community feedback survey

[Lucilyn]

I'm getting kinda tired of everyone arguing different points and missing others' points entirely

 

 

if the staff thinks Kopase's videos linking to the Tulpa Central discord is a serious issue, then they should put a warning about it in his guide or something, but if the guides are fine (idk I'm not watching/reading all that) they shouldn't be moved out of Guides

 

it's not really fair to ask anything like this of Kopase either so it's really just on us to add a disclaimer about the third party place if we want to

[Ranger]

Oh, sorry for the break, I got caught up and busy with some other things. I'm excited to be able to focus on this again but I'm not going to guarantee fast progress anytime soon.

 

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One of the things I'm planning on doing is adding a dedicated section of guides to "just do it" guides. Casually mentioning it in LOTPW (I linked Bre's post because that's where the discussion really starts) and on Discord has already generated some discussion so I figured I should post it here so people don't miss out and I can go over exactly what I'm planning at the moment.

 

I believe "just do it" (JDI) guides are both an important part of guide history and are often underrepresented because they're not as detailed as dedicated guides and they rarely get accepted as guides. Given that I believe the philosophy of "just do it" can help a great deal of people, I think it would be worthwhile to give JDI guides their own dedicated section.

 

I believe a JDI guide is any guide that teaches a mindset or multiple mindsets but doesn't elaborate on a detailed process for how to achieve something since the idea is the reader can figure that out on their own. A couple of examples are "force more" and "stop if you're not having fun". JDI guides are typically very short but they can be longer to elaborate on the mindset presented. The difference between a JDI guide vs a Tips & Tricks guide is a Tips & Tricks will give more details on what to do (here's a tip: force in the morning so you knock it out early!) vs (just force more). 

 

I believe JDI guides are more likely to be repetitive and multiple people will submit similar guides. I think this is okay because I think the goal of a JDI guide isn't the content as much as the mindset and the delivery of that mindset. The name of the game is to make it easy to understand or to get you to to think about it a particular way, not to instruct you on how to do it. Therefore, I think having a sub board dedicated to these and looser rules on duplication/plagiarism would be nice. The catch is since JDI guides are likely to be numerous and repetitive, each individual guide won't get their own listing on the list of guides.

[Ranger]

As I said on Discord, the idea of having a section dedicated to "Just Do It" guides or JDI guides for short was poorly received. I did notice at least one person interested in the idea however, and I figure it would be so harmless to try that maybe putting it out there wouldn't hurt anything. I figured after two weeks (or as Zen pointed out maybe a bit longer) of no activity in the new board it can get taken down and the new threads can be moved to the Tulpa Discussion board instead.

 

I hit a snag worried about checking the guide list and I figured out a solution for that. I wanted to do something fancy using code, but after looking into scraping or writing code for the forums directly, all of my options were terrible. Tulpa.info does not want to be scraped, and I do not want to get banned trying. I realized that thanks to IPB sucking, there's no easy or convenient way for me to write a script to check guides either. We may be a Com Sci major now but we're not a seasoned php developer, nor am I an admin of the forums. Instead, I think the more reasonable solution is to throw up the white flag on this approach, take the guide list I (with some help) checked manually, and ask you guys to keep an eye out for any guides I missed. I did check this list technically twice, but most of the checking I did took place back in February, what was left I don't feel like rechecking and that happened even longer ago. Please ping me if you see any guides whose OP's look like "-------".

 

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With that being said, the other snag was I wanted to do some huge update where I have everything sorted out and ready to present. There are a few missing pieces, but I do have a lot of already finished crap back from February and I don't think it's doing anyone any favors collecting dust for months.

 

So here's what I have so far, after making a couple of changes here and there:

 

The Working Board Description Blerbs

 

This is what you will see when you see the board preview on the homepage

 

Spoiler

Guides:

 

This section contains user-submitted guides. To learn more about the guides board, please go here (link).

 

Tips, Tricks, & Resources:

 

This section contains user-submitted tips & tricks and resource guides. To learn more about the tips, tricks, & resources board, please go here (link).

 

Just Do It:

 

This section contains user-submitted "just do it" type guides. To learn more about the "just do it" board, please go here (link).

 

Articles:

 

This section contains user-submitted articles. To learn more about the articles board, please go here (link).

 

Drafts:

 

This section contains raw guide content written by users. To learn more about the drafts board, please go here (link).

 

Guide Discussion:

Public discussion about the UpVote/Draft guide system or guides in general.

 

The Working Guide Guidelines OP (A pinned thread)

 

Spoiler

These guidelines cover what each guide type is by providing their descriptions, the expectations of each guide category, and the guide creation guidelines:

 

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Guide Descriptions

 

When posting your submission, make sure you are posting to the correct board. If you post in the wrong board, your submission will be moved to the correct one.

 

Guides: The Guides board contains user-submitted guides that teach how to perform and develop tulpa related skills and mindsets. Guides tend to be longer passages that go in-depth into their topic, typically providing examples and sometimes providing sample exercises. Guides may also incorporate the author's detailed opinions and provide dedicated resources. It should be noted a guide does not have to be solely about any general tulpamancy topic (i.e. possession), it can still be an in-depth walkthrough on a general technique. For example, a guide dedicated to possession positions may go over the importance of this topic, the pros and cons of different positions, examples of and how to achieve different positions, advice for coming up with your own positions, and so on. General or creation guides tend to be the longest guides. Unlike other guides, creation guides tend to give a general overview of various tulpa-related skills and milestones.

 

Tips, Tricks, & Resources: The Tips, Tricks, & Resources board contains user-submitted tips & tricks guides and resource guides. When submitting a guide for this board, please specify Tips & Tricks or Resources, not both.

 

Tips & Tricks guides teach tulpa-related skills and mindsets without going too in-depth. These submissions tend to be brief and focus on a specific helpful mindset, offer an unusual but helpful approach to a specific skill, or offer other helpful information to make developing other skills easier. For example, a Tips & Tricks submission may be advising the tulpamancer to sit a table when practicing arm possession. Tips & Tricks submissions are not in-depth enough to be guides dedicated to the discussed skill.

 

Resource guides provide tools or links to other resources to assist tulpamancers. These submissions normally don't teach the tulpa-related skill they are designed to assist with; These are dedicated aids not walk-throughs. For instance, a resource submission may be a list of pictures of what positions a tulpamancer can try while doing possession, but this submission won't teach you how to do possession. At the time of writing, there are not enough recourse guides to have their own dedicated board, which is why they share a board with Tips & Tricks guides.

 

Just Do It: The "Just Do It" board contains user-submitted "just do it" (or JDI for short) styled guides aimed at teaching tulpa related mindsets. JDI guides are typically the shortest guides with some being a few words long. JDI guide authors expect tulpamancers only need the necessary mindset to perform the given tulpa-related skill and can figure out the rest on their own. For example, a JDI guide submission for possession positions may be, "Just don't sit funny". JDI guides are more about the delivery and wording of the mindset rather than the content, so submissions may be very similar and repetitive. For this reason, JDI guides will not have their own individual listings in the List of Guides.

 

Articles: The Articles board contains user-submitted articles discussing tulpamancy. Articles tend to be persuasive or informational essays covering tulpa related topics or the tulpa community. For example, an article on possession positions may go over which positions the author has observed and their observations about each position. While articles sometimes argue to embrace specific advice, articles typically focus more on the why advice is important in a broader community sense rather than try and teach their reader that advice.

 

Drafts: The Drafts board contains unfinished submissions that either the author wishes to further revise or need further revision before being moved to one of the other guide boards.

 

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Guide Categories

 

Submissions are given guide categories to make them easier to find or search for. Guides and Tips & Tricks submissions in the List of Guides(link) are sorted by guide category. As of now, Articles and Resources are not due to the lack of submissions. Additionally, guide categories are also tags the author can add to their submission. The forums have an advanced search feature where you can search for threads based on their tag alone.

 

When you submit your guide, make sure you say "submitted for ___" or explain what category best fits your guide. If there is disagreement, discussion on where it should go will determine its ultimate placement. Otherwise, a staff member will use their discretion and provide a category.

 

This forum supports multiple tags, and a guide may fit in more than one category. To address this, guides may have up to three relevant tags including the primary guide category for the List of Guides placement.

 

Here are the following guide categories:

 

General: Guides that help you through the whole process of creating a tulpa

Personality: For those who wish to create a personality for their tulpa, look no further

Sentience: Getting your tulpa to the point where they seem to act and think on their own, or help getting past the points where you are unsure or worried

Vocality: Tips on how you might be able to hear your tulpa's voice

Forcing: Stuck when actually trying to create your tulpa? These might help

Focus & Concentration: Guides on how to focus properly in the creation process, for those who are having difficulties. Includes meditation techniques.

Narration: Narration touches on how to talk to and with your tulpa, with some tips as to what you might talk about if you have run out of ideas

Visualization: Help in how to improve the mind's eye

Imposition: Learning to sense and hallucinate your tulpa in the real world

Possession: Aiding the tulpa and host to let the tulpa to take control of the body

Switching: Taking possession one step further and allowing the host to completely detach themselves as the tulpa takes full control on their own

Wonderland: Tips that mostly deals with creating or controlling your imaginary mindscape

Misc: Miscellaneous guides and tips that don't fit anywhere else
 

Note: Some tags have brackets around them, such as [general]. This is a side effect from transitioning the forums from myBB to Invision Power Board. Right now, I am using these prefixes to help me keep track of submissions that may need back-ups. In the meantime, if you want to search for a guide, make sure you also search for the bracketed version as well.

 

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Guide Creation Guidelines

 

Guides should adhere to these guidelines. If these guidelines are not satisfied, a submission can either be edited by a staff member to fulfil these guidelines, be moved back to the Drafts board, and/or receive moderation action depending on the violation.

 

1. Submissions should adhere to Tulpa.info's rules.

 

2. Each submission should be posted in the correct board. A staff member may move your submission to the correct one otherwise. Early drafts should be posted in the Drafts board.

 

3. Off-site linking or third party document links (such as Google Docs) are allowed, either because the submission is long or because it was originally published elsewhere, as long as

• The website or link does not contain malicious software (i.e. viruses) and is secure.
• The full guide can be accessed on the forum itself OR a copy of the guide must be provided as a forum attachment.
• If it is a blog that contains NSFW or otherwise rule-breaking material but the page with the guide itself does not, a warning should be provided.

4. Advertising is acceptable as long as it is minimal, does not distract from content, and also brings some additional value to a system's tulpamancy experience. Paywalls to content are not allowed.

 

A note on older guides: Some older guides do not satisfy all of these guidelines. If there is a guide missing back-ups, please go to this thread to report it (link to guide back-ups) or PM me and I will fix it. Otherwise, if a guide is violating the other guidelines, please follow the Revision Request procedures here (link to Revision Request system)

 

The List Of Guides OP (Pinned Thread)

 

It's not ready yet, sorry.

 

The last list I made is outdated, I haven't organized it accounting for Tips, Tricks, & Resources, and I made different decisions on how the request review system works, thus affecting the placement of certain guides. I'll need to spend a good amount of time to clean this up and with the current edits I'm making this is already taking awhile to write out.

 

The UpVote/Draft System OP (A pinned thread)

This post is not finished. I have an outline of what I have so far and a flowchart:

 

Spoiler

The UpVote/Draft System

 

Goals: The goals of this guide curation system are to reduce post anxiety, filter guides by popular vote, encourage authors to revise their work, and offer the bare minimum protection for beginners.

 

The process in short...

• A guide author can choose to post in Guides or Drafts
• Guides in the Guides board are filtered by upvotes.
• Submissions in Drafts cannot be upvoted
• Authors can request a move to Guides when ready or to Drafts for any reason
• Problematic guides are subject to the Revision Request system.

 

Outline

• Introduction
  • Explain that guides are being filtered
  • What does this system do? (Filters guides, goals)
  • Flowchart
• Overview of Goals
  • Link to why the GAT failed
  • Ellaborate on reducing post anxiety
• Submitting to Guides
  • Can post directly in this boars
  • An overview of the guide boards, guide guidelines, and a link
  • Guides are filtered by upvotes
• Submitting to Drafts
  • Submissions cannot be upvoted
  • Can be used to keep rougher feedback separate from the guide and not punished for raw ideas
• Requesting to move a submission
  • From Drafts to Guides
  • From Guides to Drafts
• The Revision Request System
  • Brief overview
  • Link to more detailed explanation
• Conclusion

 

 

The Revision Request System OP (A pinned thread)

This post is also not finished. Here is what I have so far:

 

Spoiler

The Revision Request System

 

This system…

• Allows users to report problematic guides
• Provides guidelines for how the staff will review guides
• Is designed to encourage and reward revision

The process in short:

• A user reports a problematic guide in the guide's thread
• The staff will decide if the guide in question warrants a guide review or not
• If so, the staff will conduct a guide review
• If the guide achieves a 70% disapproval rate, the guide will be moved to drafts with feedback on how to fix the guide
• After changes are made, the author can either create a new guide thread or have the old one moved to Community Guides.

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One of the common complaints about the previous GAT was old guides with problematic advice or methodologies were not handled properly. With this system, the goal is to provide the bare minimum protection against toxic or harmful advice while discouraging spiteful complaints, working with the limited time resources the staff can provide, and encouraging the guide author to revise their work. While this system is far from perfect and is not designed to completely resolve the core issue, it may be good enough given the lack of a GAT and possibly make progress where the former GAT could not.

 

 

(Ugly) Working Staff Review Guidelines OP (Pinned thread)

 

The rules staff members should be following when reviewing guides:

 

Spoiler

Staff Review Guidelines

 

If a submission is reported to be problematic, the staff will review it and provide feedback. This post outlines guidelines staff members should follow when reviewing guides. If you would like to see more on the Request Review system as a whole, please go here (link).

 

While reviewing and responding to reported guides, the staff are expected to do the following:

• Apply moderation if the submission violates Tulpa.info's guidelines
• Focus on investigating the reported issue. If the guide is long, the majority of the guide may not be read
• State their position on the reported issue.
• Provide feedback on how to resolve the problem
• And abide by these guidelines, but can provide optional additional feedback on grammar, content, etc.
• Staff review sessions may take awhile. Given the staff has other duties, there is no set deadline for completing a review. If the staff is really busy, a review session could take months
• Staff are not expected to provide in-depth reviews on a submission's methods or claims but if they do, cannot hold a submission back unless the content is highly problematic. A guide method with weird or silly ideas should not be held back unless the guide is deemed satirical or breaks rules such as advocating self-harm.
• While staff can provide feedback on grammar and structure, this cannot hold back a guide unless the submission is hard to read. A gid wit bad formeting n speli errors can be **illejabule** and if stractur is like OMG!!! so bad bad :( distrectud it can be held back.

 

Given all of that, what's left is:

• Ironing out the policies (like... how many staff members are actually expected to review a guide for any given review session)
• Finishing the essays describing these systems (and if necessary, simplifying things further)
• Actually updating the list of guides 
• And then once all of that is done, getting people to test the new system

Edited September 4 by Ranger

[Ranger]

This is a post I wanted to have as its own stand alone thread but I honestly see no point in doing that. I wrote this post back in January, but given the recent discussion on Discord on having a new guide approval system I think it's worth dusting off:

 

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The Guide Approval Team (GAT) concept has been created and disbanded twice now, and any potential third attempt at recreating the GAT should be aware of the potential problems they may face. The idea of having a GAT formed when people wanted to filter out bad guides from the good ones. After suffering through several issues and a lack of interest, the GAT dwindled until only Waffles remained as the last GAT member. Unfortunately, aside from the criticism from the public complaining the GAT tended to be overly harsh and nitpicky, there is very little I can tell you about the original GAT and why it fell apart. Afterwards, a new smaller team of 7 GAT members was created in attempt to curate guides again. However, like the first, it disbanded. I was the last GAT member and manager, and I'm going to go over the problems with the second GAT attempt. If there is interest in creating a new guide curation system, whether it be the GAT or something else, I hope these issues are carefully considered before the new system is established.

 

There were several issues with the second attempt, but they mostly boiled down to these four things:

• Poor planning and organization. The newest attempt was conceptualized by the new team day 1 and policies were added and edited in the moment. Several issues on how to run the GAT and what the policies were came up, including how the approval system worked, what the GAT managers and GAT members had authority on, if the GAT had to be exactly 7 members, an odd number of members, etc. (I kid you not), if we could have substitutes, if GAT member participation for every review was mandatory or not, the guidelines for reviewing a revision, and how to address guides the community had a problem with were constantly debated and occasionally had policy hammered out but not always. While some policies like the advertising policy couldn't have been seen in advance, several of these other issues could have and GAT members struggled with bureaucracy and policy fatigue. If there is a new attempt at reviving the GAT, most of the major policies need to be hammered out before day 1.
• Communication issues. Things moved really fast and with several changes thanks to the poor planning and poor organization, but communication breakdowns with the community, staff, and within the GAT itself also existed. The Tulpa.info staff moves slowly in general, and they could not catch up with the GAT despite the fact I and the other former manager were or were soon to be staff members. Additionally, while the GAT made efforts to reach out to the community and get feedback, the community was frustrated and felt like they couldn't contribute to the new system. Establishing how the Tulpa.info staff and the community contribute to and or interact with both the curation team and system ahead of time will be critical to avoiding these breakdowns. Additionally, internal communication suffered as well. There was little internal organization, and GAT members struggled with waking up to 50+ new Discord messages and either having to read everything or miss out on important information. A system for relaying and keeping track of important information will be critical to prevent communication breakdowns internally.
• Drama. Since the GAT was mostly private, it became a hot spot for conspiracy theories on server politics and extreme views on how to run the GAT. The GAT was stressful, demeaning, and toxic. Negotiation was difficult not only because of extreme views but also because of crazy things like plans to go on a guide disapproval rampage, making it even harder to pass policy. Some members dropped out due to server politics and personal issues. I see one of the simplest ways to avoid this is to have a mostly if not completely public curation team to discourage 'behind closed doors' talk and call out extreme views on the spot.
• Burn out. Uncertainty on what the GAT represents or does, constant negative feedback from the community, and all of the other issues lead to burn out. GAT members felt they were not getting what they needed (whether they were overworked or underworked) and struggled with the idea they were doing more harm than good for the community. The large time investment was a thankless job and it was what served as the final nail in the coffin. After creating a feedback survey and seeing mostly negative feedback early on, the GAT thought up a rough idea for a plan B and disbanded. Keep in mind writing a single review can take hours for a 2-3 page guide and there were little upsides to being a GAT member.

I created am creating the current guide system hoping to resolve the issues the GAT system created and failed to address. While I don't think this system is perfect, I hope it will encourage people to post guides who were originally afraid of being humiliated while offering beginners the bare minimum protection from bad and/or harmful advice.

 

While attitudes towards the GAT have worsened over time including my own, I saw some interest in a guide curation system when asking others for feedback on an idea I had for a guide on Discord. To my surprise, discussion over how my guide idea should be written shifted to GAT discussion. Since one of my goals with this new system is to encourage drafting out your ideas and then submitting them, it's possible conversations like these could crop up again in the future.

 

If you are interested in creating a new curation system or revising the GAT system, feel free to share your ideas here or contact me. I don't mind helping out on hammering out policy and acting as a liaison between the new team and the staff if absolutely necessary. Regardless of how much involvement you want I and the rest of the Tulpa.info staff to have, keep in mind that the new guide curation system revival won't be successful if it's not thought out.

Edited September 5 by Ranger

[Luminesce]

The normal GAT system we've had is fine, where experienced members can opt in and out, and they're notified and expected to go over new submissions.

 

The problem is pretty simply that the forum is just not active enough to maintain a team over a long period of time, which goes hand in hand with no new guides being submitted either.

 

My suggestion would be to let people make submissions, and allow anyone to offer feedback, and then you or whatever mod/etc. is in charge of guide approval (or just any mod that feels like it) can approve them if all seems well. 

I'd say any (forum) mod+ should be allowed to move submissions to the approved categories if they feel they're qualified to make that decision.

 

 

It's disorganized, but playing by ear will be necessary when there isn't enough activity to uphold (or even utilize/warrant) a system in the first place. If the forum became particularly active again for some reason, I'd then recommend going back to the typical Guide Approval Team setup.

Edited September 5 by Luminesce

[Ranger]

5 minutes ago, Luminesce said:

The normal GAT system we've had is fine, where experienced members can opt in and out, and they're notified and expected to go over new submissions.

 

The problem is pretty simply that the forum is just not active enough to maintain a team over a long period of time, which goes hand in hand with no new guides being submitted either.

 

I disagree, the second GAT was created when the forum had roughly the same amount of activity it has now. The second GAT fell apart because it was a hot mess, and it honestly stopped doing much once 2021 came around the corner. If we tried to recreate the old system I think it would be hard to find people to recruit for it (and I sure as heck don't want to run it). I think we are better off with a new system that doesn't require approval or disapproval before a guide is submitted.

 

9 minutes ago, Luminesce said:

My suggestion would be to let people make submissions, and allow anyone to offer feedback, and then you or whatever mod/etc. is in charge of guide approval (or just feels like it) can approve them if all seems well. 

I'd say any (forum) mod+ should be allowed to move submissions to the approved categories if they feel they're qualified to make that decision.

 

Honestly the difference between that and the UpVote/Draft system is people post directly to guides and mods will move it to the right guides board as needed.

 

The UpVote/Draft system does have a guide report system that's more GAT-like in nature, but technically speaking that isn't essential to the system itself, it's just there because people had a problem with the last GAT not taking down "bad guides".

[Luminesce]

If the forum was more active, we'd need to hold a members' voting process to vote in GAT members the community feels is qualified to critique and approve guides, and there would be more submissions there to approve in the first place

 

If/until that time though, the best choice is to let anyone critique (or just compliment) submissions, and have existing Staff manually approve the threads when they think they're good enough. There's not enough going on to try and organize more than that, it's unnecessary

 

We could give people an optional opt-in role Discord style similar to Half-op but with no special permissions, just the fancy title, so they could feel a little more officially involved. If there's a way to notify people with a specific role on the forum, then we could also attach a Submissions notifier to the role, but it's not necessary. Well, the role isn't necessary at all, I just think it would encourage people to keep up with submissions a bit more.

[Ranger]

I'm willing to consider completely throwing out the UpVote/Draft system if it flops hard. Right now though, I feel obligated to push the system because I promised I would deliver a system with upvotes and such.

 

I don't know how to include a member vote in a continent way that won't slow down the process too much.

 

I don't know how many people would be interested in such a role. Unfortunately, there are very few people who care about guides, let alone the guide review process. I figure the less people involved in-between the submission and it being posted as a guide, the better.

[Luminesce]

To be clear, I intended for Staff to be able to approve a guide at any time, regardless of if anyone's even left actual feedback on it yet, if that Staff member feels the submission is high quality enough.

 

But, encouraging community feedback is good to do too.

 

(* In this forum-inactivity suggestion, definitely not if we reformed a full-fledged GAT again when it's more active)

Edited September 5 by Luminesce