Hey all, WhyEssEff here

Over the past two-and-a-half or so years of being the sort-of-official emoji czar, the emote repository has grown to contain approximately 2300 distinct pictographs. As has been remarked over my tenure, this has unfortunately come with a lot of disarray. In order to address this, let me break it down in order to give proper context for it all.

The Problem

Hexbear’s emote shortcodes are notoriously obtuse and lack enforced standardization. A patchwork fix was applied to solve this in the refork, being keywords, but these only work when you are searching through the emote picker, not when you are using :shortcode-notation:.

The primary reasoning behind why this problem is a conundrum to fix is what I will call ‘shortcode rot.’ Essentially, what this entails is that:

1. an unintuitive emote shortcode, for one reason or another, makes it into the emote repository.
2. enough time passes for said emote to be used across multiple posts and comments.
3. the shortcode now cannot be altered without breaking these posts’ and comments’ use of said emote.

The sources of unintuitive/unstandardized shortcodes, as far as I understand it, tend to fall into these categories:

• attempts at brevity (e.g. :biderman:)
• emote is older than my tenure (e.g. :loser:, though this was one that I vividly remember making and recommending it be added back when we were stuck in the lifeboat discord, so this one’s still technically my fault )
• emotions and natural language representation of pictures are ambiguous (e.g. linguistics)
• syntactical ambiguity and non-standardization (e.g. one way this is used advantageously is that this is how we have three representations of 1984 in our emote base, :19::84:, :1984:, :nineteeneightyfour:)
• WhyEssEff trying to be clever (e.g. :debate-me-debate-me: and :kubrick-stare:)
• the other ones that I can’t think of.

The Proposals

To preface, these are merely the options I am considering at the moment. Furthermore, the subsequent poll is merely me gauging feedback on these potential options. I reserve the right not to enact or fully enact whatever the majority opinion falls behind, because I a) have a life and may not be able to address the issue meticulously, b) can’t please everyone with whatever shortcode schema we do end up with, and c) kind of am attached to certain wrinkles in the repository and would ultimately be operating on my own discretion no matter what as the head and sole maintainer of the repository.

With that out of the way:

PROPOSAL 1: Discretionary Rename Effort

Plan of Action: As I sort through the emote database, I change the ones that stick out as unstandardized and/or ambiguous by my own discretion, updating them as I go and making a pinned masterpost that I update when I change a shortcode so people can stay informed about new shortcodes.

Pros:

1. The one that is the most realistic for me.
2. Solves the problem for the most erroneous ones.

Cons:

1. My discretion is biased and fallible.
2. Changes to shortcodes that may break some older content.

PROPOSAL 2: Strict Standardization and Total Overhaul

Plan of Action: All emotes are strictly standardized according to an enforced style guide, on top of the previous proposal.

Pros:

1. Most accessible.

Cons:

1. 99% chance I'm not going to do this because it sucks to implement.
2. Really really breaking changes to shortcodes.
3. Ehhhhhhhhhhhh

PROPOSAL 3: Do Nothing

Plan of Action: It is what it is

Pros:

1. No broken shortcodes, archive preserved.
2. I can just keep to a standard in the future.
3. I don't have to do anything.

Cons:

1. The problem remains unsolved, so all the aforementioned issues.

The Poll

So, in order to collect feedback, here's what I ask:

Respond with the emote that corresponds to the proposal in a top level comment, except for the last option, which I'll explain below.

• (:dean-smile:) for Proposal 1: Discretionary Rename Effort.
• (:dean-malice:) for Proposal 2: Strict Standardization and Total Overhaul.
• (:dean-frown:) for Proposal 3: Do Nothing.
• (:dean-neutral:) for something else, and explain what you suggest in your comment.

If you want to vote for a proposal that is suggested by someone else using , reply to their comment with a

Again, non-binding poll, I'm just trying to gauge the temperature on this. In about a week, I'll check this post again and tally it all up, and then I'll take that and decide how to move forward. Thanks all