Forum:Temporary forums/Content warning templates

Opening post
Opening this as suggested by User:WaltK. There isn't currently an opening post draft that I know of, but then, this isn't so much a new proposal as the revival of an ongoing point of community discussion from before the Forums' collapse.

The issue is simple. The Wiki isn't "family-friendly", because the DWU isn't. But that is no reason to knowingly inconvenience or even harm our readers by letting them stumble upon shocking or triggering information by chance on pages where common-sense, from the perspective of the not-we, didn't lead one to expect it. Who visits the page of Dodo Chaplet expecting to read about her contracting an STD? Is it fair on people unfamiliar with The Talons of Weng-Chiang 's infamous reputation to hit them with an image like this, uncontextualised?

Our status as an in-universe Wiki makes this hard — but not insurmountable. Hatnotes of various kinds, spoiler tags, tags are all already designed to quickly frame a page's content for readers who've just clicked on it. The solution, then, may be in templates for content warnings and trigger warnings, which could, as the case requires, be included at the top of a page or in a particular section. They would need to be noticeable, but not so large, of course, that their prominence becomes triggering in itself. Aside from their design, the other big question is how broad to make them — how many possible triggers/offensive elements to award warnings to, and how to decide which pages get them.

To give but one example of the sorts of questions we must examine: I don't think anyone would disagree that e.g. stories, and in-universe pages citing those stories, that discuss sexual assault should get TWs; but things quickly get more complicated. Tagging systems on, say, writing sites like Archive Of Our Own filter concepts like "character deaths", but the fact is that although it's often bloodless, at least one minor character is likely to die in any given episode of Doctor Who. "Just this once, everybody lives!" was special for a reason. We could dab any story with a character death in it anyway, I suppose, but that would risk diluting the noteworthiness of the content warnings, and make people who don't mind the occasional bloodless laser-blast overlook warnings on other pages that they really, really should have paid attention to.

So, here's the proposal, here are the problems. (Primarily, this thread should discuss the how more than the whether — I think the necessity of having such templates to some degree is sort of a no-brainer at this point. But of course, if someone has an impassioned argument against the whole concept to make, they can air it out here too if they want.) Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 12:23, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

Discussion
I would agree. We should take the precedent that most older TV shows do in the modern age and slap a warning on the pages that could potentially trigger some people. As a wiki, we need to cover it, not to mention it would be a shame to leave out certain information. It would be outrageous to not cover it, and we shouldn’t go that route just because some people might take offense to it as has been also seen in the real world. A content warning allows the content in question to be fully available while also warning some of our more sensitive readers. Danniesen ☎  13:43, 17 February 2023 (UTC)


 * I don't know how this will be implemented.
 * Are there any examples of other wikis implementing anything like it, like Memory Alpha or another wiki that has a similarly large amount of in-universe pages and long history to contend with?
 * We do present the wiki as covering everything from before the start of the universe to its end, I struggle to know where we'd start with the content warnings especially in-universe.
 * I think Scrooge MacDuck bringing what's fair into it skews the discussion. It doesn't matter. If we go down that path then we'll end up making value judgements about every article / what information they cover.
 * And that is a messy road to go down as we've seen with valid sources and spoiler policies for which we have an existing frame work to make to define and work it out.
 * Also how do we go about quantifying a content warning and the threshold for them, and how we judge that? --Tangerineduel / talk 13:49, 17 February 2023 (UTC)


 * Yeah, I share these concerns. Jack &#34;BtR&#34; Saxon ☎  13:51, 17 February 2023 (UTC)


 * I would disagree that it "doesn't matter" what's fair. We do need to balance the ideal against what's practical, but this strikes me as an extension of the balance that had to be struck between Wiki practicality and the obvious ethical concerns involved with deadnames, when we agreed on an ethically-motivated policy change there. Sure, we can't be perfect, but we cannot allow ourselves to act like the narrower concerns of what is, ultimately, a hobby for us all is blankly more important than the actual safety of our readers to such a degree that we don't expend any efforts on accommodating them — even if it's hard.


 * As for the practical hurdles of quantifying content warnings and thresholds, well, that's exactly what this thread is meant to figure out! We definitely need to work out easily-policed standards and stick with that, if this is to work at all. But I think it's worth the effort. These aren't hollow concerns, we're talking about real potential harm to actual human people.


 * Going off of possibly-faulty recollection of the pre-Forum-collapse discussion (it's possible that this stuff may originate in off-Wiki conversations I had with fellow editors around that time, rather than the Forum thread itself), one notable possible implementation would be to give up on tagging in-universe pages, but to include some sort of section on story pages on potential triggers. That wouldn't so much be a matter of smoothing over the Wiki-user's experience qua browsing the Wiki, as it would be improving out usefulness as a reference guide for people thinking of experiencing a given DWU story; but that's part of our remit too, and I think that avenue is worth exploring, whether or not TWs on in-universe pages are deemed feasible in the final analysis. - Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 13:59, 17 February 2023 (UTC)


 * I agree that we should have something like this. I put together some potential templates that could be used for this ages ago. If we do decide to implement some form of content warning system, I don't mind if they're used, with or without changes, or not. Bongo50   ☎  15:49, 17 February 2023 (UTC)


 * I also agree with implementing content warnings. The primary ones that I could think of that we should probably have content warnings for are rape/sexual assault, racism, homophobia/transphobia, ableism, etc. I don't think we should be doing a content warning for character death, for the reasons outlined above - most DWU stories are going to feature at least one death over the course of the story. Pluto2 ☎ 16:50, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

In the prior thread I was taking a very hard line stance, iirc, saying that content warnings being implemented for phobias as well was viable. And I still think that, at least in the long term. But I don't think that it behooves us in this point in our discussion to bite off more than we can chew. Starting small and making sure that we get this right is more important than having some pure system of tags that we can apply to everything.

Tangerine, forgive me, I'm not sure I understand. We already use templates of various types on in-universe articles. It's not ideal when we do so within a section of the page, but it does happen, and there are other tricks we use as well. Maybe I'm misreading you, is this about where on the page the templates would go? I just don't understand this objection.

As for the topic of trying to avoid value judgements. Look. I'd love for editing a wiki to be pure and pristine and completely separate from the rest of life. But that's not the world we live in. (Notably, this is an often made criticism of Wikipedia, see, for instance, this article, by someone I know you're familiar with.) We had this discussion to some extent already in the racism thread. I also note that our mountainous discussions on validity are the exception. The vast majority of stories are neatly sorted into valid/invalid boxes and it's only those at the fringe where we have a conversation. I see no reason why this won't be similar. We can all agree Talons is racist. We can all agree Dodo's page could be surprising for some people. We can all agree 8.46 should probably never have been written. Are there going to be marginal cases? Sure. But those are going to be the exception, imo, so long as everyone is approaching the issue in good faith. Najawin ☎  17:40, 17 February 2023 (UTC)


 * Thank you for everyone who's added to the discussion since I posted mine. It's made me think more about the position I took. Also to state I'm not against the use of content warnings, just looking to wider implementations on the wiki.
 * I think Najawin with regard to the templates wise, how Bongolium500 has laid it out is a fine starting point. If this policy change goes ahead we will need to look at templates on the pages closer to cut down the noise of the amount of templates at the top of pages, but that's a discussion for another time.
 * I also agree that character death shouldn't be in the content warning given it'd probably simpler to have a template when that doesn't happen.
 * I suppose my question is where do we stop with the content warnings? Should all pages have a content warning that says something to the affect of "this media was produced in  and has content that don't represent current values"? As Danniesen suggests at the top of this discussion. —Tangerineduel / talk 04:10, 18 February 2023 (UTC)


 * While I do agree to some point that content warnings would be valuable, I do have my doubts as to how workable it is. There is never an obvious line when it comes to this. A character getting an STD for instance, does not require a warning in my book. (What makes dying from an STD more triggering than dying from cancer?) I would understand a content warning on Dodo's page for mentions of sexual assault, but even then the warning would suggest the content is more descriptive than what it actually is.


 * However, if we do wish to attempt it, I strongly advise to make it so that random editors cannot add the warnings. LauraBatham ☎  05:55, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

Design-wise, I would ordinarily support the 'usual' template boxes as seen in Bongo's suggestion here but I fear it could lead to quite cluttered headings on a lot of pages. Would a smaller, more compact warning template be therefore better, perhaps immediately under the page title? I'm no design or Wiki expert but here's an example of what I mean. I just feel as though it's neater, cleaner, and less intrusive - whilst also being immediately noticeable right after the page title. Fractal Doctor ☎  12:02, 18 February 2023 (UTC)


 * I quite like that example. Short, generic, and doesn't cause any extra clutter. LauraBatham ☎  13:28, 18 February 2023 (UTC)


 * I like this bit of text. Although, I would make it a bit bigger because it’s very easy to miss imo. Danniesen ☎  14:27, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

Hey, I don't really have anything to add, since my position on this is already clear considering the thread was my idea to begin with, other than wanting to thank Scrooge for whipping up such a detailed and concise opener on my behalf, and to everyone who's chipped in their two cents so far. WaltK ☎  16:46, 18 February 2023 (UTC)


 * I'd like to congratulate Bongo for that amazing temaplet first of all. Secondly, i agree with FractalDoctor's proposation of making it smaller and under the title, although im also okay with Bongo's version if people prefer that. Cousin Ettolrhc ☎  17:50, 18 February 2023 (UTC)
 * That too! Thanks Bongo. WaltK ☎  03:56, 19 February 2023 (UTC)


 * An admin would have to comment as to whether we can restrict adding these warnings to certain user groups. I'm not sure if this is possible. (If it is, it might be more difficult to do than editing the source code.) (I'll also say that I've thought about creating a proposal to expand usage of user perms since they're dramatically underutilized on this wiki. We only have user/autoconfirmed/admin/bureaucrat when there are a few other groups we could use to segment people into. Discussion for a later day.)


 * My suggestions as to what is tagged is bigotry and abuse (emotional, physical, sexual, etc). All of that gets a content warning. Hopefully that's a decently flexible yet reasonably well understood set of criteria. (Cue people disagreeing.) Najawin ☎  04:39, 19 February 2023 (UTC)


 * What counts as physical abuse? Jackie slapping the Doctor? A villain killing someone? Domestic violence? And I'm not even sure what you mean by tagging emotional abuse. LauraBatham ☎  05:31, 19 February 2023 (UTC)


 * I think it's fairly clearly the third one. As for the second question, generally something like constant manipulation, gaslighting, stuff that I don't think has really featured in the DWU but, you know, should be tagged if it does.


 * The point of content warnings, as I understand them, is not so that people who object to the content can avoid said content, or so that people can ignore our parents page warning. While that's a nice side feature, that's not the general goal. (Not a psychologist, so, of course, any actual psychologist can correct me here.) I believe the idea is that after a traumatic event it's generally thought to be healthy for people to live their life as best they can while still avoiding things that remind them of that trauma, over time taking small steps back into uncomfortable areas until they no longer need to avoid reminders of the event. So the question becomes, what can reasonably remind someone of a traumatic event? In my mind, at least. Najawin ☎  19:09, 19 February 2023 (UTC)


 * I believe that's trigger warnings; "content warnings" is a broader category that includes, but is not limited to, trigger warnings. (Warnings for e.g. discriminatory language might occasionally function as trigger warnings, but I think they are more generally understood to be content warnings.) That being said, you are absolutely correct that our prime concern is with content that would be genuinely distressing to people, not something they might intellectually object to. Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 19:12, 19 February 2023 (UTC)


 * I've always interpreted contented warnings to be a relabeling of trigger warnings to avoid the bad PR. Fair enough if I'm wrong! Najawin ☎  19:15, 19 February 2023 (UTC)


 * "What can reasonably remind someone of a traumatic event?" And that's where we hit our problem. Because there is no answer to that question. Everyone has different ideas of where the line should be based on their own experiences and there is very little that we would all agree is "reasonable". Do we put a warning on the Clara Oswald page for her emotional blackmail in Before the Flood because it may remind someone of a partner that did similar to them? Do we put a content warning for a simple "they experienced rape" sentence that does not go into any detail whatsoever? Personally I don't think so. We want to be considerate of people's triggers, yes, but we don't want to become condescending. Most people know how to manage their own mental health, and it is not our responsibility to nanny those who don't - that's a job for a professional. And while you may think "physical abuse" clearly means domestic violence, there will be many people who will see it as other things as well.


 * And even if the people on this thread do find an agreement on where to draw our line, once we put it into practice, we are opening it up to people who have not been privy to the discussion and who will make their own assumptions. LauraBatham ☎  00:31, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

I just don't think we're ever going to agree that there's no intersubjective standard of what's "reasonable" in any given situation. You're going to have a very hard time convincing me of that. I'm perfectly willing to just say people are wrong about what is and isn't reasonable. Whether or not others in the thread agree with me, well, I'll let them speak for themselves.

As for your two examples, I would say yes and yes. I would also note to your "nannying" objection, the entire point is that there are many pages on this wiki where you can go and have no clue that there will be content you might find distressing to your mental health. See, for instance, Erasing Sherlock. I tried to be as circumspect with that novel summary as possible, but at the end of the day some fairly prominent plot points in the character arcs could be triggering to anyone who just wanted to read summaries for all the Faction Paradox books. (Like, sure, Racism is obviously going to be a problem. So, as a result these tags would apply to that page as well. But the idea that people are good at managing their own mental health is absolutely not a rejoinder. The entire point is that they can't do so.)

So there are two ways to read that last comment Laura. The first is that we just end up missing things and others think we're wrong for drawing the lines where we do. As to that: I agree that it would be ideal if more people than just us discussed this issue! I posted it in Discussions. If others wanted to post it on reddit, or twitter, or Discord, or wherever, I'd support that. I like having more discussion over less. Completely support that idea. The other is that people just misapply the rule. But having policies that people misapply has never been a reason to not have them, so I don't think this is a defeater to the proposal. Najawin ☎  06:03, 20 February 2023 (UTC)