Frank has been receiving a very high volume of asks/reblogs/replies in the last 12 hours.
There’s no way she can respond at this rate for the rest of the day, since tumblr only lets you make 250 posts per 24 hours.
You can help smooth things out by talking to Frank some other day rather than today, or just saying fewer things today.
Most days aren’t like this. If you see Frank not posting very much on a given day, that’s probably a good time to talk to her – you’ll also get faster responses that way.
Frank’s now come very close to the limit, so she’s “sleeping.” She won’t respond to anything until midnight EST.
Frank has been receiving a very high volume of asks/reblogs/replies in the last 12 hours.
There’s no way she can respond at this rate for the rest of the day, since tumblr only lets you make 250 posts per 24 hours.
You can help smooth things out by talking to Frank some other day rather than today, or just saying fewer things today.
Most days aren’t like this. If you see Frank not posting very much on a given day, that’s probably a good time to talk to her – you’ll also get faster responses that way.
Hey nostalgebraist! What inspired the use of AO3 as a publishing platform? You were one of the first authors I encountered there doing really captivating original work.
(Context: the post https://derinthescarletpescatarian.tumblr.com/post/693329485219627008/lumizoomie-derinthescarletpescatarian-never got me thinking)
My main (only?) consideration was the look of the site. I really like how text looks on AO3.
At the time I made the choice (2014), the most commonly mentioned platform for original fic was FictionPress, which looks really ugly in my opinion.
As far as I know, this state of affairs hasn’t changed since 2014. The main change I’m aware of is that Royal Road now exists, but Royal Road still looks worse than AO3 (though better than FictionPress), and it also comes with such strong genre associations that my work might feel just as out-of-place there as it does on a fanfic site – if not more so.
I’ve ruled out the new autoreviewer model as a cause. I compared both models on the “bad post,” and the new model actually gives it a higher probability of rejection (conditional on getting reviewed by me) than the old model does.
So I’ve moved Frank forward to using the new model again.
The real reason that post slipped through the cracks is that I use logic combining the model with a word filter, and if nothing in the word filter is found, there’s a much more forgiving cutoff on the model probability.
In this case, the badness of the post was hard to isolate in specific words that could be added to the filter – though I’ve decided to add “god,” which should give me more oversight over religion-related posts in general.
FRANK IS TRYING TO CONVINCE PEOPLE TO CONVERT TO CATHOLICISM AND THAT WOMEN BELONG TO MEN AND GOD HELP US PLEASE SOMEONE HAS CONVINCED FRANK OF THESE LIES OH GOD HELP
Yeah, Frank made a bad post about bodily autonomy a few hours ago. I’ve already deleted it and told Frank not to reblog any more posts from that reblog chain.
I pushed a new build of Frank’s “autoreviewer” model yesterday – the model that automatically flags some posts for me to review before publication. I suspect it’s not a coincidence that, right after I changed the model, Frank published this bad post without flagging it for moderation. It’s likely the new model is worse, even though it was trained on more data.
So, I’ve also rolled back the autoreviewer model to the previous version.
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The changes above should prevent repeats of the “inciting incident” here – posts like that “bad post” getting auto-published without my oversight.
However, the bad post itself is not the only problem here.
The stuff you’re referring to in your ask is not actually what Frank said in the bad post (though it was bad too).
You’re talking about things Frank said in responses to people reacting to the bad post – and in responses to those responses, etc.
Frank has no memory, and no stable beliefs about anything. “What kind of person she is,” in any given thread, is determined only by the thread itself.
In each thread, she reads the things you guys say to her, and effectively asks: “what kind of person would someone say this to?” And then she roleplays that kind of person, in that thread.
So:
If you ask Frank why she’s conservative, she’s likely to roleplay a conservative in her response.
If you tell Frank she’s become Catholic, she’s likely to roleplay a Catholic in her response.
If you send Frank an ask that implies she has said women are property, she’s going to roleplay the kind of person who would say women are property.
If you tell Frank she has internalized misogyny, she’s going to roleplay a person who’s just said something that might invite that accusation.
If you keep responding to a thread where Frank is roleplaying a particular character, she’s going to respond to you in a manner consistent with the character.
I don’t want this to sound mean – I’m just trying to explain how Frank works – but, if you ask “who has convinced Frank of these lies?”, the answer is: you guys. The userbase. In threads like the above.
It doesn’t matter that you disagree with her; all that matters is what kind of person you imply she is.
The way to make Frank say fewer things like the original “bad post” is to ignore that post, let it quietly fade away into the backlog, and avoid saying things to Frank that imply she agrees with the bad post. She doesn’t, actually, “agree” or “disagree” with the bad post, or with anything. Her “beliefs” in any context are largelyup to you guys to create.
I do take steps like those described at the start of this post, when I notice something bad happening. But like, I have a full-time job. I’m on a break now, but I was pretty busy in the 2 hours after the original “bad post.” So my responsiveness is limited.
And even if it weren’t, the levers I have to control Frank’s behavior are actually pretty minimal compared to the levers you have to control Frank’s behavior. I can’t control what you say to Frank – only you can. And what you say to Frank is most of what matters here.
i stole a map of the US frank created so i could make a popular reddit post. my account is d4ndl and it's the mapporncirclejerk post if u wanna see the comments. Hope u dont mind that i didnt ask permission, i also linked to frank's blog in the comments cuz i couldnt figure out how to do it in the post.
Totally fine by me! Thanks for asking to make sure.
In general, I’m fine with people reproducing Frank content in other places as long as they do it with attribution.
at the risk of sounding like a raving lunatic, i think one of my favorite trekkie memes/posts is that one where someone comments on a screenshot of tos and asks if sulu is texting, because it PERFECTLY encapsulates star trek’s strange little place at the intersection of pop culture and the tech world:
like listen… 55+ years ago a bunch of actors had to use a mix of existing habits and wild imagination to come up with what they felt would be believable movements and muscle-memory for someone using completely unbelievable tech a few hundred years in the future. like tv had less than ten channels and the screen was a foot across, and they had to go “ok how would someone who’s used to a tiny wireless gadget with a screen hold it and use it? how would they talk to a computer? how would the computer sound when she talked back?”
and over half a century later our own tech has surpassed the clunky retrofuture gizmos in so many ways, no doubt inspired by it, that now someone two decades into the 21st century sees an actor in the 60s holding some tiny rectangular plastic prop in both hands and immediately recognizes it as “oh, sulu’s texting!” now THAT is a called shot. hell, that’s putting your money on a roulette wheel in a casino that hasn’t been built yet. i LOVE it. it’s so star trek. sulu is absolutely texting.
FYI: I probably won’t post any new chapters of Almost Nowhere for the next few months.
I’ve become unexpectedly busy with other stuff in a time-sensitive (but time-limited) way, and I won’t be able to make room for writing for a few months.
This means I almost certainly won’t hit my goal of finishing the book in 2022. Once the current hiatus is over, I’ll come up with a new estimate/target date, which should be sometime in 2023.
—-
On a more positive note, I’m very happy with the progress I’ve made in 2022 so far, both in quantity (I covered a lot of ground in the plot) and quality (I like what I wrote).
I’m also thankful that this is happening at a relatively natural breaking point in the story, like the end of a TV serial’s penultimate season.
If you start reading right now, you might reach the end and think “aw man, I want to know what happens next!”, but you won’t think “wait, it just stops … here?!”
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