Regarding author statements from Twitter, Facebook and other social media (Staff Only)

So some points about WOG was brought up in this thread, which is that we should stop using Twitter and other social media as credible WOG-statements. One, because you can't in most cases prove that whoever made that statement wasnt an intern using the account, the other being it is "too easy" to inflate a verse by proding a specific answer out of an author.

So what do the rest of you think, should WOG from Twitter , Facebook, Ask.fm etc be banned from being applied entirely?

Verses affected by this is Transformers. Characters like Unicron's low 1-C rating relies entirely on a Facebook post, so the verse would be 2-A if it couldnt be applied.

Other verses affected are God of War to some extent. Obviously there are probably many more verses affected, but those are the ones I know of.

NOTE: STAFF ONLY

For the second point, that's not an issue just for social media sites like twitter. Any statements that come from a leading question should be disregarded (with a couple exceptions, for instance statements that are unrelated to, but said in response of, a leading question). That can be judged case-by-case. Statements coming from an intern is an interesting argument, though I've not heard of any cases where this has really happened.

The real issue with WoG from social media is that it's an informal setting, and the author isn't going to take much care 99% of the time in answering these questions. I feel like if a statement is thoughtful (i.e. a lot of detail went into the post) and the original question wasn't leading, then it's alright to use no matter the platform.

IMO It depends entirely on how the information was requested. Like, asking for a general explanation on something is fine, but asking if a character can do things not shown or even related to their story is not. Its for this exact reason that we dont use 99% of WoG statements for verses like Godzilla, because the wog statements were garnered from questions asked specifically to wank Goji's feats.

I agree with both of you, and the thing about interns, it's because since Stan Lee has intern using his account, even presumably when he was still alive, it means that we must assume all accounts on Twitter are used by interns until the opposite is proved...

And I agree with both of you, we should use WOG if the author isnt answering leading question or stuff not brought up in the series. Especially if the answer is thoughtful

Assuming every single twitter account is using interns is incredibly stupid.

But WoG is generally scrutinized either way, and is usually only used to back something up/clarify something.

We already have rules that prevent using author statements by themselves and require in verse information to be used.

Doorinmyhouse said:

I agree with both of you, and the thing about interns, it's because since Stan Lee has intern using his account, even presumably when he was still alive, it means that we must assume all accounts on Twitter are used by interns until the opposite is proved...

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This seems like a very extreme example...

Ogbunabali said:

Assuming every single twitter account is using interns is incredibly stupid.

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GyroNutz said:

This seems like a very extreme example...

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I agree, it is a proof by example fallacy. it is what Dragomer, ProfessorKukui4Life and Ionliosite was proposing and agreeing about.

Since Transformerverse doesnt actually at any point suggest that their verse is a uncountably infinite multiverse, only that their multiverse is infinite, should it be downgraded from low 1-C to 2-A?

Since Transformerverse doesnt actually at any point suggest that their verse is a uncountably infinite multiverse, only that their multiverse is infinite, should it be downgraded from low 1-C to 2-A?

Not really. Considering the statements come from an in character lore perspective, it isn't contradicted from in verse statements and it's just adding to an already established infinite multiverse. I'd say the Low 1-C is fine to stay.

If you ask me, this is one of the better examples of how we should use these types of statements.

Int an infinite multiverse only 2-A though?

Yeah, but uncountably infinite multiverse would be Low 1-C.

How so? From what ive been told you need a lot more than just a big number to be 5-D

Well because uncountably infinite R^4 would the same cardinality as R^5.

The current tiering system isn't exclusively dimensional tiering now, rather we use the "size" of the dimensions, so to speak, as a measuring sticks to get the tiers.

Not anymore. Ever since we abandoned dimensional tiering stacking infinite's is an easy way to get a higher tier.

Zach stacking infinities won't get you anywhere close to being uncountably infinite. You need more than that.

So would an infinite number of 2-A multiverses that multiplies exponentially in size multiple times every second be Low 1-C?

Would need context, but mostly likely not. It would be "At least 2-A" though, for being infinitely above baseline in any case.

Although this is really dealing at this point. We should probably stop.

no, it would still not reach uncountable infinite. you cant really reach uncountable infinite just by multiplying infinite infinite amount of times.

@Og youre right, i'll take it to Discord

Okay, on the main topic

I feel like the biggest issue with author questions is when they're asked in terms of vs debates, as was the case with 2-A rick Sanchez

About Twitter, Facebook, ask.fm or any "social media" being used... It is not a problem. Let's go back into the past when letters were the main means of communication, authors or producers would read letters received by fans and sometimes answer questions from fans, sometimes it could appear on magazine pages just answering fan questions. Sometimes an author can't find a convenient space to put some information and then he takes advantage of this "Q&A" to do that

Information is information no matter where it is spread, a multimedia franchise can fragment its information among many media to be able to disseminate it more than normal, making you have to read advertising material that comes in a magazine to understand something what happened.

We are in the age of social media, so it is more than normal for social media to get into it. Digimon in the last few years has had whole stories being published on Twitter because the producers thought it would be a good way to get close to the fans, it's not like we're going to deny trivias and whole stories simply because it was revealed on Twitter or Facebook, currently they are just a very efficient means of disseminating information.

If someone wanted to answer the fans, they would have to wait maybe weeks or months to get space in a magazine or book to be able to do that. If he wants to respond on twitter or facebook, he will be saving time and space, would we disregard the information simply because it is being disseminated in a more efficient way?

And there is not even the question of "he answering this completely changes the way in which this scene was understood, beyond anything indicated in the original work".

Sometimes ... This is exactly what happens. Nowadays with more meta works, it is not difficult for a digital comic or video on youtube to mean something, but then someone discovers that on the author's page looking at the source code there is an encrypted text that transforms a cute story of magical animals into a story of terror involving monsters that absorb souls. Sometimes the nature of these stories is just to change as you observe more information. And let's face it, if we accept "information hidden in the source code of a page that belongs to the author" as a source of information, tweets or facebook messages are even less strange.

And even "The questions asked by fans directing an answer corrupts the author to answer something in a biased way", is not exactly an adequate criticism.

This is to assume that the author exists as something sacred, that if the fan interacts with it, it will corrupt and everything that comes out of it is invalid. No, sometimes the author will rely on the fan to answer something, and sometimes it can become something more important. If a fan asks the age of a character "Is he 17?" and the author replies "We don't think about an age for the character, but 17 makes sense". This will not make it invalid because the idea came from the fan, the author will simply take advantage of the fan idea and use it to answer the question. And nowadays with authors wanting to get closer to the fans, even more so with those who guarantee that the reader's word is as important, or more, as the author's, this is just getting even more common.

"But we are talking about questions about powers (Or power level) that were never presented in the work itself" ... yes ... it is no different than asking the age of a character even though the age has never been mentioned before. Here, we sometimes have the impression that "power level" is something different from the rest of the work, while it is not. It is a mechanism of the work that suffers from all the problems of other mechanisms, such as inconsistencies, and we only treat it differently because we were more directed to believe that it is something different.

Of course, I understand why we think "He asked if the multiverse is infinite even though its size has never been indicated at work before" as wrong, but as I write this, I started to notice more and more than with the way it some jobs are done today ... it's just a normal mechanism for how something is built. We are in a different era in which the distance between author and fan is narrowing more and more, and social media is making this contact even easier. If there are franchises that are based on this, and on even more complicated and strange methods, it is not as if we could simply disregard these methods, after all today they are valid.

So all that remains is to use subjectivity to try to affirm that "this is valid and that is not", but it will remain subjective in most cases.

I agree with Executor. Honestly looks to me like a case-by-case basis.

We already disregard WoG on many things unless it fits with the story's plot and is consistent with its feats.

Ok, so what I'm getting from this, if an author answers a question that isn't a leading question, if the answer isnt contradicted by in verse statements and simply adds to something already established within that verse, and the answer is thoughtful, the WOG statement can be used?

Regardless if the statements come from a Guidebook, Interview, Twitter and other social media etc?

Do we still count bill ciphers reddit interview as canon?

So highlight?

Doorinmyhouse said:

Ok, so what I'm getting from this, if an author answers a question that isn't a leading question, if the answer isnt contradicted by in verse statements and simply adds to something already established within that verse, and the answer is thoughtful, the WOG statement can be used?
Regardless if the statements come from a Guidebook, Interview, Twitter and other social media etc?

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Pretty much. If nothing contradicts anything and only adds on top of it, we can use it.

And it shouldn't be like anything like trolling Kamiya or shit. Guy literally blocked his own company.

@Executor

You wrote quite a lot so im only going to address part of that reply of yours.

Executor N0 said:

We are in the age of social media, so it is more than normal for social media to get into it. Digimon in the last few years has had whole stories being published on Twitter because the producers thought it would be a good way to get close to the fans, it's not like we're going to deny trivias and whole stories simply because it was revealed on Twitter or Facebook, currently they are just a very efficient means of disseminating information.

If someone wanted to answer the fans, they would have to wait maybe weeks or months to get space in a magazine or book to be able to do that. If he wants to respond on twitter or facebook, he will be saving time and space, would we disregard the information simply because it is being disseminated in a more efficient way?

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I dont think you fully understand the main issue thats being addressed here Executor. No one here, not me or the others who argued about this in the thread the OP linked, said anything about denying entire stories just because they come from social media. Why would we? It's quite obviously information that is well detailed, took time to answer and it coming from social media wouldnt change its legitimacy. It would only increase it if anything.

What we're arguing against is being able to strictly use author answers from social media if it doesnt come from an official interview, databook, guidebook or anything similar to the former 3 things. Especially if people are going to try and use them to argue for tiers that other verses would normally need FAR bigger evidence than that to ever reach.

Your point about how social media can be "more efficient" can be used right back against you too. Because as it would be very efficient for authors to use social media to engage with fans, it's also very easy for fans to use it to engage with authors. To spam them with many different questions to extract answers and annoy them with it despite it not being their job to ask those kind of questions. Which is part of why some of us have huge disbelief in these answers being legit, especially on platforms that limit the amount of information put in replies like Twitter.

I'll comment on more of this later on because I have schoolwork to deal with soon. But I do want to point out one thing I said earlier in regards to this:

Even if answers from social media posts have some kind of backing to them, and are acceptable under some conditions, we absolutely shouldn't accept any of them to use as justifications ludicriously high tiers like 2-A and higher.....like seriously? Have we fallen so low that we're going to be desperate enough to turn to social media platforms to scrap together evidences for tiers that, normally, require far more extraordinary justifications than that?

Tiers like those shouldn't be so freaking easy to reach just because of small social media comments instead of in-canon material. An interview? Completely fine. Databook? Fine too. Hell, a guidebook? I can live with that. But social media??? It should be harder and harder to reach those tiers using actual concrete evidence. For us to sit here and casually accept such low-tier evidence like this to upgrade verses to tiers that other verses would normally need FAR bigger evidence to reach is just.......no.

Even if we assume the author just decided to ignore industry standard of having his social media on lockdown to not damage the brand in case of a problem or a drunk rant and thus you say it's the author even without proof, unless it's part of some independent from the fans's commercial post like a 'did you know X ?' to hype up a future release, it hold no weight, it's a social media post and if on twitter, you litteraly can't elaborate on it at all so you have at best to boil it down to the most basic shit / normie friendly or 'close enough' explaination, which given how our standard get after a certain tier is completly unnacceptable.

Efficiency =/= accuracy =/= credibility, sure it's more convenient for the author to answer while taking a shit but i don't see how it make it as valid as an answer in a professional setting with the express purpose of explaining stuff and with the backing / approval of the full team team like in an interview or a databook.

Seriously, even asking the author around a drink at a random bar would be a more set in stone answer than a social media post and neither of them are credible proof since he could just be saying that without actualy thinking of the verse's cosmology or what the people he work with think about it.

And in general, accepting social media shit when we already examine every guide, databook and interview info before accepting them or rejecting them is just dumb.

Also i'll point out AGAIN we litteraly have a rule saying to not go and annoy any authors on social media for VS debate purposes, accepting that kind of stuff is just giving an incentive to people to break the rule.

Call @Matt here lmao.

Again, no one is telling anyone to go harass authors like this. We're just saying that if we happen to find some tweet where the author explains the verse in detail in response to fan questions that are polite and it's consistent with what the author's verse shows and matches it, then it's okay.

But if the verse shows nothing like this (For example, the author cries 2-A but there is no 2-A stuff in the verse), then it's an actual no-no. But if there is 2-A stuff in it confirmed by guides, databooks and the author confirms it to be the case and solidifies it even further, I see no harm in using that.

Simply put, we should look at this all case-by-case (yeah, I hate this term we have abused on this site time and time again), but we need context. How were these twitter posts given? What was the content in these posts? How detailed are these posts?

There's a stark difference between shit like this.

And a creator being asked if the Multiverse has infinite higher dimensions and the creator going "Yeah, sure" and us using that to support High 1-B whatever.

Look at the context of how the information was given, look at the detail of the information given and see how it applies to the series as a whole and if it's consistent. Otherwise throw it out. Not all Twitter answers are the same beast and we shouldn't just generalize them under a single umbrella. Just as it can be abused to fish answers from creators, it can also be a quick, convenient and easy way for creators to expand on their works and explain things that they may or may not have forgot to detail in their product. Basically it's a double-edged sword that should be met with instant scrutiny and only accepted if the information given can be proven to be something that can be used and isn't clearly a way to upgrade the verse in a very cheap way. See the ye old DMC and Bayonetta fiasco.

No one is telling to do it but we litteraly give an incentive to do so because it may get your fav at 2-A instantly like with transformer.

Except that is not how it's currently used and it's not how the discussion that led to this thread was using it.

Dragonmasterxyz said:

Simply put, we should look at this all case-by-case (yeah, I hate this term we have abused on this site time and time again), but we need context. How were these twitter posts given? What was the content in these posts? How detailed are these posts?
There's a stark difference between shit like this.

And a creator being asked if the Multiverse has infinite higher dimensions and the creator going "Yeah, sure" and us using that to support High 1-B whatever.

Look at the context of how the information was given, look at the detail of the information given and see how it applies to the series as a whole and if it's consistent. Otherwise throw it out. Not all Twitter answers are the same beast and we shouldn't just generalize them under a single umbrella. Just as it can be abused to fish answers from creators, it can also be a quick, convenient and easy way for creators to expand on their works and explain things that they may or may not have forgot to detail in their product. Basically it's a double-edged sword that should be met with instant scrutiny and only accepted if the information given can be proven to be something that can be used and isn't clearly a way to upgrade the verse in a very cheap way. See the ye old DMC and Bayonetta fiasco.

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Also, a reliable twitter statement alone should not be what upgrades a verse. It should in fact be supported by the media and be only one thing that supports it. Alone it does nothing, but with support from the series and other reliable sources should be what upgrades a verse. I disagree with us just throwing out twitter statements for evidence for higher tiers instantly, but I also disagree with us using them as the end all be all evidence for higher tiers.

@Dragonmasterxyz That I can get behind. Twitter posts and the like should at the end of the day be completely secondary evidence for an upgrade and at best just show that the author agrees with his characters holding such power in a narrative sense. But using a post alone to make a character Low 1-C or something is a terrible standard to allow.

Personally, interviews are the most accurate (or least contradictory) sources of WoG since the authors would have actually had time to think things through before giving out information about their work. There can be contradictions but I'd put more stock in that then a place where an author could just say whatever seems to fit.

What Planck and dragon said.

And of course, this is only after the statements are evaluated and agreed to be usable.

I've highlighted this btw.

Basically what Dragomer and Planck said. At the moment some people here attempt to treat these social media author statements as high tier primary evidences for a verse when, for the reasons given, it's incredibly flawed.

Of course im not saying all cases are and have to be the same, but it certainly must raise a red flag when verses who have the luxary of using in-canon material for arguments get upgrades rejected, yet another verse gets an upgrade of the same caliber and everything under the su through something thats not even established in their canon.

We already have rules in place for these sort of things though.

Since this concerns a wiki policy issue, and to avoid that the discussion turns too crowded and chaotic, I will move this to the staff forum.

Since the OP, me, Dragomer and Planck were the ones who originally started this discussion, would it be fine for us to leave replies here still?

If not, then you can delete this reply I made.