ANNOUNCEMENT!
Thanks to the public launch of our very own forums and the recent addition of notifications in Stash-Box, day-to-day management of StashDB is moving to Discourse!
This will allow us to leverage many of the more advanced communication and community management tools available to us there, all on a platform that we control. The emphasis on threads will also make it easier to save, find, and share important discussions that can be easily lost or overlooked in Discord.
I’ll share a glimpse of our future plans in a second. But first, here is a rundown of everything you need to know right now:
New Requirements and Changes
- StashDB editors are required to create a Discourse account
- Make sure to fill out your profile as well. Those requirements are detailed in the new onboarding guide.
- StashDB editors are required to join the StashDB Editors group
- Please follow all of the instructions in the request template, even if you already have edit access.
- StashDB editors are not required to have an active account on Discord or Matrix
- We only required these accounts because we had no viable alternatives for communication. Now that we have StashDB notifications and Discourse, we are removing that requirement.
- Many StashDB-centric Discord channels will be archived:
- # stashdb-invites is no longer necessary and will be archived. All requests for edit access will be handled through Discourse instead.
- # ministry-of-truth will also be archived. The discussions there have always been better suited as threads. That way, they won’t be lost in the shuffle quite as easily. They already have their own category on Discourse.
- # stashdb-guidelines is also moving and will be archived. We are currently working on a new process for submitting and approving guideline proposals using Discourse’s built-in polling features. Until we finish writing the necessary templates, proposals will be paused.
- Lastly, # stashdb-general will continue on Discord, but it will no longer be the primary method for communication and coordination between editors. We have a StashDB chat room on Discourse for anything that isn’t better handled by a thread or edit comment.
- References to Discord and Matrix in the guideline docs are still being updated
- As we continue the migration from Discord to Discourse, a lot of incidental references to Discord or Matrix may be out-of-date. I’ll be updating those in the coming days.
- The most relevant pages relating to Discord, Matrix, and now Discourse should already be updated. Let me know if you find any major discrepancies that still need fixing.
With the organizational stuff out of the way, I’d also like to make a few points regarding content moderation.
Downvoting
First, I ask our voters in the edit queue to hold submissions to a higher standard than you may be accustomed to. The recent addition of a few big software features — built-in notifications, multiple updates per edit, and votes that reset after an update — represent an opportunity to re-examine old habits that may not be necessary anymore.
Before it was hit-or-miss whether someone would even see your comment. And if you downvoted something, you’d have to manually flip your vote after an update. It was also much more common in the early days to upvote just about everything, thinking any data was better than no data. Often, it would be easier to just approve a bad edit as-is and submit your own follow-up edit to correct it.
But none of that is true anymore. It is now easier than ever for both submitters and voters to notify each other of a potential mistake and swiftly correct it, all without leaving the StashDB interface.
In other words, don’t be afraid to downvote edits.
Downvotes are the most effective way to teach less experienced contributors about our requirements and expectations. The more often we take the time to review, downvote, and comment, the more we encourage a higher level of quality in the edit queue. And in return, we save ourselves more time in the long run with fewer bad edits to review and resolve.
Sourcing in Edit Comments
Similarly, I want to hold submissions to a higher standard for edit comments. That doesn’t mean everyone needs to write an essay complete with footnotes (love ya Echo), but it does mean that initial comments like “submit”, “add performer”, or simply a blank space are no longer acceptable.
All sources must be acknowledged in the comments. Without them, the burden is placed on the voter to either verify the data independently or guess where the data was sourced from and hope it’s accurate.
Recently, part of a larger submission from an experienced editor looked suspicious to me, but there was no explanation in the initial comment. I also couldn’t verify its accuracy on my own, so I asked in the comments for the source before approving the edit. Apparently they couldn’t find a real source for it either, so they asked an AI chatbot for the answer instead.
Obviously, ChatGPT is never a reliable source for StashDB data. That should go without saying. But the more important takeaway for me is that I never would have known just how unreliable that piece of data was if I hadn’t insisted on a source before approving it.
To give a few practical examples, if everything is scraped directly from the studio, then “scraped from studio” would be a fine comment on its own. But if you grab anything else from a different source (IAFD, TPDB, Indexxx, Wayback Machine, etc.), you need to explain that in the comments.
If you’re adding a performer you recognize in the video, trailer, or cover image, then “performer from visual ID” is all you would need to say. If you recognized them from a tattoo or other distinctive feature, then that would be useful to include in your comment as well. But if you just say “add” without clarifying the sourcing, then reviewers are left to guess if it’s a visual ID, an AI recognition tool, an external database, or the studio itself.
Adding tags without a source is similar. If the comment just says “adds tags”, then I don’t know if they’re manually added based on the video, scraped from the studio, implied by the cover image or description, etc.
Again, it doesn’t need to be a complete essay. In fact, concise comments that are quickly and easily parsed by reviewers are preferred. As long as you’re not leaving out any important information, of course. I plan to add a more thorough explanation to the guideline docs about our expectations for edit comments and sourcing, so keep an eye out for that.
Keeping my earlier point in mind, I encourage everyone to start downvoting edits over insufficient comments.
Mod Elections
I saved the most exciting news for last. After we’ve finished migrating everything to Discourse and set up the new guideline approval process, we will finally start building a larger mod team for StashDB. Mods will be given greater say over the future of StashDB along with a direct hand in the guideline approval process. Mods will also have an opportunity to “adopt” portions of the database — i.e., a favorite studio, a particular niche, or a category like “performer images” — to help lead discussions, answer questions, and decide how to interpret certain guidelines within their area of expertise.
Moderator status won’t come with any new features or special abilities within StashDB right away, but we have discussed those possibilities. Whatever elevated privileges come along with the MODIFY role mostly depends on Infinite and the Stash-Box dev team.
Mods will also be elected by their fellow mods and admins. We are still finalizing the details, but
this will also be handled within Discourse. If you’re familiar with auto-editor elections for MusicBrainz, ours will look a lot like that.
Signing Off
That’s everything I have right now, but I’ll be sharing more updates as I have them. Until then, join Discourse!