cheRP/ msparp sideblog

just some person talking about cherubplay and msparp

[yellowbloods-deactivated2021051]

>>LINK<<

as of right fucking now i have officially finished copying over every bit of dialogue from hiveswap, the friendsim, and yes, even homestuck. 

clicking on each character will bring you to their file on google drive with documents containing their sign and every conversation they’ve had, organized by who they were speaking to. 

go nuts :) 

[all sprites drawn by the amazing @hiveswapministrifes! thanks so much!]

[cherubaway]

the year is 2020. Old cherp shuts down. You go onto the new site. You see color presets. There aren’t enough for it to be the entire Homestuck cast, and they’re obviously not the actual colors of Homestuck.

Do you:

a. look up the color codes that Homestuck used and copy them

b. use the presets anyway

c. throw your hands in the air and take a wild fucking guess

if you chose b or c, congratulations, you are a significant portion of the cherp userbase

[liqnus]

wait, people do that? fucking wild

[liqnus]

what happened to this tag holy shit

[chappybird]

I gotta say cherp admins filing a DMCA over a stupid parody account is the most cherp admin thing they could have done

[liqnus]

they, they did WHAT??

[liqnus]

Did yall miss this part of the rules or.

specifically says “Do not give information about yourself or solicit information from others, including real name, Discord information...”

It’s a perfectly bannable offense. Don’t ask me why because I dont really get it but yeah. It’s literally in the rules that you 1. should not give out your discord and 2. should not ask people for their discord. I remember reading this before the newest rule update (bumping it from T3 to T4-5) so it was there for a good long while which is why the other mod said it was a “mistake”

[deerheadghostfucker]

Quick question:

Would using the word discord in a RP post get you banned? Because I just wanna know if I need to avoid that when describing… Well the general utter chaos in some of my RPs.

[liqnus]

No. A mod from the discord said this

They individually review every ping, from what I can understand

[bubonic-plague-2021]

Why did mods go ahead and ban everyone for discord sharing when there aren’t any means in place to

notify their partners that the other user has been banned, effectively leaving rps in limbo?

draft/delete posts of banned users so that people don’t connect to them?

Banning rule breakers is fine, but there was no “cleanup” process around it. Waiting until the mod tools were developed to implement those features would have been a better option.

[liqnus]

Apparently there was some sort of legal thing that happened with a minor being asked to move offsite with a groomer, so they’re cracking down on it hard now to... idk, send a message or something? Not too clear on what this is about since according to the convo I read you can just appeal it and get it revoked later on if you Ask Nicely and also Aren’t A Groomer/Repeat offender of rule 3. 

Imo since they’ve shown that they’ll read chat logs for context (from Insolent’s screenshot of a user’s chat), they should give the normal punishment to regular adult users and permaban the minors and groomers instead? But maybe it’s an automated thing, dunno.

[liqnus]

Wait so from this screenshot that TTMIYH posted

ik you guys are focusing on the “this site is up AT MY LEISURE” part but the very first part of this confuses me. What is the first 4 lines about?

Like… “We as your userbase deserve to know rule updates” and then “you don’t deserve / JACK / FUCK” 

I mean… Don’t we, though? I thought that was a reasonable thing to say. I’m really confused on this part. If we aren’t notified of rule updates, how are we expected to follow them? Are we supposed to religiously check the site rules every single day and compare it to our personal copy of the previous day’s rules? If a mod could clarify this for me that’d be great, because I’m not understanding that mentality at all.

I’m not sure what rule this exact conversation revolved around, but in general, shouldn’t the userbase be informed of rule changes? It seems silly to me to say that users of a site don’t deserve to know about updates to site rules.

[frickafracken]

These are the preceding messages. What TT is saying when he says “you don’t deserve jack fuck” is that something that is this ban worthy, you dont deserve to be notified through the site before the ban happens. Pink later adds in that they want to be notified on site so that they can message all their chats that they’ll be making a new account bc theyre being banned. Which… Ruins the purpose of the ban

[liqnus]

Oh, I see now. Thanks for clearing that up. I thought TT was responding to Hexdae specifically due to the phrasing which confused me.

[liqnus]

So I joined the discord and went digging... (critique/concerns post)

long post because of screenshots, sorry in advance! 

(Context: they were talking about the recent banwave concerning people asking their partners to move offsite, and Also Spencer was asking how they managed to find people that asked about this sort of thing.)

(the conversation after this has already been screencapped in another post so I won’t include it here)

So, here are my concerns as a user…

Keep reading

[guardianshenanigan]

It was previously discussed how we came to find the users, that there was a database scan for key words commonly used by IP phishers, groomers, pedophiles, people trying to move off site or trying to break the ooc barrier. Exactly HOW it was sweeped we did not say as a preventative measure to keep people from trying to block us. Considering there are over 2500 users, we aren’t about to “back read all of the chats”. Trying to block the sweep will not work, all it would do was stall us and only make us a bit more irritated whenever we find them and their attempts to curve the rules (as did a very large majority during this band sweep; aka why we bumped up the punishment).

You guys need to understand that there are more factors you can’t see, such as what was said in the chats. I know a few things have been leaked (and mods yelled at for it), but it’s really just a drop in the barrel of what people think they can get away with. The clause exists quite literally for circumstances like this where we need to up the bans in such a short amount of time.

I’m not saying every person who was banned was IP phishing, grooming, etc etc however there was a very fair amount. Some of you are gross and that’s a reality we are dealing with voluntarily. It also raises the new issue of people pleading innocence, when it states when making an account/signing in to read the rules and by making an account you agree to them. If you blindly make agreements (as I’m sure a lot of you have a tendency not to read entire TOS which I’m guilty of as well, apple can honestly fight me) it’s something you already agreed to.

The agreement to up the ban to permanent had been DISCUSSED prior to the wave. There had been no final decision and was technically still under review until we found a large amount of the users being punished quite literally saying “it’s only a week, I’ll just come and do it again then”. No. That defeats the purpose of the punishment and the rule. It’s in place to protect the users both physically and legally. We have disclaimers in place, we have rules in place, in fact from the first time we caught someone genuinely grooming a minor on the site the disclaimers and rules ***saved*** a lot of you without you knowing. It’s not fun for us to go through and take the site away from people. It never was, and it never will be. While we are as open with you as we can without violating other user’s privacy, we cannot stress enough this isn’t a game.

Enforcing rules, making up rules and punishments isn’t the “for fun” of our hobby. It’s a grave reality we’ve come to respect. And with people doing a mixture of intentionally ignoring the rules and pleading ignorance vs. actually not reading the rules ( which again ignorance isn’t an excuse when you agreed you read the rules) it’s impossible to find the people who had good intentions or not.

[glubbernaut]

Hi, Shenanigans. Thank you for taking the time to read and respond to my post.

I appreciate the clarification on how the offending users were caught, but that was not really the focal point of my post.

I was not implying that your moderation work is a game, or trying to undermine the importance of what you do at all. I know this isn’t a game, and I understand that there was legal action taken due to a minor being endangered on the site, which is why this banwave occurred. I’m not trying to understate that.

I appreciate the hard work that the moderation team has put forward. You have both my respect and thanks for taking the steps necessary to protect minors, though I’m not sure what that’s worth to you. However, that was far from the focal point of my post.

What I wanted to point out was that none of this information is readily available on the main site. No explanation for the sudden crackdown, no heads up about the universally increased punishment for rule three, and no real… communication, I guess?

My main issue was that the discord, where it seems that most of the communication between users and the moderators occurs, is not really emphasized on the site despite its importance. Users have no way of really knowing what is happening on the site itself, where the discord is mentioned a total of three times despite its growing prevalence in the management of the site.

I made the post with my primary concern being that, as a user who does not actively use discord, I often have no real way of knowing what is going on with the site. My suggestion was that updates to site rules/policies be posted on the site itself instead of just on discord. My issue lies mainly in this snippet of the argument that I read over:

You mentioned that after finding statements like this the permaban was invoked, and Pink suggested that there should have been a notice sent out. The response of TTMIYH seems to imply that a notice on the site was not necessary because it was discussed extensively in the discord. Additionally, from the same conversation,

I am not certain what Hexdae was referring to in specific (as far as I can tell the rule update was announced in some capacity, but the penalty increase was not), but I believe that they had a point. The userbase deserves to know what they are culpable for, and how exactly they will be punished for it. Discussing and announcing things on the discord is fine, but I think the updates discussed on the discord should also be posted onto the main site, where 100% of the userbase will have guaranteed, easy access to it. Pink makes a good point here, which is that not everybody who uses cherp is also on the discord. 

I also agree with the punishment increase, I simply think it should have been announced on the site.

Somewhere like the home page would be a good spot, in my opinion.

[guardianshenanigan]

Again, with the punishment increase it wasn’t officially decided until DURING the ban wave. And in the future, ban waves will not be announced either. The sweeps will only be for legally endangering activity, and by not announcing it, it allows us to FIND the activity, rather than users delete it or “hurry up and get what I want” (actual quote). The rules are in the process of being updated. There have been absolutely no “hidden rules” in the discord, only discussion of existing rules.

A lot of time the discussions or as everyone else is calling them, rule announcements, have been edge cases. A less extreme example; every character needs one tag, that’s the rule. Say, I’m playing Rose Quartz from Steven Universe. Well that’s a problem, right? She’s technically three people at once. Rose Quartz, Pink Diamond and Rose 2.0.

It comes down to how you are playing her, because they are all separate characters with separate plot lines, and which you would want. Pre revolution? Pink Diamon. Post revolution, pre Steven? Rose Quartz. And so on. There is no new rule. Simply an explanation of an edge case. There is no reason to make a site wide announcement, as from here on we can just gently let the users know individually for the ones that it would affect. In this case; there is no new rule once again. It states that there is not to be the exchange of personal information and to move off site. Nothing was added or changed. The clause of “the punishment can vary” is literally in place for this exact moment when instead of “I’ll just keep eating the bans and do what I want” it becomes a gone forever.

Most of the issues have come from users who were caught and their problem was “I expected a week ban.” They knew it was wrong. They knew there would be a punishment. They figured they would just take the week ban and move on with their lives and continue like nothing happened. The discussion of increasing the ban timer had been just that, a discussion. There was no final agreement UNTIL DURING the ban wave when almost EVERY person banned acknowledged it was wrong and would take the ban anyway. (Not every single one but a very, very large amount, if not around 80%). There wasn’t a notice because it did not EXIST at that time. It was simply an idea that was put into place with the increase of new evidence. This was less than an hour after the ban wave, and the moderator who has access to updating everything wasn’t even on yet.

This is literally a case of people getting caught doing wrong and causing as much of a fuss as possible in hopes of some sort of leisure.

[liqnus]

Thank you for elaborating on the situation that brought about the heavier punishment. I wasn’t extremely clear on what had occurred prior to the banwave, so this was helpful to me. I’m by no means a professional, but perhaps implementing a strike system of some kind would help with the issue of willful rule breakage? i.e. 2 or 3 strikes = IP ban (with mod discretion)

Aside from that though, that makes sense. However, I stand by the fact that the site does not have any mention of this occurring whatsoever-- that is, there is still no post about the harsher punishments being put into place on the site, whereas it’s old news on the discord at this point. 

That and I think it would be beneficial to the moderators to put up a post on the homepage containing a lot of questions that seem to be asked a lot recently, as another user (forgot who) suggested? A FAQ of sorts that would address concerns such as

“Will I know if my partner is banned?”

“What will happen to the banned party’s directory posts?”

“Will I be notified if I connect to a banned user’s post?”

“Will chats with a banned user be deleted?”

and etc, not just for the users but also for the convenience of the moderators who keep having to answer these questions.

[liqnus]

So I joined the discord and went digging... (critique/concerns post)

long post because of screenshots, sorry in advance! 

(Context: they were talking about the recent banwave concerning people asking their partners to move offsite, and Also Spencer was asking how they managed to find people that asked about this sort of thing.)

(the conversation after this has already been screencapped in another post so I won’t include it here)

So, here are my concerns as a user...

From what I understand, the Discord member Pink aggressively suggested that there should have been a notice sent out (presumably they meant on the website) stating that accounts who have asked their partners to move offsite will be permabanned in the next banwave. TTMIYH responded that there WAS a notice sent out, in the form of extensive discussion on the discord server. Shenanigans reasserts this by stating that “it was discussed a lot,” and that it was “in the rules since day one.”

In this case I’m assuming “it” is the rule to not go off site? Correct me if I am wrong.

What Pink seemed to take issue with was that the punishment of violating rule three (pictured below) was stated to warrant only a “Tier 3″ punishment, which, on the site, is described as “(Up to) [a] 7 Day Ban.” However, the mod team decided to disregard the normal punishment in response to legal issues, switched it to a permaban for the recent ban wave (either a Tier 4 or Tier 5 punishment, I’m not sure which). Pink agreed that the rule was a good one, but was irritated that there was no official warning or announcement on the punishment becoming more severe (such as an updated rule page/description or a message on the Home tab).

Moderator Shenanigans and Administrator TTMIYH stated that discussion of the increased punishment had taken place on the discord. My issue with this is similar to Pink’s-- not all users of cherp are on the cherp discord, or even follow cherp on tumblr. I initially found cherp through a friend who informed me of the “new cherubplay knockoff,” and I’m sure that a portion of the userbase found it through a similar fashion. Either that, or through tumblr, but certainly not discord. 

Shenanigans and TTMIYH’s words on the matter seem to imply that if you were in the discord, you would’ve received a heads up on the increased penalty. Thus, as a user, it would be logical to assume that the importance of the discord server is stated somewhere on the website, correct?

Of the seven tabs on the ribbon, only two of the links mention the discord, with the third being the discord link itself. It is mentioned once on each page.

On the homepage:

And on the rules:

My issue with this is that, assuming that the discord contains important information regarding the state of the rules and the server, the website should emphasize its importance. Since it doesn’t do so, users who:

1. Are not interested in socializing with other users

2. Do not want to see the comprehensive list of issues on the discord

3. Do not wish to speak to the moderators in real time

Will not be incentivized to join it. Additionally, the official cherp tumblr is also not listed anywhere, so its implied importance to the site is... nothing. I wasn’t in the discord prior to this, and I also didn’t follow the tumblr. From the setup of the website, I assumed that important updates or changes would be listed on the Home tab, but it seems that I was incorrect. In the future, I think it would be beneficial for the site to either emphasize the discord’s importance for receiving updates, or to post updates on both the site and the discord.

I understand that moderators may invoke harsher punishments if they deem it necessary, since it says so on the rule page (pictured below). Mod discretion is something that can be appealed to a different moderator or administrator most of the time, so I’m not complaining about them using their power in this way. However, it seems that the recent banwave was a decision that was agreed upon by most of the moderation team, if not all of it, since there is no infighting among them in regards to the issue during this conversation (given that only TTMIYH and Shenanigans were present, this assumption of mine should be taken with a grain of salt).

In my opinion, large scale decisions like these should be announced to the userbase-- if not for their sake, then for the sake of the moderators who will have to deal with every single banned person asking “why am I permabanned?” My main gripe with this whole situation is that the mods didn’t communicate the increased punishment properly to the entirety of the userbase, which resulted in this argument happening in the first place.

There’s also that weird part in the screenshot where what Shenanigans says implies that the mods may have read through chat histories in order to find specific phrases, such as asking people to move offsite onto discord, or asking people for tumblr usernames and etc. This is brought up by Pink, but never addressed again as far as I could tell. Take that as you will. I don’t have any strong opinions on that aside from feeling a tad bit violated, but I understand that it may be an issue for other people. 

It might be wise to have this sort of thing rely on the reporting system instead of taking it into their own hands if my assumption is correct. If it is not correct, I’m sorry that I accused you of reading through your user base’s chat histories, but I didn’t have sufficient evidence to think otherwise what with the phrasing of the conversation. I’m assuming that there may be a bot of some kind, but again: not enough information.

But uhh yeah that sums up my thoughts on this situation. Pretty wild, hope I dont die for saying this

[liqnus]

Wait so from this screenshot that TTMIYH posted

ik you guys are focusing on the “this site is up AT MY LEISURE” part but the very first part of this confuses me. What is the first 4 lines about?

Like... “We as your userbase deserve to know rule updates” and then “you don’t deserve / JACK / FUCK” 

I mean... Don’t we, though? I thought that was a reasonable thing to say. I’m really confused on this part. If we aren’t notified of rule updates, how are we expected to follow them? Are we supposed to religiously check the site rules every single day and compare it to our personal copy of the previous day’s rules? If a mod could clarify this for me that’d be great, because I’m not understanding that mentality at all.

I’m not sure what rule this exact conversation revolved around, but in general, shouldn’t the userbase be informed of rule changes? It seems silly to me to say that users of a site don’t deserve to know about updates to site rules.

[liqnus]

AAAA!!! AAAAA!! Someone took down my shipping prompt the day I put it up! AAAA!!! I am Very Happy how are yall doin today

[liqnus]

The year is 2020. 

I log onto mxrp for the first time in ages. 

Hit that fat search button. 

I connect. 

It’s a Dave. 

They dc instantly. 

I close mxrp.

[toxxi-talks]

noooo don’t disconnect, you’re so sexy lol

[msparp-hell]

new site, new person who stops replying and reposts their prompt on the front page instead of just ending the chat

sigh

[cherp-rp]

Just so y’all know it takes you longer to make these than it takes us to remove them

Don’t be this guy

[liqnus]

[liqnus]

Nothing to add to the drama other that Wow Y’all Wildin In These Tags Huh

But I’m sad man. I got so many nibbles on my obscure prompts that matured into long RPs. And now it’s all gone :^( RIP my RPs. Can we get a F in chat boys?

Not to mention I don’t even want to RP anymore now. I’m feeling burnt out cause all my effort went down the drain. Hella sad. Hope CheRP is gonna be more stable from now on but for the time being I won’t take part in it other than donating for the servers. Have fun guys, it’s been real 🥺