We are one month in on the Another Eden magazine, and I think that’s a good time to take a moment and check the temperature.
We are growing, with new content being posted regularly, and I have to thank all of your for your efforts. Threads, comments, upvotes; all of these contribute to the community and are important to building the sort of space we want on Kbin.
Now, a few comments have come to me about content and keeping a healthy environment (for discussion, as well as our members).
When it comes to content, as long as it is related to Another Eden in some way, it’s on topic - that includes the story, characters, head canon, fan art, fan fic, or even the state of gachas in general (if AE is reasonably referenced). That’s not an exhaustive list. As an example of off-topic or not acceptable discussion, anything that violates copyright or would open the magazine to legal repercussions, please refrain from posting here. Discussion of this content, if done tactfully, is on topic, IMO. Additionally, meta discussions about this community are always welcome.
As concerns cross-posting to or from /r/AnotherEdenGlobal, if the content is your own, by all means go to town. If it’s not yours, please get permission from the creator. If you want to encourage people visiting the magazine, that’s also cool, just be nice about it. Whatever the platform, let’s be respectful of the larger AE community.
For how we interact, I’ve been considering some options around a Code of Conduct, or community rules. For a starting point, I’m suggesting we adopt the Contributor Convenant. We can make adjustments (this was originally created for open-source development communities), but the bones are good, IMO. It puts responsibilities on us all as community members, as well on leadership to enforce the rules and represent the interests of the community.
On the note of leadership, I am calling for those interested in being mods on the magazine. I freely admit that I’m not a gregarious person, and while I’m not afraid of enforcing rules, I’m not the best candidate for building the social aspect of our community. Additionally, personal events this past week have shown me that I am not a safe choice as a single point of failure (as owner and single mod, I am very much in that position). I realize kbin currently lacks mod resources, and we’re not currently seeing situations requiring moderation. However, I’d rather have the network setup before we need it.
So I’ve done a lot of talking, and I want to hear what others think. For me, this is our community and we need to grow it based on open communication and consensus - to be clear, that doesn’t mean we all agree on everything, just that we have no clear and rational objections; I’m happy opening a separate thread on this topic.
Some specific topics we should consider:
- How do we want to handle spoilers? @niantre has a thread with a simple solution; do we want to adopt that until kbin gets spoilers working?
- Do we want to allow sensitive (pornographic, graphic violence, slash fic, etc) content? What subset of items are/are not acceptable? If yes, how do we respect everyone and their desire to avoid this content? To be clear, if we can’t find an acceptable way to balance these needs, we won’t be allowing sensitive items in the magazine - external hosting without preview is an option in that case.
- Anything else you want to see in the community.
Thank you for the comments about leadership. As for my concerns, it’s not just this week; there are ongoing life and health concerns that make me a bad SPoF. This past week just reminded me of them since I didn’t come to the magazine even once in almost 7 days. Having some sort of back up to make sure things keep ticking along is a long term must have to ensure the community can keep functioning.
To be clear, and I should add this to general “rules” in the welcome post, illegal content is not allowed. Full stop. Territoriality for some of that sort of content is beside the point. It’s a good idea to make that clear (and what content it is) in the welcome post.
I’ve avoided saying it explicitly but perhaps I should put it all out in the open: I am mostly willing to help in whatever way I can, although having my name on this magazine could be more likely to drive some people away than to help it, and I am also quite burnt-out after doing that for almost 2 whole years on the Reddit, so I am looking to help in a non-managerial role, plus I also may not check the magazine on a daily basis as I am looking to intentionally step back from social media in order to focus more on my job right now. (and maybe seeing me saying this will encourage others to want to step up, knowing that we need more people and greater diversity of people in the future than simply “former Reddit mods”?) I even wondered if my presence here a lot would be more helpful than harmful, though figured so long as many others were posting it would become a more and more dilute issue.
What I mean is that I am not… universally-loved on the Reddit sub, and far more so on the Discord server. “Stupid as OpenStars” has become a literal meme, most often backed up by partial screenshots that intentionally ignore what I say in the first half of a sentence and then blow the second half enormously out of proportion lacking that crucial context, plus I legit do write longer comments that people desired to not have to read…:-). I was not a match for what they wanted, as Reddit transitioned from a “discussion forum” to a “social media” site. HERE, ironically I do not think that will be an issue - you all write like I do, in proper grammatical style with paragraphs of content rather than merely monosyllabic grunting of “me likey” / “git guud” - but for someone who does not know the truth behind the lies, it is a true statement that seeing my name appear here may turn people away.
Anyway I see what you are saying: you are raising the red flag and warning people that this magazine may not get the proper attention that it may need in the future. Kudos once again for your concern, and for your honesty. I will add that if we do not take proper care of this place, then it will deteriorate - we all (or at least, sufficient number of us) need to step up, according to our capabilities and desires, and you will offer what you can too but your abilities were more in terms of setting this place up initially rather than socially growing & maintenance. I hope we get a new moderator then, to help ease your mind, although atm it is nice to know that it is not even needed as people are so nice & friendly here so far that there is nothing to actually do!:-P