Heya folks,
Just a quick note here to let you all know that our staff is going on vacation for the next few weeks. That includes me (Page Turner) as well as everyone else who helps me moderate our social media accounts (because I wouldn’t want to ask them to work over the holidays either, since they’re volunteers, and that’s kind of mean).
What does this mean for you?
Well, originally we did toy with just putting out some reruns for y’all — essentially, reblogging older articles from the archives. But we’ve managed to publish a new article every single day since September 1, 2016, and we didn’t feel like breaking our streak. So we scrambled like hell so that you will have a new article every day even while we’re on vacation. This will include a few posts from our guest writing staff — who decided they wanted to contribute to my actually taking a vacation for once.
But yeah, it’s kind of a big deal. Between writing for the site, writing for other places, ghostwriting, coaching, and moderating, I haven’t off been for two consecutive days in a row for over two years. In fact, I typically work on my birthday and holidays, etc. And I’ll be unplugging for several days in a row.
It’ll probably be good for me. But woah. Here goes nothing.
Social Media Management While on Vacation #
**Facebook **
Poly.Land’s Facebook account has the most followers (well over 37,000 folks creeping its way towards 40,000 as of this writing) of any platform we’re on. It’s a very busy place, and it poses one of the most difficult hurdles when it comes to the prospect of taking a vacation.
Thankfully, Facebook also has the best functionality for comment moderation in a situation like this.
Our articles auto-publish there well, and we’ve also queued up some memes for y’all to enjoy, as many as our scheduling software will allow.
You’ll still be able to share memes and articles and tag your friends, but we’re employing an AI assistant who will place 99% of other comments in a moderation queue so that they aren’t published until a human being from our staff can review them. That means you and your Facebook friends will be able to see your comments, but they won’t be published for public consumption until they’re approved.
Why are we doing this? Well, we have a commitment to stomping down hate speech when we can (you would not BELIEVE the kinds of vile and inane things people leave for comments sometimes, it’s unreal). And we really don’t want to leave something super offensive sitting there for a week or more.
AI isn’t exactly perfect, so it’s entirely possible we’ll miss something, that something will get through the net. If that happens, that happens. But this should keep most of it contained until human mods can look through things.
And the other alternative was asking volunteer admins and mods to work over the holidays — which I didn’t want to do.
If I’m off, they should be able to be off, too.
FetLife
Our second largest social media presence is on FetLife, where we have just shy of 7000 followers.
Normally, articles are x-posted manually from Poly.Land to FetLife Monday through Friday.
Unfortunately, we don’t have a good auto x-post solution for FetLife at this time for our articles, so FetLife users should visit the main site at if they want to read Poly Land articles in the interim.
Meme posting procedures for FetLife will be unaffected (we almost never post memes to FetLife).
And FetLife’s moderation tools are much more primitive than Facebook’s, so comments will sit where they are until I return (I do not receive admin help from volunteers for FetLife).
As per our normal FetLife moderation policies, if you’re hateful to other commenters or to (non-me) characters who appear in essays, then you’re far more likely to have comments deleted or to even be blocked when I return from vacation. Please be civil. There’s no reason not to be.
**Twitter **
Our Twitter account is the baby of our social media family. We have a little over 1000 followers there. We’ll try to get the daily auto-post working better with Twitter. Unfortunately it’s been more finnicky and has broken on us several times in the past (we operate on a shoestring, and the free tools don’t always like to play nice with one another), and I’ve been doing it manually for some time.
I _think _I got it working properly for vacation. But it’s been janky in the past, so I have some (well-merited) trust issues re: it.
So if for some reason you don’t see any new articles during our vacation in our Twitter feed (or there’s an interruption of service), please feel free to visit us here at and check up and see what the new article is.
Twitter’s ability to implement any form of comment moderation is very bad, so we won’t be posting memes or anything much beyond the daily article there over vacation. If you want to see new memes, there should be some on our Facebook account (should, if the auto scheduler plays nice).
We just don’t have the functionality to ensure good comment quality. And we don’t want to leave a cesspool while I’m away.
Reader Mail #
Regardless of how reader mail arrives, whether it’s by Facebook IM, Fetlife PM, Twitter DM, our site’s contact form, or email, you won’t get a response over the vacation period.
It’ll get looked over after vacation, however, and if a reply is appropriate and/or indicated, someone will probably get back to you.
Since our social media presence is co-managed, that could be a member of our admin team. Fair warning though: We don’t respond to everything (we get a lot of mail).
As always, the best way to reliably reach me in particular for relationship advice, to ask about writing for Poly Land, or to suggest a professional collaboration is via this site’s contact form.
*
Thanks folks!
I feel weird about going on hiatus. But I had the opportunity to go somewhere cool that I’ve never been for basically nothing. And I haven’t unplugged in so long. I need to.
I hope to regale y’all with tales of my trip when I return home.
I’m sure I won’t be able to help but write, even while on vacation, but my plan is to write only in a spiralbound notebook.
Hope your winter holidays go very well, too! Thank you so much for reading.
Love,
Page