u/harperofthefreenorth

Hey everyone! I hope all of you in the Northern Hemisphere have been enjoying the summer... I haven't but that's because I don't like the season much and there's been a whole heck of a lot of fires and smoke in my region of Canada.

Being moderator of the sub is something I take seriously, and perhaps a bit too seriously as Kyoko and Velvet might have surmised. While our monthly visit/post/comment counts have plummeted, a lot of that is related to the decline in farming bots.

Outside of an incident regarding an alt, there hasn't been too much incivility. Which is good, I feel that this transition has gone more or less smoothly. So I'd like to hear from everyone, how do you think we've been doing? Are there any things we've missed? Or if you have an idea for an event or contest we can run in the future, feel free to share it!

I'll respond to as many comments as I can, maybe not right away but eventually-ish 😄

Hi everyone,

First I want to thank everyone who applied to join the moderation team, with six applicants and two spots it wasn't an easy decision to make. Given the low volume of our subreddit I decided to take into consideration values, enthusiasm, and transferable experience. Again, it wasn't an easy choice to make but thus is the nature of these things. If you were not selected, I, again, thank you for volunteering.

I've decided to bring aboard u/AVelvetOwl and u/theslickflow. I'm hoping we can all give them as warm of a reception as I received just ten days ago! I believe they will do a fine job and look forward to working with them.

Hi everyone!

I am happy to announce that I am opening up applications for two additional moderator positions. If you look in the top right-hand corner of your screen there should be a "Help lead our community" widget, applications are to be submitted through that. If you cannot see it, click this link. However I will give a brief overview of the process.

The application has two parts that need to be filled out, the first is a Google Form that logs basic demographic information (gender identity, if you identify as trans, and orientation) and contains a short personality test to act as a quick way for me to get a sense of what an applicant will be like. The second is a series of four questions hosted on the mod application itself: why you are applying, what contributions would you bring to the table, what time zone you reside in, and a description of any prior moderation experience if you have any.

The rationale behind the demographic information is rather simple: I am a cisgender straight man and thus I have certain implicit biases that go along with that even if I am neurodivergent and disabled. Ideally the other members of the moderation team should be more representative of our userbase than I am. This isn't political or ideological in nature, such discussions will only lead to strife. With that said, this is just an ideal that I am aiming for, if the demographics of the applicants make such a balance impossible I will make do with what I get.

If you have any questions feel free to comment down below.

Hi everyone!

I have closed the design survey and will begin implementing some of the changes requested today, but I'd like to go over the results with you in the spirit of transparency. In total there were 22 respondents, which is a respectable number and I thank everyone who answered!

My first question had to do with platforms, and the majority of respondents (16) use the mobile app, 8 use New Reddit, 4 use old Reddit, and 2 of you use reddit in the browser on your mobile devices... I respect the dedication 😄 . So for now I'll focus on the look and feel of our New Reddit/Mobile skin

https://preview.redd.it/6go90gybm9eh1.png?width=2199&format=png&auto=webp&s=08d6eb3ea15300ae8a8e0ee63978250f9a4e3e7e

Next was whether to allow media in the comments, based on the response I will be enabling both GIFs and Image embeds, not that unlike posts you cannot flair media embeds as NSFW, so please refrain from using them to share such content.

https://preview.redd.it/p7p8lutzo9eh1.png?width=2199&format=png&auto=webp&s=286de08feb1c85a1e0ef0730850287d501c1e028

Third is something I have already implemented, which is a quick filter for tags, none of the respondents said no and a majority wanted that feature. I limited it to general posts and ships involving notable P3P characters. The other protags were excluded as I didn't want to make it too long.

https://preview.redd.it/tkdmfx7up9eh1.png?width=2199&format=png&auto=webp&s=ce0dc63bb1a7348ce9e10bcf5c34c847842e007f

Next were a pair of questions about updating either the banner or icon, I will not be touching these at present as neither option had a majority of respondents agree to them. However, if I do anything in the future it will be open to OC submissions as a majority showed interest in such.

https://preview.redd.it/pxecn51fq9eh1.png?width=2199&format=png&auto=webp&s=be8d31136c952cb0b1c2fff6195f829f376e99ba

https://preview.redd.it/099nz6jgq9eh1.png?width=2199&format=png&auto=webp&s=57427a47adfae5ccf211fd7d7f1933f7412f9c33

The last response I'll be covering is whether we want icons/emotes for flairs. A majority showed interest in adding them so I will be getting started on that this week. I already had icons for FeMC and the P4 Protag lying around

https://preview.redd.it/q50v3a3vq9eh1.png?width=2199&format=png&auto=webp&s=6be2e96e15211750f5d253aacc46574bf264cb81

The final two questions were just feedback on changes I had already made, and I'm pleased there was no negative response!

I am still working on a Moderator Application Form so keep an eye out for that!

That's all for now, have a good day everyone.

I've noticed a trend in some comment threads where headcanons are being conflated with "canon" - be it FeMC's sexuality, love interests, personality, etc. As I said before, I do not wish to introduce a new rule until I have earned the trust of the community at large but this is definitely something that needs to be addressed right now.

In a nutshell, due to the nature of the Persona games and how spin-off media is produced what can be considered canonical is limited to rather broad details. Even then, consistency isn't always guaranteed (see Akihiko's protein gag ever since Arena's release). The minutia is purposefully left for a player to determine, something which is rather attractive for the domestic audience ATLUS targets with the series. I can go on a tangent here but the point is that there's nothing really worth getting heated over at the end of the day.

So, let me use one of my headcanons to illustrate what I mean. In my head, Kotone played hockey as a little girl after watching the 1998 Winter Olympics and that's why she can use hockey sticks as weapons. Is it plausible? Yes, but it'd be rather silly if I were to argue with someone who thinks she played a different sport or none at all before her time at Gekkoukan.

Taking this further, FeMC's orientation is not something that is firmly established because of a few factors. To start off Aigis is a possible romance but due to an apparent coding error in the flowscript her FeMC SL doesn't trigger a romance flag despite being largely the same as the MaMC's Aeon link. I say error since this is ATLUS, as a modder I've seen them do bizarre things under-the-hood that don't make a lot of sense. Futhermore, JRPGs are RPGs at the end of the day, so the individual player always winds projecting their own worldview and morals onto the protagonist. As such debates over the topic are discouraged, it seems to only fuel disagreement and arguments often follow.

This sub ought to be welcoming to all, thus going forward I'll keep an eye out for assertions about her "canon orientation" as they seem to just invite trouble and bring out some rather ugly conduct. If you think she's exclusively lesbian, great. If you think she's exclusively straight, great. Just don't tell anyone else they're wrong if they don't agree with you. Personally, I don't think it matters and is a rather silly thing to argue about. I'm not taking sides here as I see it as childish and against the spirit of our community either way.

Hi everyone!

Ownership of the sub has been granted to me so we now have moderation! I'll be working on revising some of the rules to address some issues we have run into, and going through the list of flairs to organize it better (ie the Shipping-Joker tag not being with the other shipping tags), as well as adding a tag for original content... we need more of that tbh so yeah.

I hope you all will go easy on me, I'll do my best here and hope everyone will be with me. I'll also be opening up secondary mod applications over the weekend once I can get through the more administrative tasks and the like.

Cheers everyone and I look forward to fostering and reviving (no pun intended) our little community!