NEWS/OPINION — SCP staff are debating edits to the site’s official list of author pages.

(Just a note here: there will always, always, always be an archived link. Not only does it save what may be nuked later, it denies the page the traffic it desires. You can always pull the actual link from the archived page if you want to see it and any additions.)

The main topics of discussion here are the removal of the “classified info” header and a column next to the authors that currently notes their staff rank or just “personnel”. The first is seen as anachronistic to the current mandates against roleplaying on the site, and the second is taken to be an instance of poor taste, and more pressing:

The Authors’ Pages page has not seen a substantiative update in years. It’s currently broadcasting a message that the site hasn’t held for a long time (longer than the time I’ve been here, anyway) — by putting staff rank next to the author page link, it implies that a user’s current or previous staff role has something to do with their ability to write. That’s a big no in my book.

…

The column containing info on what site staff rank an author holds or used to hold has been removed, because that has absolutely nothing to do with being a site author and I’ve no idea who thought that would be a good idea.

Well, it isn’t that someone thought it was a good idea per se, it’s that the optics being frowned upon here hadn’t entered into the Overton window then. It was an innocuous-enough instance of the fun-loving roleplaying that characterized the early Wiki. It had the justification of being informative and playfully (keyword: playfully) braggadocious. But my how the times have changed!

I understand that I am perpetually antagonistic to SCP staff, perhaps to a fault. For the record then, I agree with this , not like they care. Staff rank has zero causation with or guarantee of writing ability and to suggest it is a bad look for the Wiki. My contention lies here: what about the column actually suggests this?

Ask yourself; what about putting a staff member’s position next to their author page is broadcasting that their writing ability is better than another’s? Well. It isn’t. Like a yearbook, it’s telling us who’s who on a page that for all I know might have been the only way to determine as much back then. You have to really squint & read into it to get to the conclusion that it is a superiority statement on skill. Maybe there’s a needless statement about a member’s relative importance on the site and staff hierarchy, sure. And maybe it deserves to go for that reason, as it doesn’t have anything to do with authorship. There are other places that list staff, after all. (That’s the point the poster should be making.)

But writing quality?

Bit of a stretch. Thus that this pairing needs to be removed for this reason is a tacit admission that the association is more problematic, and hence more true, than it once was. The optics wouldn’t be an issue otherwise. The column wouldn’t be “implying” anything about quality otherwise.

Another fault line where this becomes obvious is the phrase “a message that the site hasn’t held for a long time”. Did the early site broadcast that person A’s writing is better than person B’s simply because person A is on staff? That was never a message that I’m aware of. There were plenty of people on staff who everyone knew couldn’t write well. TroyL is a more modern example; he sticks mainly to tales because he feels he can’t write articles well (debatable, maybe some false humility there too) and he is/was at the apex of staff. ProcyonLotor is a current example. Can’t write for shit.

So the simple inclusion of the column does not,— and truthfully cannot — imply “that a user’s current or previous staff role has something to do with their ability to write”, not without superimposing on it the political sensitivities specific to this era of the Wiki. And tellingly. It is not broadcasting this and it never was. It only is poor taste against the backdrop of rampant elitism and corrosive superiority complexes in the ruling class.

Optimistically, the revaluation of this column is part of a slow, reluctant, but growing honesty from staff with how members of the ruling class abuse their position, and how the site’s architecture contributes to that. The proposal from this time last year, for example, that admonished influential site members for leveraging their celebrity for sexual favors. (This proposal was promised, drafted & voted upon in overwhelming support, but never implemented. Hm.) Or another proposal that asked what the good was in choosing to keep the Wikidot karma feature so visible. (This was also drafted, voted upon with general favor, but never implemented.)

Hilarious to also note the ongoing petrifaction of the composite staffer into a feeling-less, inhuman bureaucrat who is so helplessly detached from the site’s pulse as to be hopeless in its management. Were it not for someone reminding the OP that the average user isn’t going to like or feel welcomed by an imposing wall of pure policy, the poster here would have replaced the “Warning: Classified Info” header with a long block of criteria and rules. Seems to be a trajectory.

So, again, I agree with the move generally, and am glad to see the sensitivity and initiative, but would have expected from “leaders” to be able to talk plainly about how they can help an ongoing cultural problem without dancing around it in staffspeak. Gutless virtue posturing in place of down-to-earth substance seems to be their M.O. still.

The bottom line: Members of the ruling class absolutely get an undue and undeserved bias in article reception and ascribed quality. Who can say when the last staff-authored article was downvoted and deleted? While the requisites required to become staff generally coincide with an exposure and familiarity with the format that can cause a correlation with writing quality, (1) this is no guarantee, (2) is often capped if the correlation exists at all by staff duties demanding time from the individual that would otherwise be used to write and improve, and (3) this is confounded by superior writers who are non-staffers.

This proposal is the loudest broadcasting you’ll get of staff’s awareness & admission of the bias.

© Lack of Lepers, 2021