I don't want to cast blame on the mods here in particular, because this is a group of people in a size that they hadn't anticipated (and frankly I hadn't either) and there's no generally agreed-upon method of handling triggers as a whole, or even a general public understanding of what triggers are. While it would be really nice if triggers were as understood as food allergies and we had a way of handling them as common as corrective lenses, things aren't that way. There are things that could have been handled much better here, but inexperience on both sides of the equation is the direct cause of this whole mess. The huge crowd of people complaining about couch cushions might have never existed if triggers and how they work was part of common knowledge, and quite frankly, they were at least as abhorrent to me as the actions of the mods.
There's an inherent tension here between the size of the community, one of 1500+ people, and the desire to maintain accessibility for everyone in a group where just by the sheer size it's likely some people will have highly specialized needs and it's absolutely inevitable that people will have conflicting needs. The need for pregnancy to be listed as a trigger and the need for it not to be listed as one is an example I've seen in the comments here, and both are completely legitimate. It sounds as if there may have been people making this process more complicated than it had to have been by listing things that were only squicks, or were things that they thought might trigger other people but are not triggers for them, or were things they thought their boss might not like them looking at when browsing in the workplace. If the shipping olympics wants to consider itself a closed space where the needs of its members are taken into account, we have to be able to trust users not to do this. It's not just taking language meant to describe something people need to describe something people want, it's also making it more difficult for the people who do have needs to get them met as the situation gets more and more complex. *
I think some of this could have been averted if the post linking to the google form discussed accessibility issues that come up with this process. I would suggest mentioning not just trigger warnings, but also things like flashing images or text transcriptions if text is used extensively in an image, with some basic mentions of why these things are encouraged and links to more information.
* I have also seen some people use "I don't feel safe" language when referring to submitting things to the rounds. I am a little worried about that because just as some people have come to use trigger terminology to describe things that only squick them, it feels as if these people might be using this language to mean "I am uncomfortable submitting entries because of the potential reaction" rather than "I worry that the reaction to me submitting entries will make me violently ill." Having an anxiety disorder makes it very easy for me to imagine the latter happening, but I've seen the former use case far too often. If the latter case is you, please, please don't do that.
no subject
There's an inherent tension here between the size of the community, one of 1500+ people, and the desire to maintain accessibility for everyone in a group where just by the sheer size it's likely some people will have highly specialized needs and it's absolutely inevitable that people will have conflicting needs. The need for pregnancy to be listed as a trigger and the need for it not to be listed as one is an example I've seen in the comments here, and both are completely legitimate. It sounds as if there may have been people making this process more complicated than it had to have been by listing things that were only squicks, or were things that they thought might trigger other people but are not triggers for them, or were things they thought their boss might not like them looking at when browsing in the workplace. If the shipping olympics wants to consider itself a closed space where the needs of its members are taken into account, we have to be able to trust users not to do this. It's not just taking language meant to describe something people need to describe something people want, it's also making it more difficult for the people who do have needs to get them met as the situation gets more and more complex. *
I think some of this could have been averted if the post linking to the google form discussed accessibility issues that come up with this process. I would suggest mentioning not just trigger warnings, but also things like flashing images or text transcriptions if text is used extensively in an image, with some basic mentions of why these things are encouraged and links to more information.
* I have also seen some people use "I don't feel safe" language when referring to submitting things to the rounds. I am a little worried about that because just as some people have come to use trigger terminology to describe things that only squick them, it feels as if these people might be using this language to mean "I am uncomfortable submitting entries because of the potential reaction" rather than "I worry that the reaction to me submitting entries will make me violently ill." Having an anxiety disorder makes it very easy for me to imagine the latter happening, but I've seen the former use case far too often. If the latter case is you, please, please don't do that.