Announcement

[hso_mods]

Here is what the list of requested trigger warnings is:
A guide to assist you in not hurting your fellow participants in the HSO.
That post is not a list of rules, it is information.

It is not in any way appropriate for you to decide what other people can or cannot be triggered by. You do not get to decide that, and we will brook no argument on that topic. Furthermore, there is no hard and fast rule for triggers, because they do not follow a logical structure. There is no line we can point to, saying 'ten years is a significant age difference, but nine years is not.' Asking us for those numbers does not constitute asking us for clarification.

Practically speaking, a good rule of thumb is to consider whether the potential trigger is a significant theme in the work. When in doubt, warn and specify.
And finally, nobody is getting points taken away if they forget to add trigger warnings. Nobody is getting disqualified, nobody is getting punished in any way. We have spent the past week reworking the schedule so that we have enough time to read through the entries and add trigger warnings where necessary before posting them to the main HSO comm. We know you are going to miss stuff. We are going to miss stuff ourselves.
Nevertheless, we are committed to providing trigger warnings for all of the main round entries, and we have no intention of giving up on that commitment.
If you do not feel that you can agree with this mission in word and in spirit, the HSO may not be the right event for you.

Because of the reactions to the trigger warnings post, we are postponing the bonus round 0 for 24 hours (until May 20 11:59PM EDT) so that we can be sure everyone here is on the same page before we open the main comm to content creation that might potentially endanger HSO participants.

Edit: comments have now been unscreened.
Please be advised that there is a flashing gif about halfway down the page.

Comments

[endless_aegis]

I think what's actually happening is a bit in between. While I do believe those questions were asked in good faith, I'd imagine it's pretty tough for those who submitted their triggers to see them pulled out and dissected like that. Nothing against the people who asked, but in my opinion freezing comments was the better decision.

(And even if they are trolling attempts, which I don't believe, there's no way to tell, so it's better to let someone have the amusement than risk hurting someone like that. It's not like adding a tag, or having a tag added, is a huge inconvenience of some sort.)

[polariity]

In my opinion, the mod should have shut their mouth before making an ass of themselves because only after they were called out was the thread frozen. But maybe that's just me.

In my personal opinion, I think the mods are honestly in a 'damned if you do, damned if you don't' situation, but they definitely could have handled this a lot better, starting with not writing such a condescending post on how they're not here to teach Triggers 101, or how they're the only ones who know what a trigger is (which is the impression I got). They also could have just kept things listed to a general set of things that need to have a content warning for (gore, rape, etc) and then asked if there was anything else that needed to be added, with a possible reason why.

For example, I would like to know *why* a warning is needed for things like swearing and reality bending when those are core staples of the whole bloody canon and have been obvious from the beginning. (For the curious, the first swear, 'smartass', appears in the very second 'page' of Homestuck. 'Fuck' is on John's desktop.) You say they don't believe they're trolling attempts, and those are the reasons why I believe that's not true.