The Death of SCP

[Mr. Bambu]

Also known as "If The Horse Is Being Beaten This Much, Maybe It's Time We Just Let It Die, As Nature Intended".

Summary
In the past, we have repeatedly debated whether or not the SCP Foundation (and verses very similar to it) had a place on this wiki. Concerns on this front were largely based on the notion that because of how easily one could contribute to the written works of the verse, it would not only be possible but likely that our own wiki would come to corrupt it in a way, with our terminology and ideas leaking into it resulting in a situation where pages were written with explicit knowledge about how to make a verse "meta" here- that is to say, very powerful.

We decided to let it stay, because the counterargument was always "yes, but they need double digit upvotes to be accepted, and in scenarios so far where pages were submitted with VSBW-ified lingo, they've been shut down". This debate arose again when it was made known that, yes, site users had successfully published their own articles to the SCP wiki and gotten them through the rating requirement. These pages weren't particularly grievous with their terminology, however, and so we continued to allow SCP to serve as an oft-cited exception-to-the-rule, although many similar situations saw discussion about this being hard to accept with certain sections of our membership, such as discussion on verses like the Backrooms.

Now that you're caught up on the past, I will state the obvious intent of this thread for the future: we propose that SCP be deleted, on the grounds that these general countermeasures to bad articles have failed to properly filter out Suggsverse-esque pages for the SCP wiki. There is a good amount of evidence to suggest that SCP writers not only know of VSBW and its tiering conventions (in fact, this much is downright irrefutable), but that they furthermore know how to use these conventions to boost the tiering considerations of the verse.

Thus, SCP ought to be deleted. Our one consideration that has allowed SCP to remain as that exception has been nullified.

Case One: The Abraka David's Proposal
The first intent of this thread is to establish that SCP writers directly, and relatively frequently reference their own high-tiers on our wiki. It is also notable to mention that we do currently allow Joke-type pages on the wiki, having no strict rule against their existence. There is similarly no rule about how strong these pages may be to be accepted.

As such, it is considered extremely worrying that an SCP page (not in the extended canon- its own SCP page) that is completely valid for page creation on our wiki, mentions being "Outerversal".

Case Two: Who Asked
This inclusion serves to show that what might be called the "main" SCP writers (or, at least, some of them) are well aware of our wiki. They are asked about tiering their own works on our wiki, and approach the question in seriousness, as well as the follow-up questions. This isn't an article or anything but shows a good grasp of our wiki for writers of the SCP wiki.

Case Three: The Parable of the Conscript
Simply put, this was made by one of our users, Iapetus the Impaler. I know him personally and he showed it to me when he first published it back in 2020. Now, Iapetus deliberately wrote some of his content to avoid discussing VSBW themes and ideas, and even approached me to ask about how to avoid that. I am satisfied with the result, however it cannot be maintained that all SCP writers do the same. I include his stories more for posterity than anything, and to put forth the notion that we cannot accept all to be as graceful as him.

Case Four: Baroque Unreality
A less worrying case, but still worthy of mention following the above for its similar explicit mention of our lingo. It even goes so far as to cite the wiki pages it is satirizing, in particular our concept of "Tier 0" and our page on the Department of Unreality, which is the piece of Extended Canon this article is from. This, too, has well exceeded the necessary rating to be considered "canon" per our standards on that subject.

It should be irrefutably known now that SCP writers are, broadly speaking, aware of the wiki sufficiently to integrate its lingo into their own pages to achieve the effecs they want. Here, it is obvious their intended impressions are comedic or scornful: they achieve this by mentioning us directly. Other pages on the SCP wiki appear to be guilty of the same, but less explicitly, which we believe to be intentional to allow publication on our wiki (which further cements a competent awareness of VS Battles Wiki and its rulings on the subject).

Case Five: Chaoskampf and Creation
I consider this to be the most egregious of the pages that do not directly mention VSBW but appear to be written in such a way as to "game" our system, as even the first paragraph opens up and unloads many statements that would inarguably be used as justifications for high tiers. It is written deliberately to achieve power in our tiering systems and with our ability pages. Feel free to read it for yourself, one feels little need to elaborate on why this is extremely "off".

Case Six: A Journey Through The Afterlife
An interesting companion to Chaoskampf is this article which appears to do much the same, with very specific wording choices entering into it: the use of "Platonic Concept" as opposed to "Platonic Form" suggests discussion of the matter on VSBW or with people who use it, as the former term is most often used here due to fitting in with our Conceptual Manipulation page, compared to the latter being the appropriate one. This mixed with the apparent goal to unify every single religion and render them canon for SCP as a verse reads as though it is written with a certain amount of knowledge and intent regarding our wiki.

Allow me to be clear: this page stacks infinite layers of Plato's concept of forms, does so while using terminologies suspiciously derived from our own conventions, and is beyond the requisite amount of votes to be considered canon.

Case Seven: Lesser Instances of Evidence
Although they are notable for being easily discovered instances of manipulation on the part of SCP writers, they are simple enough to not warrant broader discussion, and can be used as bit pieces of evidence. This thread does not claim to be exhaustive, rather that even casually browsing the deeper bits of the SCP wiki will yield articles apparently written with the intent of achieving higher tiers and better abilities.

• The Third Law: A glossary of terms used for this branch of SCP fiction, including a couple that stand out as strikingly similar to our own definition of things. Their definition of concept bears a reasonably strong resemblance to our own for Type 1s, and their definition of the Void is also notable. Much of this is written in VSBW-esque jargon.
• SCP-CN-2510: Ostensibly translated from Chinese to English from within official SCP channels, this article has similar levels of VS-Speak being employed: "In the very beginning, before the concept of history even existed, beyond the infinite layers of nested narratives, beyond all the concepts that make up that incomprehensible Noosphere, outside all the infinite dimensions, farther in than the grand shape of The Tree of Knowledge standing above the sea that is called the multiverse, there was one, infinite, omnipotent Metanormalcy." It takes great pains to expand on ideas that don't seem to assist the writing but do net certain esoteric abilities (transduality and so on).

Case Eight: The Deleted Tale
To begin our segment on strange outliers for consideration, this tale was deleted but similarly to the first few cases mentions our tiering terminology explicitly and directly (again apparently using/satirizing Tllmbrg's work on SCP pages). Though deleted, it represents more evidence of various SCP writers having open and working knowledge of our standards.

Case Nine: Who Is He?
Acknowledging that it distracts from the point somewhat, the other oddity up for discussion is AI writing. This tale was written using ChatGPT, and is (admittedly barely) above the threshold to be considered totally acceptable for addition to VSBW. This is a secondary consideration to the broader problem of VSBW leaking into and corrupting the SCP wiki, but it is necessary to address it at some point, anyhow.

Addendum One: Miscreation and Imperfectionism
Mentioned to me by @Agnaa about 15 minutes after posting the thread is this tale which, quoting him, "This one was very close to just reciting the planned tier 0 standards shortly after they were accepted". It was deleted by the author rather than the site staff, and was regarded well enough to be considered canon.

Conclusion
SCP represents an unmitigable problem for our wiki, in that it allows anybody to contribute and, by that measure, add to its mythos ideas pulled directly from our wiki (and thus violating our rules on the subject). Evidence strongly suggests that this has happened multiple times (and these are just what have been pulled from the hulking mass of their writing: it appears plausible if not downright likely that many other examples exist), with many SCP writers directly referencing VSBW in both serious and non-serious capacities. They have no rules against the subject, and so far we have relied solely on their rating system, whereby a page must be above -10 votes to remain on their wiki. This being a fairly lax requirement for our purposes has allowed these listed cases to exist within the SCP "canon".

As such, it is clear that SCP has become so ridden with VSBW terminology and lingo that is is impossible to separate them to the satisfaction of our wiki, and any measure less than deletion will inevitably come to be addled with the same problems: therefore, the proposal is total deletion. It has been discussed with FC/OC staff already that they would be unwilling to allow the verse onto their wiki.

Vote Tallies

• Agree with deletion (14): Mr. Bambu, Chariot190, Qawsedf234, Planck69, CloverDragon03, Deagonx, Propellus, Antvasima, GarrixianXD, Flashlight237, Psychomaster35, Damage3245, Crabwhale, Catzlaflame,, Maverick_Zero_X, DontTalk, DarkDragonMedeus, Theglassman12, Firestorm808
• Disagree with deletion (4): Agnaa, Sir_Ovens, Tllmbrg. IdiosyncraticLawyer, Colonel_Krukov, CrimsonStarFallen
• Agree with deletion of 1-A and up (1): Everything12
• Agree with extremely limited editing allowances (1): Wokistan

 

[Mr. Bambu]

Before our bi-annual discussion of "has SCP finally crossed the line" gets too rowdy, I invite all users to recognize that this is in Staff Discussion. You must receive permission to post here, and even then, your permissions are limited. I will have no barbarism this time around.

 

[Chariot190]

A verse being aware of the wiki and power scaling, imo, isn't inherently an issue and shouldn't be a death sentence. Like if a writer for Marvel frequents VSBW and cooked some wacky shit, well it is what is, pretty sure dudes like the director of the Amazon Invincible is well aware of this shit for example. Or if a member randomly made a verse, got it officially published, somehow became popular lol, and it def seemed aware of some scaling bullshit, well it'd fucky but hey as long as it ain't suggs level, it would be an officially licensed piece of media, if some other dude enjoys it and wants to make a profile for it, might be unfortunate but shrug, notwithstanding I think we do have a written rule against the latter, consider this just my opinion if that's the case, there's definitely a slippery slope here, but this case does seem to be beyond ridiculous.

The issue here, evidently, is the fact this is basically fanfiction.net, literally anyone can add to it, which while neat and fun, causes the issue presented, any mf can just go and wank it, or hell, downplay it, and given the, to be blunt, hilariously low-quality control, it really ain't hard to alter stuff. The fact a verse exists that even I can cook in, and with little, if any effort, get it wiki-qualified is a bit ****** up.

I ultimately agree with the proposal, they're way too lenient in what gets by, and while I don't think some of the points by themselves is an issue, all together is yeah ok shit has to change or it needs to go, and I don't think it's about to change.

 

[Mr. Bambu]

The issue here, evidently, is the fact this is basically fanfiction.net, literally anyone can add to it, which while neat and fun, causes the issue presented, any mf can just go and wank it, or hell, downplay it, and given the, to be blunt, hilariously low-quality control, it really ain't hard to alter stuff. The fact a verse exists that even I can cook in, and with little, if any effort, get it wiki-qualified is a bit ****** up.

This is the crux of the issue, yes. A combination of actionable knowledge of our wiki's standards and haxes and so on, and ease-of-contribution.

 

[Chariot190]

This is the crux of the issue, yes. A combination of actionable knowledge of our wiki's standards and haxes and so on, and ease-of-contribution.

I recall there being a "extended" and "main canon", does ease of altercation by anyone apply to main too? If so it should be deleted flat out, but if it's only extended, would it be possible to keep main?

 

[Mr. Bambu]

I recall there being a "extended" and "main canon", does ease of altercation by anyone apply to main too? If so it should be deleted flat out, but if it's only extended, would it be possible to keep main?

It has been discussed that this would be a possible offer: I consider it to be a band aid on a fatal laceration. The fact is that anyone can and do submit their own mainline pages for SCP. Removing extended canon may reduce singular statements spreading throughout the verse to scale to every other character in it, but the mainline articles are just as susceptible to VSBW-leakage.

So I don't think that's a good solution.

 

[Colonel_Krukov]

Would it be easier to just ban pages, or any scaling, that are influenced by the tiering system and make direct references just to have large stats and specific powers?

For example, if a page is too heavily influenced then it should just be banned outright, but there's multiple articles on the same SCP, then just ban any powers/scaling that makes direct use of the wiki to make said character more powerful.

 

[Everything12]

I'm not going to say whether I agree or disagree yet, because I want to see if their is other opinions, but I will offer an alternative.

Anything 1-A+ or higher is straight up not allowed. Anything with an unnecessarily large number of higher dimensions/higher realities, especially infinite, is not allowed. Anything that is Tier 1 or has powerful hax/physiologies that aren't necessary for the narrative being told isn't allowed. If the story exists only to make the cosmology bigger/more powerful with no deeper narrative reasons it isn't allowed.

The difference between SCP and regular fan fiction is supposedly that it has a certain type of stories that are being told, existential horror (with some comedic parodies), so if the story doesn't even try to attempt that and just seems like bigger infinities for the sake of it or just creating a powerful monster without putting effort into make it fit, then we shouldn't allow that.

Also, I probably don't have to say but any VSBattles related terminology is a big no-no.

 

[IdiosyncraticLawyer]

Let's see how rich this'll be. @Sir_Ovens @Saikou_The_Lewd_King @Ultima_Reality @Tllmbrg

 

[Mr. Bambu]

Let's see how rich this'll be. @Sir_Ovens @Saikou_The_Lewd_King @Ultima_Reality @Tllmbrg

I linked Ovens and Tllmbrg myself via Discord, and I've also discussed it with Agnaa (hence the addendum to the OP). It's presumably already been sent to Saikou, given that was Ovens first concern, but fair play.

Would it be easier to just ban pages, or any scaling, that are influenced by the tiering system and make direct references just to have large stats and specific powers?

For example, if a page is too heavily influenced then it should just be banned outright, but there's multiple articles on the same SCP, then just ban any powers/scaling that makes direct use of the wiki to make said character more powerful.

I think this all this does is promote adaptation from the SCP community, whereby the writers get better and better at burying the language. The entire cosmological structure of SCP as a full verse at the moment would fall into this, as well.

I'm not going to say whether I agree or disagree yet, because I want to see if their is other opinions, but I will offer an alternative.

Anything 1-A+ or higher is straight up not allowed. Anything with an unnecessarily large number of higher dimensions/higher realities, especially infinite, is not allowed. Anything that is Tier 1 or has powerful hax/physiologies that aren't necessary for the narrative being told isn't allowed. If the story exists only to make the cosmology bigger/more powerful with no deeper narrative reasons it isn't allowed.

The difference between SCP and regular fan fiction is supposedly that it has a certain type of stories that are being told, existential horror (with some comedic parodies), so if the story doesn't even try to attempt that and just seems like bigger infinities for the sake of it or just creating a powerful monster without putting effort into make it fit, then we shouldn't allow that.

Also, I probably don't have to say but any VSBattles related terminology is a big no-no.

I suppose I'll mentally add this as a possibility but I also don't think it's a great solution. The threat of contamination still exists and one can still readily achieve a great deal- I would not be shocked if years down the line we then find a good amount of High 1-B smurfs.

It's unfortunate but I really don't see a good cover-all solution other than straight up and total deletion.

 

[GrathOfLux]

I'll reserve any firm judgement until later, but there is a small argument in favour of deletion here I'd like to bring up that I don't often hear in the discussions around whether SCP should remain on the wiki.

It's hard to deny that there is a noteworthy portion of the Versus Battles Wiki community who do care about the SCP Foundation and its stories, and that there is a strong cross-over in the communities. I'd think, for at least a portion of these users, this care extends beyond simply liking the idea of making a verse high tier. I think there's a good portion of users who actually appreciate the stories themselves and enjoy being a positive contribution to the ever-expanding writing project.

But when I think about how the VSBW has influenced the writing of the SCP stories, I almost exclusively think of it in negative terms. The very idea of prioritising particular storylines, phrasing, and word choices that will validate particular tiers the author wants to achieve means that the priority is being taken away from making the story enjoyable, interesting, or a valuable expansion to the lore beyond the very specific purposes of the author. 'Quality' may be a subjective factor, but I would think it's a fairly agreeable factor here nonetheless - the OP already elaborates well on stories that go completely off the rails purely for the sake of introducing extremely specific terminology and ideas that add no benefit to the story and exist purely for pushing an agenda elsewhere.

And when the very reason behind these obtuse and detrimental aspects of the story is down to the fact that the authors want to make VSBW pages for them, I would argue us allowing those pages is one (indirect) cause of the downturn in quality that many people have observed in SCP stories over the years. If we want to do good for the SCP community - which again, I believe some of us would have a personal motivation for, being a part of the community - we could mitigate this issue of consistently bad SCP stories being churned out for the sake of making pages by removing the incentive to do so in the first place.

I think it's a minor factor in the grand scheme, and it's debatable whether it would have the intended effect. I don't blame the OP for focusing on the more important and less contentious matters. But if nothing else, I would hope this is food for thought.

 

[BLS]

I was given permission to comment here by Everything12

I agree with deletion (and this almost never gets brought up in this discussion) on the principle that SCP in essence is very loose on copyright and copyrighted materials, like for example this SCP "here" where it's literally just using Minecraft for its entry. While it's a fun concept, i think it can be problematic interms of credibility.

 

[Agnaa]

and so far we have relied solely on their rating system, whereby a page must be above -10 votes to remain on their wiki. This being a fairly lax requirement for our purposes has allowed these listed cases to exist within the SCP "canon".

Last time I interacted with the series, we essentially took the inverse approach; requiring a page to be at +10 votes or above to be treated as acceptably canon for our wiki.

As such, I'd emphasize that Miscreation and Imperfectionism was on the road to being canon (sitting at a +9 rating when I brought it to other people's attention, a day or so before it was deleted), but wasn't quite at that level yet.

I suggested that policy so that articles couldn't worm their way onto our profiles simply by being too obscure for them to be rightfully retracted.

As such, it is clear that SCP has become so ridden with VSBW terminology and lingo that is is impossible to separate them to the satisfaction of our wiki, and any measure less than deletion will inevitably come to be addled with the same problems: therefore, the proposal is total deletion. It has been discussed with FC/OC staff already that they would be unwilling to allow the verse onto their wiki.

but that they furthermore know how to use these conventions to boost the tiering considerations of the verse.

To address both of these, I think it's possible to separate them, and I don't think they've successfully boosted the "tiering considerations of the verse" through reading excerpts from our pages.

To address the boosting part, at least as it was back when I still kept up with the series, it landed at such high ratings due to a scattering of disjointed tales establishing feats for parts of the cosmology, which were then stacked together, and combined with statements of characters scaling to them. From a distance, this seems vaguely similar to stuff that's happened with Marvel/DC; a variety of authors without a unifying vision writing a fuckton of stuff that occasionally goes on a cosmic scale will eventually lead to high tiers, simply by throwing so much stuff at the wall.

To address the separation part, it's kind of unnecessary since we don't actually put any weight behind statements like "And then he went beyond the infinite hierarchy of High 1-A constructs!!!" without the series establishing what those terms mean. And since the direct invocations do it simply to mock them and/or to claim that they're actually far lower, there's not much to actually worry about, in terms of practical effects on profiles.

However​

I do think there's something to worry about in terms of the SCP wiki itself getting contaminated by our bullshit, but as the SCP wiki is the victim of that, I think our handling of that should start with asking their staff members what, if anything, they'd like us to do to help with that.

Plus, I do worry about starting to just nuke verses for the reasons outlined in the OP. As I've discussed with Bambu on Discord, I think it's hard to actually get good lines about this sort of thing. It's easy to either be completely ineffectual (if we require actual participation with VSBW rather than a passing glance, then most of those articles wouldn't actually be violations), or to go too far (if we require any participation in battleboarding, we could nuke quite a few verses, given how stuff like Death Battle breaches into the cultural zeitgeist).

The issue here, evidently, is the fact this is basically fanfiction.net, literally anyone can add to it, which while neat and fun, causes the issue presented, any mf can just go and wank it, or hell, downplay it, and given the, to be blunt, hilariously low-quality control, it really ain't hard to alter stuff. The fact a verse exists that even I can cook in, and with little, if any effort, get it wiki-qualified is a bit ****** up.

Eh, it's not literally anyone. You can chuck something in certain logs which may stay up for a few months simply because a staff member hasn't pruned it yet, but actually posted articles by new users typically go through a few rounds of draft evaluations by established users. And even then, as I said, we'd want it to pick up some steam before we include that.

A lot of the things mentioned in the OP are joke articles invoking these for the funny, so I'd implore you to consider the merit of many of them as ironic jokes, rather than as pieces of perfect prose.

Would it be easier to just ban pages, or any scaling, that are influenced by the tiering system and make direct references just to have large stats and specific powers?

I believe they're already not used anyway, so that's not really relevant.

I'm not going to say whether I agree or disagree yet, because I want to see if their is other opinions, but I will offer an alternative.

Anything 1-A+ or higher is straight up not allowed. Anything with an unnecessarily large number of higher dimensions/higher realities, especially infinite, is not allowed. Anything that is Tier 1 or has powerful hax/physiologies that aren't necessary for the narrative being told isn't allowed. If the story exists only to make the cosmology bigger/more powerful with no deeper narrative reasons it isn't allowed.

The difference between SCP and regular fan fiction is supposedly that it has a certain type of stories that are being told, existential horror (with some comedic parodies), so if the story doesn't even try to attempt that and just seems like bigger infinities for the sake of it or just creating a powerful monster without putting effort into make it fit, then we shouldn't allow that.

Also, I probably don't have to say but any VSBattles related terminology is a big no-no.

This sounds exhausting to hold to as a rule, and likely to lead to bad incentives (would our editors start downplaying characters so they can get profiles?).

I was given permission to comment here by Everything12

I agree with deletion (and this almost never gets brought up in this discussion) on the principle that SCP in essence is very loose on copyright and copyrighted materials, like for example this SCP "here" where it's literally just using Minecraft for its entry. While it's a fun concept, i think it can be problematic interms of credibility.

It's been brought up before, and honestly, it's been discussed to death. It's of too small scale to actually be disqualifying. It's only a few steps beyond stuff that JoJo has done. We should not delete every piece of media that includes a real copyrighted video game in 0.01% of its content.

 

[Mr. Bambu]

Last time I interacted with the series, we essentially took the inverse approach; requiring a page to be at +10 votes or above to be treated as acceptably canon for our wiki.

I do mention this earlier in the thread, although I could be more explicit: my intent in mentioning the -10 line is solely in pointing out the extremely low bar of entry to be on the SCP wiki to begin with.

It wasn't my intent to misconstrue that. Apologies.

I've discussed the Marvel/DC comparison with you via Discord and I bluntly disagree, but you know that already.

Interestingly, as an aside:

fuckton

huh. No asterisks.

 

[Agnaa]

I've discussed the Marvel/DC comparison with you via Discord and I bluntly disagree, but you know that already.

Not to be hostile, but I don't think you really did?

After I mentioned it, you responded to Tllm making a related but distinct point.

After Ovens and I mentioned it again, you said you couldn't keep up with all those points being made at once, and referred to an older message of yours to establish your position, which didn't interface with that comparison.

huh. No asterisks.

We can't just automatically censor strings like that, otherwise we wouldn't be able to talk about assassinations or the town of Scunthorpe. Advertising services are aware of that too, and don't necessarily punish us for words like that; their reprisal is our reason for censoring most swears in the first place.

 

[Mr. Bambu]

Not to be hostile, but I don't think you really did?

Hadn't I? I meant to. Whoops.

I don't think it's too similar due to the openness of the verse in question (a point you may find less relevant but I don't think anyone would contest), and I think it hails back to an earlier talking point we had regarding what one means when one says that a character or weapon or verse is intentionally written to be powerful- we would not ban Goku or Saitama or Superman because the author wrote them to be deliberately overpowered as that is the crux of the character- this is evidently not similar to Suggsverse-esque writing which we see in the above examples on the SCP wiki.

To address the separation part, it's kind of unnecessary since we don't actually put any weight behind statements like "And then he went beyond the infinite hierarchy of High 1-A constructs!!!" without the series establishing what those terms mean.

Regarding this bit, defining what those terms mean would be an element of the problem for SCP here, since those definitions would be influenced by us to create a system that is extraordinarily high tiered for the sole purpose of being high tiered. My issue here is not with high tiered characters, or characters becoming high tier by right of long term existence inevitably leading to something we consider to be a high tier feat, but rather with the contamination of VSBW leading to these situations deliberately, which is strictly against our rules.

 

[CurrySenpai]

Would just like to say, I know Kru was here but if SCP gets deleted, FC/OC is NOT willing to take the profiles. Us over there talked about it privately, and we don’t really have the time to manage or deal with that work load.

 

[Colonel_Krukov]

I believe they're already not used anyway, so that's not really relevant.

Then I don't see what the issue is.

OP can put me down for disagree with deletion.

 

[Mr. Bambu]

Would just like to say, I know Kru was here but if SCP gets deleted, FC/OC is NOT willing to take the profiles. Us over there talked about it privately, and we don’t really have the time to manage or deal with that work load.

I'd mentioned it in the OP, but I appreciate you expanding on the "why".

 

[Mr. Bambu]

Then I don't see what the issue is.

OP can put me down for disagree with deletion.

To be clear, I believe what Agnaa is saying is that the pages linked in the OP, specifically, are not "tier-setters"- that is, they don't define the tiers for the verse. They are viable for pages per our current standards on the subject. The belief of the OP is that as the verse has fairly easily verifiable instances of corruption, that these "tier-setters" may well also be the result of the influence of VSBW.

 

[Qawsedf234]

Anything 1-A+ or higher is straight up not allowed. Anything with an unnecessarily large number of higher dimensions/higher realities, especially infinite, is not allowed. Anything that is Tier 1 or has powerful hax/physiologies that aren't necessary for the narrative being told isn't allowed. If the story exists only to make the cosmology bigger/more powerful with no deeper narrative reasons it isn't allowed.

To be honest this sound the best to me. Its the higher narrative stuff and the power scaling jargon that raises my eyebrows more so than the entire thing in general.

However, that's also just us cherry picking and it ultimately being just half measure because we're not really addressing the core issue. To quote a random speedrun history video it would just quickly become a race of "who can get the closest without going over" more so than anything.

So in my mind if the thing is going to be removed, it should be the entire aspect of it. Not just a single faucet. Because if one part of the SCP online forum can be influenced by power scaling then any part can be influenced by power scaling and they'll all have the same core issues.

 

[Mr. Bambu]

To be honest this sound the best to me. Its the higher narrative stuff and the power scaling jargon that raises my eyebrows more so than the entire thing in general.

However, that's also just us cherry picking and it ultimately being just half measure. To quote a random speedrun history video it would just quickly become a race of "who can get the closest without going over" more so than anything.

So in my mind if the thing is going to be removed, it should be the entire aspect of it. Not just a single faucet.

Would I put you down as fine with either, then, or just one?

 

[Qawsedf234]

Would I put you down as fine with either, then, or just one?

I look at it as "If SCP never existed and came out today, would we allow it?". Personally I think we wouldn't and there would pushback against it from staff due to all the issues you've presented and that we've seen from other SCP-esq properties. So if I'm being consistent with my thoughts, I would be for a full deletion rather than a partial.

 

[Mr. Bambu]

I look at it as "If SCP never existed and came out today, would we allow it?". Personally I think we wouldn't and there would pushback against it from staff (even Ant has said the verse was more grandfathered in than anything). So if I'm being consistent with my thoughts, I would be for a full deletion rather than a partial.

Understood, thank you for the clarification.

 

[Agnaa]

Hadn't I? I meant to. Whoops.

I don't think it's too similar due to the openness of the verse in question (a point you may find less relevant but I don't think anyone would contest), and I think it hails back to an earlier talking point we had regarding what one means when one says that a character or weapon or verse is intentionally written to be powerful- we would not ban Goku or Saitama or Superman because the author wrote them to be deliberately overpowered as that is the crux of the character- this is evidently not similar to Suggsverse-esque writing which we see in the above examples on the SCP wiki.

I was talking about the actual sources for the ratings SCPs are given in our profiles, where that Suggsverse-esque writing is irrelevant.

And I was not using that to say that they're similar in terms of whether they should be deleted, I was simply using it as an explanation for why SCP has high-tiered profiles.

If you'll read them, they're not from Suggsverse-esque writing. That's why most article canon profiles don't go above tier 2. They land at such high tiers by having 4 different unrelated statements being connected.

Regarding this bit, defining what those terms mean would be an element of the problem for SCP here, since those definitions would be influenced by us to create a system that is extraordinarily high tiered for the sole purpose of being high tiered. My issue here is not with high tiered characters, or characters becoming high tier by right of long term existence inevitably leading to something we consider to be a high tier feat, but rather with the contamination of VSBW leading to these situations deliberately, which is strictly against our rules.

As a website seeping into the cultural zeitgeist, we can't stop others from being influenced by us. I think looking out for VSBW contamination on this scale is a bad idea in the long-term.

 

[Mr. Bambu]

As a website seeping into the cultural zeitgeist, we can't stop others from being influenced by us. I think looking out for VSBW contamination on this scale is a bad idea in the long-term.

I just flatly disagree with this idea. And, again, our current standards do as well.

I was talking about the actual sources for the ratings SCPs are given in our profiles, where that Suggsverse-esque writing is irrelevant.

And I was not using that to say that they're similar in terms of whether they should be deleted, I was simply using it as an explanation for why SCP has high-tiered profiles.

If you'll read them, they're not from Suggsverse-esque writing. That's why most article canon profiles don't go above tier 2. They land at such high tiers by having 4 different unrelated statements being connected.

These more blatant examples are, yes, but the purpose of several examples in the OP is to show that these examples exist, and that others are likely to as well, with better burying-of-leads. If not now, then later- the threat is verifiably existent, even if you'd rather not engage in some level of speculation as to how deeply rooted it is.

 

[Agnaa]

I just flatly disagree with this idea. And, again, our current standards do as well.

Note the "on this scale" portion. I think our current standards refer to far more pervasive examples, not people spending 0.01% of the media's content mocking it, or struggling to answer questions about it after being bombarded with them.

These more blatant examples are, yes, but the purpose of several examples in the OP is to show that these examples exist, and that others are likely to as well, with better burying-of-leads. If not now, then later- the threat is verifiably existent, even if you'd rather not engage in some level of speculation as to how deeply rooted it is.

I don't actually think many others are likely to. I'd expect you've probably covered >85% of them in the OP so far, with the remaining ones inevitably being far more minor. Those sorts of articles rose to being notable due to the wiki-relevance being salacious. Any further examples would be more subtle, more obscure, more recent, and thus, more few, I think.

And I would say that looking into more obscured examples starts to get a bit risky. As I said on Discord, our standards are rooted in pre-existing philosophy, mathematics, and fictional examples. Hiding them to the point of being undetectable simply involves ripping off the sources we ripped off, instead of taking from us directly. I'm worried about such searches becoming a bit of a bogeyman.

 

[Hl3_or_bust]

I have been given permission by @Sir_Ovens to be able to post on this thread.

Case One: The Abraka David's Proposal
The first intent of this thread is to establish that SCP writers directly, and relatively frequently reference their own high-tiers on our wiki. It is also notable to mention that we do currently allow Joke-type pages on the wiki, having no strict rule against their existence. There is similarly no rule about how strong these pages may be to be accepted.

As such, it is considered extremely worrying that an SCP page (not in the extended canon- its own SCP page) that is completely valid for page creation on our wiki, mentions being "Outerversal".

I feel the need to note that vsbw does not "own" the term "Outerversal." That is a common powerscaling term that has been used since before vsbw came into existence, so that alone being used as evidence against SCP being on the wiki doesn't sit right, particularly when that is literally the only instance of anything like the sort.

Case Two: Who Asked
This inclusion serves to show that what might be called the "main" SCP writers (or, at least, some of them) are well aware of our wiki. They are asked about tiering their own works on our wiki, and approach the question in seriousness, as well as the follow-up questions. This isn't an article or anything but shows a good grasp of our wiki for writers of the SCP wiki.

This has been discussed a few times offsite, and it isn't nearly as problematic as it is made out to be. Anyone who reads this can easily tell that Placeholder made this due to being continually badgered by incredibly blatantly leading questions. Acting as if this is the direct result of SCP being on our wiki is disingenuous at best.

Also, " shows a good grasp of our wiki for writers of the SCP wiki"? Placeholder and co. very clearly do not actually understand the systems they are being asked about. Note how he responds to 6488's perceived tiering, as he states "behaviour restricts it to low Tier 10 or Tier 11 at best." I don't think I need to explain that this is not how our system works even remotely.

I simply don't see why the angered rants of someone who was harangued by leading questions from individuals who were likely at least partially intentionally doing this to stir up trouble should be blamed on the people who actually want to engage with the writing using our systems.

Case Four: Baroque Unreality
A less worrying case, but still worthy of mention following the above for its similar explicit mention of our lingo. It even goes so far as to cite the wiki pages it is satirizing, in particular our concept of "Tier 0" and our page on the Department of Unreality, which is the piece of Extended Canon this article is from. This, too, has well exceeded the necessary rating to be considered "canon" per our standards on that subject.

It should be irrefutably known now that SCP writers are, broadly speaking, aware of the wiki sufficiently to integrate its lingo into their own pages to achieve the effecs they want. Here, it is obvious their intended impressions are comedic or scornful: they achieve this by mentioning us directly. Other pages on the SCP wiki appear to be guilty of the same, but less explicitly, which we believe to be intentional to allow publication on our wiki (which further cements a competent awareness of VS Battles Wiki and its rulings on the subject).

See above. I don't know why you are conflating an awareness of our standards with a "competent awareness." Baroque in general is literally just Fishish being annoyed with our page and taking the opportunity to insult the creator rather than actually offer any reasonable critique. Fishish even had a similar thread to Placeholder where people were constantly asking him about stuff involved with our tiers, and he ended up describing the Department of Unreality in ways that not only contradict most writings in the canon, but also contradict literally all of his own writings in the canon

Case Five: Chaoskampf and Creation
I consider this to be the most egregious of the pages that do not directly mention VSBW but appear to be written in such a way as to "game" our system, as even the first paragraph opens up and unloads many statements that would inarguably be used as justifications for high tiers. It is written deliberately to achieve power in our tiering systems and with our ability pages. Feel free to read it for yourself, one feels little need to elaborate on why this is extremely "off".

Aye, this has been a known article for a few years now. I believe we nearly changed our standards around it once, but since then we've elected to simply ignore it due to its obviously provocative nature, something that can be easily applied to the rest of these examples and any that may appear later. After all, we are the ones creating the standards that the pages on our wiki are created with, so nothing is stopping us from just using common sense.

Case Six: A Journey Through The Afterlife
An interesting companion to Chaoskampf is this article which appears to do much the same, with very specific wording choices entering into it: the use of "Platonic Concept" as opposed to "Platonic Form" suggests discussion of the matter on VSBW or with people who use it, as the former term is most often used here due to fitting in with our Conceptual Manipulation page, compared to the latter being the appropriate one. This mixed with the apparent goal to unify every single religion and render them canon for SCP as a verse reads as though it is written with a certain amount of knowledge and intent regarding our wiki.

Allow me to be clear: this page stacks infinite layers of Plato's concept of forms, does so while using terminologies suspiciously derived from our own conventions, and is beyond the requisite amount of votes to be considered canon.

There isn't much to say with this one, besides pointing out the existence of common sense again. I should also note that "concept" is, yet again, not a vsbw-exclusive term, but one endemic to power scaling as a whole. Still not great obviously, but you do seem to constantly take vague and general powerscaling concepts and say that their use indicates vsbw viewership a lot.

Case Seven: Lesser Instances of Evidence
Although they are notable for being easily discovered instances of manipulation on the part of SCP writers, they are simple enough to not warrant broader discussion, and can be used as bit pieces of evidence. This thread does not claim to be exhaustive, rather that even casually browsing the deeper bits of the SCP wiki will yield articles apparently written with the intent of achieving higher tiers and better abilities.

• The Third Law: A glossary of terms used for this branch of SCP fiction, including a couple that stand out as strikingly similar to our own definition of things. Their definition of concept bears a reasonably strong resemblance to our own for Type 1s, and their definition of the Void is also notable. Much of this is written in VSBW-esque jargon.
• SCP-CN-2510: Ostensibly translated from Chinese to English from within official SCP channels, this article has similar levels of VS-Speak being employed: "In the very beginning, before the concept of history even existed, beyond the infinite layers of nested narratives, beyond all the concepts that make up that incomprehensible Noosphere, outside all the infinite dimensions, farther in than the grand shape of The Tree of Knowledge standing above the sea that is called the multiverse, there was one, infinite, omnipotent Metanormalcy." It takes great pains to expand on ideas that don't seem to assist the writing but do net certain esoteric abilities (transduality and so on).

The Third Law hub argument is just straight up reaching at straws. The definition of concept given is way too clinical and the things derived from it actually make sense in the context it creates. If I am understanding your point correctly as well, you are considered a variety of foundational concepts to the SCP setting, like infohazards and antimemes, to be "vsbw-esque jargon." Hell, the idea of entities or objects that are "shadows" of something beyond perception is one of the oldest ideas in the mainline and has been there since the very first series. Secondly, this hub is quite old if I recall correctly, which sharply reduces the chances of this being an intentional effort.

As for 2510, that excerpt doesn't feel as blatant as you are making it out to be. SCP regularly goes through phases where certain cosmological elements become popular, such as the boom in narrative anomalies during the 4000 series and the noosphere stuff happening intermittedly since. Point being, a long-time reader would become aware of quite a range of cosmological elements just by reading what's new every once in a while. As for the rest though, yeah, though it could also simply be poorly written, which seems to follow with some other portions of the article. There's also the potential existence of translation issues, particularly with the particular language used, but that's neither here nor there.

Case Nine: Who Is He?
Acknowledging that it distracts from the point somewhat, the other oddity up for discussion is AI writing. This tale was written using ChatGPT, and is (admittedly barely) above the threshold to be considered totally acceptable for addition to VSBW. This is a secondary consideration to the broader problem of VSBW leaking into and corrupting the SCP wiki, but it is necessary to address it at some point, anyhow.

Yeah, I uh... don't see why you bring this up? This isn't even the first AI-made article, not by a longshot as that would be this joke scp. I really don't see how this is anything but an irrelevant tangent to something else people don't tend to like rather than being relevant to main point you're making.

Addendum One: Miscreation and Imperfectionism
Mentioned to me by @Agnaa about 15 minutes after posting the thread is this tale which, quoting him, "This one was very close to just reciting the planned tier 0 standards shortly after they were accepted". It was deleted by the author rather than the site staff, and was regarded well enough to be considered canon.

I don't see why this should be used against us when it was literally deleted? Besides that this is indeed quite blatant, but again we have common sense for a reason. We have the power to pick and choose what is allowed and what isn't for ar eason.

Also known as "If The Horse Is Being Beaten This Much, Maybe It's Time We Just Let It Die, As Nature Intended".

Summary
In the past, we have repeatedly debated whether or not the SCP Foundation (and verses very similar to it) had a place on this wiki. Concerns on this front were largely based on the notion that because of how easily one could contribute to the written works of the verse, it would not only be possible but likely that our own wiki would come to corrupt it in a way, with our terminology and ideas leaking into it resulting in a situation where pages were written with explicit knowledge about how to make a verse "meta" here- that is to say, very powerful.

We decided to let it stay, because the counterargument was always "yes, but they need double digit upvotes to be accepted, and in scenarios so far where pages were submitted with VSBW-ified lingo, they've been shut down". This debate arose again when it was made known that, yes, site users had successfully published their own articles to the SCP wiki and gotten them through the rating requirement. These pages weren't particularly grievous with their terminology, however, and so we continued to allow SCP to serve as an oft-cited exception-to-the-rule, although many similar situations saw discussion about this being hard to accept with certain sections of our membership, such as discussion on verses like the Backrooms.

Now that you're caught up on the past, I will state the obvious intent of this thread for the future: we propose that SCP be deleted, on the grounds that these general countermeasures to bad articles have failed to properly filter out Suggsverse-esque pages for the SCP wiki. There is a good amount of evidence to suggest that SCP writers not only know of VSBW and its tiering conventions (in fact, this much is downright irrefutable), but that they furthermore know how to use these conventions to boost the tiering considerations of the verse.

Thus, SCP ought to be deleted. Our one consideration that has allowed SCP to remain as that exception has been nullified.

Conclusion
SCP represents an unmitigateable problem for our wiki, in that it allows anybody to contribute and, by that measure, add to its mythos ideas pulled directly from our wiki (and thus violating our rules on the subject). Evidence strongly suggests that this has happened multiple times (and these are just what have been pulled from the hulking mass of their writing: it appears plausible if not downright likely that many other examples exist), with many SCP writers directly referencing VSBW in both serious and non-serious capacities. They have no rules against the subject, and so far we have relied solely on their rating system, whereby a page must be above -10 votes to remain on their wiki. This being a fairly lax requirement for our purposes has allowed these listed cases to exist within the SCP "canon".

As such, it is clear that SCP has become so ridden with VSBW terminology and lingo that is is impossible to separate them to the satisfaction of our wiki, and any measure less than deletion will inevitably come to be addled with the same problems: therefore, the proposal is total deletion. It has been discussed with FC/OC staff already that they would be unwilling to allow the verse onto their wiki.

Now, for the main point, since I wanted to get the competitive nitpicking out of the way early as this has thoroughly ****** up my morning.

As seen above, any actual instance of an established author interacting with literal vsbw terminology involves nothing but ridicule of whatever interpretation results in such a "high tier." Fishish basically directly insulted Tllmbrg's page through various tidbits surrounding Baroque and contradicted their own writings to **** over powerscaling questions, Placeholder very clearly didn't spend any time actually looking at our standards because, quite frankly, he didn't care because he was a writer, not a vsdebater, and there's nothing wrong with that.

These are just two examples, sure, but these are both quite prominent writers and also writers whose responses you have used in this very thread, as if the mere knowledge of vsbw existing is somehow a bad thing. Acting as if this is a consistent, coordinated effort by larger authors is factually incorrect to anyone who actually looks at what you have posted.

Additionally, your parting comments about how "SCP has become so ridden with VSBW terminology and lingo that is is impossible to separate them to the satisfaction of our wiki" shows how you really do not interact with the site enough to be making such sweeping claims. I know you don't read SCP very consistently, and I am doing my best to not mentally interpret this thread as malicious due to the actions of some users in the past, but this is just bad.

You picked a few examples of articles that used general powerscaling terminology, authors directly insulting people for asking them about vsbw tiering, at least one article that is straight up fine to anyone who isn't being overly paranoid, and a few that are legitimately bad due to being clearly made to be strong for the sake of being strong, and then claim that this is indicative of the direction the entire site is heading? SCP isn't just a few big authors writing everything, it is a collaborative project with hundreds if not thousands of active participants, all either posting tales or articles or critiquing them. There are nearly 9000 main series articles and god knows how many tales. Sure, most of what gets represented on vsbw is the highest-end stuff, but that's a selection bias for "interesting profiles" and nothing more. To claim otherwise is basically to argue that powerscaling has somehow infiltrated mainstream literature to explain the perceived increase in "powerful verses" appearing on the wiki. That's just a straight up conspiracy at that point, and a prime example of how this community becoming isolated through the forum move has lead us to eat our own dog food, our interpretations of what is and isn't "strong" influenced by what was already considered strong rather than any external and potentially more impartial basis. We are not the center of the world, we aren't even the center of powerscaling in general.

Point being, you say that this thread isn't exhaustive, but how much more is really out there? Everything here has, at one point or another, shown up on the discord server that the knowledgeables use before because we keep an eye out for this stuff. How many have managed to slip past us, when it's basically our duty to stop this from getting onto the wiki? How many more articles with vague powerscaling terminology are there, how many more authors respond negatively to questions involving vsbw tiers because they don't give a **** and are annoyed by the constant badgering questions, how many more clear actual vsbw-bait articles are there? That's not really possible to determine for sure, but I highly doubt that what is in this thread isn't a significant majority sample. It is simply not a site-wide problem as anyone who actually reads the site recreationally can tell.

In any case, sorry if this is somewhat rambly. As mentioned above, I woke up only to be greeted by the news of this thread, so not exactly an amazing time as you can imagine.

 

[Planck69]

Reading through this, I agree that removing the verse seems to be the best option on my opinion.

 

[IdiosyncraticLawyer]

In any case, sorry if this is somewhat rambly. As mentioned above, I woke up only to be greeted by the news of this thread, so not exactly an amazing time as you can imagine.

I empathize with you 100%. I also woke up to being greeted by this, and I was about to try to type out my own tirade against this thread, but you captured all my thoughts about this perfectly.

Bambu, I will say more to oppose this thread if I must, but I feel like I won't need to. In the end, far from presenting some knock-down argument sure to get SCP deleted, all you did was a cliched SCP deletion attempt, just worded more cleanly. A bluename was able to tear this down so succinctly; what do you predict will happen when Ovens, Saikou, and the rest of us come down on this thread? If anything, this attempt at killing SCP will just end with its place in the wiki cemented even more now that a staff member tried and failed to remove it. I, and everybody else here who actually read the SCP site, are telling you to get over trying to remove it. I do see this thread becoming nothing more than a colossal waste of everyone's time.

 

[Qawsedf234]

If anything, this attempt at killing SCP will just end with its place in the wiki cemented even more now that a staff member tried and failed to remove it.

If it does end like that then ultimately I think that would just be a good thing. Since it would limit future grumbling/issues rather than leaving it in a nebulous area.

 

[Roachman40]

Was given permissions to speak here via bambu, I have not read the other messages yet cus theres alot to go over, but at the moment im in agreement with the deletion

My concerns mainly lay in that SCP articles dont seem that difficult to make, which wouldnt be a big problem by itself, but due to powerscaling culture seeping into SCP it has made the problem much bigger. Articles being made that are charged by such powerscaling not only are causing problems for SCP on the wiki currently but likely will in the future as well if it somehow isnt deleted by then. That is not to say SCP doesnt keep track of these things, but more subtle articles charged by powerscaling to some degree could pass through and be accepted.

 

[Hl3_or_bust]

Was given permissions to speak here via bambu, I have not read the other messages yet cus theres alot to go over, but at the moment im in agreement with the deletion

My concerns mainly lay in that SCP articles dont seem that difficult to make, which wouldnt be a big problem by itself, but due to powerscaling culture seeping into SCP it has made the problem much bigger. Articles being made that are charged by such powerscaling not only are causing problems for SCP on the wiki currently but likely will in the future as well if it somehow isnt deleted by then. That is not to say SCP doesnt keep track of these things, but more subtle articles charged by powerscaling to some degree could pass through and be accepted.

Perms by @Sir_Ovens again

This is something that should be addressed because it's both important and unintuitive.

Anyone can post an article to an empty SCP slot, but it will be swiftly deleted as a coldpost. Instead, you are meant to go through the greenlight process, where you present a summary of your idea to the wiki for critique. This greenlight process is full of ridiculous and contradictory standards, like the whole system inherently ******* over short-but-sweet types of articles because it both wants a full and detailed summary but also has a strict word count limit where admins will literally delete part of your post if you go over it. This isn't even starting on how you will generally be getting critique from long-time viewers and other established authors, who naturally have very high standards and will absolutely obliterate your idea if it isn't matching current trends or generally extremely compelling right out of the gate.

There are a few intentional ways around this. Firstly, "established authors" who have three or more articles can ignore the greenlight process, though many opt to use it anyways. Secondly, there are various groups that exist specifically to quickly give critique to a prospective author, but this has the standards issues as mentioned above as well as bringing in issues of availability.

As you can likely discern, it is intentionally very difficult to get an article onto the wiki, even if this evidently doesn't stop some things from leaking through.

 

[Mr. Bambu]

I have been given permission by @Sir_Ovens to be able to post on this thread.

I feel the need to note that vsbw does not "own" the term "Outerversal." That is a common powerscaling term that has been used since before vsbw came into existence, so that alone being used as evidence against SCP being on the wiki doesn't sit right, particularly when that is literally the only instance of anything like the sort.

This has been discussed a few times offsite, and it isn't nearly as problematic as it is made out to be. Anyone who reads this can easily tell that Placeholder made this due to being continually badgered by incredibly blatantly leading questions. Acting as if this is the direct result of SCP being on our wiki is disingenuous at best.

Also, " shows a good grasp of our wiki for writers of the SCP wiki"? Placeholder and co. very clearly do not actually understand the systems they are being asked about. Note how he responds to 6488's perceived tiering, as he states "behaviour restricts it to low Tier 10 or Tier 11 at best." I don't think I need to explain that this is not how our system works even remotely.

I simply don't see why the angered rants of someone who was harangued by leading questions from individuals who were likely at least partially intentionally doing this to stir up trouble should be blamed on the people who actually want to engage with the writing using our systems.

See above. I don't know why you are conflating an awareness of our standards with a "competent awareness." Baroque in general is literally just Fishish being annoyed with our page and taking the opportunity to insult the creator rather than actually offer any reasonable critique. Fishish even had a similar thread to Placeholder where people were constantly asking him about stuff involved with our tiers, and he ended up describing the Department of Unreality in ways that not only contradict most writings in the canon, but also contradict literally all of his own writings in the canon

Aye, this has been a known article for a few years now. I believe we nearly changed our standards around it once, but since then we've elected to simply ignore it due to its obviously provocative nature, something that can be easily applied to the rest of these examples and any that may appear later. After all, we are the ones creating the standards that the pages on our wiki are created with, so nothing is stopping us from just using common sense.

There isn't much to say with this one, besides pointing out the existence of common sense again. I should also note that "concept" is, yet again, not a vsbw-exclusive term, but one endemic to power scaling as a whole. Still not great obviously, but you do seem to constantly take vague and general powerscaling concepts and say that their use indicates vsbw viewership a lot.

The Third Law hub argument is just straight up reaching at straws. The definition of concept given is way too clinical and the things derived from it actually make sense in the context it creates. If I am understanding your point correctly as well, you are considered a variety of foundational concepts to the SCP setting, like infohazards and antimemes, to be "vsbw-esque jargon." Hell, the idea of entities or objects that are "shadows" of something beyond perception is one of the oldest ideas in the mainline and has been there since the very first series. Secondly, this hub is quite old if I recall correctly, which sharply reduces the chances of this being an intentional effort.

As for 2510, that excerpt doesn't feel as blatant as you are making it out to be. SCP regularly goes through phases where certain cosmological elements become popular, such as the boom in narrative anomalies during the 4000 series and the noosphere stuff happening intermittedly since. Point being, a long-time reader would become aware of quite a range of cosmological elements just by reading what's new every once in a while. As for the rest though, yeah, though it could also simply be poorly written, which seems to follow with some other portions of the article. There's also the potential existence of translation issues, particularly with the particular language used, but that's neither here nor there.

Yeah, I uh... don't see why you bring this up? This isn't even the first AI-made article, not by a longshot as that would be this joke scp. I really don't see how this is anything but an irrelevant tangent to something else people don't tend to like rather than being relevant to main point you're making.

I don't see why this should be used against us when it was literally deleted? Besides that this is indeed quite blatant, but again we have common sense for a reason. We have the power to pick and choose what is allowed and what isn't for ar eason.

Now, for the main point, since I wanted to get the competitive nitpicking out of the way early as this has thoroughly ****** up my morning.

As seen above, any actual instance of an established author interacting with literal vsbw terminology involves nothing but ridicule of whatever interpretation results in such a "high tier." Fishish basically directly insulted Tllmbrg's page through various tidbits surrounding Baroque and contradicted their own writings to **** over powerscaling questions, Placeholder very clearly didn't spend any time actually looking at our standards because, quite frankly, he didn't care because he was a writer, not a vsdebater, and there's nothing wrong with that.

These are just two examples, sure, but these are both quite prominent writers and also writers whose responses you have used in this very thread, as if the mere knowledge of vsbw existing is somehow a bad thing. Acting as if this is a consistent, coordinated effort by larger authors is factually incorrect to anyone who actually looks at what you have posted.

Additionally, your parting comments about how "SCP has become so ridden with VSBW terminology and lingo that is is impossible to separate them to the satisfaction of our wiki" shows how you really do not interact with the site enough to be making such sweeping claims. I know you don't read SCP very consistently, and I am doing my best to not mentally interpret this thread as malicious due to the actions of some users in the past, but this is just bad.

You picked a few examples of articles that used general powerscaling terminology, authors directly insulting people for asking them about vsbw tiering, at least one article that is straight up fine to anyone who isn't being overly paranoid, and a few that are legitimately bad due to being clearly made to be strong for the sake of being strong, and then claim that this is indicative of the direction the entire site is heading? SCP isn't just a few big authors writing everything, it is a collaborative project with hundreds if not thousands of active participants, all either posting tales or articles or critiquing them. There are nearly 9000 main series articles and god knows how many tales. Sure, most of what gets represented on vsbw is the highest-end stuff, but that's a selection bias for "interesting profiles" and nothing more. To claim otherwise is basically to argue that powerscaling has somehow infiltrated mainstream literature to explain the perceived increase in "powerful verses" appearing on the wiki. That's just a straight up conspiracy at that point, and a prime example of how this community becoming isolated through the forum move has lead us to eat our own dog food, our interpretations of what is and isn't "strong" influenced by what was already considered strong rather than any external and potentially more impartial basis. We are not the center of the world, we aren't even the center of powerscaling in general.

Point being, you say that this thread isn't exhaustive, but how much more is really out there? Everything here has, at one point or another, shown up on the discord server that the knowledgeables use before because we keep an eye out for this stuff. How many have managed to slip past us, when it's basically our duty to stop this from getting onto the wiki? How many more articles with vague powerscaling terminology are there, how many more authors respond negatively to questions involving vsbw tiers because they don't give a **** and are annoyed by the constant badgering questions, how many more clear actual vsbw-bait articles are there? That's not really possible to determine for sure, but I highly doubt that what is in this thread isn't a significant majority sample. It is simply not a site-wide problem as anyone who actually reads the site recreationally can tell.

In any case, sorry if this is somewhat rambly. As mentioned above, I woke up only to be greeted by the news of this thread, so not exactly an amazing time as you can imagine.

A lot of this touches on points that I'm not making, so I'll try to be succinct in addressing it (hopefully to satisfaction, given that you have limited ability to speak here- I realize you may want to argue your point further but rest assured we're watching the "commoner's thread" on the subject).

I feel the need to note that vsbw does not "own" the term "Outerversal." That is a common powerscaling term that has been used since before vsbw came into existence, so that alone being used as evidence against SCP being on the wiki doesn't sit right, particularly when that is literally the only instance of anything like the sort.

This isn't the point. The point is to demonstrate that SCP writers have working knowledge of our terminology and tiering system. You do not contend against this.

This has been discussed a few times offsite, and it isn't nearly as problematic as it is made out to be. Anyone who reads this can easily tell that Placeholder made this due to being continually badgered by incredibly blatantly leading questions. Acting as if this is the direct result of SCP being on our wiki is disingenuous at best.

I don't really have much to say here other than that I disagree, I think it is precisely as problematic as it is made out to be. The fact that fairly notable SCP writers are answering direct questions regarding the scaling of their characters using VSBW terminology is an indefensible piece of evidence of VSBW bleeding into SCP, which was the point of this article's inclusion.

Also, " shows a good grasp of our wiki for writers of the SCP wiki"? Placeholder and co. very clearly do not actually understand the systems they are being asked about. Note how he responds to 6488's perceived tiering, as he states "behaviour restricts it to low Tier 10 or Tier 11 at best." I don't think I need to explain that this is not how our system works even remotely.

I don't understand how this illustrates a lack of knowledge of our system, although perhaps it is the sweeping nature of the lowball (since I can't think of any other character that would inhabit those tiers)? Either way, in the same article he is addressing other tiering related notions that are competently answered. I don't see any issue.

I simply don't see why the angered rants of someone who was harangued by leading questions from individuals who were likely at least partially intentionally doing this to stir up trouble should be blamed on the people who actually want to engage with the writing using our systems.

You're characterizing it as an angered rant. I think it is an agitated but still reasonably measured response to the wiki's users constantly pestering him and the other writers involved in the article.

See above. I don't know why you are conflating an awareness of our standards with a "competent awareness." Baroque in general is literally just Fishish being annoyed with our page and taking the opportunity to insult the creator rather than actually offer any reasonable critique. Fishish even had a similar thread to Placeholder where people were constantly asking him about stuff involved with our tiers, and he ended up describing the Department of Unreality in ways that not only contradict most writings in the canon, but also contradict literally all of his own writings in the canon

If this is much the same position as the above then I don't feel the need to confront it. You're claiming they're incompetent regarding our systems, I just don't think that's true. Moving on.

Aye, this has been a known article for a few years now. I believe we nearly changed our standards around it once, but since then we've elected to simply ignore it due to its obviously provocative nature, something that can be easily applied to the rest of these examples and any that may appear later. After all, we are the ones creating the standards that the pages on our wiki are created with, so nothing is stopping us from just using common sense.

It's good we're in agreement about some of this, at least- that there is verifiable contamination on the SCP wiki in a very much serious capacity (and this is only what is blatant: what is less so can only be speculated about, as mentioned earlier in the thread).

There isn't much to say with this one, besides pointing out the existence of common sense again. I should also note that "concept" is, yet again, not a vsbw-exclusive term, but one endemic to power scaling as a whole. Still not great obviously, but you do seem to constantly take vague and general powerscaling concepts and say that their use indicates vsbw viewership a lot.

Ditto to the last one, although I find contempt in the characterization of reaching for anything as evidence of VSBW-rot. It is not the word concept but rather its usage, inappropriately in that particular article but in a way that is common lingo here on VSBW. You don't address this even though this is the point. Still, as you accept that this is a powerscaling-centric instance of SCP writing, I feel no need to split hairs over whether they're appealing to VSBW or some other place, that consideration means essentially nothing to me.

The Third Law hub argument is just straight up reaching at straws. The definition of concept given is way too clinical and the things derived from it actually make sense in the context it creates. If I am understanding your point correctly as well, you are considered a variety of foundational concepts to the SCP setting, like infohazards and antimemes, to be "vsbw-esque jargon." Hell, the idea of entities or objects that are "shadows" of something beyond perception is one of the oldest ideas in the mainline and has been there since the very first series. Secondly, this hub is quite old if I recall correctly, which sharply reduces the chances of this being an intentional effort.

As for 2510, that excerpt doesn't feel as blatant as you are making it out to be. SCP regularly goes through phases where certain cosmological elements become popular, such as the boom in narrative anomalies during the 4000 series and the noosphere stuff happening intermittedly since. Point being, a long-time reader would become aware of quite a range of cosmological elements just by reading what's new every once in a while. As for the rest though, yeah, though it could also simply be poorly written, which seems to follow with some other portions of the article. There's also the potential existence of translation issues, particularly with the particular language used, but that's neither here nor there.

I really don't think it is. The definition of concept there is identical to our definitions of it, which is not "clinical" or in broad use outside the powerscaling community. I think it presents strong evidence of at least awareness of us (or, to sate your want for generality, powerscaling in general). And, no. Those terms aren't "VSBW-esque jargon", I didn't claim they were. I don't have much more to say on that front aside from correcting the misconception, so second paragraph time.

It does feel blatant to me. And onto the rest of your point, I ought to note that much of this was brought to me, including this bit, with these particular points circled in red: I agreed that they were questionable at best, and so onto the thread they go. This isn't something you can characterize as me going overboard in my interpretations.

Yeah, I uh... don't see why you bring this up? This isn't even the first AI-made article, not by a longshot as that would be this joke scp. I really don't see how this is anything but an irrelevant tangent to something else people don't tend to like rather than being relevant to main point you're making.

There is at the very least some chance SCP isn't deleted as this thread sets out to. I think it is more likely it is, but then, I don't have broad-reaching knowledge of that. As such, I include this as another anomaly (hah) that should receive discussion: articles generated by AI seems worthy of mention. So it isn't relevant to the idea of SCP having lots and lots of VSBW bleed-in, but it is relevant to discussing weird problems that SCP has. Hence. Inclusion.

I don't see why this should be used against us when it was literally deleted? Besides that this is indeed quite blatant, but again we have common sense for a reason. We have the power to pick and choose what is allowed and what isn't for ar eason.

I'm not sure you've really understood the point of the thread, so I'll explain it here for convenience. The thread aims to cast reasonable doubt on the SCP wiki as a whole for being susceptible to outside influences (specifically those originating from powerscaling communities such as our own). As such, evidence of such corruptions being extremely blatant (such as this one here) are relevant to the conversation, even if they were deleted. It is doubly relevant since the writer of the article deleted it, rather than the site staff: it was within acceptability standards of their site, and almost well enough in to be used for our wiki. Had the author not deleted it, this would be a tiersetter that is explicitly viable for our wiki. The only reason it isn't of concern now is because the writer chose to remove it.

As seen above, any actual instance of an established author interacting with literal vsbw terminology involves nothing but ridicule of whatever interpretation results in such a "high tier." Fishish basically directly insulted Tllmbrg's page through various tidbits surrounding Baroque and contradicted their own writings to **** over powerscaling questions, Placeholder very clearly didn't spend any time actually looking at our standards because, quite frankly, he didn't care because he was a writer, not a vsdebater, and there's nothing wrong with that.

The point directly above wrote a very serious article deliberately to get to Tier 0 per our new standards. The fact is that that they don't use VSBW terminology directly just implies that they're smart enough to at least give a half-hearted attempt to hide it. Yes, there are articles that ridicule our processes here, or at least dismiss how they're currently being applied (the Placeholder Q&A, specifically). But that is not all instances of VSBW-bleed, and you know it.

Additionally, your parting comments about how "SCP has become so ridden with VSBW terminology and lingo that is is impossible to separate them to the satisfaction of our wiki" shows how you really do not interact with the site enough to be making such sweeping claims. I know you don't read SCP very consistently, and I am doing my best to not mentally interpret this thread as malicious due to the actions of some users in the past, but this is just bad.

I will offer you the same courtesy of not actively trying to sound mean, yes. You interpret this to mean, perhaps, that every SCP article has VSBW lingo. This is obviously not the case, nor is that ever asserted. It is asserted that SCP is ridden with VSBW terminology to the point that we cannot trust that every currently deemed acceptable SCP article is in fact not the result of VSBW-bleed. That is the assertion. If you feel that is "just bad" then so be it, really, I have little else to say on the subject if you don't even really understand my position.

You picked a few examples of articles that used general powerscaling terminology, authors directly insulting people for asking them about vsbw tiering, at least one article that is straight up fine to anyone who isn't being overly paranoid, and a few that are legitimately bad due to being clearly made to be strong for the sake of being strong, and then claim that this is indicative of the direction the entire site is heading? SCP isn't just a few big authors writing everything, it is a collaborative project with hundreds if not thousands of active participants, all either posting tales or articles or critiquing them. There are nearly 9000 main series articles and god knows how many tales. Sure, most of what gets represented on vsbw is the highest-end stuff, but that's a selection bias for "interesting profiles" and nothing more. To claim otherwise is basically to argue that powerscaling has somehow infiltrated mainstream literature to explain the perceived increase in "powerful verses" appearing on the wiki. That's just a straight up conspiracy at that point, and a prime example of how this community becoming isolated through the forum move has lead us to eat our own dog food, our interpretations of what is and isn't "strong" influenced by what was already considered strong rather than any external and potentially more impartial basis. We are not the center of the world, we aren't even the center of powerscaling in general.

Point being, you say that this thread isn't exhaustive, but how much more is really out there? Everything here has, at one point or another, shown up on the discord server that the knowledgeables use before because we keep an eye out for this stuff. How many have managed to slip past us, when it's basically our duty to stop this from getting onto the wiki? How many more articles with vague powerscaling terminology are there, how many more authors respond negatively to questions involving vsbw tiers because they don't give a **** and are annoyed by the constant badgering questions, how many more clear actual vsbw-bait articles are there? That's not really possible to determine for sure, but I highly doubt that what is in this thread isn't a significant majority sample. It is simply not a site-wide problem as anyone who actually reads the site recreationally can tell.

This mostly boils down to direct disparaging remarks on my character and so I ask that if you intend to continue to post your positions here, understanding of mine or otherwise, that you refrain from this. "overly paranoid"? As mentioned, much of this was brought to me from elsewhere. I peddle it forward as a formal staff decision because so much of it was brought forward that it demanded official consideration of the fact that yes, we, VSBW, are having an impact on the SCP wiki and how it is being written, specifically to achieve Tiers. That much is something you have already agreed about, and the fact that you don't care to look further and see what all is iffy at best, is extremely concerning. Especially if you are one of the primary SCP people working on the site.

Every ounce of skepticism should be afforded to this situation, as it is no longer paranoia if it is proven true. And it is. It is true that VSBW is pouring into SCP, and you don't seem the least bit concerned about that other than offering a general trust that people will naturally filter it out. That is my stance on this subject.

 

[Mr. Bambu]

I empathize with you 100%. I also woke up to being greeted by this, and I was about to try to type out my own tirade against this thread, but you captured all my thoughts about this perfectly.

Bambu, I will say more to oppose this thread if I must, but I feel like I won't need to. In the end, far from presenting some knock-down argument sure to get SCP deleted, all you did was a cliched SCP deletion attempt, just worded more cleanly. A bluename was able to tear this down so succinctly; what do you predict will happen when Ovens, Saikou, and the rest of us come down on this thread? If anything, this attempt at killing SCP will just end with its place in the wiki cemented even more now that a staff member tried and failed to remove it. I, and everybody else here who actually read the SCP site, are telling you to get over trying to remove it. I do see this thread becoming nothing more than a colossal waste of everyone's time.

If you could withhold your insults for the thread's completion, perhaps saving them for a Twitlonger, I'd be much obliged. Grow up or don't speak here.

 

[IdiosyncraticLawyer]

If you could withhold your insults for the thread's completion, perhaps saving them for a Twitlonger, I'd be much obliged. Grow up or don't speak here.

I apologize. I was a bit groggy when I typed that out, so my tone got a bit carried away when I was trying to make my points.

 

[Hl3_or_bust]

Final post under perms granted by @Sir_Ovens

I'm switching from a point-by-point approach to something more comprehensive, half because of the permissions thing I have been informed of and half because Bambu's response is somewhat baffling to me. Note that I said his argument, not him personally.

I think the fundamental issue here is that Bambu believes that bleed-over is both a nuke-on-sight-worthy offense and widespread. The former is a simply asinine position, as it is an inevitable result of vsbw or powerscaling in general being popular. It is not a good thing and it should be filtered out wherever possible, but it is not something that can be entirely prevented without excessively invasive and extreme methods that would do nothing but kill any fandom it came into contact with. The latter is simple false. This isn't something that can be conclusively proven for somewhat obvious reasons, but many people who read SCP on their own time will agree with me when I say that it really isn't common to any degree. Bambu himself admits that he hasn't read much SCP or even really the articles in question, merely having excerpts with offending portions highlighted sent to him for use in this thread. Going from this alone and with the benefit of the doubt that Bambu did read the rest of the articles he was send parts of, the idea that not only is vsbw terminology and bleed-over common, but not universal as I never said nor implied that, but that authors who disparage it are "simply smart enough to hide their use of it" is outright conspiratorial.

This is not an attack of Bambu's character, but his arguments and the basis on which they are made. I am concerned that vsbw is influencing SCP. I've read from the SCP wiki for well over ten years. It is something enjoyed greatly for that time, even when the trends of articles were going in ways I didn't particularly enjoy. To see all of this get buried under self-masturbatory godmodding and gloating would be a tragedy of monumental proportions. Thankfully, this position is held by most people on the wiki itself. Even though there is definitely stuff of such a nature in there, it is very rare, and the overwhelming majority of content has no regard for powerscaling or similar nonsense. Of course, this is all in regards to the SCP wiki itself, but the point remains, as I and some others occasionally use vsbw as a resource for finding interesting articles.

I simply find Bambu's proposition excessively total. None of the articles he uses as evidence for his position of deleting SCP have come up in other contexts, either due to being intentionally not used by knowledgeables, being obscure in general, or simply not being relevant to anything. Again, I know this is not an exhaustive list, but there is definitely not huge swathes of vsbw-influenced content out there, something that can be indirectly discerned from simply reading from the wiki for a decent length of time. This thread likely lists a significant majority of it, and thus to claim widespread corruption from it is an overgeneralization of comical proportions. SCP's systems are obviously not perfect at filtering it out and I have never said that they are, but it definitely does help to a notable extent.

And no, Bambu, I am not insulting you personally but correctly pointing out that you aren't exactly an SCP regular and thus do not know what the context of the overall wiki looks like. Calling that an attack on your person is farcical. In fact, if anything, you are the one attacking people's characters, as you say that we "should already agree on this" and that it's concerning that I don't. Maybe I just don't agree with you? There isn't something wrong with people just because they don't share your viewpoint, and your insinuation that I am somehow undeserving of calling myself a knowledgeable because I disagree with you is extremely insulting and unbecoming of a staff member. That's also not a personal insult, that's pointing out that you are held to higher standards of conduct than me.

 

[Colonel_Krukov]

OP can put me down for disagree with deletion.

 

[DarkDragonMedeus]

I am hardly invested in the verse, but based on what I have read, I think Agnaa is being most reasonable.

 

[CloverDragon03]

I've had this sentiment before, so I'll express it here: I agree with the deletion of SCP