hso_mods: (Default)
hso_mods ([personal profile] hso_mods) wrote in [community profile] hs_olympics2012-05-20 03:26 pm
Entry tags:

Announcement #2

In the sign-up form, we asked for 'any triggers you would like to be warned for' specifically because we wanted to emphasize the serious nature of the request, but in later conversations with various individuals who have expressed that they did not interpret it as specifically and seriously as we intended it, it has become apparent that the phrase 'trigger warning' is being taken more broadly. Furthermore, as has been pointed out to us, 'trigger warning' is not a value-neutral term; it does real and significant harm, particularly to individuals whose identities are deeply connected to the items listed.
We have discussed the matter and agreed that it is appropriate to amend the categorization to 'tags.' Thank you to everyone who called us out, and we apologize for our mistake.

With regards to languages: mimicre made an Anglo-centric and extremely thoughtless error by amending the list to include 'non-English languages' rather than a particular language that was asked for. They sincerely apologize for their hurtful behavior.
We are currently reviewing the situation and attempting to find a solution that causes the least possible amount of harm. If you have any input or suggestions, they would be much appreciated.

One thing that we had not previously considered was the inclusion of a 'no tags used' option. We agree that this is a necessary option to offer, and will be implementing it throughout HSO 2012.

We have made several serious missteps in this matter, and we would like to extend a formal apology to those we have hurt. We ask for your patience as well as your forgiveness in these things, and we understand if the way that we handled the matter has made you feel too unsafe to continue participating in this year's HSO.

With that said, we want to emphasize that we are treating each trigger warning request with the utmost seriousness. On the balance of things, it does far more harm to attempt to 'vet' requests or otherwise seek some standard of 'legitimacy' than it does to assume unusual triggers are 'joke entries' or 'trolling.' If you would prefer for us to tag your main round entries, we are willing to do that for you.
As we have said before, we are not taking points off anyone; we are not punishing anyone in any way for not including trigger warnings. We did not post that list so that you would be concerned about following the rules. We posted it to let you know how best to make this a safe community for your fellow HSO participants, and we posted it to let you know exactly what we will be looking for to tag the main entries with.
We are not limiting your content creation in any way. Entries containing every single one of the listed requests are still considered valid for the HSO. All that we ask is that you tag the entries (or opt out of tagging them) in order to give your fellow HSO participants a heads-up.
To reiterate: absolutely nothing has changed in terms of what you can or cannot do, and what is and is not acceptable for the HSO. If your team's main round entries contain untagged elements and you do not opt out of the tagging system, we will tag them for you and post your entry as usual. We are simply giving you the option to assist us in this endeavor.

The HSO is not a public space, like AO3 or other places that only use very common trigger tags. It is a private event with needs specific to its particular participants, who have a finite list of triggers. Our goal is to keep these specific people safe, and we can do that by tagging entries appropriately.

For now, comments to this entry are screened. Once the mods are able to be present to respond to comments in a timely manner (most likely within 5-10 hours), we will un-screen comments here and on the previous two posts.
Comments are now unscreened, and we have no plans to screen them again at this moment.
cypher: (redrom?)

[personal profile] cypher 2012-05-21 03:13 am (UTC)(link)
+1 to this. You guys have been clearly trying really hard to make this event work for everyone who's participating, and you've been really graceful about both apologizing and fixing stuff when you make mistakes. Thank you. Keep rocking.