Axx°N N. wrote:Yes, but aren't those naturally posters that would reach out to you? Having an issue with posters is kind of a one-way-street solution. But if a user is being driven away by mod hostility, I'd imagine they would just silently dip out or write the community off; too much trouble. There would be fear of retaliation if they did otherwise, or even just a self-defeating sense of pointlessness. A community is its mods. I mean, I didn't want to post this because I was worried I'd get banned.

I don't believe I quite understand what you mean with the first sentence in particular; could you clarify?

As for the rest - I realize the argument you are making, and do not question the validity of the sentiment. However, for the specific context of this forum, I believe it does not apply to that absolute extent; not merely the (admittedly in large parts subjective) quality if analysis has dropped since Reichu in particular left, but also the much more measurable quantity; the amount of proposals of new ideas, of any sort of theorycrafting has drastically decreased since then, and most of the currently talked about things are merely treading old ground; since I fundamentally agree with Reichu's vision for this forum as a place where new ideas are born, I consider this a major cause for concern and a problem that needs to be rectified; I am fully aware that this sometimes results in stepping on people's toes, but my own conviction (and that of the rest of the active mod team - we do coordinate in advance how we handle things) is that enforcing this standard of debate in some fashion is worth the price of stepping on the toes of those who do not wish to engage in this was.

For the final point: You, nor anyone else, will never face repercussions for voicing concerns so long as you come from a place of genuine concern for the wellbeing of the forum. This is a matter that I will not budge on so long as I hold any semblance of authority.

Several users disagreed with your definition--so did the dictionary--but your argument is basically that only yours is correct. I don't think your idea of how the term should be used (let's say, "originalist") inherently lends itself better to an analytical context.

I did not mean to imply that my interpretation is the only correct one; there are several steps down the ladder that I also view as valid stances to take, even if I don't fully agree with them, and I took such care in illustrating the other extreme in hopes of spurring people on to find such a definiton of their own; the issue was that this did not happen and those two extremes remained the only points considered.

It's worth noting, though, that within their original comments they linked to production interviews that put a fair amount of doubt on the OP's theory. If we're supposed to have an academic standard, weighing theories against production realities should be a worthwhile endeavor. It's pretty plainly on the record that Mari was incorporated in a "figure it out as we go" approach. That doesn't mean meaning can't be added retroactively, but it should be considered when the OP is making the claim that certain creative decisions were made because of reasons they're attributing just so their theory bears out.

For the record, I also do not agree with OP's theory; I did not respond to in proper because I could not find the words to a proper writeup to why I disagree

Claiming that someone using the term Mary Sue is doing so because of sexism is a pretty big one. It's just not a fair accusation at all, and it ignores basically every point they had substantiated previously. It just makes it seem like you weren't considering their opinions at face value, and that tone continued.

That was not the intention of that line at all, and I thought I had taken proper care in my wording to differentiate it from said accusation; evidently I did not.
My intention in that particular instance was to illustrate why I do not consider the current dictionary definiton of the term a particularily valid one through the example of one of the driving forces in that shift coming from a rather malicious standpoint; by no means was I trying to infer that anyone in the discussion shared that standpoint, and I apologize if that is the way that this line came off.

Blockio wrote:The board is in a sorry state, people are being turned off.
Blockio is hostile.

I'd suggest these two things are not unrelated.

To be fair to Blockio, no one person is responsible for the “sorry state” of the site.
It's a process that has been going on for years now. Sites like this are dying in favor of social media. Some sites like Kanzenshuu and Sonic Retro are indeed alive, but they're attached to huge franchises (Dragon Ball and Sonic). For what it is, I think we're doing fine. Evageeks is an archive and a place for a few friends to meet online.
I do think that our moderation style might have something to do with it and have been voicing my opinions for years. But even then, that's not a single person problem. We work as a group. I feel like some mods have become scapegoats for structural problems on this site that existed long before this mod team took over. A lot of things happened right before we became mods and had the chance to start changing things around here. That, in itself, wore things down a lot and it was up to us to move on and try to do the best.

Blockio wrote:I don't believe I quite understand what you mean with the first sentence in particular; could you clarify?

Sorry, I see now I phrased that awkwardly. I meant what I was getting at a few sentences later; if a user has an issue with other users, seeking a mod seems the obvious remedy. No such remedy exists for when a user has an issue with mods if there's any perception of hostility, except to disengage.

BernardoCairo wrote:To be fair to Blockio, no one person is responsible for the “sorry state” of the site.

I didn't mean to imply as such, and apologize to Blockio if it came off that way.

I know there's a broader context here for why the site is how it is and the concerns of those who feel the rhetoric has worsened--but having chatted with various users myself, I'm aware there's a decent share who feel this place is intimidating and actively discouraging of negative critique. I readily agree with much if not most of the moderation on this point--I don't want to see half-baked rants that would fit better elsewhere. But I do notice that half-baked posts are left alone if they're positive or neutral whereas anyone with even a stray negative thought will be zeroed in on and challenged, and that in this case it was an unfair challenge--contradictory because the charge seemed to be "this isn't thought through enough" while at the same time engaging in logical fallacies and ignoring reasoned clarifications as if they weren't given.

I understand (and appreciate) the vision of the site as an analysis hub. But I think there might be a certain degree of perspective stagnation going on, or to use a term that previously got me in hot water, a bubble. The perception of EGF back in the Q hiatus (which I think I can speak on with authority because I've seen this place talked about elsewhere many, many times) was that of a fandom in civil war. A third movie that many saw as deeply flawed and even abhorrently so, who felt the flaws warranted engagement on those grounds (ie, critiquing, voicing disapproval) versus a portion who in crafting increasingly elaborate theories instead, were making a tacit argument that no, actually, Anno is an unquestionable genius. Many saw that portion as attempting to justify or handwave any perceived flaws. In the wake of NTE's conclusion, the reputation of this portion is considered to be one merely proven wrong, and the popular split is now among those who liked or didn't like the character resolutions. People nowadays seem to engage NTE using the language of dramatic scriptwriting, not mythological esotericism--mostly because, in the end, it turns out that so did NTE.

Now, I'm speaking so bluntly because I believe this has to do with a core identity issue with the site. If this is stepping on toes or reeks of any kind of hubris on my part, please disregard me entirely. Again, I say this with many reservations. It just feels like I'm the only one that will go ahead and say it and that it needs to be said.

Evangelion meant something different before and after its conclusion(s). It meant something before and after the idea of a remake existed. As it stands, I see the legacy of the franchise, in terms of analysis, as rife for exploring its many facets, not just its mythology or grand meaning, but particularly and somewhat unfortunately, its failings.

I don't think being an analysis hub should, or more like could, look like people only engaging with the mythology, and that's the impression I get for what's desired. If so, the vision for the site is at odds with the reality of how people naturally want to engage with the work. Or to put it another way, the reality of how the work begs to be regarded.

Although there seems to be some regret about the theorycrafting having died down and so the purpose of the site diminished ... I believe there was huge potential for this to be a gathering place for analysis of a literary sort but that any possibility was shut down by active discouragement. I've long had the impression that attempts to critique here are read as a kind of hostility, instead of a vibrant part of the genre of literary analysis--there are whole books about books that are written out of deep fascination or even love of a material but that might look like the world's most thorough takedown, but if you were to ask the author, they'd die on the hill that it wasn't intended with malice. And it's the most normal thing in that field. And to be honest, the idea of coming to a work without a scalpel just feels so dead to me.

My own perception of EGF if I were to be pithy is that it doesn't have a wide palate regarding food for thought. I come here because I get it in my head that this is where one goes to have an interesting discussion on NTE, but feel quickly reminded that it's with many, many exceptions.

Anyway, that's all I have to say. That specific thread spurred a feeling in me and brought up something that's been itching at me and I think I've wrapped my head around it.

Disregard what of this feels like a personal rant: this is, as best as I can tell, the feelings of some of the users here, and I figured you all should be aware.

I do see your point.

I am under no illusion that the theorycrafting side of EGF as it was in the days between Q and Shin is anything other than dead - many of the driving forces behind it who have left have, publicly or in private, said in no unclear terms that they have no intention to return.
So I very much do agree with you that if the site is to survive, the notional direction of discourse needs to be changed in some fashion or the other.
This will sound harsher than it is intended, but even after rather substantial delibaration, I do not find any better way of expressing it; the direction that I see the site currently taking is effectively one of a better archived Reddit in terms of the level of discourse.
My personal opinions on what the site should be aside for the moment, this does pose a much more objective problem: If this site is just another Reddit, what is the justification for the continued existence of EGF?
Ultimately, I think that the format of a forum still suits itself better for the direction we have had so far; whatever that means in terms of practical policy is a question that justifies and requires further deliberation.

While I do still believe that much of the speculation looking at the deeplore was justified - if nothing else by how many of the predictions made well in advance of Shin that noone else saw coming ended up true - I will be the first to admit that they are also monolithic and impenetrable, and a difficult read to get anything resembling up to speed with them, which in turn gave rise to a pattern of dismissing them out of hand wholesale because any individual part of them does not appear immediately significant; this is the trend that at the heart of matters, I take issue with.
This is obviously not meant to imply that lore and metyphysics take absolute precedent over analysis through the lens of dramatic scriptwriting (on my own end, this is a matter that has caused a lot of debate between Reichu and I in our respective experience with Shin); both are necessary to the whole picture, and I believe it unwise to dismiss one out of hand completely for the other.
I do not have any idea how to lastingly bridge the gap between those two encampments on any significant scale; anyone who does is very much encouraged to leave suggestions.

I don't have any good note to end this on; we as a site are in an awkward place, main releases being done for the forseeable future, many prolific members gone or inactive, and the entire sphere of the larger internet shattering in ways that noone knows if the largest public-facing network is even going to still be around next week. Something needs to happen, but even people with orders of magnitude more money and market research have not the faintest idea, what that something should look like.
So yeah, I can only reiterate, suggestions encuraged.

I think I generally agree with Axx°N N.'s opinions here. I have already made my opinion about the forum as a whole on this thread and others, years ago even. As of the past couple of years it doesn't seem things have changed much, so I don't know if I can add much more. Something I would like to bring attention to, though, is the fact that even now EvaGeeks is a reference in Evangelion fandom. The wiki is still well-read, people simply assume a bunch of things and other communities are somehow "run by Evageeks". In the forum's case, we now routinely have over 200 and at the moment I'm writing, over 300 online members reading the forums. A few years ago when it was still very active, and you can go back on Web Archive and see for instance the total post count, we used to have a lot more posts on average, at least 50k a year, even when the online user count itself rarely went above 50. We have gained a total of... around 5k since last October, and about 6k in the preceding year. Nowadays I repeatedly talk to people and even though a lot of them keep reading mostly old threads and info, very few want to post, because the forum has such a reputation for being unfriendly, gatekeeping and hostile.

Netflix and later Shin did much to reinvigorate the franchise overall and even now other Eva communities I participate in are very vibrant, full of discussion and new people, yet EGF, for all its many achievements, and as much as I love it and it has a special place in my heart, feels pretty quiet and stagnant, even though the viewcounts increase much faster than they did in, say, 2018. I know the forum format is intimidating to newcomers (and an update to the UI, if possible, could help), but it's not just that, since other forums still thrive. People still read the forums, but feel afraid to post here, and of those who do, quite a few give up after a while. I don't believe there is any single person to blame here, but a problem does indeed exist. And I don't think we're going to make it any better if we keep being seen as elitist and stuck-up. Newbies are the lifeblood of any community, and yes they will show up and make some pretty silly questions, but everyone was a newbie once and I believe we have to be welcoming towards them if we want the community to be healthy.

FelipeFritschF wrote:Newbies are the lifeblood of any community, and yes they will show up and make some pretty silly questions, but everyone was a newbie once and I believe we have to be welcoming towards them if we want the community to be healthy.

That's kind of the crux of the matter tho - as you yourself point out, forums as a format are much less convenient to the average user than Reddit, or any social media community that does not require a dedicated signup. What this means is that unless we, as EGF, have an identity that distinguishes us from these other places, slowly but surely, people will simply stop signing up because they can get the same thing elsewhere for less effort.
This is not senseless fatalism or a call to gatekeep, but a trend that has proven true time and time again; if a smaller space wants to avoid being superceded by a larger space, it needs to provide something that the larger space can't, otherwise those who look for productive engagement will over time migrate to the larger space because there are simply more people to talk to there.

Although I agree with AXX and Felipe on some issues regarding the style of moderation we adopted in the past, I don't see how this is so strongly linked to the critical debate over the quality NTE.
I understand that this is a forum, that there are users here with huge posts counts, and that it can be daunting posting here as a newbie. I really do. I will also be the first to admit that some situations may have been dealt with an elitist stance in the past by previous members of our moderation team. But criticizing NTE is something that has never been a problem here. In fact, I'm always doing so and I know many other people who think the same as me and are relevant members of our community. The difference between here and Reddit, for example, is that (even due to the site's format) we ask for a minimum of argumentative analysis in posts. There’s no point in coming here just to write “Mari is piece of shit" and leave...

I'm not sure I'd say it's directly linked, it's more like it's correlated. The bulk of mod exchange (at least that I see, I'm mostly in the NTE subsection) has to do with putting a lid on incendiary hot takes. I say all this as someone who views a good chunk of blithe statements against NTE to be somewhat underthought or merely a stubbornly held totally incorrect viewpoint. But the pattern as I see it is that someone has a hot take, and then a mod responds with a counterargument that seems personal and with the authority and intent of moderation at the same time. And I think that leads users to walk away from these exchanges with the perception that they're being told "I disagree with your opinion and thus it's not allowed" instead of "your opinion wasn't substantiated enough, please do so" precisely because the enforcement also uses the language and tone of a regular user just disagreeing on personal grounds--and in some cases, with blithe hostility.

Or to put it another way, because of the power differential, the context of a counterargument carries with it implicit stakes and gravity beyond just a back and forth. I think this can cause a user to be defensive on multiple levels at once, and thus the animosity they have that was directed at whatever thing in NTE they don't like naturally spills over into a fight or flight response. I know for a fact, due to chats, that certain users just walked away from similar exchanges feeling that it was unfair. That's not my endorsement of their feelings, mind you, I'm just saying that's the end result in certain cases.

I get the sense too that in certain cases, a mod response can cause users to feel that a counterargument pressing them to substantiate themselves, if there's any perception of poor faith involved, comes across more as baiting them into a ban instead of a genuine desire for a viewpoint to be articulated.

I don't presume to know the answers here, all I know is that my own perception of the hostility in this recent case came down to the fact Blockio was openly insulting in the way I typically think of a regular user who would then be met with moderation, and not a mod themselves. If the goal is analysis and substantiated argument, I don't see why insults and reductionist paraphrasing was called for.

You have to know how to separate things. Yeah, we give our opinion on the discussions that take place here. But that doesn't mean those opinions have any influence on how we conduct our moderation. We are users like any other and it is important for us to interact with the community beyond our role as moderators. At the same time, we understand that with the role comes responsibilities. We are, indeed, in a position of power and, yes, that has to be taken into consideration. I understand where you're coming from, but all the decisions we make are made together. Yep, mistakes can be made on a personal level, but we always come together to preserve objectivity and professionalism. There is no "agenda" here. Blockio and I, for example, disagree on many things about Evangelion and the site itself. And yet, we always work with each other for the greater good.
We have no problem with hot topics. We only intervene when the discussion goes off topic, which is our job. The NTE subforum, in particular, has become a boring and repetitive place because of this. We rarely leave the status quo there. Nothing against the usual discussions, I actually think they're good. But we created threads specifically for this. Turning everything into an NGE vs NTE argument is impractical. Unhealthy even.

FelipeFritschF wrote:... I know the forum format is intimidating to newcomers (and an update to the UI, if possible, could help), but it's not just that, since other forums still thrive. ...

Blockio wrote:That's kind of the crux of the matter tho - as you yourself point out, forums as a format are much less convenient to the average user than Reddit, or any social media community that does not require a dedicated signup. ...

I don't have a Reddit account; just now I clicked the Reddit "Log In" button and saw a popup that permits me to continue with Google or Apple sign-in, or to manually create a new username and password. I'm assuming I'd have to use one of these options before being allowed to post there; a bit more Google searching shows me older Reddit posts by noobs asking for help to post because they've been blocked by inadequate account age or insufficient karma, whatever that is. Without logging in, the Reddit home page shows me a bunch of current events, and if I use the Reddit header search bar to find "evangelion" I see a bunch of post in different r/* categories, which I assume are kind of like subforums. All that said: Reddit has a significant sign-up hurdle, obscure requirements to post, and its organization is not intuitive to newcomers; I assert that Reddit is harder to use than a traditional Web 1.0 forum like EGF, not easier.

The moderation team should praise the traditional forum format, not treat it like a handicap. It's great. It's bulletproof and easy to navigate and post in. Embrace it and promote it!

Reddit threads tend not to age super well either. Like I love (hate) only being able to read half a conversation in an old thread because a random guy got banned or decided to delete their account or whatever. This is on top of following conversation chains generally being a pain in the ass to follow even if every post is in tact.

The upvote/downvote system is generally terrible system too that prioritizes popularity of opinions over anything else.