Tags Discussion

Do you want tags to return?

  • Total voters
    53
Great to see and read you, Bev! :disco:

Reflecting on this, I think what's most glaring to me is how fanciful the notion is that we somehow all have the same standards of what is and isn't acceptable, which underlines the fundamental issue with bringing them back as they were and hoping for the best.
 
Sorry Bev, but I completely disagree. The fact is someone’s mental health is more important than the joy someone gets out of tagging. It’s clear that right now is not the right time to discuss this matter. I’m saying we park it for now, let everyone calm down and then we discuss it at a later date in the future, it’s only been three months since no tags, let’s pick a date some months in the future and then perhaps discuss it then. This gives people time to ruminate over things, let the admin and mod team discuss it, perhaps come up with a number of different workable solutions that are going to be realistic and we take from there.
 
I’m not really sure that by parking it right now and discussing at a later date is going to make a blind bit of difference. People have aired their views, and we now need to look at a way that is the best way forward for everyone.
 
I'm trying to drag myself away from this today because I spent so much time reading and typing on my phone last night, but I think Beverley summed up a lot of what I'm feeling more articulately than I could, and pointed out some things that I hadn't really considered either.

I think my thoughts in summary are as follow though, and apologies for some repetition:

- I have felt hurt and anxious as a result of tags in the past, but think that the poster(s) would have found ways of achieving that regardless of whether there were tags or not. Whether that was the result of stress on their end or just something that brought them joy I don't know. The difference was that tags granted them a bit of anonymity.

- A few posters have had tags made that were more personal and insulting than the ones about me, so I feel a bit guilty for posting so much. My headspace at the time was not great which caused mine to sting more than they might have other people.

- If tags return, I would like them to at the very least be attached to a username. I would not quit if tags returned; it would depend on their use.

- We need to continue to be open about discussing these things, and not roll our eyes when someone comes to the forefront and says they're uncomfortable about something. As Bev pointed out, for the bulk of people who have shared thoughts on this Moopy is more than just a forum. That's obvious from the time put in and the relationships. And that's not something to be embarrassed about (though I'd still never tell a friend to come here as 60 percent of my posts make me want to curl up and hide).

I've read the thread back and it really hasn't been a futile discussion. Pretty much everyone handled their points well, especially now that we can look at it away from the stress of the moment.
 
I think everybody needs to make peace with the fact that this is never going to be a painless process. Tags are deeply embedded in the identity of this place, particularly in how the forum sees itself. So let the discussions be open, lets move past the discomfort and lets try to work from the place that everybody wants the forum to be a fun place.

Nobody needs to talk to me about mental health; I've not posted for three months because of this debacle. And to be quite frank with you, unless the admin and mods have been discussing what to do in that time, I think there are others on this forum who can keep it moving forward.
 
What I'm trying to say really is that the tags were symptomatic of the culture of the board, and not the core of the problem in itself. I enjoy posting here, clearly, but we can be cruel and dismissive, and the only way to address that fully is through open discussion and reflection. I know I've felt harassed here in ways totally to tags in the past, and I'm sure I'm one of many.

I do think however that if removing tags helps to bring us forward then we shouldn't go back on that.
 
I agree with Bev and Chlammy. If we want to get to a certain place, i.e. a decision about tags, and there's a difficult conversation standing in the way, let's have it.
 
It can't just be an free-for-all argument though. As Bev says, it would need to be structured with moderation and facilitation, I'm not sure what the terms of these things are. I'm also not sure if we have the INFRASTRUCTURE
 
And let's stop behaving as if there are only one or two people whose mental health is affected by this. Doing so not only ignores the people subjected to shitty tags, but reinforces forum hierarchies that people are so insistent don't actually exist.
 
The admin and mod team had a very detailed discussion about this whole thing back in May and June when this all kicked off. We discussed various options, which we let everyone know about and we were very proactive into looking at how to implement the various options.

We tried to implement making tags public, but the issue with this was that it opened a whole new can of worms because it made all historical tags public, and there was at least one issue where an off-colour tag had been left in a joking manner that could have been construed as something else. There are potentially more there, and I think it would be a huge job to go through them all. I don't think it's fair really to turn them on for historical tags, we do not want to turn this into some sort of historical tag hunt.

We looked at making the tags known only to the admin and mod team, and if someone has an issue with a particular tag, then they would notify us, and we would deal with accordingly. We discussed how we would do this.

We then got a White Lives Matter tag, which ended up being deleted before we had the chance to do anything about it. At that point we had reached our limit and we decided that the best thing to do was to switch off the tags at that point. Which we did.

The time out was just as much for the mod and admin team as for the whole forum, it was just not a good time and lots of people were getting upset both on the mod team and off it.

That's about how things lie at the moment.
 
Wow Moopy LOVES to have long discussions about itself doesn't it!

My initial response to the poll, when this thread only had a post or two in it, was yes because "tags are funny lol" but I've changed it to no based on some of the responses in here.

I guess I've just never seen tags as SO fundamental to the identity of this place that it's worth people getting genuinely hurt as a result of them. I mean yes they were a nice unique quirk of Moopy, but so essential that doing away with them actually causes people to leave? I know this is coming from the perspective of someone who doesn't tag that much and can sometimes skip right over them but who ARE these people?!
 
I think if we're taking the conversation forward beyond a flat no to tags coming back, making them public seems like a no-brainer at this point.

I also think the suggestion that they be switched on only for selected forums/threads might be worth exploring. No to any post where people are encouraged to share personal photographs, for example. And probably no to the Current Affairs and Debate forum(s) too, as they tend to be where personal conversations are prone to getting heated.

If the people who have felt genuinely victimised by tags are comfortable with that as a workaround, I'm happy to endorse it.

Not to put the onus on any one person or group to answer for this, but I'm certainly interested to hear how else we can continue this conversation constructively without going around in circles. We can all promise to be better and not bully each other, but we also know that's always going to be vulnerable somebody flouting that agreement. (Though again, if tags are all public at least there's a degree of accountability).
 
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If tags do come back, we need to start with a clean slate. All old tags need to be gone for good. And the mod team needs to be increased to deal with the potential increase in work. We need to decide whether the tags are made public to everyone, or just to the mod team.

We need to have an open action plan as to what we do if there are any issues that arise from tags, how we deal with rule breaks, sanctions etc.

The one thing we know is we are not going to please everyone, but everyone is going to have to have some come and go.
 
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If we were to pursue a further discussion, I think the onus has to be on the people who want the tags back:

1. What could a tag return look like?
2. How do we make sure that it isn't a way to punch down on people again?
3. In cases where it is used to punch down, what does accountability look like?
4. How do we make sure that this sort of accountability doesn't put the onus on victims to report and moderators to arbitrate?
5. How do we stop old tags being dragged up?

If there is some consensus on that, it could be put to a poll (or a range of options) against the option of having no tags at all.
 
For my money

1. Make tags public and limited to pop culture forums where there's less chance of them being abused for personal attacks.
2. In addition to making them public, mods and admin to draft a list of tagging rules so that the parameters are as clear as we can make them. Rules to be subject to broader Moopy debate, but the end product should focus on protecting people from being bullied, not satisfying the desire of a potential majority to be cunty without reprisal.
3. Mods to have power to remove tags. I believe only admin had that power before, which put too much pressure on them and also limited the speed with which we could react to things.
4. Zero tolerance for rule breaking. Anybody can flag an offensive tag even if it wasn't aimed at them, and then the first mod/admin to respond makes the judgement call as to whether it should be removed, at which point the tag should be deleted immediately or not, with a reason given by the moderator either way. If you feel your funny joke was misinterpreted as offensive, feel free to moan but you will surely survive. Repeat abuse of the tagging function to be subject to temporary bans and/or loss of tagging privileges.
5. Start from scratch. It's the only way.
 
Beverley said:
If we were to pursue a further discussion, I think the onus has to be on the people who want the tags back:

1. What could a tag return look like?
2. How do we make sure that it isn't a way to punch down on people again?
3. In cases where it is used to punch down, what does accountability look like?
4. How do we make sure that this sort of accountability doesn't put the onus on victims to report and moderators to arbitrate?
5. How do we stop old tags being dragged up?

If there is some consensus on that, it could be put to a poll (or a range of options) against the option of having no tags at all.
Click to expand...
Since this elaborates on your PM I'll reply here... I think that several solutions have already been proposed, only to be dismissed or ignored. I don't have anything new to add.
 
VoR said:
5. Start from scratch. It's the only way.
Click to expand...
While I feel like there’s enough weight in the poll to say that the mood is that tags shouldn’t return anytime soon, you’ve raised an interesting point here that might be worth investigating. Can we do a hard reset on the tags, or would we have to manually delete each one in order to start over?
 
Kate said:
Since this elaborates on your PM I'll reply here... I think that several solutions have already been proposed, only to be dismissed or ignored. I don't have anything new to add.
Click to expand...

I personally don't have anything against them. But since people have suggested ending the discussion altogether, I'm asking you/others to come back to those solutions, elaborate on them, so that we can find a way forward
 
And if a solution is made that means the tags are brought back, it’d only be worth it if those that have been victimised/targeted in the past are ok with the change and still feel comfortable posting.
 
I think we have a few questions we need to answer then and then we will have a better idea of how we need to proceed:

- Do we bring tags back or do we consign them to history?
- Do we make tags public for ALL to see who wrote them, or just the mod/admin team?
- Do we bring back historical tags or do we do a hard reset and start anew?
- Do we make tags undeletable apart from the mod/admin team?
- How do we deal with complaints or contentious tags?

And there will be more questions too.

In addition to all of this we have to consider the cost and the technical aspects of it, it's not quite a simple thing of flicking a switch and it's all done. The admn/mod team have to spend time sorting all that out, testing it, ensuring it works before rolling it out.
 
ButterTart said:
While I feel like there’s enough weight in the poll to say that the mood is that tags shouldn’t return anytime soon, you’ve raised an interesting point here that might be worth investigating. Can we do a hard reset on the tags, or would we have to manually delete each one in order to start over?
Click to expand...

In the admin panel it's an individual delete of all 106878 different tags.

However, i'm sure there'll be an easier way of doing it in the databases.
 
For the sake of my own sanity I can't continue with this discussion right now. I got very close to posting things last night which I would have regretted today.

That's not me trying to close it down - I just can't be a part of it right now. I just want to make it clear that it's not because I disagree with the discussion being had or don't care. I need to be in self protect mode for a bit. There are things going on which I have to attend to and I need to cut back on the stressful stuff which I don't need to be a part of, and this is one of those things. THANK FUCK I'M NOT A MOD.

I'm not taking a break. Simply opting out of this like I did coronavirus.
 
I think we need to remember that the tag discussion and their removal is still a very new topic, so it's natural for the discourse around them to be heated. This is a good thing. It means people CARE.

Now that it's been called out and we're ready to do something about it, we can perhaps start to see some changes in the culture and behavior of Moopy if tags were to return.
 
Pingu said:
Wow Moopy LOVES to have long discussions about itself doesn't it!

My initial response to the poll, when this thread only had a post or two in it, was yes because "tags are funny lol" but I've changed it to no based on some of the responses in here.

I guess I've just never seen tags as SO fundamental to the identity of this place that it's worth people getting genuinely hurt as a result of them. I mean yes they were a nice unique quirk of Moopy, but so essential that doing away with them actually causes people to leave? I know this is coming from the perspective of someone who doesn't tag that much and can sometimes skip right over them but who ARE these people?!
Click to expand...

I've just been made aware of all this pallava and I don't believe for a second that there is any correlation between this function being removed and @Shirley stopping posting.

I mean credit him with a bit more self respect at the very least!
 
More than year later, what do we think? Does anyone miss them? Did we make the right decision? Also I need plunger recommendations.
 
I do miss then but they’re far more hassle than it’s worth.
 
I feel like I post more without tags, and I have to put more thought into my stupid jokes (nobody say anything please) so I'm happy with them staying away.
 
No

People feeling bullied should hold more weight than them being funny. I guess public ones would be fine but that seems to take away from the whole point
 
I was always a proponent of bringing them back with some sort of policing system in place, but it's been a year and I haven't missed them at all.
 
I find the discussion about them tiresome, so here I’m taking part in it to say that they were fun but bringing them back will eventually only lead to the reason why they were removed in the first place.
 
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