[Official] Upcoming changes to the library. Discuss.

[SkullTraill]

one way to reverse the incentive for low quality posts would be to make access based on reaction score rather than total number of posts. you may need to limit who can react to prevent people from registering multiple accounts with the sole intent of boosting the reaction score of a single account, but that sort of reaction gang behavior would be relatively easy to detect

also when you say posts do you mean starting new discussion threads or does every contribution to a thread count as a post?

1. Yes I’ve considered using reaction score as the metric, but like you say we’d have to implement some sort of restriction on who is allowed to react. So that’s something that’ll have to come later.
2. At the moment post just means threads or posts in a thread. In the future I can consider threads not posts as a requirement which is why I said it may be tweaked in the future. For now it’s just a very lax first step

Thanks for the feedback!

 

[reverendsteveii]

i honestly think that just getting the barrier to entry above zero will eliminate the vast majority of the behavior you're looking to eliminate. This is a solid idea, even as someone who primarily uses the forum for research. Reporting back the results of experiments is key to developing occult paradigms and needs to be structurally encouraged.

 

[AlfrunGrima]

But now that WF has grown quite a bit, I feel it's right to shift the focus to gaining on-site content. This plan is designed to help with that. Don't worry too much about technicalities and what could go wrong. As always, anything and everything that goes wrong on WF is my fault and my fault alone. Not the staff, not you, the members. Me. I am to blame for everything that goes wrong on WF.

So trust me when I say, I am doing this for the best, and I have thought of every single cookie-cutter "but ppl will spam" potential pitfall here, and I am ready to handle them, and if me and the staff team can not handle it, I will simply reverse this decision. The potential upside here is too good to simply not try.

I know and trust you are doing your best and doing things for the best. Just give it a try, people gonna always dig in their heels when changes occur. That is an human thing, don't take that to deeply.

And for the point that everything is always your fault...... Ok, you are administrator.... But we as an online community should still feel the responsibility to provide you with good feedback, share good ideas, work on good discussions, be helpful to others, take care for others, work on quality when here online. I hope and wish that we all do that so that you can trust us too.

 

[Swampdweller900]

As a new person, I'm 100% on board with this. This seems more than fair - I even agree with those who mentioned a slightly higher barrier.

FWIW, I was once a mod for an esoteric subreddit, and even to post we required that accounts be over 30 days and have more than 50 points of "karma" (for any not familiar, it's like accumulated participation points). Spammers and scrapers are real.

I'm here for the people and discussion. And I did grab a book about herbology, which was super useful.

I do have 1 question - what exactly are the "Occult Sections"? Is that "The Order" section? Or the first 3 sections of that with the actual word "Occult" in the title? Just curious.

OK, actually, second question - on book shares. Is there a vetting process for book shares? I'm also thinking that it might be very easy for people looking to skirt the rules to just upload a PDF of ChatGPT slop. Personally, I wouldn't mind uploading a historical fiction book about an obscure witch, but that doesn't seem like it's in the spirit of the book shares. But I also assume I'm never going to come across something worth uploading in the wild that isn't already uploaded here.

 

[Morell]

But I also assume I'm never going to come across something worth uploading in the wild that isn't already uploaded here.

The library is already vast even if you don't download the huge library archive, which is problematic as it requires to have app.

However I wouldn't say that there is not a possibility that you can find something. I admit that it is rather small chance. But keep your eyes open. You never know what you can stumble upon.

 

[SkullTraill]

I know and trust you are doing your best and doing things for the best. Just give it a try, people gonna always dig in their heels when changes occur. That is an human thing, don't take that to deeply.

And for the point that everything is always your fault...... Ok, you are administrator.... But we as an online community should still feel the responsibility to provide you with good feedback, share good ideas, work on good discussions, be helpful to others, take care for others, work on quality when here online. I hope and wish that we all do that so that you can trust us too.

Thanks for the kind words. I just meant I can and will never blame members for anything that goes wrong with WF. Members have duties but no blame.

As a new person, I'm 100% on board with this. This seems more than fair - I even agree with those who mentioned a slightly higher barrier.

FWIW, I was once a mod for an esoteric subreddit, and even to post we required that accounts be over 30 days and have more than 50 points of "karma" (for any not familiar, it's like accumulated participation points). Spammers and scrapers are real.

I'm here for the people and discussion. And I did grab a book about herbology, which was super useful.

I do have 1 question - what exactly are the "Occult Sections"? Is that "The Order" section? Or the first 3 sections of that with the actual word "Occult" in the title? Just curious.

OK, actually, second question - on book shares. Is there a vetting process for book shares? I'm also thinking that it might be very easy for people looking to skirt the rules to just upload a PDF of ChatGPT slop. Personally, I wouldn't mind uploading a historical fiction book about an obscure witch, but that doesn't seem like it's in the spirit of the book shares. But I also assume I'm never going to come across something worth uploading in the wild that isn't already uploaded here.

Thank you for your message. To answer your questions:

1. The occult sections means The Order, yes.
2. That requirement was made so no one who has already contributed to the library would be locked out of it. It would be a true travesty if someone who has already posted book shares for WF ends up getting locked out simply because they haven’t posted many posts in the occult sections. People like @Rowena, @dosintheshell and many others. It’s not so much for newer members. That being said, you’re right, I don’t want people making their own little low-effort PDFs and sharing them in the book shares section so perhaps we will have to institute some rules for what kind of material is allowed in the book shares section.

 

[Sh4d0w]

Thanks for your message, but this is not particularly about "protection".


Definitely this would mainly affect the book shares + requests sections. Sorry, I need to edit the OP to clarify this. Thanks. Book discussions would remain unchanged, unless there's some reason for it to be included as well (if people just spam book requests there).


So far it's still fine that the book shares are visible to the public. Yes it attracts some crazy authors and such, but I am not worried about anything legal at this point. As I have mentioned in the Library Manifesto thread, WF does not break any laws in the jurisdiction it's in.


Yeah definitely, would also be easier to moderate since the occult sections require people being strictly on topic!


That'll still apply, WF will still appear on search engines, and the books will still be easy to obtain. It'll just require some minor contributions.


100% agree.


Don't worry! They can't beat me either


Yeah, I'm fairly convinced that the only people it harms are people who don't contribute anything to WF... so... they don't really tip the scales for me.


What if the goal is to demystify and unconceal "something mysterious and concealed" which would then reduce the risk to newbies. I don't believe that information is dangerous. Only that uninformed actions are dangerous. Which is why the goal of WF has always been to inform. However, I think this is a topic for another thread/different discussion so as not to go off topic!


Honestly, I'm not convinced you've read the OP.


You don't. The goal is not protection and filtering. I'm not someone who inherently believes in restricting knowledge and information for the purpose of exclusivity or elitism. I myself have uploaded 90% of my own original contributions to WF's library to ZLib and by extension anna's etc.

I thought I was extremely clear about this in the OP. The reason I am doing this, and why the requirements are so relaxed and easy to attain is that I'm doing this simply to give people coming here for books a gentle nudge to also stay and contribute to the open content on the site.

High value content on the open forum > high value content in a PDF linked on the forum.
​

Lol, not gonna happen.


People who post meaningless messages get warned and eventually banned. This already happens and I've already addressed this.


Read the OP properly. Don't be someone who types more than they read.


And it will still be the case for many.


This will not change.


To me, it does.


As admin of this site, I see a lot of metrics every day, and while it does flow both ways, one stream is a trickle, and the other is a deluge.


Thanks, I appreciate that. These measures will only reinforce that.


I've never had a problem with that. I'm never going to be able to stop leaks, and that's never been my goal. The more this material is uploaded and mirrored around the world, the better, imho.


Lol! Maybe at any given moment... but the number of monthly active users on WF is multiple 100s.


That risk always exists, and we will find ways to combat that.


I'm sure it will...


... and these problems can be managed, and if not, I'll simply roll back this change.


Sometimes, just the 10 posts from a person is enough useful content that will live on WF forever, potentially fueling discussions months later. As I've said before, the goal here isn't to ensure everyone who's ever downloaded a book from WF remains active for life. It is just a slight tip of the scales to ensure there is more quality content on WF per registered member than there is now (there already is plenty, but a little more could greatly benefit WF in the long run).

It's just a rebalance. Even just a few posts per member will generate permanent content on WF that can attract more people who want to engage with content vs people who want to download something and leave.


That's something for the future. It's not something I can implement any time soon, whereas the change I've described in this thread can be implemented quickly. This is just a first step.


Nope.


They don't need to. Read above.


Yeah, fair enough. Maybe the character count isn't the right move. I'll reconsider.


Don't worry about what moderators have to do, you aren't one. The first people I approached with this idea were the moderators of this forum, and I won't let them be overburdened by WF. At the end of the day all moderators on WF are volunteers and are never expected to put WF over anything important in their lives.


Just because it isn't broke for you... lmao. I'm trying to improve something that can be better. If it works, it works, if it doesn't it doesn't have to stay. If you contribute to WF, this doesn't change anything for you. If you don't... well...

Thanks for taking the time to reply to my wall of text — hope I didn’t annoy you too much with it.
While there’s still a chance to ask things and stir up a good discussion, I’ll use that opportunity to the fullest. It’s actually been really interesting to dive into this. Anyway, you’re going to roll this update out soon, so we’ll see how it plays out in practice. I’m genuinely curious to see what kind of effect it’ll have on the forum.

 

[SkullTraill]

Thanks for taking the time to reply to my wall of text — hope I didn’t annoy you too much with it.
While there’s still a chance to ask things and stir up a good discussion, I’ll use that opportunity to the fullest. It’s actually been really interesting to dive into this. Anyway, you’re going to roll this update out soon, so we’ll see how it plays out in practice. I’m genuinely curious to see what kind of effect it’ll have on the forum.

No, it’s alright. Perhaps it was a good opportunity for me to clarify things for everyone.

Also “soon” can be a little unpredictable when it comes to me and my schedule I thought of leaving this thread up for at least a week before implementing anything but if I get a solid chunk of free time this weekend I might just go for it.