 'nobody currently sees' them. Just from my own experience I read a *lot* of dragon descriptions when going through lineages or peeking around other user's scrolls. 

[CottagecoreKobold]

Oh, I certainly agree that it's not got the same expectations as a messageboard forum, but I think my point there was more with regards to the urgency of moderation. It was less addressing site lore being inaccurate and more addressing the risk of spam or harassment. Basically, if the issue is the risk of someone putting abusive content in their description, it would be much easier, and much more effective, for them to just post it here on the forums (especially since they can make a new account and post here immediately after a ban, whereas descriptions feature such a delay--several days at least to grow a dragon to Describable size!--that it's basically pointless). In the case of harassment/spam, I think a Report button approach for descriptions makes a lot more sense. Heck, that's already how the Trading system works. This doesn't address the lore problems, of course.

 

Also, I am not sure your experience is representative of the average Dragcave visitor--particularly not the average newcomer. You're obviously a pretty dedicated community member! Browsing lineages can be fun, but I mostly find descriptionless profiles because there's no way to hide them. It's not a very good browsing method for casual engagement, and I think that's a pity.

 

EDIT: I should clarify that I agree that lore consistency is of value. I just think we're just sort of getting the worst of all worlds right now, and we'd be better off either deprioritizing it massively or buffing up the moderation process significantly. I think an interesting option could be to post a new description automatically, but put it in italics, with a hover-over of "This description has not yet been confirmed" or the like. Include a Report button, too. Then let moderation slowly sift over to it. It avoids the risk of confusing new users with anachronisms while still letting users display their descriptions as soon as they're written.

Edited December 24, 2021 by CottagecoreKobold

[Lagie]

@CottagecoreKobold, players can share their descriptions (and/or described dragon groups) here. (Scroll way down!)

 

I'd still like to see description mods implemented.

[HeatherMarie]

13 hours ago, CottagecoreKobold said:

I think an interesting option could be to post a new description automatically, but put it in italics, with a hover-over of "This description has not yet been confirmed" or the like. Include a Report button, too. Then let moderation slowly sift over to it. It avoids the risk of confusing new users with anachronisms while still letting users display their descriptions as soon as they're written.

 

We do have something similar, while not posted automatically a description is shown as 'pending user description' before mod approval if the user viewing it has that option checked in their account settings (and if it has a few user-accepts, the specifics on that part are vague). 

[Lagie]

1 minute ago, HeatherMarie said:

and if it has a few user-accepts, the specifics on that part are vague

Some reviewers have 'description magic'!

[CottagecoreKobold]

Ooh, thanks for letting me know about that checkbox! I checked it, and I can't tell if it's worked, but I guess I'll figure it out.

Thanks for linking me to a "share your descriptions" thread! It's definitely, in my opinion, not the ideal method, but hey, it's nice to have in the meantime. ❤️

[CottagecoreKobold]

As a follow-up, I had actually literally forgotten that the "Review user descriptions" option existed. I wish it weren't tucked away like it is! I used to contribute to it all the time back when I was on the site, and I think some of my suggestions here were made with a half-memory of using it.

[TJ09]

On 11/8/2021 at 12:43 AM, Ponystar17 said:

c) reduce appointed volunteers' workload by allowing descriptions to be approved purely based on peer review (requiring a certain number and/or percentage of approvals from the existing review player descriptions system to be approved).  Under this system, if this isn't already the case, flagging a description as inappropriate should cause it to be auto-hidden.  Optionally you could also add a separate soft-flagging/comment system for when an approved description isn't offensively inappropriate but has fixable grammar/perspective/godmodding/setting-inappropriate issues.

 

(I'm aware that there's a setting in Account Settings to show unapproved descriptions.  I don't think that fundamentally fixes the issue that our current system relies on one person to review the work of thousands of users.)

 

Could you elaborate on these two points?

 

It seems like the existing ability for people to see unapproved descriptions is the same as what you're proposing in option c. In both, user-reviews push descriptions over a threshold where they become visible to others. In both, flagging descriptions hides them. It seems like the only difference is that in the proposal, official review is removed?

[Ponystar17]

2 minutes ago, TJ09 said:

 

Could you elaborate on these two points?

 

It seems like the existing ability for people to see unapproved descriptions is the same as what you're proposing in option c. In both, user-reviews push descriptions over a threshold where they become visible to others. In both, flagging descriptions hides them. It seems like the only difference is that in the proposal, official review is removed?

Essentially:

1) I'm unclear on exactly how the current system to view unapproved descriptions works.  Is the account setting for it enabled or disabled by default?  Does it show all unapproved descriptions, or just ones above a certain approval ratio?  Do ones above that ratio show up for everyone, even if the account setting is disabled?  In the context of the system proposed in c, my preference would be for descriptions above a certain approval ratio to show up for everyone (and the account setting to show descriptions which don't meet with that approval rating).

 

2) I'd like to see description reports sorted based on seriousness (perhaps a drop-down menu for type of problem), and the description auto-hidden pending review if it's reported as containing inappropriate or offensive material.  I don't see a need for auto-hide if the flag is for lore inaccuracy or spelling/grammar issues, although perhaps others would disagree on this.

 

3) As you said, I wouldn't see a point in official review for this system, aside from when a description is flagged.

[TJ09]

1 hour ago, Ponystar17 said:

1) I'm unclear on exactly how the current system to view unapproved descriptions works.  Is the account setting for it enabled or disabled by default?  Does it show all unapproved descriptions, or just ones above a certain approval ratio?  Do ones above that ratio show up for everyone, even if the account setting is disabled?  In the context of the system proposed in c, my preference would be for descriptions above a certain approval ratio to show up for everyone (and the account setting to show descriptions which don't meet with that approval rating).

It's off by default, and only opts into seeing descriptions above a certain user rating. Without the setting on, no unapproved descriptions will be shown, though you will see a notice upon viewing a dragon with a pending description, linking to account settings. These properties are unlikely to change no matter how the system is reworked. I do have a few changes planned to help raise awareness of the setting, though.

 

Volunteer review is helpful both for visibility of pending descriptions (a sizeable portion of descriptions in the queue are above the threshold) and for helping official review (descriptions that have received feedback are often revised, making them more likely to be accepted) but showing them on-site to people who haven't consented to viewing unreviewed user-generated content is not something I'm particularly interested in.

 

1 hour ago, Ponystar17 said:

2) I'd like to see description reports sorted based on seriousness (perhaps a drop-down menu for type of problem), and the description auto-hidden pending review if it's reported as containing inappropriate or offensive material.  I don't see a need for auto-hide if the flag is for lore inaccuracy or spelling/grammar issues, although perhaps others would disagree on this.

The report button on unapproved descriptions functions similarly to rejecting a description through the review page—it hides it for yourself and reduces its score. If enough people reject or flag the description that its score goes below the threshold, then it'll stop showing up, but it's definitely not a one-and-done.

 

Given there's a threshold for them to show up, it's unlikely for a description with minor issues to get above the required score to begin with.

[CottagecoreKobold]

Piggybacking off of that, whether or not user reviews become more influential, it would be very nice for users to get a little more clarity on when we should Reject a description. Like, just a bit more guidance on the page, I mean. Should we reject over a couple spelling mistakes? Even one spelling mistake? Should we confirm humorous descriptions, like a dragon that's a thinly-veiled Jojo reference, as long as they don't directly introduce anachronisms? Should we confirm one-sentence descriptions? Is first-person an auto-Reject? Is bad grammar an auto-reject, like a bullet-point-style list of sentence fragments? What if the dragon has a very silly or anachronistic name?

 

I appreciate you being so communicative here, and to be clear, I'm not necessarily asking for answers right now. (though I certainly wouldn't mind them!) I think more information on the Review page itself would be helpful, especially about where we should expect to draw the line on simple, common issues.

Edited December 29, 2021 by CottagecoreKobold

[Lagie]

4 hours ago, CottagecoreKobold said:

Should we reject over a couple spelling mistakes? Even one spelling mistake? Should we confirm humorous descriptions, like a dragon that's a thinly-veiled Jojo reference, as long as they don't directly introduce anachronisms? Should we confirm one-sentence descriptions? Is first-person an auto-Reject? Is bad grammar an auto-reject, like a bullet-point-style list of sentence fragments? What if the dragon has a very silly or anachronistic name?

You can get help with this stuff in the Description Force thread!  which is here! 

 

I abstain for two or more mistakes if the general description is good.

 

Reject if it has a lot of grammatical flaws (and often I try to point out the corrections needed, or suggest they get help if it's widespread).

 

Humour makes the world go 'round and veiled references are fine and better than direct references which would be rejected.

 

One sentence is fine, so long as it's an actual complete sentence (not 'likes toast for breakfast' or 'name means xyz').

 

First person is not allowed, unless it's the dragon speaking within a third person description ('you' is also dodgy; it's not a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure!).

 

Bullet points don't generally make the grade, unless they're within a descripton (like this), and fragments are rejects (with a request to please use complete sentences.

 

So long as the name's not rude, names aren't usually a problem.

 

Have fun reviewing!

[CottagecoreKobold]

Oh, thanks!

[TJ09]

On 12/29/2021 at 3:09 PM, CottagecoreKobold said:

Piggybacking off of that, whether or not user reviews become more influential, it would be very nice for users to get a little more clarity on when we should Reject a description. Like, just a bit more guidance on the page, I mean. Should we reject over a couple spelling mistakes? Even one spelling mistake? Should we confirm humorous descriptions, like a dragon that's a thinly-veiled Jojo reference, as long as they don't directly introduce anachronisms? Should we confirm one-sentence descriptions? Is first-person an auto-Reject? Is bad grammar an auto-reject, like a bullet-point-style list of sentence fragments? What if the dragon has a very silly or anachronistic name?

 

I appreciate you being so communicative here, and to be clear, I'm not necessarily asking for answers right now. (though I certainly wouldn't mind them!) I think more information on the Review page itself would be helpful, especially about where we should expect to draw the line on simple, common issues.

 

The description review page has recently received a minor redesign. Check it out; hopefully it addresses your concerns at least in part.

[Lagie]

1 hour ago, TJ09 said:

 

The description review page has recently received a minor redesign. Check it out; hopefully it addresses your concerns at least in part.

Ooh. Interesting tweak! And a shard! Thank you, TJ!

I'm assuming it will still help if we comment, even on an approval? I know @Kaini has said even a simple 'looks good' is helpful.

 

Another question - a perfectly good review with two spelling corrections? I would have abstained in the old format. Do you want it approved or rejected?

Edited December 31, 2021 by Lagie
Extra question

[CottagecoreKobold]

Oh my gosh, I love this! What a great improvement.

 

As a minor request, could the Market page be updated to mention reviewing descriptions can grant shards? I think it'd be nice to highlight it, especially as a recent change!

Edited December 31, 2021 by CottagecoreKobold

[0x08]

Finally I can (attempt to) round up my shard numbers!!! I've been at ##11 for way too long, it's been getting on my nerves.
 

3 hours ago, CottagecoreKobold said:

As a minor request, could the Market page be updated to mention reviewing descriptions can grant shards? I think it'd be nice to highlight it, especially as a recent change!

This is a good idea. It may also encourage more participation!

Edited January 1, 2022 by 0x08

[CottagecoreKobold]

This is a very personal "me" want, but it would also be nice to have some kind of tracker for how many descriptions we've reviewed--in a session, all-time, both, whichever.

[Lagie]

59 minutes ago, CottagecoreKobold said:

This is a very personal "me" want, but it would also be nice to have some kind of tracker for how many descriptions we've reviewed--in a session, all-time, both, whichever.

Paper. Pen. And the four slashes, one cross slash = 5 system.

[Awdz]

43 minutes ago, Lagie said:

Paper. Pen. And the four slashes, one cross slash = 5 system.

For new ones, could try that. But what about ones previously done?

I like CottagecoreKobold's suggestion for tracking reviews done.

[purplehaze]

20 hours ago, 0x08 said:

Finally I can (attempt to) round up my shard numbers!!! I've been at ##11 for way too long, it's been getting on my nerves.

But you can still only get up to your 100 shard limit.

[DragonLady86]

57 minutes ago, Awdz Bodkins said:

For new ones, could try that. But what about ones previously done?

I like CottagecoreKobold's suggestion for tracking reviews done.

Even if this would be added, like most things it wouldn't count those done before it was implemented.