2021 Death of the Author

 

The forum post introducing the town hall and vote for the “fate” of pixelatedHarmony’s articles.

The 2021 Death of the Author episode, also referred to as “Community Vote on Harmony’s Articles 2021”, “The Fate of Harmony’s Articles”, or the “Harmony Article Fiasco”, is an internal crisis to the SCP Wiki that took place in February 2021. It was a response to the long-time staff member and author formerly known as Roget — by that time referred to as her chosen name, pixelatedHarmony (Harmony) — and her request to remove her 200+ articles from the Wiki. The result of the event was the uninterrupted cohesion of SCP’s body of literature, but at the cost of the invalidation and supplanting of an eleven-year long core principle within SCP Wiki rules, protocol, and culture that gave an author the right to remove their works from the Wiki’s collection of articles upon request.

On 29 Dec 2020, user pixelatedHarmony created a Wikidot account[1] and began posting a rapid succession of coldposted tales and articles. The works, as well as Harmony’s forum posts, featured themes of subversion, dehumanization, resentment towards hierarchy, anarchy, insurgency, transgender issues, love, and genocide.[2][3][4][5][6] Described as “snappy”,”curt”, “abrasive”, “powerful”, “emotional”, and with effective use of “fascist language”, these works survived albeit some scrutiny and marginal reception, and an author page was made shortly thereafter, on the 25th of January.[7] The user spent the next weeks commenting on pages on the Wiki and attempting posts, notably engaging in spirited discussion which drew the attention of staff’s disciplinary and pre-disciplinary teams, due to behavior complaints from other users. It was revealed to the community publicly and centrally on a resulting O5 non-disciplinary post that pixelatedHarmony was the author formerly known as Roget/RJB_R, who had stepped down from staff in October 2020, and had a relatively reduced presence on the site for the next months.[8][9] In the non-disciplinary post, Harmony was noted for not tagging works correctly, and was sent a reprimanding message by Nagiros of the MAST team, which ironically she at one point co-captained, and was told to cease tagging activity. Harmony’s behavior was also cited for vehement language in discussions with other users that came close to violating the site Criticism Policy, but that ultimately was found to be non-rule breaking.

History

The next days saw the user commenting constructively on numerous posts, as well as posting tales that would become a hub (The Computer Chronicles) and self-deleting attempts at a tales, articles, and a GOI format — most if not all of them coldposted.

On February 14th, Valentine’s Day, Harmony posted a tale submitted as part of the CupidCon 2021, and one she regarded as her “first masterpiece”, with the comment that it would be her last work for the SCP Wiki:

To some they are worlds, for others they are just words. Thank you for reading. This is my first masterpiece and nothing makes me more excited than finally getting to share it with y’all today. Happy Valentine’s Day.

It is also the last work for my time on the SCP Foundation Wiki. Thank you all for your time and your eyes. It was a pleasure.[10]

A comment also left on February 14th indicates a growing displeasure in Harmony with the quantitative metrics that the SCP Wiki uses to gauge quality and author success, indicating the degree of her ideological separation from the ethos of the community:

I have a small problem. I do not like posting links in the chat because I am nauseated by the notion of instigating a list of numbers and statistics next to something I wrote. Would it be difficult at all to add some sort of a “[nobot]” prefix so that this doesn’t happen automatically(or is there any way I can do that now)? [11]

Later in the day, Harmony can be seen making several critical posts on SCP articles and tales, mainly that participate in the CupidCon 2021. While some are high praise, others are blunt and direct with regard to perceived shortcomings. It cannot go without notice that some of these comments might not elicit kind responses, despite them technically being within the rules of the Criticism Policy. Examples are:

I hate the dialogue. I hate it because I know it could have been better and I see the article this could have been. Technical sense there’s nothing wrong but it’s completely unbelievable. From the first line of dialogue I could not bring myself to have the slightest investment in the stakes of their interactions and I was fully conscious of the fact that I was reading an SCP article. I hate that this made me sad while also failing to inspire me to care.[12]

The dialogue is awful and my main takeaway from the article overall is a reminder of how irritating I find the cliche of opening con procs with “All <whatever>”. It’s paced well, and it’s benign at worst, but I don’t have any reason to care about or remember this piece.[13]

On February 15th, Harmony posted a note to the site, created as a page on the SCP Wiki itself, called “An Open Letter”. This has since been deleted despite being upvoted due to it being an invalid page (not an article or a tale and not staff approved), but has been archived in the Internet Wayback Machine. It reads:

A specter is haunting SCP. The specter is me.

I depersonalized myself to the point that I used everybody I knew here for the validation I couldn’t give myself. Not the person who I am now, but the persona I used to be. I was Roget, the Writerbot.

It’s not just a “me” thing. When I arrived in this community the culture of reading and writing worked in concert, hand-in-hand. I disrupted that by relentlessly begging for readers, which was just playing the numbers game for upvotes and I openly admitted to that fact.

As a matter of fact, I happilly [sic] admitted to it for a long time, and even when I later pretended otherwise, I hadn’t changed. I am the instigator for why so many SCPs sit with a handful of comments at best, unless you optimize your begging or have patience and time, the disparity stems from me. I saw it happen. I was there, and I was doing it on purpose. Not for the wider goal of community change, I didn’t reckon with that or would have cared enough to stop if I did, all I cared about was knowing that I had the biggest numbers.

I am responsible for the hurt, I am hurting it too. This isn’t a mic drop, and I am not going anywhere. I’m just done with the walking on eggshells. I’m finished with lies. Please. Let’s stop counting so much, and reading too little. It’s not too late to try.

I love everybody here. I hope that I have a place here, that I didn’t only know your love when I was sick.[14]

The last comment left by the original pixelatedHarmony account on February 16th is cryptic. It in response to a CSS theme; Nagiros felt as though some of the colors weren’t working well, and Harmony replies saying that maybe it wasn’t as bad as the individual thought. There was clearly more behind the scenes in conflict regarding this comment, particularly concerning the dynamic previously mentioned between them in the context of tagging. Two days later, on the 18th of February and after her membership was revoked (see Revoke & Ban, below), she edited this post to read:

This has nothing to do with Nagiros anymore I already deleted my old account last week it just hasn’t finished processing but is inaccessible. If Gaffney had bothered to read what I wrote before he posted he would have known that. Try harder to censor me.[15]

Revoke & Ban

Harmony’s non-disciplinary citations were escalated to disciplinary ones on February 16th, over a week after the first signs of tension brewing between herself and the users over her request to delete past works under previous pseudonyms.[16] In the disciplinary post, staff noted Harmony’s “hostile” and “unproductive” criticism of a user’s guide on blackboxing/redacting. The post was edited several times to soften the language; 25 revisions in just over an hour.[17] Due to the proximity of this with the previous non-disciplinary concerns, several staff members (Modern_Erasmus, DrBleep, and Toumey Tombstone) moved to revoke Harmony’s membership to the SCP Wiki, which was carried out by DrBleep shortly thereafter.

After, the first comment on Harmony’s author page, initially cordial and brief, was edited:

Today is the end of my involvement with the community, but I hope, not all the people of SCP. If I am dear to you do not be afraid to find me. I am not far away, bu[t] I cannot be here any longer. My masterpiece was the last story I had to make and if anybody would like to finish the Computer Chronicles or any of my other drafts I started in this short second act, I make all material in my sandbox available to be used as you see fit.

I would like to request that Dr. Roget’s personnel file, my non-fiction material (excepting for all of my contributions to HOTUS and all original primary source materials I created such as the interview with “The Administrator” and the files attached to some of those pages) and all of my SCPs be deleted from their current places on the SCP Wiki, immediately. The same for the tales. Everything I posted under the account named RJB_R, and not applying to that which I wrote using this account about which I am requesting nothing other than they be treated the same as anyone else’s work.

To be clear- don’t delete anything listed on pixelatedharmonyauthorpage

In addition, I would like the author attribution which I have on all collaborations to be extinguished, and authorship rights to my rewrites restored to their original authors or assigned as Modern_Erasmus sees fit.

Do not delete anything I wrote in Conwell’s collaborations, my pictures on Troy’s author page, contributions to Gears’ Day, and Leveritas can have New Tech Issues if he wants it.

The living will present on Dr. Roget’s personnel file is no longer valid. I bequeath all of the deleted content which I no longer wish to have associated with my name to the SCP Wiki community at large, to be remixed and revitalized as they see fit.

I would like a neutral space not owned by anybody in the community be created to accommodate this public material, or that an existing one like GitHub or pasteboard or another site not controlled by any one person or WikiDot, all other details however the executors of this action see fit.

Any author may post my words to the wiki again as they were, but please don’t, I would personally take that as a slap in the face and seek you out to hold you accountable for it on an individual basis. So don’t make me do that I’m trying to make a clean break, okay?

I do not wish for accreditation other than the bare minimum in terms of credit and how many places it is placed in that is technically required by law.

I hope that everybody enjoys all of the empty slots. Nothing would make me happier than to know that you filled them with articles that made you happy to write, to replace the things I wrote for outside validation because I couldn’t feel happy by myself. Let that be my final legacy.

I hope when you see that unique number next to the others you have and will write, that you think of me, and all we have accomplished together in the next decade and the one going on after that on and on, until the sun sets.

Never forget, the SCP Foundation will always belong to everybody. Thank you for your time. I had the time of my life.

Harmony, formerly Roget, your eternal friend and admirer

Oh, and to answer the last ask the person above you a question I will ever answer, I hope that I find someplace new that I belong after the pandemic is over.

(Emphasis added.)

Harmony joined and posted on the KiwiFarms SCP thread on February 17th.[18]

Harmony was permabanned from SCP Wiki on February 18th, one day prior to the opening of the vote, and hours after her comments to Nagiros in response to the CSS theme in question was modified, and on the blackbox/redacting guide (see above). Rumors exist that Harmony PMed members of the site who pushed back against her hope to delete past articles, although these rumors have no evidence available at the time of writing and cannot be confirmed. The reasoning given by Anti-Harassment staff was: “harassment of multiple users, including doxxing, emotional manipulation, and accusations of hatred.”[19] Again however, given the nature of SCP’s Anti-Harassment and the relative opacity of their practices, these accusations cannot be corroborated or confirmed with the available data.

Harmony changed her WikiDot username to “do_the_right_thing” on March 5, 2021, after the completion of the community vote and the enacting of the results.[20]

Community Reaction & Vote

Reaction

Harmony’s requested to remove all articles and tales was part of a series of actions seemingly meant to distance herself from her past: “all I want a clean break from the fake person I used to make life a spectator sport so I can share my truth with all of you.”[21][22] There was significant push-back from SCP Wiki users in response to Harmony’s request, something other members of the community equated with deadnaming.[23]

From Harmony’s author page comments, February 16th, the day of the official deletion request:

If you’re so dead on being the second fishmonger, than I guess no one can stop you, but maybe slow down and think about what exactly you’re doing.

So long. Take care. — Varaxous

I would beg that you reconsider. A deletion wave this large would have a huge negative impact on site history, on crosslinks, and on lore. Entire canons and plotlines like Class of 76 will be abruptly gutted, as all the works that built off of yours will suddenly lose their foundation.

It would not be an exaggeration to say it would be the single biggest blow SCP as a literary work has received in the history of its existence. — Modern_Erasmus

^ times 1000. At least a decade’s worth of works being nuked from the site would be devastating. It would be like if Gears decided to delete 682 and 106.

At the very least, consider having things from collaborative contests and canons stay up. It would be a slap in the face to those who worked on them with you otherwise. –Ihp [24]

Two messages from SCP user and Admin Dexanote informed Harmony and the community that no deletions would take place until March, per a conversation had by the two that cannot be confirmed with available data at this time, in order “to not cause irreparable damage to the site and literal months of authorial chaos.” According to Dexanote, staff was aware of the request and were discussing how best to proceed. The ability to comment on Harmony’s author page was quickly suspended with a page lock on the same day, “to prevent further misunderstanding and fragmentary discussion.”

Staff addressed the community via DrBleep on the 17th of February in a forum thread titled “Town Hall Meeting: Mass Deletion Request”, that made Harmony’s request more widely known.[25] In this thread, staff explained the change of their usual protocol:

We were shocked and saddened by the request, and sincerely requested that Harmony either reconsider her decision or come to a compromise whereby some works were preserved or attribution changed to reflect her desire not to associate with the works any longer. Unfortunately, she did not agree to a compromise.

As is our precedent, we resigned ourselves to removing the pages following a two-week planning period to divvy up the large work involved. However, we received numerous requests and concerns from authors and readers asking that we reconsider the deletion in this instance, as well as many suggestions to allow the community itself to weigh in on the subject. Hence, this thread.

What do you want us to do? Should we hold to our principles of author autonomy, or consider an exception based on the magnitude involved? We genuinely don’t know the right course of action, so please share with us your thoughts and feelings on this complicated issue.

Most responses in the thread recommend keeping the articles, though few cite the long-honored policy. A comment by user Nykacolaquantum typifies the more popular sentiment:

The concept of “authorial intent” only exists because a decade ago, a user threatened the staff of the time with a lawsuit that had no judicial leg to stand on, but they capitulated nonetheless. They capitulated again with the Pride Month fiasco, when another prolific author decided to be spiteful and scorch Earth, removing a well-received skip and nearly gutting a canon in the process.

The whole thing goes against the principles of the Creative Commons license. There’s a difference between self-deleting an article or two because you’re not happy with it, and this situation.[26]

User Pedantique offers a viewpoint characteristic of the opposing side:

I find the idea of preserving authors’ works against their wishes unsettling, especially if it gets baked in as any kind of broader rule. It sucks to see good pieces go, but people will write better ones. Or not! That’s cool too. Regardless, I find the public pressure campaign some people have waged in some areas of the broader community distasteful, and I believe these pieces should be deleted according to Harmony’s wishes. It’s not like there isn’t plenty of other great works on the site to read if so desired. Go enjoy some of that.

If this becomes a “your works belong to the community in spirit” sort of thing, I’ll probably be moving along too.[27]

Vote

On the 19th of February, DrBleep in their inaugural action as newly approved Admin, posted a thread to the SCP Wiki forum’s Proposals and Policy category titled “Community Vote: Fate of Harmony’s Articles”.[28] The vote was suggested by SCP Wiki staff who did not want to outright grant the deletion request to Harmony, based on the effect it would have for multiple pseudo-canonical articles, and for the sake of general enjoyment of the works by the site’s participants. The collection of articles included over 200 SCPs, tales, GoI formats, and two 001 proposals, an estimated 2% of the Wiki.[25] This was the first time in site history that a controversial and difficult decision was given to the users to decide, staff being excluded from the vote.

The voting period was open for one week. Three proposals were given as options by staff. A user was asked to rank the proposals in order of most preferred to least. The total would be tallied at the end of the voting period and the proposal with the most points was to decide “the fate of Harmony’s articles”. Staff promised that regardless of the outcome, policy would be revisited that would remove the blanket-deletion-upon-request policy that had been upheld as a core principles of the wiki and its structure and operations since the removal of articles by early SCP author The_Fishmonger in 2010. Such a change would “replac[e] it with a more nuanced policy that will still allow us to show we highly respect author autonomy while not also allowing for deletions that would severely damage the community.”

Author autonomy has long been one of the core principles of the wiki and we are loathe to abandon it entirely as many have suggested, but some sort of compromise involving exceptional circumstances is worthy of a discussion given the widespread sentiments expressed in the Town Hall thread. — SCP Staff

The second issue that would be addressed would be the staff’s perceived lack of engagement and out-of-touch posture with the community.

Experience during this affair has shown many in staff that in high profile crises and incidents, transparency and communication with the community at large generates goodwill among the community towards staff, and greatly improves/decreases the stress level of staff while increasing formal trust in both directions. As the amount of work required to run the wiki has grown over the years, many staff have been too consumed by it to interact with the community as much as we used to. We want to fix that… Your support and dedication to the community we all share a love for has been a ray of light in a very chaotic and dark moment in the site’s history.

This resulted in the formation of subsequent Town Halls, of this this vote was the first.

Proposals

Proposal 1

In proposal 1, called the “status quo”, no works would be removed. The legal terms of the license would essential supplant the gesture given to authors for autonomy and control over their works as far as their inclusion in the site. If accepted, the license would be invariably binding and dictate that any and all submitted works to the site would be by default irrevocable, retractable only by the users in a deletion vote, or on a case-by-case basis. According to this proposal, Harmony’s works would then be auto-approved for rewrites “by anyone who wants to, per the instructions she left on her author post”. An optional addendum was added for proposal 1 that would re-post all of Harmony’s articles in a neutral placeholder WikiDot account created for the purpose, e.g “TheCommunity” so that it could abide by Harmony’s request to rid attribution. This proposal meant the least amount of immediate friction for site participants, and the least amount of work for staff.

Pros:

  • Site lore and canons will be preserved and pieces built upon Harmony’s works will be unaffected.
  • Authors who have active investment in seminal lore/canon and even standalone pieces written by Harmony are afforded the opportunity to rewrite/modernize said pieces encouraging creative reimagination.
  • Backlink, Wikiwalk Crosslinks, and other maintenance elements will not need to be fixed.
  • If 1A is included, Harmony’s attribution will be cleared, partially fulfilling her request and desire to detach herself from her former works, and will be blunted from harassing a neutral, anonymous staff account.
  • Minimizes the overall amount of work necessary from staff and the community, and stretches active work out over a longer period of time allowing staff to split-focus between rewrites and other efforts to improve the site and community engagement.
  • Contests can be used as a medium for rewrite of highly visible and prominent articles not impacting other site lore/canon dependent pieces.
  • This proposal was the most supported in the Townhall thread, and is highly supported among staff.

Cons:

  • Harmony’s wishes are not completely filled.
  • Including 1A will require a decent amount of short term effort and locking down slots in order to repost under a staff account.
  • Harmony will likely continue to harass staff members.”

Proposal 2

This proposal would remove the articles from the site, and have the works be available for public use on an alternate platform, per the specific request of Harmony’s letter. The staff might reserve the resulting empty slots to allocate as they see fit.

Pros:

Harmony’s request is completed in both the spiritual and literal sense. Slots in Series I and II are made available to the userbase to fill with more modern writings, increasing visibility. Contests may be used to fill Series I and II slots and to provide reimaginings of Harmony’s Seminal works. Harmony’s works would be preserved in offsite venues. Harmony probably stops harassing Staff and SCP Wiki users.

Cons

Site lore/canons built upon Harmony’s material will be damaged, leaving holes in continuity and themes for a large contigent of material. Visibility of lore/canon built upon works by Harmony will be impacted by removal and into offsite archives. Site navigation will be damaged necessitating large staff cleanup efforts to correct hundreds of backlinks, wikiwalk crosslinks (As many of Harmony’s articles were used in the initiative in both directions due to wikiwalk being Harmony’s brainchild), inline crosslinks, and hubs. Actively deleting, recording deletions, and fixing all navigational/maintenance aspects will require weeks of work, diverting staff effort away from Wikiwalk 4.0, navigation improvements, and other quality of life improvements for the site. Deleting all these articles increases the likelhood of people trying this again, unless there is a policy change. Because Harmony had an extremely high level of collaboration with other authors, deleting her articles may have a severe chilling effect on future site collaborations, including referencing existing SCPs and building new canons, because authors will know that their collaborators may remove their work (and make collaborations potentially unintelligible) at any time. This may be the case even if mass deletion policy is changed going forward.

Proposal 3

Proposal 3 would delete the articles, but only nominally, as they would restore them “upon request”, under an anonymous and placeholder account (e.g. “TheCommunity”) operated by staff.

Pros:

Harmony’s request is partially adhered to, in that all her articles are deleted and attribution cleared. Harmony’s seminal/influential works on which other works rely may be restored on request, minimizing damage. Backlinks, wikiwalk crosslinks, inline crosslinks, and hub links will not require fixing by staff for requested reuploads. Anonymous requests for reupload can be used to avoid Harmony’s harassing behavior against the requesting user.

Cons:

Initial deletion will require large effort for proper recording, as well as storing works in staff kept/user kept offsite archives in the event of reupload requests. Crosslinks, backlinks, navigational elements, and hub links broken by the initial wave of deletion will either remain broken until request for a reupload, or have to be fixed months later after no request is made to reupload a given piece. Reuploading works in this fashion will vastly increase the effort made in deleting them. Harmony will harass staff members for reuploading works unchanged.

Results

Proposal 1: 591

Proposal II: 185

Proposal III: 256

259 people voted. Staff released a Google Document to ensure transparency.[29]

Addendum 1A failed to pass, which would have deattributed the articles from the RJB_R name and reattributed them under a new name.

Thus, Harmony’s articles remained on the site as they were. Shortly after, staff clarified guidelines for rewriting Harmony’s articles.

Criticism

Users of the site as well as extra-community commentators criticized the SCP staff for what was viewed as the pawning off the responsibility and blame onto the users that was to result from a difficult and unavoidably controversial decision. This was attributed to a fear among staff of public backlash. Several community members expressed dissatisfaction that the option was given to the userbase over the issue to begin with, feeling as though it violated and defaced a long-standing moral and ethical courtesy extended to the authors that make the site what it is. Critics noted that staff was previously fine with letting authors remove their works despite them technically being Creative Commons once they are posted to the wiki per the license, and that the promise offered by staff to the authors of the site predated the staff’s competent understanding of the CC license and its implications by several years.

It was observed that the removal of an author’s works on demand was an explicitly stated and extended right according to site rules and policy, and that this was a rug-pull for authors who were operating under the pretense and terms of that agreement with staff. Additional criticism focused on the likelihood that staff knew well that the users would choose to keep the articles prior to offering the community vote, as the majority of site users would have nothing to lose with no skin in the game by the revocation of these author rights. The good-faith effort of democratizing the complexities of the moral question at hand was done in the falsely claimed name of fairness and impartiality.

Several notable members of the site expressed their disgust at the low threshold for abandoning site culture, tradition, and bonds at the prospect of disrupting the cohesiveness of a canon and brand that was supposedly without cannon. At least one previously active and prominent user, one who was on staff at the time of this decision, verbalized their dissatisfaction with what they perceived as unethical cowardice, and has not returned to the site since the decision to disavow author sovereignty was upheld.

Criticism was also directed at the poor political handling of the situation by staff from a PR viewpoint, allegedly taking the opportunity to feign solidarity in the community with staff (presumably due to the community’s agreeing with staff’s initial inclination regarding their denial of Harmony’s deletion request), and attempting to elicit sympathy in a heavy-handed manner, “not letting a good catastrophe go to waste”:

In many ways, staff have been apprehensive in the past year or so as event after event diminished the userbases trust in staff. For the community to come together and react the way you all have in response to the events of these past two weeks has touched many of us, and left a deep impression that won’t fade soon.

I would like to give special mention to members of my team, many of whom have been actively targeted, and thrown under the proverbial bus by Harmony in an active attempt to wound staff, under the rather bizzarre [sic] delusion that she orchestrated a shadowy cabal within staff to try to overthrow staff, a rather insulting conclusion to make about a group of dedicated and passionate staffers who are striving to make the site a better place for everyone.

These staffers are tireless, hard workers, and continued vigilantly to discuss, track and tabulate the results of the vote. This is a huge shout out to them, and to the new junior staff who busted their butts to help fill the gaps and refused to be intimidated.[30]

The lack of the type of bond described here between staff and the users would be the focal point soon after in the subsequent Town Halls, and so the degree to which this was staff’s optimism versus an actual outpouring of support is questionable.

A very specific critique of the situation focused on the type of voting that staff selected, specifically the ranked-choice voting called Borda count, which was said to artificially elevate two preferred options over a third, the latter two having little distinction or difference in practical effect. The inclusion of pros and cons were taken as concerning bias vulnerabilities.[31]

Trivia

Inter-dependence upon other SCPs has been a perennial point of contentious tug-and-pull in the history of the SCP Wiki. In the early /x/ days, it was recommended cross-referencing was avoided so as to not become like The Holders. Despite this, many early SCPs (e.g. SCP-002/SCP-003) featured cross-references. By the move to WikiDot, cross-references made in early SCPs had to be edited to remove them as older SCPs were eventually deleted, e.g. in SCP-004, where this comment is found:

“This is one of the reasons we try not to reference other SCPs. If an article stands alone, it doesn’t matter if other articles are deleted, but if they’re all cross referenced then the editing becomes a headache and we miss things.”[1]https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/forum/t-76555/scp-004#post-672084

References

References
↑1 https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/forum/t-76555/scp-004#post-672084