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For real, if you have an adblocker, turn it the fuck off for Cherp, these ads are a delight.

I’ve been gnomed, and rickrolled all in one place in this, the year of our lord, 2020.

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I do have to say that the concept of cunherp was a sort of diamond in the rough. But instead of, y’know, cutting and polishing the diamond, whoever was running it just covered in in dirt instead.

A place to vent anonymously is always good, especially considering how spicy the tag can get. Sometimes attaching your username to a complaint, no matter how valid, can be an invitation for some shittery from the more... passionate folks around here.

I must say that I’m half-tempted to start something up myself, of course with far more moderation, and far less tag-flooding. No promises yet, just something I think is worth considering.

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Oh, I haven't checked the tag in a few days, let's see what going-

Uh... yikes.

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I think something ought to be clarified regarding this whole hullabaloo, and even I’m guilty of not wording things in the most clear way for this specific point.

The FBI isn’t investigating Cherp. The FBI is (was?) investigating an internet user, who I would assume they’d already been investigating for Crimes outside of Cherp. It’s more than likely that while hacking the internet (that’s how it works, right?) of the user in question, they saw that they used Cherp, and it just so happened that the user had some gnarly shit on Cherp.

Of course, the specific details are all speculation, but based on what I’ve read, Cherp is fine, and the FBI was interested in a specific user.

Also, as an addendum to my last post based on some talking there, I would like to say that yes, some Big Criminals exchange discords, but that does not make everyone who exchanges discords a Big Criminal.

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I gotta say, it’s pretty fucking bizarre to me that people are implying that wanting to share Discord information is a gateway (or worse, equal) to Actual Fucking Crimes that the FBI would be investigating. 

Oh yes, the investigation and subsequent downtime is clearly the fault of the people not wanting their only connection to be a website with tenuous uptime, and certainly NOT the fucko(s) doing Big Crimes.

I mean, I don’t even really care about the whole discord thing. I don’t have a discord account anymore, and even if I did I would have no desire to share it. Why give my partners another platform that I just end up ghosting them on for long periods of time?

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To offer a bit of positivity in this trying time...

I have to say that I’m personally quite pleased with the clear and concise directory tagging guidelines that are on the cherp tumblr page. They even managed to clearly define the incredibly vauge “Fantasy Morphology” tag, which is neat.

That said, could we get them on the actual site? Or, at the very least, some links to the posts on the directory page, like on old cherp?

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Here’s a hot and controversial take for you guys. 

If you tell rulebreakers how to more effectively break your rules, nobody is going to take you or your rules seriously.

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Regardless of how you feel about the tag, the issue is that it’s going to be used in any number of forms unless it’s given a concrete, and unavoidable place where it always is. It’s pretty clear that this whole thing is purely for an ease of blocking it. It’s an inelegant solution to the problem, but once the change is implemented, it’ll have a 100% block rate as opposed to having to individually block each iteration of the tag.

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Y’know, I’ve been thinking. The smartest thing Mystic ever did was just not interact with the community.

I know y’all are trying your best, but I don’t think I’ve seen a single conversation that involves a person officially associated with the website go well in this tag. This isn’t even like a “ugh where’s that PR training?” kind of thing, but it seems like nobody in this situation is capable of even kind of acting like an adult so maybe we should all just shut the fuck up?

The people that will disagree will always disagree, and the people who will defend will always defend. Nobody is budging, so all this does is breed more toxicity in an already toxic place.

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I mean, I have some partners that straight up won’t reply unless I have the chat open, I haven’t the faintest fucking idea of why that is, but that’s just how they operate I guess. One of those chats went from very active to silent once the live updates stopped, but I wasn’t super attached to it anyways so whatever.

Honestly I do think that live updates would be ideal, but I certainly won’t shed any tears over it getting cut if it’s just easier. Refreshing and scrolling down the page really isn’t that much of a bother to me personally.

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Obviously having a system where there was an explanation attached to the removed prompt would be ideal, but like, the rules aren’t that complicated at all? I’ve had a directory post removed before, and it took me like 5 seconds of looking at the tagging guidelines (that are linked on the directory landing page) to realize where I fucked up.

It should also be said that the system for getting said posts back up after you’ve fixed them is not great either, but that’s my stance on anything that involves the discord so my opinion doesn’t mean much on that one.

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Hey y’all, it’s ya ethereal being of nondescript gender here to throw in their (probably unwanted) two cents after a brief little internet hiatus.

So to start off, yes I’m a Known Shithead when it comes to a lot of things regarding the site, specifically a certain rule that will go unnamed because I promised I’d stop writing essays about it. That much is known and has been established thoroughly, but I hope it won’t undercut my main point.

Basically, as has been said numerous times, these folks are just people. There’s no reason to get all up in arms because you have to refresh a page or something, that’s just straight up dumb.

But that’s been said before, and I promised MY two cents. I think that the thing that hurts the staff the most is the fact that there’s even a staff. It fucking sucks to say, because more people is good for the site, but more people also heightens people’s expectations. I mean, if Mystic could do one Cherubplay alone, the Cherp staff should be able to do THREE (i dunno how many people are on this thing honestly, i do my best to not look in the tag these days and you know i’m not in the discord) Cherubplays, right? Obviously not, only an idiot would think that. Regardless, people expect more from three people doing this for the first time (again, an assumption, i haven’t seen any other sites mentioned) than from one person that had been doing it for five solid years and that’s just not right.

Maybe some of you don’t remember what 2014 Cherubplay was like. We didn’t have tick boxes, if we wanted to look at NSFW AND SFW, we had to do it one at a time. Prompt page? What prompt page? Fucking write out or copy/paste your prompt every time you want to post a new one, do it you animal. The directory was just a twinkle in Mystic’s eye in those days. We didn’t have directory blacklist issues, we didn’t have a directory! We saw something we didn’t like? We looked away and bitched about it in the tag. You want to RP another fandom? Good fuckin’ luck dude, this is a Homestuck RP site and will be forever. I had to carry my roommate Jade prompt uphill both ways in the fucking snow. By which I mean I had to have an off-site prompt sheet, which was moderately cumbersome at worst.

My point is, if you want to see what this thing can be, you have to let it grow and be patient. Cherubplay wasn’t built in a day, and Cherp won’t be either. I didn’t wait for Cherubplay because I was passionate about the site, I just liked having a place to RP my Homestuck bullshit. I am gonna wait for Cherp though, I want to see what a site made by people who learned from Cherubplay can be. Yes, I may harp on stupid bullshit way too much, but I guess that’s just my stupid way of saying that I care about this website and I want to see it be the best it can be.

And if you’re not interested in that, then maybe you should save your breath and bounce now instead of waiting for the final straw.

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Okay. Apparently I haven’t made my point obvious enough. That’s what I get for truncating, I suppose.

My beef with 14a isn’t even so much that it can be used by any person to remove the anonymity of another user. Yeah, that’s a shitty side effect for sure.

It’s more that it is a rule that only comes into effect when some random asshole decides it does.

I post things in the directory pretty regularly. I’d say maybe once a week, and I rarely repost. At this very moment in time, there is nothing requiring me to put a unique blacklist tag on any of my posts, let alone all of them. I am not in violation of any rules when I post these things, assuming I tagged them correctly.

Then, some random asshole decides that they don’t like my posts, and they connect and request I make a blacklist tag. In this hypothetical situation, I decide not to, because I’m a stalwart believer in rule 14, which clearly states that “minimodding” is a no-no. And just like that, I am now in violation of a rule. A rule that doesn’t exist, mind you. I’m looking at the rule list on the official Cherp tumblr page right now, and I don’t see any rule declaring that I have to make a blacklist tag, and yet I could receive a ban for not doing it. All because some random asshole who, I should continue to stress, isn’t a mod, they’re just another user.

The inconsistency is what gets me the most. Rule 14 says “Hey, don’t enforce rules, that’s our job.” and the rule immediately after says “Except this one, I guess.”

Even ignoring the fact that this is a user-enforced rule on a site with a rule against users enforcing rules, there’s another glaring issue that I didn’t even think about until I read your post.

Plainly put, there’s no way you can enforce the intent of this rule, so there’s no reason bringing up the intent. How can you quantify what a “pointless” blocktag is? There’s no objective way to say what is or isn’t a valid request when you’re dealing with people, and that’s what makes this rule so awful. I’m sure there are people using it as intended, or at least I’d hope so, but because there is no fool-proof way of distinguishing them from the people abusing the rule, having it could hurt more than it could help.

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Personally, I don’t care about whatever the donation perks are, and therefore don’t have any input to give on the matter, but I have to say that “If you have anything to say about this Important Thing, please jump head-first into this trash fire to be heard.” is a bad model.

I’ve been in the Discord, I was there for like, 10 minutes before I fucking bounced because of toxic cloud that was looming over that place. Maybe it’s changed, somehow I doubt it, but even if it has, I have 0 interest in going back. If you’re exclusively taking input from Discord, then why even bother posting in the tag? Why bother having a tumblr page at all?

Also while I’m here, have they said literally anything about 14a? I mean, we’ve established that they don’t look to the tag for input, but sometimes you just need to scream into the void, y’know?

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Okay yes, I did a bad job making my point.

“14a. You can, however, connect to people’s prompts to request they make a blacklist tag. If someone requests you make a blacklist tag and you do not, they are well within their rights to report you. Punishment: Tier 2″

Basically, I'm not taking issue with the bulk of the rule. I think that allowing people to request that someone makes a blacklist tag isn’t bad in any sense. It's the addition of the line "If someone requests you make a blacklist tag and you do not, they are well within their rights to report you." with the attached punishment (presumably for not making a blacklist tag) being a 1 day ban. 

THAT is my issue. Having a rule that only exists when people decide it does is pointless, and it completely negates the whole of rule 14 by allowing an average user to not only “minimod” as it’s been dubbed, but to do so fully in accordance with the rules.

Just as an example, keeping completely in the spirit of this rule, I could go though the whole directory and request that every single poster make a blacklist tag for their prompt, and, again, in the spirit of the rule, anyone who didn’t would get a 1 day ban. I, someone who isn’t associated with the site as anything but a user, could just decide that everyone who posts in the directory isn’t allowed full anonymity anymore, and anyone who didn’t comply with my rule-enforcing would get a 24 hour ban, as stated in the rules.

Obviously things wouldn’t go like that because this site is run by human beings with common sense, but if the rules are followed to the letter, it would, and frankly that’s not very rock and roll.

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Everyone’s talking about the beta and I’m still here waiting for clarification on exactly what the fuck rule 14a is even for.

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Call me stupid or whatever, but I don’t see the point in implementing a rule that you know is (largely) unenforceable? The whole point of rules is that they, y’know, can be enforced. Don’t get me wrong, I do understand why you’d think of this rule. I mean, nobody uses Facebook, Twitter, or Tumblr even, because of the lack of anti-screenshotting rules. It just drives users off in droves, knowing that their post could be screenshotted and posted elsewhere at any time with no justice for them.

Also, on the subject of weird rules, I was re-reading the list and this one stuck out to me

“14a. You can, however, connect to people’s prompts to request they make a blacklist tag. If someone requests you make a blacklist tag and you do not, they are well within their rights to report you. “

Report you for what? My understanding of the report function is that it is for people who break the rules, and there isn’t (and shouldn’t be, because of that anonymity thing everyone is so fond of) a rule requiring a specific and unique blacklist tag for anything. So all that addendum does is add pointless reports to the pile, assuming there isn’t some hidden, anonymity-destroying rule we don’t know about yet.

Anyone care to clarify here? Y’all know I’m more than willing to admit that I’m the dumb one but this just doesn’t add up to me.