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Critique on the decline of a community


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(Ugh. Six posts while I was writing this one due to being so distracted. I apologize if it's no longer on topic. Also, I was distracted. See endnote)

 

I feel like I'm being really biased here, but the only way I can think about this rule going into effect is how it will affect Cinemaphobe's Progress Report. He inspires so many other people and their PRs, I just have to. The conflict here though isn't his occasional life-relating-to-tulpamancing in my opinion though, but his dream journaling. I remember the moment he said he would use his PR as a dream journal, I had to think on whether that was really okay or not. I was a bit happy though, because dream journaling is the single most important thing to do in the pursuit of lucid dreams, and obviously his goal was to dream with his tulpas.

 

But I know we're not talking about just his PR here. There definitely are PRs that are undeniably blogging, albeit blogs called "Life With My Tulpa". So I'm not going to argue against this update to PR rules, in the hopes that it helps shy people away from writing too much about their lives not regarding their tulpas. However, I'm going to suggest you rely more on informing than enforcing these rules, at least for a while. I see zero harm in what Cinemaphobe writes about for those that choose to read his thread, because nearly everything he does is centered around his tulpas in some way. That means I would personally allow his dream journaling, as long as he also includes other types of content on the progress of his tulpas, which he does. If you start seeing posts which are nothing but dream journals (which I'm sure he'll make sure to avoid, after this debate), then by all means warn him away from that. But it just isn't worth literally enforcing new regulations outside of obviously rule-breaking cases quite yet. Give it a while to sink in and inform/warn where necessary, just be careful not to scare people off.

Because the staff is kind of good at that

 

 

With that being said, I'm not saying no other PR can't be warned right now. I only read a few and I only read a couple paragraphs of the ten I random-sampled, so there may be cases where people are straight up blogging. I was simply using the one I knew best as an example. (Alright, I wrote this post while in a skype call and it's all over the place. Replace Cinemaphobe with *anyone* and I think the meaning comes through well enough. Sorry this post sucked)

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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I for one support this change. It will be little effort for Cinemaphone to move the brunt of their talk, the daily slice of life stuff, the rants, the talk that's irrelevant to actually working on their tulpa, to lounge. Meanwhile, PRs can take on a more serious tone, where people talk about how they perceive their tulpa, and concretely talk about what they did to work on them. As Kiah said, it would be easier to see for newbies what people actually do in this community, and it'd be easier for people to understand others' methods without digging through huge wall of texts about their life. Not that there's much wrong with those, but those won't be banned from the forum anyway. Nobody has any ill will to Cinemaphobe, I'm sure, and he'll be able to post just the same, just in Lounge.

Feel free to ask me anything.

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

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So what I'm seeing is that there's more interest in personal blogs than actual literal progress reports. In fact, I think there's more interest in personal blogs than there is in the Lounge. So if all of our blogs are moved to the Lounge, it'll make everything currently in the Lounge feel completely wrong and out of place. Plus it will be a lot of work for the mods, moving and deleting the 95% of the PRs that are off-topic.

 

Here's what I suggest: just rename Progress Reports to Personal Blogs, then create a new forum named Progress Reports. Then mods won't have so much work moving the few on-topic PRs, and we won't have the Lounge all cluttered with one type of thread.

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

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So what I'm seeing is that there's more interest in personal blogs than actual literal progress reports. In fact, I think there's more interest in personal blogs than there is in the Lounge. So if all of our blogs are moved to the Lounge, it'll make everything currently in the Lounge feel completely wrong and out of place. Plus it will be a lot of work for the mods, moving and deleting the 95% of the PRs that are off-topic.

 

Here's what I suggest: just rename Progress Reports to Personal Blogs, then create a new forum named Progress Reports. Then mods won't have so much work moving the few on-topic PRs, and we won't have the Lounge all cluttered with one type of thread.

 

Great idea and pretty the best possible solution i´ve read here.

Lacie(my tulpa for my everydaylife and also my best friend)

 

Noah together with Lynn are my spirituell tulpa´s im using for meditation

 

Darcmanish Me

 

Lacie´s and my progress report.

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Here's what I suggest: just rename Progress Reports to Personal Blogs, then create a new forum named Progress Reports.

 

Lol'd. The concept of that is funny, albeit a bit much, I think. Progress Reports as of now are still a place for progress, and I don't believe separating the "blogs" from the "progress" is a productive endeavor.

 

Let's clarify the problems. Progress Reports, due to the interconnectedness of tulpamancing progress and life events, have become a place to talk about anything remotely tulpa-related, such as.. the activities you've been doing instead of tulpamancing. There's a blurred line (because some PRs are worse offenders than others) between information relative to the tulpa's development and information relative to the host's life. Forcing Progress Reports to be strictly progress documentation will discourage many users who are used to the current state of the PR forum from posting at all. Having them "blog" in the Lounge is inefficient for several reasons: this requires many users to have two distinct threads where it's easier to maintain one, which may

will

lead to Progress Reports being abandoned, and Lounge blogs containing progress; the blogging problem will become even worse if we force people to do it specifically (no thanks), and again progress reports will be less appealing to all but the most dutiful of tulpamancers; and it's a ton of work, partly for the mods but mostly for the users, who might not consider it worth the effort to post at all if they're going to be told to stop doing what they enjoyed doing. On the flip-side, progress reports are becoming difficult for ~some interested users to read and glean information off of due to their off-topic nature. Progress of the community is supposedly slowed by this off-topicness becoming more common. Also, there are quite a few fully legitimate progress reports in the PR section, so renaming the forum would still require a lot of work for the mods.

 

I don't know if I covered everything but it's 8 AM and I've been up since yesterday. The best solution to me seems to be an active effort on the community's part to keep Progress Reports on-topic - whether it requires nudging or warning, on a case-by-case basis - following a re-clarifying of the rules in the Progress Report section. If enough members participate in this re-aligning

and aren't too offensive in doing so

, I see no reason we can't move back towards documenting progress and away from blogging. Even if it means telling people to stay on-topic on a case-by-case basis for a couple months.

 

That's my solution. If you guys are too lazy (or rude) to help, I'll go through every single active PR myself and make sure they know we're going to focus more on the tulpa-aspects of the hosts' lives, in a polite yet firm manner.

 

Right after I eat something and sleep for a questionable amount of hours. I'll really do it though, I don't want you guys to do anything drastic like split the community in half between strict-reports and progress-blogs.

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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At the risk of, as Kiahdaj said, just complaining and not giving positive solutions, and also maybe repeating what Sock and amber said, I can't link up off-topic in PRs with a 'decline' of the community. It's not exactly what the board was for, but that doesn't mean its original vision is the best. And the actual link proposed seems to be "It makes it difficult to find the real progress, thus diminishing information gained by readers and discouraging them from joining." Or something.

 

Honestly I'm disinclined to believe it's a particularly strong force of evil without some delicious anecdotes anyway, but honestly, given how much content you might be excising with it, I'd think it'd kill a good deal of what retention power PRs had up to this point - I think I agree with Sock a good deal when he says (or implies) that high user turnover is somewhat culpable for the 'decline' we're talking about.

 

But we may not be on the same page, here. When you say "decline", I say that what is listed here is mostly symptomatic, rather than the problem per se. But, like a lot of people in this thread have alluded to, I think the problem might be a dilution of the (somewhat) intelligent and curious with lower-quality users, or, in bitter old-time speak, morons. The kind of people who will post the same questions in Q&A over and over again (Sock, please notice me) - a long time ago, I used to think that this was a problem, and tried quite hard to fix it; I now see it as symptomatic.

 

The upside is that I don't think it's any worse than it was a year ago. On the other hand, I don't have a solution. Stagnation happens because there really is only so much to talk about (this is why PRs as they are are important for retention. This is also why old members form circlejerky, off-topic cliques - because the only reason they're still talking to each other is a volume of off-topic talk that stays interesting. There is discussion but it will be sparse, because interesting things are here). Actively stimulating intelligent discussion - with intelligent people - is a candidate solution, but it's harder than it sounds to do it convincingly and consistently (this solution has been discussed before). And I'm culpable here, just look at my post record. Maybe I'd try harder this time around. Sorry.

 

 

TL;DR: Issues listed here are symptomatic at best and irrelevant (PRs) at worst; cracking down on them directly will do more to stifle things than improve them. The real problem is a dearth of

intelligence

old blood, or rather, too high a member turnover. But I don't have a good solution.

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I agree with 1, but I think 2 is dumb. This entire board isn't just for discussing tulpas. You also talk about off topic things here, as well as your tulpa drama or goingson in life. That doesn't make it a personal blog, nor does it make it a big off topic lounge. All we have to do is make sure everything is in the appropriate section. If you have an issue with this, you're just at the wrong forum. Not many forums are NOT like this, actually.

as for #3, if people aren't coming out saying they're Roleplaying, all it does is leads to accusations of everyone's tulpa being fake, which is the actual shitty drama we don't need, not personal blog stuff. And if they are saying they're roleplaying, who gives a shit tbh, unless they're contributing to the forum as if they actually have a tulpa. If someone needs tulpas answers on something, for instance, it's not cool for someone with no tulpa to answer pretending like their tulpa said so. People need authentic feedback and answers. But if someone wants to roleplay to make their tulpa sentient as a sort of parroting, or if they just feel like it, it's cool as long as theyre not giving people information about "their tulpa" when they need actual knowledge.

My lip hurts.

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Alright, I've just read through this whole thread. Following is 2 points that may be the root of the problem(s?) that I'm surprised no one has brought up, following that is a mass section of replies.

 

1. People leave once they've finished their tulpa.

Now, I don't mean 'finished' in any concrete sense, but there comes a point when the site simply has nothing else to offer. What this means is that we don't have any expeirience tulpamancers to guide the newbies. And the people who do stay for years stay because they've been unsuccessful, and are still desparately trying to figure out what they did wrong, how to succeed next time they try. Or maybe that's just me.

 

2. There's only so many things to talk about.

I've heard multiple times the mention of 'advanced discussion', what exactly do you mean by that? It seems to me that there is only so many things you can say about tuppers, and so it all gets repeated and regurgitated over and over... I swear I know the common answer to *every* question could ask. Or a not-so-newcomer.

 

I would love to be proven wrong about this. Is there some good example of this fabled advanced discussion? Maybe due to my aforementioned failure it simply sails right over my head? Please link me a thread.

 


Mass reply section

People don't come here en masse and roleplay - they simply see how we act and, not understanding just how much effort and quality a tulpa takes, make underdeveloped ones.

I may be guilty of this myself

 

I've not given this thread a proper read yet, only skimmed it, but wanted to offer my opinion on the automated bot stuff. It's probably already been said, but such a thing would be pretty difficult to pull off without it being able to understand the meaning of words/sentences in the post as well as the context in which all of them are used and such, and at that it'd probably still not be as accurate as a real person making a judgement about said post.

Indeed. A bot just wouldn't work, you'd practically have to invent AI. Although I certainly invite anybody to prove me wrong.

 

Not only do I feel personally attacked, but I'm sure a few others do as well.

There have been plenty arguments both ways on your PR. Try not to take it too personally, you just happen to have the best the most popular PR

 

Maybe a probationary period of three days to a week where you cannot post any new threads to the forum outside of maybe the beginners questions and answers thread and the intro thread. You can read but you can't post to avoid the issue of the same question being asked over and over again and if they leave from frustration they weren't here for the right reasons to begin with.

"The right reasons to begin with"?? This sounds like a horrible idea. It seems like all it will do is simply drive off new members.

 

Unfortunately I cannot read this(permission denied), was it deleted by mods?

 

At the risk of, as Kiahdaj said, just complaining and not giving positive solutions,

I see no problem with this. The first step is to identify the problem (and not the symptom), and then identify a solution. If you can do both at once, even better!

 

[same post as above]

I can't link up off-topic in PRs with a 'decline' of the community. It's not exactly what the board was for, but that doesn't mean its original vision is the best. And the actual link proposed seems to be "It makes it difficult to find the real progress, thus diminishing information gained by readers and discouraging them from joining." Or something.

Exactly! I think the PRs are just fine as they are, and all the solutions provided so far I can't see having any beneficial effects.

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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Not everyone leaves when they "finish their tulpa". My tulpas were practically "finished" when I found this place a year ago. I think there's still more to learn about tulpas and people, myself, but mostly I'm here to help as many people as I can by improving the community, and those periodical personally-inspiring posts for specific people. I don't plan on leaving.

 

And "advanced discussion", to me, means sitting down and clarifying different aspects of tulpamancy. We didn't inherit this community and its norms from some elder gods, it was made by people like us. That means it's imperfect and can always be improved upon. My and Linkzelda's discussion on philosophical zombies comes to mind, although that was more philosophical than useful maybe. But we can always improve on what we know, or question it in some cases. How strict should we be in teaching newcomers about tulpamancy, ie should they be able to figure a lot of things out themselves or be told what to do every step of the way? Are there correlations between creative people and the ability to create tulpas, and are those tulpas generally more or less qualitative after their quick development? Are we taking any beliefs for granted that don't actually have a strong underlying logical explanation, and can we give them one?

 

The topics are rather more difficult to come up with than what goes on in the Q&A section, but they're still necessary for the development of the community. Even if we don't necessarily come up with anything new, simply reaffirming what we're taking for granted every once in a while is worth the time. Answering newbies' questions will only take us so far without covering the nitty-gritty on occasion. The answers we're giving them are like ancient wisdom handed down by people who once had to really think about the subject matter. We should be trying to improve on, or make new the old. Our understanding changes with time (as do our definitions apparently), and we need "advanced discussion" to affix it again.

 

On a more personal note, I think you might be projecting on the whole "There's only so much to talk about" thing. I spent over four years researching lucid dreaming, until I became almost an expert on the subject. I can teach someone to lucid dream better than someone who can. Because I never really could do it. I mistook my current mindset on the matter as solid and productive, convinced I just needed to learn more for it to really work. But that wasn't the case at all. All I needed was to stop and think about how I was going about it, rethink my thoughts, work up some motivation and just buckle down. I could've studied lucid dreams my entire life and been no closer. And to be honest, I think you're in that same situation with tulpamancing. I think you should stop worrying about the phenomenon itself so much and just work on the internal stuff. Nothing external is going to just make things click in your mind, trust me, I tried. You have to fight the internal battles to really get things done.

Sorry that was off topic, but it kept popping into my head as I wrote my reply to you. Just trying to help.

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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Not everyone leaves when they "finish their tulpa".

No, but a large magority do. I'll try to get some statistics to back this up.

 

I think you might be projecting on the whole "There's only so much to talk about" thing. ... [useful advice] ... Sorry that was off topic, but it kept popping into my head as I wrote my reply to you. Just trying to help.

You're probably right.

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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