ttmiyh

[ttmiyh]

i assumed anyone idly speculating about what i do didn't actually want an answer but if you're asking directly;

in terms of day-to-day site activity i help moderate along with rezzy (although most tag wrangling is done by her). the tooltips + tag definitions was my baby project and i handle all of those myself. i also handle approval of ads and a small quantity of devops stuff as necessary, including handling of the database itself.

from a week-to-week standpoint i dictate particular developer goals ("here's what i'd like us all to focus on next"), make sure our site host is happy (so we don't get a repeat of 'thell holding the server hostage', which is not likely to happen but still), get the final word on moderation decisions (such as ban vs warn vs ip ban vs harsher things), and act as the point of contact for any financial interactions & problems thereof (such as cancelling subscriptions).

then, month-to-month, i am the point of contact with our retained lawyers to make sure that the site (which contains both fanfiction and pornography) doesn't run afoul of any laws, the point of contact with our retained accountants to make sure that the site doesn't run afoul of any financial laws/regulations and that we pay our taxes, set policy & rules, and make design level decisions about the "metagame" such as timers, ticket costs, things like that.

this may strike some people in fandom as an odd notion (given how much we like Big Horizontal Group Projects) but it is generally better to have one single project manager that coordinates everyone than have a free-for-all where all decisions happen independently with no central guidance or policies. left hand vs right hand isn't as much a problem when all hands are connected to the same torso. my job is being the torso. and paying for torso costs out of pocket.

i genuinely want a response from TT though. what DO they do for the site? they kind of just sit on their little throne and act holier than thou. but like ??? with what to back it up babez?

TT the people want the answers. What do you do exactly?

-Mod Aldo

[ttmiyh]

lol?? anon are you okay

prev is right. plus tt is so fucking rude and condescending. if you hate answering questions as much as it seems like you do, maybe just stick to taking credit for the shitty, broken website you pay for and begging for money to pay rent at the same time.

This ask is kind of scathing omfg??? Tt what are you doing HAHA

[ttmiyh]

:)

Yeah I've tried rp on other sites and it's nothing to write home about. Like it or not this is where the quality is and at least the community knows how to behave themselves on-site. I don't like or care about homestuck and was only introduced to cherp/cherami by a friend late into its lifespan, and can honestly call the site a hidden gem just by the consistent quality of its users alone. You wouldn't believe the horror stories I've encountered elsewhere. The fact that users here can be counted on to properly structure a sentence makes it worth its weight in gold to me, not to even mention the fact that they don't try to turn ERP into ooc sexting.

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[ttmiyh]

as far as i am aware - it is a concurrency issue related to the architecture of how the database works (which is to say, if they try to go at the same time, it becomes hard to control the order in which they arrive, and sometimes that makes things freak out). it's definitely unideal though, and 100% not a thing we're Doing Because We Want To, Just We Have To. We have been looking into ways of fixing it so the submit button just submits everything as you expect it to.

Okay, just got around to trying cherami, and why can you not save all of a prompt at once when editing? Am I missing something? It's fine with a brand new prompt, but if you try to edit a prompt that already exists, it's an absolute mess. "Submit Tags" saves the tags but reverts any changes to the ooc and prompt body. "Submit" does the exact opposite, saving the ooc and body but reverting the tags. Why??? Am I the only person that likes to make little fixes to all of my prompt before bumping? And this makes it a nightmare to get old prompts from pre-migration updated.

I’m so sorry 😭

[ttmiyh]

unfortunately i am extremely disabled and the job i have is the only one that is both willing to accommodate my needs at the time in terms of work, and also willing to provide me the health insurance i need. i'm a little caught between a rock and a hard place because part of why my paycheque is low is because this (union-negotiated) health insurance is absurd in terms of value, and if i try to jump up to a higher paying job it's extremely likely, inevitable, really, that that job will not have better health insurance.

that is to say, i am regularly requiring procedures that would require tens of thousands of dollars a month that my insurance fully covers. i've shopped around for new jobs and gotten interviews - even if i got a cushy desk top at a nice tech firm, their insurance policies would prevent me from actually changing jobs because my medical bills would instantly bankrupt me, even if they paid 4x, 5x, even 10x what i make right now.

being disabled is expensive and i am trying to also keep the site afloat at the same time. so occasionally i'll have to ask for donations from time to time. sorry if that's an issue.

more asking for donations from TT. i sure hope theyre looking for a replacement job because i dont think they're gonna be able to survive off of donations lmfao

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[ttmiyh]

we do not plan on using LLMs even if we are to include anything like "finding similar prompts to the one you are looking at". existing techniques known as "similarity search" tools have existed for almost two decades and are more than adequate for this use case, an LLM would be somehow slow, expensive, and overkill all at once. like hunting rabbits with an artillery cannon.

i think people are being a little too demanding. its got new code thats still being tweaked. of course theres going to be weird bugs that require downtimes. also, while im not the worlds biggest fan of ai, i... dont think making a bot that that spits out tags for you is that bad. not something id use, but its not on the site itself and tt said it never will be. large language models do have their uses (though are MASSIVELY overhyped by corporations) and "analyze text to find matches" is a pretty good one. i still understand why its a dealbreaker, but. yeah.

I don’t want anything to analyze my text to find matches or do my tags for me OMG. Ai should not mix with rp websites because it will be stealing peoples writing. Idgaf if I look like I have a tinfoil hat on by saying this.

No more AI asks for a month omg everyone shut up about ai.

[ttmiyh]

I'm not sure what you want me to comment on. LLMs aren't vacuums that actively hoover up new information whenever you prompt them - they get trained once and then they're done, baked in like that forever, it's not learning anything new. You have my assurance that I won't feed your writing to any AI, and also, because it's not in the terms of service that we can do that, you might be able to sue me if I did. I'm not sure what else you need me to comment on.

can't post on anon on the actual cherami blog </3 will tt ever comment on the LLM? or our info? how do we know our writing won't get fed to some other AI? i really dislike this discord bot thing

[ttmiyh]

Sure, I can talk about this.

The ticketing system as it currently exists was designed to function as a sink for different kinds of user needs - some people like to throw a bunch of prompts up, some people will use <spoilers feature #1>, some people will use <spoilers feature #2>, and some people just want one prompt that they can really spam right now (which will be handled with the upcoming Superbump system). So instead of allowing all of these to be separate systems with separate timers, we unified it together in a way that we hope will respect the user's time a little bit more.

That is to say, if you are a busy person, and you come home from work and you have an hour before you have to go to run errands or do whatever, you can smash all 7 prompts up into the directory instead of having to wait 2 hours over and over again to "maximize" your prompt load. It produced unhealthy, both in a UI sense and in an actual physical health sense, behavior patterns where power-users would stay up extremely late in order to "get the most" out of their bump timers, so they could post 12 prompts a day over and over again. The ticket system "narrows the prompt # gap" between people who have too much free time and people who have too little, in theory.

Eventually, the ticket system will be clarified and better tutorialized, and the timers will be altered so that everyone's tickets refresh in a bundle of 7 at midnight their local time, but there are more bug fixes and other features that need to come before that. The timers are also up for adjustment - there's probably a sweet spot between "two hours per prompt" and "no time at all between prompts" that is best for everyone.

That's the thought process, at least.

bro what the FUCK is the ticketing system??? i had seven, drafted a new prompt to work on in the morning and just noticed it says 6 tickets left??? HUH??? CAN I ONLY POST SIX MORE PROMPTS????? WHAT IS THIS

I think it's a daily thing. so you can only post 7 times a day. no idea why it was implemented though. it would be nice if they explained why they added what they did to the website, or changed things beyond "it'll be better for the future of the website" kind of blanket statement.

-Mod Aldo

[ttmiyh]

Hi Anon.

Putting your account in the deletion queue should only be possible for someone capable of logging into the account. If you could open a ticket on the Discord, or make a new account on the website and start a mod chat, we can hopefully get this reversed. You should have about three weeks or so. Thanks.

So, I've been out of town for a few weeks and just came back to... whatever is going on now. Wtf happened? I tried to log in, and it just says "This account is pending for deletion." I use a password keeper, I know my log in. Was this a bug with the migration? Are several years of chats just lost? I'm assuming that not everyone's accounts were deleted, based on posts here, but idk. Maybe I should take this as a hint and just leave?

I’d say try the cherp discord but I’ve heard a lot about how people don’t get much help there. I was able to transition over just fine

[ttmiyh]

all data is where it should be, we're just running into bugs on production getting things to display that were not showing up on dev or during the alpha. rest assured that your stuff is safe (and that your chats will be unjumbled soon too)

oh fun and joy, they've also deleted my character profiles. stunning

[ttmiyh]

episodic = this is a bunch of smaller stories featuring the same cast of characters in different situations

continuous = this is one long story

What does the continuous story mean with the plot options, and episodic story? Like a comic sort of plot story is what episodic story means?

Your guess is as good as mine, little grey ball

[ttmiyh]

No, LOL

he claimed that i did not make the payments that i did, and, if memory serves me correct, then essentially threatened to tie me up in annoying IP litigation regarding who owned what about the cherp brand and code if i tried to pursue him about it so i just dropped it and ate the several thousand dollar loss at the advice of my lawyer (it would've cost way more than the money spent or recoverable to go to court, even for all the money he stole from me over the years tacked on).

did tt ever get that server from thell

I have no idea man, tt is an enigma to me,….who is that fellow

[ttmiyh]

i dont have the exact data on hand and i wont have time to get it for a bit but generally speaking the amount of "people who logged in at least yesterday" was, last i checked, in the low one thousands.

cherp is defo far from a popular site but anyone who thinks that it only has like 50 active users must have a lot of tags blacklisted and not engage in too many fandoms. i don’t think 1/5 of the site replies to most of my starters, and i really don’t think it’s the same 10ish people who are doing so

My only blacklisted tags are ha*bin hotel, hell*va boss, and South Park

[ttmiyh]

laughing my fucking ass off

Does it ever concern you that you're basically becoming the next thellere? Not in terms of owning MXRP but adapting his mannerisms and behaviours? A lot of people are noticing it.

Elaborate?

[ttmiyh]

good news tumblr user zahkara,

I do kinda wish you COULD block/mute individual users. I know something something anonymity but like, I really do keep having a problem with connecting to or being connecting to by people who I have had bad RP experiences with before (we just didn't gel, they DC'd without warning, etc etc) MULTIPLE TIMES! and after a point I'd like to just remove them from my potential RP partner pool (and vice versa) instead of having to go 'ok yeah based on text color/writing style/desired RP this is 99% the person who I had that bad time with'

[ttmiyh]

i agree with this critique which is why we plan on overhauling the system for cardinal. stay tuned!

i’ll be so for real i don’t use cherp unless i’m in a dire situation of rp desperation. it’s a last resort, and usually a waste of energy for me bc i have moved on from naruto to a fandom with somehow even less of an rp presence despite it being one of the most popular games ever released in it’s genre. but that’s not really cherps fault. my current cherp gripe is once again the tagging system. i’m sorry but i do think it knocks down peoples chances of getting connects when they have to add 8 scary tags to their prompt for vague mentions of things existing in the backstory of a character, which IS a very different from having the tag actually featured in the rp. it’s also just……. nsfwe does not mean anything anymore. i feel bad for ppl looking for actual nsfwe content while the tag is filled with completely normal prompts that are just there bc someone has a tragic backstory.

it’s also useless to me for actually blacklisting content i don’t want to see. like “abuse” is tagged for rps that actively feature abuse or want to rp an abusive dynamic, but also ones that just have it in the backstory or otherwise in the background. i’m fine with the latter, and i’m not fine with like, rping an abusive dynamic. but i’m fine with it being featured in the rp in other aspects or as a background element. so blacklisting the tag is not helpful bc it also blacklists prompts i might want and would not be upsetting to me. but also i have to wade through shit i don’t want to see. and likewise, actual nsfwe rpers have to wade through a bunch of irrelevant normal shit. it’s just not very effective and i feel like there should be tags that differentiate the level of how those red tags actually exist in the rp.

[ttmiyh]