First off, I wanted to say on behalf of the entire mod team that we hoped this place would be successful but none of us expected to reach over 1,000 subscribers in 96 hours. That's incredible and we are extremely humbled and grateful. The community has thrived and we're so happy to see so many people engaging with the community, whether thats posts or comments. Things have really kicked off and we hope things only get better from here!
That being said, we as mods do have some work to do. This community was made with the idea that we would have clear rules written for our users so you knew when to expect intervention from the moderation team. We're all pretty new at this and while we have the advice and experience of others who have been doing this for far long, we do have to still update things as they go.
There have been some posts made recently that were reported and brought to light. The mod team has been discussing it behind the scenes and we decided we needed to address it by adding a couple of more rules to the sidebar. If we started removing posts without giving explanations on the side of what to expect, then we've failed in our original purpose for the community. So the new rules being added are as follows:
The first new one is No AI Art. It hurts the creative community overall but is also very low-effort in general. There are many communities in which AI can work but this isn't one of them.
The second is No reposts within 1-2 months. We're keeping the timeframe vague because mistakes happen and you might not be aware of if posts did happen at all. Then there's the factor of how popular that post was and whether it would have easily been seen. However we're really generous and understand that not everyone is active at all times. Reposts within 48 hours? That's something different.
The third new one is Limit of 3-4 posts per hour. Honestly that's probably more than anyone really needs to begin with but we don't want to hamper the community. If things grow and activity does too then we can definitely revisit this but as it stands, posting 5 posts within the space of 30 minutes is essentially spam.
We hope that everyone understands the changes we've made and that more changes may come in the future, especially so early on in the lifespan of /c/TenForward. Thank you guys for your time, patience, activity, engagement and love. We all feel it here at the mod team and reflect it back at you.
I was one of the A.I.-generated art posters. I'm slightly bummed, but I get it. There are moral issues to consider, and it does require relatively little effort on the creative side. I mean, I myself do prefer seeing custom stuff that was created manually by community members.
So glad to see the transparency with rule changes/additions. You guys are doing all right. Thanks for making this a fun, cozy, safe place to hang out in.
I understand where you're coming from. I do a lot of AI image creation myself for another forum and we have a lot of fun with it, but I have yet to see AI art that really does Star Trek right and you end up getting stuff that isn't very good or funny or worth discussing.
Using AI not as a post, but as a comment within is about as far as it should go. It's great seeing the ideas/shops others put forward themselves.
Limiting reposts puts the onus of creativity on us all, which I tend to view of as a positive. My very first post back on c/risa was a repost to dip my toes. Then later, there was that one post that was just a shot from the TNG Mirror comic of Picard, his arms swole. Beyond that, I personally try to make OC.
Post spacing shouldn't typically be an issue. The most I've done myself was maybe 5 on Halloween, but spread throughout the evening.
Nice work guys ... keep it up .. the goal is not to be the best the fastest ... instead to just grow slowly and with purpose
And also, take care of yourselves too ... this may be just an online community but we do have to watch out for everyone's mental health as well ... both for our community members and our mods ... everyone is a person and we all have the responsibility of looking out for one another.
I'm going to piggyback on this post to say hey to the community, and also - as a lover of posting Star Trek nonsense - that I'm happy to be helping out with some of the moderating.
I also want to communicate that while our goal is to add clear, common-sense rules to the sidebar as needed, it's impossible to predict every single situation that could occur, so there's still going to be an element of judgement in resolving some things. In those instances, I believe that having a large group of mods who are all very active in the community and can consult with each other is a decent strategy to reduce errors in individual judgment, however we're also human, so if you feel that we need to reconsider something, feel free to DM one of us and we'll bring it up to the group.
We're all just looking to laugh at memes and geek out over cool Trek stuff at the end of the day. See y'all around!
You guys are doing great and yes, modding will never be easy and there will always be disagreements and differences but the sign of a good community is the fact that we can all continually check in on one another and communicate constantly.
But the responsibility shouldn't all be to the mods either ... the community is also responsible to one another and to the mods as well. At the end of the day we are all people and we have lives so we should do our best to help support the mental health and positive feedback of everyone everywhere.
Keep up the great work guys, it is much appreciated!
I am going to piggyback on this piggyback to also say I'm happy to be here and to help out and if any of you need anything, please feel free to get in touch. I can't promise I can help, but I promise I'll try.
And I'm going to piggyback on this piggybacking piggyback just because I can .... but also to say the same .. if any of you need anything, please feel free to get in touch. I can’t promise I can help, but I promise I’ll try.
When I used to mod on startrekgifs we had a similar rule of no more than 4 posts in 24 hrs. Pain to check but definitely keeps the quality of content up 👍.
When you say no AI, I'm assuming this refers specifically to prompt-based generative AI tools like MidJourney. Are we allowed to use those kind of images within more traditional meme production?
I never expected to encounter a backwards looking, anti-new technology, anti-automation, pro-scarcity, anti-AI sentiment coming from a Star Trek sub of all places.
Well, on the one hand, extremely disappointed to see the anti-AI bandwagon driving through here too. It's particularly ironic that a meme community has rules like this, already 99% consisting of existing content recycled and pasted together like how people often misunderstand AI to work.
But at least the rule is explicit, so it's a small step up from c/risa, I guess.
As one of the mods who agreed to the no AI rule, it has nothing to do with the whole AI stealing art debate (to me anyway), it's the low quality nature of the AI posts. AI just doesn't do Star Trek properly and it definitely doesn't do the faces of Star Trek actors properly. That's why I was against AI posts.
I believe that rules should be about what the actual problem is. If memes and shitposts that don't "do the faces properly" are the problem, make a rule against that.
AI can be part of a workflow, it's not just "throw down a prompt and then shovel whatever comes out onto tenforward." The image might not have any faces in it, or the faces might not have been part of what the AI touched - I use inpainting on "real" pictures frequently, for example.
And in six months time, the state of the art in AI image generation may have reached the point where this reason is no longer viable, and AI Star Trek actors are indistinguishable from the real thing. Will this rule be revisited regularly?
Holy shit, no kidding. Some actors it likes, others… I once tried to make a group photo with all the captains, I tried many different models, lots of tricks (plenty of advancements since then, I could probably pull it off nowadays) and it was a disaster. I’ll post one or two of those if I can find them again, absolute waste of an afternoon.