About "Supporters/Opponents/Neutral" in verse pages and Knowledgeable users (Staff Only)

[Bobsican]

(I know I'm not staff, but Ant told me to do this after the forum move IIRC, and so here we are)
Okay, this has bugged me for pretty long.
Currently a "Supporter" is someone that likes the verse, a "Neutral" is someone that is, well, neutral, and an "Opponent" is someone that dislikes the verse.

As we all know, this section in verse pages is the main source to ask users at when it comes to CRTs on the subject, however, I've been starting to see users that admit that they don't know the series at all beyond what they see in the profiles, or even in some cases just following the same out of someone else doing it, and often they don't even want to be bothered with CRTs even while being so-called "Supporters", this similarly also applying to the other sections.

While the Knowledgeable Members List is also a thing, that thing isn't updated each time a new verse is made without someone manually doing it, and currently the site promotes more doing a verse page than this, as we can see in the Standard Format for Verse Pages.

So basically, my request is to just add as an option to put your username on a verse page like this (If at all) for users that while listed shouldn't be the first option to consider to notify for CRTs regarding the respective verse, and potentially also add some guidelines to avoid just being able to add your name to a verse page without knowning anything whatsoever of the series (Similarly to how the Knowledgeable Members List works).

 

[Moritzva]

I think that overall revising Supporters to be more akin to Knowledgeable Users would be a good idea.

 

[GoldenScorpions]

I agree with Bob's sentiment

 

[MrKingOfNegativity]

I recall reading someplace that the Supporters/Neutral/Opponents section was meant to be reserved for people who were knowledgeable anyway (as in "knowledgeable supporters, knowledgeable opponents, etc."), but I'm having trouble remembering where that was written.

 

[Bobsican]

Well, I'm sure that was entirely forgotten now, but in either case some standards have to be written to avoid ending up with Supporter/Opponent/Neutral verse sections that aren't friendly to new members (For example, a new member won't know that Mr. Bambu actually dislikes KH and thus doesn't actually support it in any way, even in CRTs, with Arrogant Schmuck just being listed out of him wanting to follow him with no real reason otherwise).

 

[Darkmon_cns]

I am not a ataff member, but I wish to point out on the discussions for standards for nobility required for a verse to be here, supporters/neutral/opponents was the only metric people could agree on, consider that before making changes and if you do make changes you should probably reconsider that discussion (if it ever came to a conclusion)

 

[Zaratthustra]

Could work with adding a 4th section.

Knowledgeable/Supporters/Neutral/Opponents.

A guiding rule also to be made for "Knowledgeable". - Refrain from adding yourself to the Knowledgeable section if you don't understand the verse enough to be able to respond to various questions about its story/characters/tiering/etc. At the same time, only members who are willing to participate in CRT/Revisions should take this responsibility.

Something on this line I think could work very well. If anyone has a better phrasing on my "guiding rule" don't fear changing it and/or adapting it to a better understanding.

 

[Bobsican]

It would be best to keep this as optional, as obviously this would require to have to manually edit every single verse page otherwise, let alone cases where such sections are just empty/nonexistent anyways.

As for the rule regarding the new "Knowledgeable" section...
Refrain from adding yourself to the Knowledgeable section if you don't understand the verse enough to be able to respond to various questions about its story/characters/tiering/etc. At the same time, only members who are willing to participate in its Content Revision Threads should take this responsibility.

I edited the wording a bit to be more friendly to new users, but I feel like it could be improved.

 

[Lonkitt]

There's a lot of verses I like, but I've only really ever added myself as a supporter if I've actually made large contributions to said verse while also being knowledgable of it

TBH I never saw the purpose in Neutrals and Opponents of verses

 

[DemonGodMitchAubin]

This is rather subjective, I mean the criteria for what is a knowledgeable member is vague as hell

It's a very case by case kind of thing, so having this be optional makes sense

 

[Dargoo_Faust]

There should not be a "knowledge criteria" for a

Refrain from adding yourself to the Knowledgeable section if you don't understand the verse enough to be able to respond to various questions about its story/characters/tiering/etc.

I'm solidly against this. This breeds elitism towards supporters of a verse and there's no way to objectively tell how "knowledgeable" a user is on a verse. Often times what some call "not knowing a verse well enough" is "having an opinion that doesn't line up with mine". You'll see debates on whether or not a user is a "knowledgeable member" get very toxic very fast if we try to enforce guidelines or criteria.

Instead the criteria should be willingness to help with Content Revisions - while we can't say if someone is properly 'knowledgeable' we can let people put themselves on verse profiles so that they can be tagged/contacted to participate in important CRTs.

I'm otherwise fine with this proposal - I always thought Neutral/Opponents was a frivolous thing that just took up space on profiles. I would however like to keep a "Supporters" list as just a list of people who are willing to discuss content revisions if contacted. Inactive users should be removed from support lists, additionally.

 

[DemonGodMitchAubin]

I do think removing neutral and opponents would be a good idea, it doesn't really add to the verse pages at all

 

[Zaratthustra]

My "guiding rule" wasn't or elitism, I thought it would help with the incoming CRTs/Revisions as it would show and make it easier to see which people would like/think they can help in the future with the threads. I'm neutral on all opinions that were said till now, as usual, people will comment if they want or not, never wanted to create the idea of elitism.

 

[Dargoo_Faust]

Also we should remove the section entirely from The Real World, since it's mostly a reference verse and the Supporters/Opponents list on it is basically just a joke.

 

[Moritzva]

I, too, oppose The Real World.

 

[Agnaa]

I strongly disagree with the sentiments in this thread.

We have the Knowledgeable Members list for a reason.

The only reason that "Supporters" is ever the go-to for asking for CRTs is for when people haven't added themselves to the Knowledgeable Members List.

You say While the Knowledgeable Members List is also a thing, that thing isn't updated each time a new verse is made without someone manually doing it. but that holds equally true for the supporters section on the verse page. All of this needs to be done manually, so why would we duplicate a function we already have? It's completely and utterly pointless.

I also think it's very neat to have the Supporters/Opponents/Neutral section not worn down with the baggage of how "knowledgeable" you are about the verse. If you don't care about it that's fine, not everyone has to, but you don't have to take it out for everyone else who does.

 

[Bobsican]

Well, unlike the Knowledgeable Members List, the Supporters/Opponents/Neutral section is a part of the standard format for verse pages, and so generally the user that does the page is a supporter itself, meaning that far more often than not there's a section with content in the Supporters/Opponents/Neutral section, unlike the Knowledgeable Members List for the respective series.

As said before, the Supporters/Opponent/Neutral section will still remain, a new option for knowledgeable members to list themselves directly would just be the case on their own section, so it would become "Knowledgeables/Supporters/Opponents/Neutral", while also potentially giving some basic guidelines as to what the Supporters/Opponents/Neutral section translates to when someone adds itself there.

 

[Agnaa]

But there's also not always a verse page made. Either option requires going out of the way to add text.

That just sounds extremely redundant to me. You just have to go to the Knowledgeable Members List and add two lines of text.

 

[Bobsican]

Well, the way the site is currently promotes more doing a verse page over adding the respective series to the Knowledgeable Members List.

And in such a case perhaps an alternative would be to just avoid the redundancy and eventually merge the Knowledgeable Members List with the respective verses it covers in the new "Knowledgeable" section, although that doesn't fix the entire problem respectively without some guidelines over this and how the "Supporters/Opponents/Neutral" section is intended to work for.

 

[Agnaa]

Doing that would eliminate knowledgeable member lists for verses without verse pages.

 

[Bobsican]

Well, such cases would have to remain in the page, eventually the respective verse pages could be made so it can be fully removed in the long run.

 

[Antvasima]

Could work with adding a 4th section.

Knowledgeable/Supporters/Neutral/Opponents.

A guiding rule also to be made for "Knowledgeable". - Refrain from adding yourself to the Knowledgeable section if you don't understand the verse enough to be able to respond to various questions about its story/characters/tiering/etc. At the same time, only members who are willing to participate in CRT/Revisions should take this responsibility.

Something on this line I think could work very well. If anyone has a better phrasing on my "guiding rule" don't fear changing it and/or adapting it to a better understanding.

I thought of a similar solution when I started reading this thread. A fourth section in the verse pages would likely help in the long run, but it would likely take a few years until these sections turn extensive enough to be useful, so in the meantime we would need to continue to use the Knowledgeable Members List, combined with the supporters sections.

 

[Antvasima]

Never mind. After reading the responses from Agnaa and Dargoo, I think that we can continue as previously, with the exception that we might add a mention somewhere about that our members should only add themselves to the lists if they are willing to help out, and that The Real World page should not contain such sections, as they are just references for whether or not you think that it is a satisfactory place to live in overall.

 

[Bobsican]

I'm fine with such changes.

 

[Agnaa]

Eugh that feels like the worst of both worlds to me. I find the current sections to be a good source of merriment (and a source of finding fellow fans!), I don't want them removed or combined with restrictions that people would have to help out with CRTs.

Even helping out feels like somewhat weird criteria. There's many verses where I'd be willing to help out with certain minor CRTs, or CRTs on certain aspects of the series.

 

[Antvasima]

Agnaa makes sense as usual. I suppose that we should let things remain as they are then, except for that it may be inappropriate with such sections in The Real World page.

 

[Moritzva]

Honestly, I get how things are, though at least personally I wish we could swap Supporters/Opponents and Knowledgeable Members in where they are. It's highkey a bit misleading in how people usually go to contact people for CRTs based on the verse page, just to realize while they may like the verse, they aren't great with it on a versus debating spectrum.

But I'm not entirely opposed to just leaving it as it is, as it's really just a small nitpick in my opinion.

 

[Dargoo_Faust]

I find the current sections to be a good source of merriment (and a source of finding fellow fans!), I don't want them removed or combined with restrictions that people would have to help out with CRTs.

That still has Neutral/Opponents with little to no use in either "merriment" or finding fellow fans of a verse.

Especially for larger and more controversial verses Neutral/Opponents basically just takes up space.

 

[Agnaa]

Neutral/Opponents section is enjoyable tho, from my experience. I've enjoyed adding myself to Opponents for some verses, people placing themselves on Neutral/Opponents on verses I like has started conversations before.

If y'all think this is too niche then do what you will, but I want to present that they do actually have an upside, and aren't just a complete waste of space.

 

[Bobsican]

Enjoying something isn't enought of a reaosn to keep something.
Many liked Composite Human, and we didn't let it stay just out of that alone, for example.

Look at Barney & Friends, for instance, there's more "Opponents" than "Supporters", and that really just clogs up space for no real reason beyond "don't ask those", except we already don't as we focus on knowledgeable members first, then staff as usual, and it's their duty to bring input anyways.

 

[Agnaa]

Enjoying something isn't enought of a reaosn to keep something.

Like I said, if people think that's too niche then delete it. But I was responding to comments about how they were a useless waste of space, by saying that there's reasons to enjoy them. I'd rather people argue from truth rather than falsehood.

Many liked Composite Human, and we didn't let it stay just out of that alone, for example.

Composite Human was removed because it goes against our site rules as a hypothetical fanfiction character, and because it in many ways set a bad precedent. It was removed in spite of people liking it because of these large downsides. The downside for keeping neutral/opponents is simply "page space" which I think is much less important than flying in the face of our site rules. And we aren't that spartan about page space either. We allow things that aren't strictly necessary, like large quotes, picture galleries, power of the verse sections, and match listings despite those taking up space and technically not contributing to indexing, because we consider their value worth the page space. (Not to say that those examples are identical, they obviously have far more benefits to them than the supporters/neutral/opponents sections, but you were arguing that we don't allow things because they're liked, which is just factually incorrect).

I'm not arguing a black and white "If anyone enjoys it, it should stay!" view, just trying to make people aware of the upsides which were being dismissed, because the upsides have to be weighed against the downsides.

 

[Bobsican]

Oh, very well, thanks for clarifying.
In that case we could write some guidelines on what's expected at least for any user that indexes itself on a verse page, to avoid clogging up space for no real reason.

 

[Antvasima]

I still agree with Agnaa. I think that it is good that our members are allowed to publicly express their stances regarding the verses that they are very familiar with.

It also helps us to find people who are reasonably knowledgeable who are not necessarily supporters that are recurrently more inclined to endorse exaggerated upgrades.

 

[Bobsican]

The issue comes when it's clear they aren't familiar with it and simply just wouldn't want to even try to get into it out of how out of taste it's for them (Are seriously going to expect every "Opponent" to Barney & Friends to actually get some basic knowledge beyond what's on the profiles or the simple premise or the series? At best it's too tangential to even matter on that regard), so some degree of basic knowledge regarding the series could be asked for in the same way the Knowledgeable Members List leaves up to the user's responsability to consider if they are knowledgeable or not, but to a lesser degree here, as otherwise we run into one of the main issues of such sections not being friendly to new members, out of how you basically have to be an active user regarding X series for quite a while to really know who to ask for input.

For example, while I'm an "Opponent" to Dragon Ball, that just means I often just go to support downgrades or stuff of that sort within a reasonable degree, but I don't just complain on it or so and actually have some basic knowledge on it beyond the premise. Perhaps it could be defined further to filter out users that straight up just don't like a series from those that just tend to lean more into downgrades.

 

[Antvasima]

Well, I think that our current system has worked well for us so far, and that it would require a massive amount of editing for no gain and potential high risk to suddenly change it.

 

[Bobsican]

Well, we still may have to give some more detailed guidelines on what's expected from someone that indexes itself in the "Supporters/Opponents/Neutral" section of a verse page.

 

[Antvasima]

We could write some brief guidelines in an appropriate preexisting information page, but I am not sure where that should be.

 

[Bobsican]

The Standard Format for Verse Pages comes to mind, otherwise the Editing Rules.

 

[Antvasima]

The standard format for verse pages page seems fine to me.

Does some staff or experienced member have a suggestion for an appropriate text segment?

 

[DarkDragonMedeus]

Didn't notice this thread until now, but to add my two cents.

I am against removing the supporters/opponents/neutral. I agree that people should preferably add if they have some form of familiarity with the verse, but I still think it's best to give people the option to add themselves. Also, we should keep the opponents and neutral for a number of reasons. We don't want everything to be handled exclusively by people who are obviously biased towards the verse hence if people may want to ask opponents and neutral for input in case there's skepticism and loopholes on any upgrade potentials. Also, a supporter rejecting an upgrade and supporting a downgrade, or an opponent approving an upgrade and rejecting a downgrade are stronger approvals by that definition. And neutrals are usually the least biased overall when it comes to either proposal. Also, it can be something to help who to contact for not as important but fun threads such as Vs threads.

Second, everybody has their own viewpoints on what qualifies as what; it goes beyond like, dislike, or somewhere in between for some. For me, it's case by case. I usually put myself as neutral if I enjoy the series but personally find it overrated in terms of critical acclaim, popularity, ect. Or if the fanbase is downright awful. My viewpoints on tiers, powers, and abilities has 0 correlation to my taste or likability in a series. I may list myself as a supporter if it ranges from personal favorite or I simply like just fine and may wish to see it get more attention or praise. There are some verses I'm neutral towards that I actually like better than ones I consider myself supporter. But it may be other aspects beyond how great the works are that limits the support for it. Some opponent verses vs neutral verses could also arguably be in the same case.

But either way, I think it's best to just keep the supporters/opponents/neutral list the way they are and continue letting users add themselves as they see fit. And I don't think we should force people to change it. Though, we do remove banned users for obvious reasons. Same with knowledgeable members lists, people may add themselves at least for trial to see if they show knowledge.