Mod Post: New Rules

[1800]

We're revising the rules of meme posting. Many of you have asked this for a long time and I apologize for not implementing it sooner.

TWO-WEEK RULE

Starting from the next Meme Round Up - with the exception of scheduled memes of course - you are not to post any memes that appear on a previous Round Up.


This should be easy enough to follow. Simply check the latest list made by thelongcon and do not post anything from it.

If you happen to be new here, there's a tag in the left hand sidebar that says '! meme round up' ->
https://bakerstreet.dreamwidth.org/tag/%21+meme+round+up


Because this new rule comes so suddenly I will make one small exception for next week, but only next week. You can still post memes that reached at least 200 comments this week (Mon - Sun). There are not many that fall to that category at the moment so you all need to get creative and find memes that you haven't seen recently.


During this first week there is possibly going to be far less memes than usually but after that things should even out.

Hopefully this rule cuts down the flooding of the same old memes, a practice which has caused them to gain less and less comments each week.


A reminder of scheduled memes:

* TFLN - Friday
* Smutty picture prompt meme - Saturday
* Gen texting meme - Sunday (Midnight Texting once/month, see Rules)
* Sexting meme - Tuesday
* Picture prompt (integrated or not) - Thursday
* Classic Word Association meme - on 14-18th of each month
* Covered in Blood - every other week. Sole posting right belongs to dousing

Comments

[bellefleur]

bless you.

[khaleesock]

if a meme gains traction and becomes very popular, would there be a process to go through to get it onto the weekly/schedule memes or are all memes from here on out biweekly?

secondly, is there a reason for giving sole posting rights to any one meme poster? no shade at all to dousing, it just seems like a bit of a slippery slope if sole posting rights can be given for tfln, for example.

[thelongcon]

For your second question:

See this https://bakerstreet.dreamwidth.org/5558259.html and the linked thread

It won't really be something that would be feasible for more popular memes like TFLN, since it was a way to prevent a niche meme from being over-posted. That said, there have been volunteers who've asked to posted once or twice so it goes up with specific timezones.

[1800]

Certainly, if there is a meme that becomes sufficiently popular, and by sufficiently I mean something that continuously has lots of active threads. The number of toplevels alone won't be a decisive factor.

As for giving sole rights to something, at the moment I'm more willing to give them to people who want to make sure memes aren't posted too often. That's why we have Word Association posted only once a month (it was posted by youare40 for a long time).

[sockodile]

As for giving sole rights to something, at the moment I'm more willing to give them to people who want to make sure memes aren't posted too often.

With the new two week rule, I don't think giving a person sole rights to a meme is necessary anymore.

[vahital]

Can you set down posting guidelines or scheduled turns for the gen/shipping/text picture prompt memes? I'd argue they're different beasts that should not have the same posting day to begin with, but if that's how they're handled, can we at least have a schedule for when each of them should be put up? Otherwise, it ends up a battle royale of everyone watching out to post their favorite first, which isn't ideal.

[1800]

Do you have preferences/ideas? Should we just rotate them?

There are a lot of texting memes and maybe it wouldn't hurt to combine some of them. Still, they are the ones that do well.

[vahital]

I'd move to just integrate the memes, post on Thursday, and ask those who top level to state which kind of prompts they're open to receiving (text, shipping or general).

Alternatively, give each of these memes their own weekly day: Tuesday for shipping prompt meme, Wednesday for texting prompt meme (as it's in between TFLN and the sexting meme) and Thursday for the general picture prompt meme.

Because right now, you have the following situation: general picture prompt meme doesn't serve those who want text threads, but can be used by those who want gen prompts or shipping prompts for prose threads. Shipping prompt meme doesn't serve those who want general prompt prose threads or text threads. Text prompt meme doesn't serve those who want shipping or general prompts for prose-based threads. Barring the general picture prompt meme that sees some overlap in demographic, these independently popular memes address different needs and having them battle it out for the same spot is inevitably going to leave people disappointed.

[flinchin]

Alternatively, give each of these memes their own weekly day: Tuesday for shipping prompt meme, Wednesday for texting prompt meme (as it's in between TFLN and the sexting meme) and Thursday for the general picture prompt meme.

I vote for this. As all three memes are fairly popular, coinciding with how we should now have theoretically fewer memes in general, I think we could do well with them once a week scheduled out.

That way, everybody wins.

+1

[stormfinder]

+1

[sockettes]

[1800]

Thank you for a thorough reply. That sounds like a good plan.

[memeconsolidation]

if you guys decide to do this, i volunteer to post the shipping picture prompts meme on tuesdays.

[1800]

I've discussed it with korofel so far. Thelongcon hasn't had time to comment yet.

Three pictures prompt memes on consecutive days is quite a lot, but we'll see.

[memeconsolidation]

cool, just lmk

[vahital]

If you're still tossing around options: another one would be throwing the texting pic prompt meme in the Sunday rotation with midnight/gen texting and integrating the shipping and general pic prompt meme

They're not like the smut pic prompt meme, where posters can be exposed to nsfw content just by browsing: you can simply top level and state what you are looking for (gen or ship prompts, or both).

[memeconsolidation]

any word on your decision?

[1800]

You can post the shipping Picture Prompt Meme today (or what is left of today), but this is not a final decision on how all the picture prompt memes will be allowed from now on. More likely we'll ask them to be combined somehow or posted on altenating weeks.

[sockiness]

This has less to do with proprietary reasons and more to do with wondering why the covered in blood meme has been added to the schedule, since if anything in the more recent months, I've seen the traction on that meme slipping significantly.

Also, I'd like to address and come to clearer understandings on the tlh crossposting memes. A majority of the time, the doubleposting/crossposting memes are either tlh specific, but there have been a few occasions where a poster or two who post niche memes to bakerstreet will suddenly preempt what's a monthlyish meme post to tlh, where some people are less inclined to post or play in, if only to avoid people that have been banned from here. They're niche enough memes that waiting a week (now two) to repost might start a weird posting war of switching off, so they tend to not get posted again on bs for a month, and there's always the possibility that the tlh crossposter might preempt it again.

Memes posted on fort anon make a lot of sense to crosspost, because of the lack of anon posting on bs itself. But hosting memes off-comm onto an as well known comm as bs but with less traction in an attempt to lure in more posters or just scratch that meme off posting ability for x days is becoming pointless now that traffic has slowed. By this point, if people aren't checking tlh regularly, they probably don't want to play there, so continued crossposts are getting annoying, particularly when we've had issues with multiple posts and people breaking that comm's rules.

[flinchin]

This has less to do with proprietary reasons and more to do with wondering why the covered in blood meme has been added to the schedule, since if anything in the more recent months, I've seen the traction on that meme slipping significantly.

Yeah, that meme seems sort of niche, much more so than the one line memes that apparently aren't scheduled but get a respectful foothold in comparison.

[1800]

As mentioned above, Covered in Blood was added (in February) so that it wouldn't get posted too often. True, though, that because of the new rules, it doesn't necessarily need to be on schedule any more.

Without dousing offering to post it only bi-weekly someone else might have posted it weekly, so wouldn't that have been worse?


I don't think it's unreasonable to have TLH memes cross-posted once or even twice a week. On some weeks there hasn't been any.

"By this point, if people aren't checking it regularly" applies to Fortanon, too. It has been around since 2014. I feel we should allow all comms to cross-post or none at all but if the other mods want to nix TLH memes altogether, they can make that decision.

[sockiness]

I'd say that's a yes and no on that, tbh. Dousing seems to be the only poster interested in posting that meme, so it's not one of the smuttyshippyloveysmooshyfirsttouchdatecoffeehouse memes that sometimes get multiple posters trying to cram up to be first on. There's some memes that seem to only be posted by one or two posters, just because they're the only ones that think to post them/want to post them. And that's fine. I'm not saying dousing can't post it or shouldn't post it. I'm just inferring that it's never been and currently isn't popular enough to be on a schedule. All of the scheduled memes have varying degrees of popularity, but they're all relatively higher traffic than most. Hence the scheduling.

But as for the fortanon thing, that's likely because that's around the time that anon was taken off bs, and it serves a purpose that bakerstreet is unable to, because of valid reasons. People can't post anon on this comm because the posters of the memes/mods aren't going to be around 24/7 to stop the kind of trolling harassment that was happening before. I'm sure I'm not the only one that's happier with that being left to another mod/comm and leaving bakerstreet to a modicum of accountability in terms of people being dinks. Not that it stops all trolling, but I remember how bad it got and I'll take this over that any day. TLH, however... maybe it's just me and I'm biased, but I avoid it for a reason. There are people I actively do not want tagging me/do not tag, so to see a favorite or nostalgia meme that won't be able to be posted for at least another 2 weeks (if not a month if it's been that long since last posting) be preempted to a comm where it gets little to no traffic because I'm not the only one that avoids TLH for their own reasons, it sucks. And then there's the 'is it too soon to post it?' conundrum while waiting to repost it, and the risk is run of missing out on it being posted on the comm (by anyone, I don't even care who) because it's crossposted on TLH again to not be played in.

I know these are mostly selfish reasons, but they're still valid, and at this point, the people on tlh who want to post on bs still can. It just sucks when a meme I know I've been jonesing for gets posted to it and I have to start the wait cycle again.

Once or twice a week would be fine, if they went back to the TLH-specific memes. That was the whole point of crossposting in the first place. The Breeding Stable and Hotel-centric memes would get crossposted here. It's why no one complains about fort anon memes. Those crossposts aren't taking anything away from bakerstreet. TLH yoinked memes are.

+1

[sockettes]

I agree that a) covered in blood isn't a particularly popular meme, so scheduling it is definitely super weird and b) bakerstreet memes should get priority over cross-posted tlh memes. if mods don't want to ban tlh crossposts entirely, then a tlh crosspost should be deleted over the bakerstreet meme, regardless of which came first. sockiness isn't the only one who isn't interested in playing on tlh given its rep.

[1800]

I've tried to explain it, but apparently I'm not wording it right.

You shouldn't think about scheduling = popularity.

[sockettes]

no, i understand that you meant to decrease how frequently it was posted. my point was more that i doubt anyone save dousing would post it, since it's not a particularly popular meme where people battle it out to post, so i don't think it had any appreciable effect.

[1800]

It was a quick decision on my part when dousing felt that someone had been trying to push it more often. Granted I didn't check it further. Now that the rules are already changed, it feels too late to even bring it up. I don't remember there being complaints about it before. Apologies if there were and I ignored them (unintentionally).


I think I've said it before but I'm not that familiar with TLH or its rules. I don't know what memes are (or should be) 'TLH specific' If there are memes that you think TLH meme-goers are "stealing" from here, we can forbid and/or delete the advertising of such memes. Do you have examples?

[sockodile]

Just wondering: are you planning on updating the stickied post with the biweekly posting rule? I feel like not everyone will see this post (or the reminder post you put up, since it's already been moved down the front page by new posts).

[1800]

Yes I will. Thanks for reminding. I've just been busy with RL obligations.