NEWS/OPINION — SCP Staff’s utilization of “Town Hall Liaisons” has gone from bad to worse.

Staff knew the town hall liaison position was doomed, didn’t stop it, played along, didn’t care about how it was executed as a result, it shows, and now the users are getting a small taste of how dishonest and self-serving staff can be. Staff first betrayed the production class in their battering of authorial rights. In this episode, they betray the consumption class.

I once went on a beach trip with some college friends. We had a blast. At night, the dunes framed a calm black sea that pooled with the stars, the barrier between marked only by the jewels of light from the oil drills dotted in the distance. Smoked some gooood shit too. The heartbeats from that trip will revisit me smiling on my deathbed.

On the way back, we listened to each other’s music. I heard Imogen Heap’s Hide and Seek for the first time and hid tears at the love-making of lyric and falsetto.

After the drive lasted way too long, we finally asked our driver, a ditzy girl who slept with most of the men on the trip, if we were lost. She did not hide her tears, which were of the ugly sort that bubble and pop in the nostrils. Not like my Imogen tears.

She confesses that we were not suddenly lost; we had been for a while now and she hadn’t said anything out of fear. She had known this was the wrong way for 3 hours. She sobbed and apologized so much we had to downplay our outrage just to prevent a wreck.

That was not a leader. She shouldn’t have been behind the steering wheel. She should have been mesmerized instead in the backseat by the blending of acoustic talent and vocoders, seamless like the night horizon.

At the center was a perverted prioritization of the peace. Of turning a good time sour. Somewhere in there was an intention that was well-meant and innocent, but it was smothered by cowardice. The appearance of all being well was weighted over the honesty of a needed disruption. The idiocy was the failure to recognize that the realization was eventual, and worse the longer it took.

I will never forget her. And I hate that. She will always be that girl who was too afraid to upset someone for the greater, sooner good.

The need for liaisons in the town halls should have been its own warning sign in the first place. It’s like hiring a relationship counselor to be a third wheel on your date.

As if art, the comedy of errors here emulates staff’s greater current affairs to a T, “the poetry of repeated history suggesting itself”: an incompetent individual, waving more red flags than if he were landing a plane, is let in despite this and is endorsed because of his political convenience and popularity. He then sees himself out. Attempted sensitivity explodes in-hand and exposes how ignorant staff truly are (it’s worse than we thought).

Staff can’t understand why users can’t understand staff. So in order to connect with their users in hopes to better understand each other, staff spend more time building a cocoon of bureaucracy around themselves that they can’t find their way out of, and users can’t find their way into. No one can see or hear each other through the thickness. All that’s left to do is wander aimlessly through the labyrinth, picking up fractions of unintelligible mutterings that bounce off the walls.

It is no surprise that the major source of drama to come out of the town halls can be traced back to staff’s selection of the liaisons. Staff’s not entirely to blame. They didn’t ensure this would happen with their selection. They just really, really, really encouraged it. Like with Dr. Bright and the Summer 2018 Logo Fiasco, they rolled out a red carpet and searchlights for a disaster, just in case it was thinking about showing up but wasn’t sure if it was invited.

How did we get here? Unbelievably.

We understand the psychology behind the town hall liaison role. Shock absorbers basically. This was always going to be a bumpy ride. To quote the gist from a separate but not unrelated O5 staff discussion, which we will get to later:

“Additionally, perhaps the nominated person should not be a member of senior staff to avoid the same issues that apparently spawned [the disconnect between staff and users] in the first place.” — MrAnakinSpecter, staff

But why did the role of town hall liaison survive the brainstorm when its prototype was shot down? Let’s take a look at this prototype, an intra-staff equivalent called “First Sergeant”, in order to get some insight.

Initially the First Sergeant role was proposed to solve a concern among staff. There was a perceived barrier between the senior staff and the junior staff — a gap in familiarity and approachability:

“More than anything else, it’s a fear perpetuated from unfamiliarity. Being unfamiliar with a superior makes it far more difficult to talk to them on the ‘casual’ scale.” — Naveil, staff

What sort of power gap could exist on a creative writing site to justify such hesitancy in the lower staff? That’s a damn good question.

The First Sergeant role is borrowed from the military, where there is such a power gap and cadets have every worry that they’ll be doing push ups in exchange for a dumb question, or be on the front line for a mess up. But here? In a containment fiction site? I guess some things are more intimidating when you are up close.

The First Sergeant was a good-faith effort by the “Master Administrator”. DrEverettMann was told that some staff were too intimidated to approach him, in casual conversation and I suppose also with serious topics too. His initial move is to validate those staffers’ feelings, almost per protocol. Mann overlooks the compliment he gives himself in doing so when, clumsily, he writes, “I can’t blame people for being a little hesitant.” Mr. Big-Mann-on-Campus! But he’s not trying to say that. He just does so on accident… which I guess is better.

“At the same time, people need to be able to tell us if they think there are problems we might not be handling well… I would like to nominate at least two people to act as these liaisons. If a staff member wants to let admins know about any concerns, they can bring them up to one of these individuals and have their concerns brought directly to us, the admins. Anonymously or not as the person asks, without fear of reprisal or judgement.” — DrEverettMann, Master Administrator

Sound familiar? It should.

Why is staff’s answer to everything the creation and centralization of more fiat power? (Power printer go brrrr.) Isn’t that the initial problem? An overdose of bureaucratic structure and hierarchy? A crystallized distance between them that seems to self-replicate (somehow)? If the problem is a stuffiness within the architecture, how & why would stuffing more stuffiness into it be the solution? It’s liaisons all the way down.

The last line let’s us know that maybe this isn’t just about star-struck newcomers with crippling social anxiety (although it is that, too); “… as the person asks, without fear of reprisal or judgement”. Like with most closely guarded secrets and tight-knit communities, there has been a history of hostile reactions to internal whistleblowers for years in the SCP staff.

For example, there is some evidence that a well-known staffer and author was ignored, ostracized, and ultimately removed from staff after calling for an investigation into Dr. Bright well before the public was fully aware. This example is not the only one. Considering what staff will do to mere users for speaking out against them, maybe it isn’t a surprise to learn that they go to some lengths for those who actually have dirt on them. There’s plenty of dirt, too. The fortifications that powerful staff created for themselves to shield their bad behavior may have an ancestry with why lesser staff feel they are untouchable. This is also probably why Junior Staff have historically not been allowed into the staff chat. It seems a measure of vetting is required before they can exposure to the classified, sensitive information.

“Additionally, I think Procyon would be a good choice for this role. He has always been willing to speak his mind to admins, and I have absolute confidence that he will bring any concerns left with him to us.”

ProcyonLotor is probably the worst staffer anyone, certainly Mann, could suggest for this. ProcyonLotor does speak his mind (that’s a euphemism for “he’s a rabid cunt”), and has been known to defy an administrator or two, but certainly not from a place of moral standing. He is the poster boy for staff’s self-exemption from Rule Zero (“Don’t be a dick.”) No one is quite sure how he has never been called out for this. Instead, this — his dickishness — gets him a nomination.

Procyon’s story is a long one, but suffice it to say something is wrong with someone who doxxes children and brags about it to his staff buddies. (This is something they will ban non-staff, or those antagonistic to staff for.) You’d think that Mann might be averse to endorsing someone with this history — like how you’d feel if you recommended someone for a job who ended up being terrible at it — were it not that Mann participated in the kid’s doxx. (Maybe this also has something to do with the fear seen in junior staff!)

This isn’t the last time in this story that we’ll see staff’s poor judgment in selecting someone for a role.

To their credit, the rest of the staff picks up on the First Sergeant role as ineffectual. They talk about how it really isn’t a solution at all. And they’re right.

One of the biggest problems with creating such a position that isn’t mentioned though is that you centralize the ethical fluency of a group and peg it all to a single point of failure. What if someone has something to say about Procyon? Is it assumed that he would tattle on himself? What if Procyon suddenly decides he is not going to convey a message? Or modify one? If there is such a disconnect between senior staff and junior staff, and the First Sergeant chosen is of the senior staff, why would a junior staffer feel any more comfortable? What expectation is there for junior staff that their anonymity will be preserved?

The proposal creates more problems than it solves. The smooth implementation of it rests on the moral hygiene of a single person. That single person. This is incredibly poor design. It is more likely to result in less communication than there was before, hesitant as it was, because suddenly there is a bottleneck to the flow of information… one that has an incredibly prickly personality too.

The discussion on O5 for First Sergeant is still interesting and makes the good points that apparently no one made for the user-facing version, the town halls liaison:

“While this isn’t a bad idea, it’s essentially throwing all the clothes under the bed and hoping the parents don’t notice. It works, perhaps for the foreseeable future, but it ignores the issue at its core… Whatever a potential permanent solution for this issue should be, it should strive to bring all staff groups closer together, rather than throwing in a middleman and discouraging any chances for communication.” — Naveil, staff

“I don’t think this comes close to working as a solution. We shouldn’t have people on the staff team feel too anxious to talk to others, and having someone in the middle might allow their voices to be heard more but doesn’t stop this being a problem.” — gee0756, staff

You can watch the embryology of this discussion taking on the shape of the town hall liaison (the town halls would only be a few months later):

“I believe that this could be implemented to address an issue that practically every JS brings up since I joined staff: the separation between the community and the staff team. While the gap between staff at large and administrators have significantly shrunk over the past few months, the gap between staff and the userbase has not significantly changed, bar some extraordinary circumstances. I believe this proposal would help alleviate some of that gap if it was implemented with a wider scope. The two individuals selected …would forward messages from the userbase directly to the admins.” — yossipossi, staff

“I am always a fan of trying to bridge the gap between staff and the community and it is something that I actively try to do when possible. This addition to the original proposal seems like the way to go to help staff inner communication as well as community and staff communication.” — Whiteguard, staff

“I am in favor of anything that bridges the endless valley between staff and the community.” — OptimisticLucio, staff

“I think this is a good solution when talking about staff and community members. However, I don’t think it’s the only thing we need to be doing to patch the gap, (assuming we’re still talking about the wider scope).” — CelesteKara, staff

“As such, I’m finding myself agreeing with Gee here in that this really doesn’t fix the issue of a disconnect between admins and the rest of staff.” — TheMightyMcB, staff

The biggest take away is that the First Sergeant was a band-aid. It was a way to cover the problem so as to not look at it. It didn’t address why some staff felt like they couldn’t approach admins and legacy staff. It was not implemented. That disconnect was taken as a given. The correct move would have been to reflect on why the gap was there at all. Perhaps that would be prying too deep.

This would have been a good moment for a leader to invalidate the feeling that he can’t be approached, noting that the pseudo-reverence really isn’t warranted, and that this is not a military hierarchy. Denying these emotions however would have been hard to pull off in the political environment of SCP, which prides itself on being aggressively inclusive (this oddly does not extend to certain emotions related to being a native victim of sexual grooming). Thankfully, someone else does this for Mann in a moment of clarity:

“The thing is, admins aren’t officers. Military officers have a tremendous degree of power over their subordinates’ lives. Admins aren’t teachers, with the power to assign grades, nor are they managers, with the ability to determine who gets a raise and who gets fired. This is a hobby project. The situation here is closer to talking with the head of one’s book club or the GM of a tabletop RPG than it is to talking with one’s commanding officer.” — Kufat, staff

I’d add that the truth is somewhere between the two; SCP staff is a military complex/book club hybrid. I think the participants in staff want it that way. I also believe that in a dark room with the audio recording off, Mann thinks what Kufat does, but didn’t say it because on the Wiki, sensitivity has a tendency to be equated with strength and morality.

On the surface, the whole thing is a kind gesture by Mann. I don’t doubt that it is. Just under the surface though, it’s a leviathan whose silhouette is ignored. The thread and the suggestion of First Sergeant is a Parkinsonian shuffle around any explicit mentions of the deeper issue: the culture’s paranoia of bad PR and the resulting castigation of their whistleblowers or dissidents who would bring it to their doorstep. Something a lot of staff swore would never happen again after the Summer 2018 Logo Fiasco, which imprints on their collective psyche like a scald to this day.

So why, when the reasoning against the First Sergeant role is so astute, so accurate, so effortless… and only a couple months prior to now… why then were the same arguments not applied to the town hall liaison?

The set-up is so similar. Staff gather around another gap to gawk at. The focus is a barrier between two groups of people. The posited solution is a bridge. It’s the same ingredients and recipe as the First Sergeant, just cooked in a different pot. Is the liaison role absolutely crucial now because it is the only buffer between staff and the living glare of their moral revenant, finally come with an inevitable justice? Are liaisons the airbags, necessary because the vehicle is in motion this time? Do liaisons have the benefit of being fresh lightning rods of potential failure & blame, created out of nothing by staff’s thaumaturgy that can only centralize more power?

So, cordially bowing to the mandate of good optics and the God-like necessity of projected sensitivity, the whole staff pull a Mann, even though they know it won’t address the issue. They have already admitted to themselves and in different clothing that this idea is ineffectual. However, sensitivity is morality, and leaders then should be the ones who can pantomime the most sensitivity, and on the biggest stage.

So, the composite staff rushes to the users to hyper-extend themselves in over-compensatory theatrics, and insist on solving the problems themselves; problems that only the user base can fix, and would have a hundred times already if they had but the understanding and so outrage necessary to do so. To insert Henry Ford on the same brand of wool pulled over eyes in the economic world:

“It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.”

So great is the distraction of the upvote economic engine. The Hollywood to their Capitol Hill. The lovely assistant to their magic show.

The town hall is thus an illusion of user participation and consequence. A sad deal, when it is the users who should be summoning staff, and under the users’ terms. If the staff need the guidance of the users in order to figure out what is right for the users, or learn what is missing from that care, or what they got wrong, then they have disqualified themselves as leaders. Staff shouldn’t be learning anything from a town hall; they should already know this as the fundamentals of their jobs. The justification to the prestige they gather to bask in.

But they are more aware of this than anyone and the users are only just beginning to catch on. Staff’s resolutions to do something extend only so far as the dimensions of the witness stand (will be the confession box next). There was no room in the design for actual change, because the problem is being compounded. The town hall itself is a giant production so that they can get away with not confronting the real issues. (Just the same as their first town hall, where they used the sweat of the users to wash their hands of any wrongdoing to the brand.) Consistent with the culture’s equivocation of sensitivity and gesture with morality and substance, staff almost seem to believe that they will be rated above-board for simply conducting it and showing up.

Are they thinking of the users? Or is this cowardice? Are they giving the users their champions to rally behind? Or are they outsourcing the front line?

In moments like this, staff like to turn their typical pose — the one that hasn’t worked so well up until then — inside out. After running a bureaucratic engine to its red-line — a constant exhaust of new rules and specifications to policies, that all users are expected to keep up with — staff will suddenly retreat into the mantra that they work for the users.

Yes, staff work for the users; that’s 100% true, insofar as the users are a part of the brand. When they are not conformative with the brand, they are no longer users. What’s good for the users is replaced, as it has been time and time again, with what is good for the brand.

This is nowhere more relevantly demonstrated in staff’s selection process for the town hall liaisons.

Here in the opening explanation for the liaison position, staff is radioactive. Users need someone to report anonymously to, but for God’s sake, let it be no one from staff, not even the juniors.

The liaisons are to accept messages from people through DMs on a platform or service of their choice. Despite this meaning that theoretically anyone of the fan base can participate, it is artificially limited to WikiDot users who can prove their account.

“Please note that users who are banned from the SCP Wiki may not submit anonymous messages to the Town Halls via liaison.” — “Tay Tay”, staff

Don’t you believe that those who are banned, whose records staff kept vague — particularly those unlawfully banned, or banned for the same things that staff have done and we’ve watch them fail upwards for — might have some of the type of controversial and pressing subjects that a town hall is meant for? Like, I don’t know, the opacity between the users and staff’s dealings?(Some users do.) Isn’t that the point if the town hall? To extend a voice to the voiceless?

This may come as a shock to SCP staff, who are no fans of sovereignty, but protection laws like freedom of speech are meant for those whose opinions are controversial enough to be banned. You don’t need a protection of speech if you’re saying what everyone else is. It’s explicitly for the outliers and anomalies; it protects that speech because it is in need of protection from the people who would remove their ability to say it, which a ban from SCP is the digital equivalent of.

So, here you have a group of excluded people, some of whom have been banned because their speech most certainly wasn’t free, who are not allowed in for the very same reason, and yet are who such an event and extension should be most towards. This is like Jim Crowe admitting that there is a problem here, but not letting in those affected by it in the building to discuss it because, hey, the law still applies.

At some point after liaison applications were opened, staff had to make this clarification:

“It’s not our intention to force liaisons to be infallible, or to have them worry about not perfectly pleasing us. You are working with us, not for us… you won’t face repercussions if for whatever reason there’s an oversight.”

Is staff sure this isn’t a job where they’re the boss? As far as the average user is aware(someone who won’t take time to read the commentary on something like First Sergeant and make the parallels), staff believes they’re helping reduce the gap between them. But even on-stage, the suspension of the beckoning disbelief is challenged by staff deciding to deputize some of the users into an extension of themselves; a pseudo-convert to staff. This doesn’t make any sense. The liaison job description (“Responsibilities/Duties Expected of Liaisons”) is paragraphs long, dude. Put down the bureaucracy. You hold it up like a shield. It’s why we’re in this mess to begin with.

Here’s where things get real bad:

“Users who do not wish to volunteer are allowed and encouraged to voice support in this thread for those who they believe would make the best liaisons. Before the Town Halls take place, staff will choose 3 volunteers based on the community’s feedback.”

Staff has just thrown a rake down a few yards in front of them and are about to start walking towards it blindfolded.

13 non-staff users volunteer. Other users take the above quote to mean that this is a vote. A democratic selection, similar to the familiar contests where upvotes, the governance token of community consensus, determine the winners. Where the volunteers with the most endorsements will win.

Nope.

The volunteer with the most endorsements — 16 — wasn’t chosen to be a liaison. Neither were two of the three other highest-endorsed individuals, with 8 & 7 votes. The endorsement tally for users that were chosen by the staff ended up being:

11 (Rounderhouse)

2 (PlaguePJP)

1 (djkaktus).

Whhhhack! Usually, that sound is a “Bang!” and comes from the starting gun, not from a slap to the face. So why did staff choose the ones they did?

Well, Rounderhouse is maybe the easiest to answer that for. He did receive the 2nd most endorsements, so there’s that (for whatever it’s worth). He sold himself well and is somewhat of a populist figure for the site. He’s on the Wanderer’s Library staff, which is sort of a pseudo-staff spot. He was once a small part of mainsite staff but rumor has it that he was demoted and kicked off. But given that he was barely staff (chatop I think, might be wrong), it actually sort of adds to his cred in a relatable way; it puts him with one foot in both worlds.

Ok. Plague’s selection with 2 endorsements cause the fingers to rake the scalp a tad, but they had a great line in their application.

Why I would be a good liaison: “I also don’t really want to be a liaison which makes me think I should be one.”

Can’t argue with that! I suppose.

And then…

Then…

🙁

☹️

😑

😮‍💨

😑

😐

Then there’s djkaktus.

Ok.

You have to understand a few things, but I’ll just cut to the chase; who made this decision and when will they be banned? I can’t imagine the number of consecutive blunts or brain-eroding psychedelics needed to think that this is a good idea. This right here is the worst decision I think I have seen staff make since June 2018. And both involve djkaktus.

Djkaktus used to be staff. He was a moderator at his height. He also manned the r/scp subreddit during the June 2018 Logo Fiasco. He’s a very popular writer. He is good at CSS design. His popularity is asymmetric with the quality of his writing, in my lonely opinion. He is morbidly over-subscribed to. He made an entertaining SCP podcast once. He won’t stop writing 001 articles, even though it is about time to.

He is a notorious drama queen who cries like a baby when he doesn’t get his way. He has remarkably thin skin, particularly for the amount of success he has. He was instrumental in the fallout of the Logo Fiasco, and banhammered people for expressing differing political opinions than his, remorselessly, even after staff admitted their error. Staff has repeatedly identified him as the most damaging accelerant to that fire. He is a quitter, who quit all responsibilities and blames his quitting on staff because they aren’t saying good things about him.

Years prior to his most famous ragequit, he was quietly fired from staff. After, he was desperate to get back on in any groveling shape necessary. This didn’t work out. No one wanted him on his team. At one point, he was sent into a insecurity-backed hormonal frenzy after a better writer got in some hot water. So he did his best Gríma Wormtongue impression and used his influence to advocate for de-personing this literary rival (Metaphysician), with the incredibly tasteless recommendation that the rival be stripped of his articles prior to being banned, for the explicit reason that the Wiki could keep them against the rival’s own will, if it came to it. He further championed the removal of authorial rights when the time came, and then did a 180 and suddenly was against it for no clear reason. His conviction might seem to have no rhyme or reason and move with the wind (I guess that actually works in his favor here, in that a liaison is a conduit), until you put together that his moral compass points towards the rating module.

He conspired with the author formerly known as Roget to infiltrate and orchestrate a smear campaign targeting the RPC Authority in the formative months of their creation for political purposes and because they make fun of him. He wrote an article where the main picture was in secret, a heavily-edited selfie of his ass; this stayed up on the site for years until his co-author spilled the beans, at which time he quickly deleted it. He has been caught using racial and homophobic slurs, the sort which he thinks makes RPC members less than him. He refers to himself as “The Based God” and his most identifying trait is an overgrown narcissism. His biggest hobby is bragging about his upvote totals. He is the epitome a culture of greed and the debasement of the containment fiction medium into a ape’s game of banana hoarding. He has been accused of sexual harassment by an underage girl who notoriously was groomed by elite members of the site, and referred to her as a “minx” when she was 17, he in his mid 20s. He was/is a regular in the site’s NSFW chat. He participated with ProcyonLotor and Mann in doxxing that kid. Staff have admitted privately in their internal chat rooms that they should have banned him several times by now, but that they won’t because he is too popular. The only person staff shit-talks more is Scantron/CommunismWillWin. Djkaktus knows this. He is well aware that he dislikes staff and they dislike him. It was in his application’s text.

To summarize, he is one of the least approachable and least-liked non-staff users on the site for those who know him any more that what his heavily airbrushed image communicates to his predominantly off-site audience. Remove the upvotes, and he is the worst representation of an SCP user possible. (The corollary in popular opinion is that his upvotes make him one of the best representations.) He believes himself to be a great representative, with only the site’s best interest at heart, when he can’t understand that the message he gives as a diplomat to the greater internet is that containment fiction is an excuse to glorify one’s self. He can only be seen as a good thing for the wiki when you factor in and over-value his upvotes. He reduces SCP to a gladiatorial competition fit for chimpanzees. In his way of thinking, works are churned out for the lowest potential reader. (For impressionable kids, in other words. Talk about filling the honey pot.) He is the SCP author equivalent of McDonald’s — both in production philosophy and nutritional value.

Djkaktus should be the farthest living thing from a position of representation. Otherwise is like saying Eric Cartman is a great representative of Christianity as the lead singer in Faith+1. There is zero excuse for staff selecting him as a town hall liaison. It is mind-boggling and impressively stupid.

So what do you think may have happened shortly after the town halls began?

Djkaktus quit. He cited the staff saying mean things about him.

He pitched such a tantrum that DrBleep, a newly christened administrator, took a sudden month long sabbatical, specifically citing his drama. Reputedly, this isn’t the first time an admin has had to leave due to his tantrums (Decibelles, per Dexanote), because djkaktus has the mental fortitude of a toddler. (And he’s supposed to be good for the community. Seems to me he just infects others with his tendency to quit.)

Not coincidentally, another long-time and high-ranking staffer is leaving, the question of their return ambiguous.

The drama has blown up on social media outlets, and is the most notable thing to come out of the town halls. Much of the concerns voiced in the town hall specific to staff issues is about how much of a disaster the liaison selection process was. For example:

“There were questions about why the process of choosing liaisons seemingly did not line up with the process that was explained to users.” — ghostchibi, OG, retired staff

Here’s the official reply:

“In our haste to get the liaison system up and running by the time the town halls themselves were, we ended up forgetting that not every part of our thought process is evident to everyone else. This is something we’ve done before and is a large part of why the Town Halls are happening in the first place — we’re constantly trying to improve this. We’re learning a TON with this first town hall and know how to more cleanly handle the next.” — Dexanote, Admin

The insincerity and staffspeak is suffocating even filtered through the computer screen. So the staff usually forgets that their thought processes aren’t made clear to their public? That’s something that’s happened a lot before, and is part of why the town halls are here, yet they can’t be extra careful to not do it during? That’s what this says. It’s like an individual drinking at an AA meeting. The irony is this staffer just spent, call it, 6 paragraphs explaining how users were misguided in their beliefs that staff wasn’t being transparent. Again, if you are learning “a TON” from this, you have just argued against your fitness as staff.

“While the process for choosing the liaisons absolutely includes taking into account community support for a potential candidate, we also tried to pick candidates who we felt were able to best represent different demographics of the community. ”

It’s amazing how users can get so confused about the amazing job staff do at transparency! How could “…staff will choose 3 volunteers based on the community’s feedback” possibly have led those craaazy users to believe that their feedback would select the liaisons? Let’s put these side by side to show just how gosh darn wrong the users got it here.

“…staff will choose 3 volunteers based on the community’s feedback..”

“…While the process for choosing the liaisons absolutely includes taking into account community support for a potential candidate, we also tried to pick…”

“based on the community’s feedback”

“…we also …”

👀

Silly users! It’s almost like they think we all talk to make sure the answers are consistent. We’ve told them that we are super duper keen on that several times, after all! Glad we can clear up how staff is not wrong.

This is an amazing failure of coordination for something as basic and foundational as the liaisons and their selection process — something that literally stands between staff and users and who are the first to proceed down the isle in this circus thought to be a church. Such a contrast in staff response seems to show that they are not working diligently behind the scenes to ensure “the most accurate and up-to-date answers”, as promised, but are scrambling to defend themselves.

Why was djkaktus chosen? Was it his application? Don’t think so… it’s filled with the characteristically flat prose and hollow words I know his writing style for. The sort of speech that would make even a politician take a second to swallow back down:

“This position as Liaison is more than just a means by which the community can express its concerns to staff — it is a position of advocacy for anyone who feels as if their voice is just one among many. As an advocate I feel that my position within this community would carry enough weight to project these cares and concerns to the persons who need to hear them the most, and I would be able to engage with those staff members in a constructive and diplomatic way. If nothing else, I have worked very hard over the last few years to prove that I have both the community and the wiki’s best interests at heart, and would do everything in my power to serve those interests to the best of my ability.” — djkaktus

This is hilariously wrong, the liaison is a joke that staff understands better than anyone. This paragraph feels like it was turned in by a 6th grader looking for a good grade in expository writing.

Thank God that Dexanote justifies djkaktus as a selection:

“Kaktus, for example, is a long-time user who has been part of the wiki longer than some (if not most) staff members.”

I don’t know what to type about this. My God. You’ve taken a town hall that is supposed to be about reconnecting with the every-user and you deputize the one person who has the least clue what it is like to not have a booming voice in the community. The farthest thing possible from the average user. Suddenly, community feedback has absolutely nothing to do with staff selection of a liaison, but relative longevity does. Staff communicated that privilege and seniority are what sets someone apart from a group, when that thinking is the exact problem that inspired the town hall. Suddenly, the newer users who applied have to conclude that they weren’t selected because they are newer. That doesn’t seem like a good way to promote inclusion. I’m sure a new generation of users are really eager to get to know you now, staff. I’m sure they don’t feel that there is a chasm that has widened between the two of you.

“Rounderhouse is an admin to our sister wiki…

Ok, so he’s technically staff too. Let’s overlook that.

…as well as being present in a lot of unofficial SCP-related social areas. PlaguePJP was chosen to hopefully represent the newer members of the community as they haven’t been present as long as the other two chosen candidates but still garnered vocal support.”

I get the diversity in length-of-stay, but did you have to completely disregard the precedent you set for endorsements? How could have PlaguePJP been chosen for his relative newness when there were other newer users who got more endorsements? Why not them, if it was based on youth to the site? The answer is clear. A sort of top-down market manipulation; a hasty thievery for control out of terror. Staff doesn’t care about your voice, users. Yours is a footnote that they might hover the mouse over, might not. Again, exemplary messaging given the backdrop.

“We made sure that the candidates we chose had at least some vocal support.”

Gee, thanks. Staff should have just told the other 15 people who endorsed Pedagon after the first one to just not waste their time, that staff will take it from here because they know best.

“Ultimately, there’s not even a reason you have to use these candidates as your third-party poster. You can confide in anyone you trust and have them post for you, and they can be up front about it or not. The liaisons are simply a system put in place in order for it to be a more ‘official’ avenue of anonymous posting, and so some less-connected users might have a person to reach out to if they don’t otherwise know how to connect with us.”

I get the feeling that his voice would be shaking and cracking if he was speaking this. The amount of vertigo here is astounding. If there’s not even a reason users have to use the liaisons, then why create them in the first place? Why go through the pageantry and tease users saying that their endorsements — their voices — were going to determine their representatives? Something that is advertised as as a great bonding agent between the ailing valley between staff and users, is actually something just to disregard when it comes down to it? The only value staff saw in the position was “simply” to create a more official avenue? Time and time again, staff perform the fact that they have zero clue what they are doing here. This was an opportunity for breaking down the more official avenues, not creating new ones for, apparently, no real good reason. Astounding.

“As for HOW we chose these particular liaisons, a huge chunk of the staff team (pretty much everyone present to do so) discussed each candidate at length amongst each other and decided based upon the factors above, over the course of about three or four days.”

1) Don’t use“amongst” when you are trying to be more relatable. It keeps you at such a distance. (2) “Based on the factors above” means that the role of the users — which staff initially gave every impression would be total and a gesture of respect & good will — was minimized to the meager criterion of at least one endorsement for an applicant. The concentration of staff members gathered and the expenditure of their time (all that precious staff time, at such a premium) is what’s important here. That and their other factors that they seem to have introduced mid-flight. All those precious staff bodies in one place! Their insight used so lovingly to ignore the stake of the users — those who by their words are staff’s bosses. Staff seem to have been more interested in using the opportunity to act out a bureaucrats wet dream; a veritable Conclave with the expectation of an equal amount of reverence and rears on the edge of their seats.

And nearly all of staff worked on this math problem for 3 days, and the answer they came up with was djkaktus? The same staff that fired him the last time the temperature was this high? The same djkatkus who “stepped down” (his words) for representing the site so poorly in 2018 and who is only still on the site thanks to the mega-tantrum staff is afraid he’d pitch?

The user’s reply is miraculous:

“Users asked “why didn’t you tell us about the other factor in deciding liaisons”, and were told “if you have concerns about the liaisons chosen, please tell us” or “we picked the liaisons because of [reason].” Users were not raising concerns about who was chosen or why the liaisons were chosen. They were raising concern with the lack of clarity and transparency about the process, but the staff replies did not respond to that concern.

Again, my concern here is about staff failing to admit that they did not realize they needed to tell users what all of the criteria for liaison selection was. Instead of admitting that, they deflected the question and redirected toward other potential problems that they already had answers for.

Your response is… well, it’s incredibly disheartening because of how little it feels like you (or the people who proofread your response) actually understood anything I was saying.” — ghostchibi

Another user tries to help staff up off the ground after the momentum of their own wildly fluctuating instructions bludgeons them in the head:

“I would like to comment that there is no visible correlation between the liaisons chosen and the comments in support we were instructed to make in the selection thread, and suggest that this does not improve the perceived opacity of staff decisions which triggered the townhall process in the first place.” — HarryBlank

HarryBlank politely declines to not mention that the single individual who endorsed Kaktus in the application thread, making him eligible according to their reconstruction of the terms, is technically staff. I’m going to stop here before I read the response. I see that it is Modern_Erasmus, who I know from being omniscient in this article, we will later see retire from staff. Let me say a little prayer: Please. Please staff. Just take it. Accept the criticism. The criticism is spot on. It’s okay to have tripped on your own drool. Anyone’s open mouth can catch a few flies. It’s nothing personal. Take the correction and instruction. I know you can be the mature group you like to vibe as. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

“When staff picked liaisons out of those who volunteered, we had to weigh more factors than just number of people who posted in support of them (though that as well as private messages in support absolutely played a major role).”

Fuck it, I’m an atheist now. Waste of my goddamn time. He references unverifiable, private messages as a justification — a 1:100 scale replica of the user’s point.

“ Primarily, we wanted to ensure that we had a good diversity of community constituencies represented rather than having all or most of them primarily active on one site or platform. We did make sure that everyone we picked had vocal support and was qualified for the role.”

Tellingly, this is the only time that staff is not trusting of the users’ choice. They didn’t do this in that first town hall when the users’ choice was what they wanted them to choose. (There was no other choice that could have possibly been made; the majority of voters aren’t writers and so weren’t going to value the concept of authorial sovereignty when it went up against the brand.) They don’t do this with articles and contests. They don’t take the upvote totals of the 6k contest and pick a different one than what the users chose saying “Oh yeah, well, we considered that. We did, that was part of our decision. But you see, we had to factor in more than that because…” Why? Why here, now, in this context, is staff intermediation so quietly necessary? Is more at stake than what’s usual; them hiding behind the goodie buffet of contests?

If staff wanted to ensure something that they felt needed to be ensured, then why fake-out the users with a smoke-and-mirrors illusion of participation? The grave digs itself deeper, yawning like a snake. Wait, that’s no snake, that’s a hydra. Modern_Erasmus has just forked the hydra and there is another — no, three heads now.

“Will there be a thread that breaks down the liaison choices? Unless there were similar voting threads for these circles, this feels like an arbitrary decision by staff reflecting what they think the community wants, rather than what they actually heard the community ask.

Because, frankly, I’m confused by the decision to make djkaktus and PlaguePJP liaisons over Pedagon and carolynn ivy. Harry already pointed out the simple fact that more people showed support for those two and others in the comments of the Liaisons Volunteer Thread. I understand this was not the deciding factor, and the other factors may have been more apparent outside of my circle (SCPD), but from my perspective, Dagon and Caro demonstrated their ability to take on the role better than Kaktus and Plague have. No disrespect to them; I’m not saying they’ll make bad liaisons. Kaktus worked as staff — experience I saw similarly valuable in Rounderhouse. And I don’t doubt people enjoy Plague’s presence. But when I see they are picked over two people who took the time Dagon and Caro have to enable discussion, engage with staff, and help define the role of liaison, I have to ask how exactly the community’s feedback contributed to this decision.” — Ensophos

“I would be inclined to agree with Ensophos and M_E. Though, it did seem primarily clear to me that personally, I think carolynn and Pedagon would be great for the role, given the clear community support and their expertise in outreach. Not slamming or rejecting the final outcome of the votes, since I strongly believe the current three are just as substantial to fulfill the role, but there is a slight question of just indeed how much focus was given to the community votes.

From what I understood from the unofficial SCPD town hall channel, there was a valid concern that this might eventually and inevitably lead to a popularity contest…

I personally hope for a little blurb on what criteria was used to help choose the liaisons other than the fields that are expressly stated in the voting thread.” — wagyusteak

Dear Jesus. I’m sorry I momentarily embraced atheism because you didn’t answer my prayer. It’s just I have been criticizing staff as militantly idiotic leaders who have zero understanding of how to run a community and… I don’t know, I should be enjoying this flaying a bit more. I always thought I would. But this is just… no one deserves this sort of embarrassment. This automatic mortification. May their lips be shut for their own good, Lord. Let them have just the slightest sliver of your wisdom. Give them the new gift of humility, such that they will not feel the need to win with the last words. May they receive the realization of their incompetence with your grace. And your dignity. Amen.

“The friction came from the staff AND the users both making assumptions, because certain aspects were not filled in…” — Joreth, staff

“We admittedly dropped the ball on explaining this — so let me clarify.” — Taylor_itkin

FUUUUUUUUUUUU — 🤦‍♂️

“It feels that now that the amount of effort that I and others put into forming the role has not been met with an equal effort in implementing it and ensuring that town hall participants are aware of how to use liaisons… It’s deeply disappointing that something intended as an outreach attempt has been handled with such little effort, especially after the amount of effort put in by various people to solidify the idea.” — ghostchibi

Plot twist. Full circle, the gut punch waiting where we started from. Members of SCPD in their unofficial town hall proposed the liaison role. Just as Mann had done before, as a good-faith effort. But the staff didn’t have the guts to share the criticisms with the users that they were able to share with themselves. Call it a disconnect. A lack of comfort. A lack of familiarity and approachability. Staff went along with it out of a need to project sensitivity; the weakling’s priority. This is like not telling your friend that they have a giant piece of parsley right smack in the middle of their smile. It’s actually a shitty, weak thing to do.

Staff’s inability to be honest with the users about the futility of the town hall liaison ensured that they wouldn’t take it seriously in development, execution, or consequence. There was never a hope or chance that it would succeed. This epitomizes the gap. That’s why the role survived when its prototype didn’t. Staff feebleness. An inability to lead when necessary. An unwillingness to risk the brand.

Can you see just how much of a disaster this is for staff? We’re only looking at the responses that deal with the liaison LARP. Staff shit the bed. They flunked. They were so incapable of discerning what the users were saying that they re-demonstrated the core issues in their attempted diplomacy. The staff and users might as well be speaking different languages.

What makes the betrayal of the users’ trust by staff worse is that the position awarded to djkaktus was wasted. Djkaktus has had numerous chances at representation and responsibility, and has reliably failed each time, with things being holistically worse off than they were before. Why didn’t staff give someone else the chance to prove themselves? Maybe it wouldn’t have resulted in bruises.

It is well known that Djkaktus has strained to get back into the good graces of staff since he was kicked out. As mentioned, and though much less dramatic, Rounderhouse was also kicked off staff. So it looks as though staff was using the liaison position to trial the possible re-introduction of prior staff back into staff. Is now really the time for that? Shouldn’t staff be focusing on what the liaison role should be, at least as it is being presented?

It looks as though staff chose the two most popular authors on the site, especially right now, while they front-run the ongoing 6k contest. Does that have to do with anything? Any political utility in the scope of the greater fandom? Were the choices for liaison for the good of the users? Or for the good of the brand? Staff’s official and peer-reviewed answers give no confidence that they had any better reason or any further thinking on the matter. An opportunity for a good-faith gesture of equity was lost, and the users noticed.

The final crescendo of irony is that a member of staff used one of the liaisons (djkaktus) to address issues with the staff. I thought these liaisons were “simply” more official avenues that people with less familiarity with the site and staffers could utilize. Guess that was a crock of shit too.

One more opinion: djkaktus quit because he saw how few users were glad he was chosen. Not staff. He doesn’t give a shit about staff and what they think. He checks the KiwiFarms thread for mentions of himself as frequently as we do O5, so he already knows that staff haven’t ever stopped talking crap about him. He cares about the users because they have his upvotes. The implied vote of no confidence by the users broke his resolve to help the site, which makes you wonder if his application wasn’t in hopeful expectation of more adoration in the first place. No adoration? No help. (This guy claims to care about the site most of all.) He blamed staff cause he can’t blame himself. Because he can’t return fire on his unharvested upvotes who he… ironically, instead of staff… truly does answer to.

Maybe each staff member should have upvote/downvote accounts. You are eligible for deletion from staff when your rating falls to -10 or lower. Staff are typically afforded a grace period of 24 hours after the posting of a deletion vote, to make peace with their failure. That’s true representation. Term-limits and primaries.

The users have more complaints and ill feelings towards staff after the town hall than they did going in. Now, the train wreck that the town halls were always going to be has both mangled the PR effort and handicapped the staff who attempted it. You almost feel bad for them; like the grandparent with tapioca for brains who keeps giving you the same gift every year and doesn’t understand your lack of excitement; or who tries to remove all of their clothes in mixed company and gets mad that you’re mad at them; or who leaves home to walk 8 miles north in order to find home.

The town hall was supposed to be a forum with a microphone set up for the users. Instead it was an ear-plugged orchestral concert that never got in tune but that dove right in to Beethoven’s 5th anyway, drowning out the microphones.

Just an absolute and omni-dimensional self-fail.

What was narrowly meant to act as a sort of glue has become caustic. This is pitch-perfect SCP staff. The disconnect is past the point of no return.

June 2021 is the new June 2018.

© Lack of Lepers, 2021