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As things are, .info will die. Here's what we can do to reverse it.


Yuki

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I've been around here for over a year, but only got very involved in this place a few months ago. I wrote a guide, started helping out some new people, and tried to push for and help out with some changes that were needed in this community. There was a project to improve the tulpa.info home page, but after a few months of effort with me driving the project, only two pages got changed.

 

The current state of .info forums is pretty awful. Nothing new happens on the website, no research is done to learn more about this phenomenon. Just look at the state of the guide submission forum; barely anything ever gets posted to it anymore, and the GAT are practically out of work, the poor guys. The research board is dead, and all that happens here is that newbies ask questions and then leave, with some people keeping progress reports and playing forum games. Hardly the scientific hub regarding the tulpa phenomenon that we could be.

 

The IRC channels are arguably worse than the forums. The environment is toxic to all, with a major problem existing in the form of blatant attention and drama whores, along with people who don't take tulpas as a phenomenon seriously at all, or seem incapable of it. This can be improved with active moderation, as well as staff and users steering the place towards being more serious and constructive, without accepting the rampant idiocy that currently thrives there. As of now, the staff only acts to remove members that are explicitly hostile, rather than addressing the greater problem of people only here for attention being able to fester unchallenged.

 

I'll write down the major issues I see with this community, and what I think would be suitable steps to improve things. Just maybe, if the community speaks out for itself, things can change for the better. Otherwise, we'll be left watching this place regress more and more, until tulpa.info will be even more indistinguishable from any role playing community.

 

The major issues as I see them.

-Staff lethargy

-Overacceptance

-Dilution of information

-Brain drain

 

 

Staff lethargy is arguably the worst of the problems we have here, and if that doesn't change, I don't see anything working out with this place. The staff of .info is inactive and not engaged with the community. Back when I started trying to help out with the front page issues, Kiah, who was then just a moderator, told me he had been doing nearly all staff work by himself for several months. To make any changes, he would have to make all the efforts himself, and things would take forever to be handled. Pleeb, the owner of this website, told me the same; the staff aren't interested in doing anything on here if you don't constantly bother them and engage them. I found the same thing happening with the front page changes.

 

It took between a week and two weeks to get people to proof read texts, and meetings with the staff to redesign the front page were a month apart because people were impossible to even reach, or permanently unavailable. None of the staff made any proactive efforts during the process, and all the texts were written by outside members. Some of the staff never even concerned themselves with the process at all, and in the end we're left with a half-hearted set of changes. In the end, nothing was left of an ambitious plan to make a comprehensive starting hub for new users to learn about tulpas, and we're left with these three pages.

 

Some staff members barely ever come onto the forums or IRC and care nothing for this website. This place needs staff members who are willing and able to put in more than an hour a week into this place, and are willing to put in work to change .info for the better. You can't just sit around and ban people occasionally as a staff member, you should be the driving force behind site improvement. I haven't seen this at all in the current lineup of staff members.

 

The staff will add some new members to it in the near future, but I fear that if nothing about their attitude towards this place changes, things will be the same, with just more people doing nothing. Staff, you need to engage with the community, you need to put in work to make changes, together, and remove everyone from your group who isn't willing or able to do this. Otherwise, you're doing this place a disservice. The current attitude has driven away productive members in the past, and is currently doing the same. Be active, be involved, or pass the baton to people who do want this place to improve and prosper.

 

 

Overacceptance is a recurring problem. People come in here with all kinds of opinions and attitudes, and some of them do not mesh with a reasonable, logical forum culture. People who come here for attention or to stir up shit should never be welcomed or accepted, and yet this happens. In other communities, trolls and attention whores get banned, but in this place, for some reason, everyone's feelings are more important to protect than the state of the forum itself.

 

If I see people posting long dramatic rants about tulpas being malicious and evil, and other nonsense like that, I wonder why these people are even allowed to be here. Why do we, as a community, accept this? Surely we can be reasonable about it, but why should we have to cater to those who are only here for a big dramatic show, attention or out of boredom? We want people here who want to learn and work on themselves and improve as people through creating tulpas instead, right? I want to see the members of this community saying NO to drama whores, and shun them. I want to see the staff remove them from the community, not give them half-hearted warnings and let their bullshit continue.

 

We should make this place respectable and reasonably serious where it needs to be, not have this be a children's playground. You cannot cater to everyone, so you'll either have to hurt the feelings of people who lower the quality of this place, or drive away those who might actually be productive members. Currently the latter of those things is the choice that is passively being made.

 

 

Dilution of information is something that happens if everyone is able to give their opinions unchallenged. This is very problematic when it comes to a subjective phenomenon such as this. While dogmatically pushing for one set of beliefs as the truth is not what should be done, this place needs a push towards quality. Tulpas can be a wonderful tool for self-improvement and making your life better and happier, but this potential meaning of the phenomenon is often lost. There should be a focus on this, and we as a community should start stressing that making a tulpa is a long term, personal project if you choose to get into it, one where you can learn about yourself and grow as a person.

 

Regarding the nature of tulpas, we should not accept everyone's baseless opinions, and we should call people out on bullshit when we see it, especially if it is said as if it's the objective truth. An agnostic yet critical approach is one we need to collectively take on. We cannot accept both blind acceptance of opinions, nor blind skepticism. Blind opinions and people who state things yet can't defend them must be shunned and rejected.

 

One other thing is the problem we have with terminology being all over the place. Ask 10 people what switching is and you'll get a lot of different answers. We need some kind of uniformity in terms. It doesn't help when people start using multiplicity terms interchangeably with the ones we use here, without explanation. Perhaps something like having set definitions for terms, where hovering over an instance of the word gives you the accepted definition will help. Would it be possible to implement something like that? Being on the same page when discussing things is very important for this community, or any other.

 

 

Brain drain is a phenomenon where expertise leaves a community. In this one, we have a steady influx of newer members, and a steady drain of the existing members. People don't stick around in this place, and that's because they aren't sufficiently engaged. I think that we need projects to keep the older members coming back. They are the ones this community should cater to mostly, to preserve their experience and knowledge and keep it here. One idea that came up in the front page redesign meetings was monthly community projects, where people would be encouraged to collectively work on a certain topic like visualization or communication with their tulpa, and to encourage sharing stories, collectively writing guides, and more. If we can engage more people, get them to work on themselves and the quality of this forum at the same time, we will create a stronger and more unified community.

 

I'd be happy to lead such a project if people are interested, shoot me a PM about it if you would like to help make it happen.

 

 

I would like to see this place improve, if only because I think tulpas as a phenomenon have so much potential to help people and improve their lives. I don't like this place as it is, and very few of the older members or the staff do, either. That can change, if we do something about it. We'd need to make some changes that will take effort and might be painful to some, but otherwise we can only look as this place descends into something that won't help anyone, and only serves as escapism for lonely teens. I'd be happy to defend any and all of the points I made in this post, if you disagree. If you do agree, I'd like you to voice your opinion. Together we can make changes happen, not with one angry member posting at a time.

Feel free to ask me anything.

Suffering is self-imposed. Don't let it control you.

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I don't think I disagree with any of this. In the past you've accused me of overacceptance and I didn't agree, but I see your point now, because it's more expansive than just "don't be so friendly". I wouldn't call it acceptance as much as.. Allowance? Don't know the word, but basically, it's less that people are accepting of differing views and more that they don't even try to suggest more healthy ones. That's why I disagree with what I do as wrong - I don't hugbox, I make people feel understood and then suggest healthier/more positive/qualitative views instead. I'm not the forceful type, but I'm also not the do-whatever-you-want-lol type. The way I go about inciting change is different.

 

But, that subject is further reaching. Many people are left to their old beliefs that are often uninformed or unhealthy because they were phrased in a way that doesn't seem "too dangerous". People let "small problems" slide in order to not sound rude. And in normal circumstances, that would be fair! Don't get me wrong, you don't have to be a perfectionist with every little thing people do differently from you. But. This is a place of learning, or at least it's supposed to be. If you came here to learn about tulpas with some preconceived, destructive beliefs, and we "let them slide", we'd be doing you a disservice. People come here to learn, even if they don't sound like a philosopher or a neuroscientist. Even if they just tell stories about their tulpas' and their activities in a progress report, to some extent everyone is here to learn. So I agree in that sense, our number one priority should be to teach. That doesn't mean you can't be polite or understanding while you do it, but you shouldn't let those get in the way either.

 

As for my attitude versus yours and similar when it comes to actually doing these things, I don't really see a problem. If I'm too nice or you're too rude, I feel like that's just how the world works and it'll balance out. We need aggressive people and we need understanding people. But I agree the norm might be making "accepting" a bigger priority than "teaching". We need both, not either. And certainly not neither.

 

 

I don't really have anything unique to say about your other points, I generally agree.

Hi! I'm Lumi, host of Reisen, Tewi, Flandre and Lucilyn.

Everyone deserves to love and be loved. It's human nature.

My tulpas and I have a Q&A thread, which was the first (and largest) of its kind. Feel free to ask us about tulpamancy stuff there.

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For me, this forum is a place of learning. I use it like a feed-back-library. Im quite new to all this so I don't want to spam this place up with useless opinion. If I need some help I look in the guides or use the search function. But abou this I can say something. Right now, everything looks like it was already discused in 2012 or 2013. Nothing new happens really, so everyone looses interrest. Maybe new staff helps but I think the main problem is, that nobody trys something new. I don't think the staff should be more strict about "Drama-queens" but maybe they should create a "Help-subforum" where various problems are listed up (like the big list of guides) where you can first look up a problem before you post something. One of the most active parts of this site is the Off-topic section but I don't know how to solve this problem. It's just because the more experienced people got nothing else to do in the forums than help newbies. We need something new! (But I think the progress reports are very usefull, because the writers don't loose the motivation to make a tulpa)

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Just throwing in some random thoughts here and there.

 

With how indifferent, busy, or just straight-up inactive the staff can be at times, it's a bit difficult to get anything done in terms of the redesign. They were able to contribute a good number of things to it, namely proofreading and actually changing the pages, but it would have been nice if things moved just a bit faster.

 

It is a bit silly to see how some of the boards have died out after the first two years, where we get a few bumps and the occasional experiment that sticks at the planning phase and don't go anywhere. Back when the forum was just starting out, people were enthusiastic to push the limits of what they thought this could all do, and I'd like to see that start up again. To anyone reading, feel free to contribute to some of the threads in there, even if you'd be bumping month/year-old threads.

 

I agree when you say that the IRC is worse. The staff is rarely around when some of these things you mention go on, and I've pinged them to get promising replies like "we'll keep an eye out", only to have the same thing happen again. And hell, even a few people in there have admitted to starting drama and arguments just for the sake of attention, and they're still active members of the chat now.

 

Yes, people come into the chats often with things that are pretty outlandish. A good number of people are open-minded there, but there are still people that blindly accept everything that they read, and get mad at the users that are skeptical of claims made.

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Staff lethargy

 

Kiahdaj is doing a great job. But he should not be the only one.

 

Overacceptance

 

I think it's up to each individual person whether they choose to spare someone's feelings. I agree with you that it's not a good thing, but I'm certainly not going to enforce a rule that says everyone has to be harsh.

 

Dilution of information

 

Difference of opinion makes the world go round. Can you imagine if we all still believed wholeheartedly in FAQ Man's guide? I don't think we should ban someone because they have different beliefs or experiences.

 

Melian is a great example. We don't want people coming in to the community and thinking that Melian is typical for a tulpa. However, now that she and Mistgod have defined what she is, and how she's different from a tulpa, I think it's an asset having them here. Some people will be coming here who experience the same thing, or who want something more like Melian than a tulpa, and we can point them to Melian as an example.

 

I agree wholeheartedly with you on terminology. I think in some cases we need to define things more clearly as a community. In other cases we're maybe using the wrong word to begin with. (I'm not going to try to get people to stop using 'tulpa', even though it is wrong, but other more minor words should maybe be changed.)

 

Brain drain

 

I would love to see something like monthly community projects. I think that's a great idea.

"Some things have to be believed to be seen." - Ralph Hodgson

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[Hail] I think I am mostly on the same page as Sushi here. Going to go through the things item by item.

 

Staff lethargy

 

I cannot actually comment on the staff directly. After all, they could just be watching and doing stuff behind the scenes but not posting. So I don't know.

 

Now, on the general topic of staff becoming lethargic on forums, I know all about that. I've been a moderator of a transgender forum (retired at the end of my last term) and an admin of a few fanfiction groups (became lethargic there), and Tri and I are moderators of a plurality forum (active there), moderators of plurality subreddit (/r/plural) (active there), admins of a small tulpamancy information and discussion site meant as a supplement (active there), and moderators of an otherkin/therian site (inactive there). When one becomes a staff member, it is easy for community involvement to become an obligation rather than a pleasure which later leads to lethargy. Been there a few times, and fighting it in the places I or we are still active.

 

Overacceptance

 

Similar thoughts to Sushi. I will say this, though, lots of seemingly strange things turn out to be true and lots of not so strange end up being false. Hard to say.

 

Dilution of information

 

Also on a similar page as Sushi. This is partly how we improve our information and knowledge as a community. Also, having a few different folks is a bit of an asset. Different folks are where we learn about things that might be achievable or gain new insights into things. A lot of people, for example, have gained insights from the wider plural community which is pretty different. Knowledge transfer is a good thing (I should note that some knowledge is transferring the other way too). Basically, all information has caveats, though often even the person saying the information does not know them.

 

As for terminology, yes, there is a bit of a crisis, mostly with a few specific terms. Imposition and switch seem to have the most trouble. Imposition mainly because there is a very gradual transition from open eye visualization to imposition and people get confused about where the line is drawn. Switch because in this community, we use a slightly different definition than other other plural communities. This is why I personally always state what definition I am using or use the tulpamancy definition here exclusively and use the other definition elsewhere. More people should do the same. As for other terms from general plurality, a good habit is to always link them to elsewhere. I do not think it is a bad thing for new terms to come here. Can be useful even. Switch itself was one of those terms, though it got a small definition change.

 

Brain Drain

 

Monthly projects might work. Don't know. But we also need to remember, it is natural for people to move on at some point. The trick is to give something for those who would like to stay but leave due to boredom as opposed to lack of time. Also, remember, some people move to different places in the wider tulpamancy community. Tri and I were really busy for a while on a supplementary tulpamancy site but now we are not so we can be back here again, but then we found a french speaking tulpamancy forum with quite a bit of information that seems to have figured a few things out in isolation from the english communities and also has the most prolific guide writer I have seen between all tulpamancy communities put together. Hope to be here more again at some point. Kind of important to me.

Tri = {V, O, G}, Ice and Frostbite and Breach (all formerly Hail), and others

System Name: Fall Family

Former Username: hail_fall

Contributor and administrator on a supplementary tulpamancy resource and associated forum, Tulpa.io and Tulpa.io/discuss/.

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Only skimmed the thread, but I do agree with the majority of what the OP said.

 

I would like to be more active on this forum, but - and maybe it's just me; I don't know - it doesn't seem like that many new threads are posted here. And a lot of them that do get posted seem to be around the same few topics. Which is fine, but I think variety would help. I like the idea of a monthly project. But I don't know. I don't get online as much as I'd like, but I do agree that a revival of some sort would benefit this forum.

Currently restarting visualization in order to get it down perfectly. 

Progress log (haven't used it in a while, but still forcing)

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I agree with sushi that we shouldn't have any harsh rules as discussed.

 

We seem to have a problem of absolutely nothing interesting to do at all. Research? What are we gonna research? Write a guide? There's already 20 million guides!

where people would be encouraged to collectively work on a certain topic like visualization or communication with their tulpa, and to encourage sharing stories, collectively writing guides, and more.

This seems like things people have already done many times. What exactly would you propose?

 

I'm certainly willing to participate, just give me something to participate in!

I certainly do want this community to survive and grow, but I've no idea how.

I don't visit as often as I used to. If you want me to see something, make sure to quote a post of mine or ping me @jean-luc

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We could start by doing some simple, inexpensive research studies (surveys are easy to do and cost next to nothing). If funding is a problem, we could have Pleeb or one of the other admins set up a Patreon, which would give us at least a trickle of research money, and might even pay for the site itself.

"Science isn't about why, science is about why not?" -Cave Johnson

Tulpae: Luna, Elise, Naomi

My progress report

 

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