This project is the brainchild of a UNC-Chapel Hill student, run by multiple students. Its purpose is outlined here.
2. What is the point of this project?
I said, its purpose is outlined here.
3. Why are the moderators anonymous?
We thought it would make people uncomfortable to put a name or face with exactly who is reading their secrets. It's fairly easy to figure out who we are, and we'll certainly own up to it if you ask us in person, but we try to keep everything on the blog itself as anonymous as possible.
4. How did you come up with the idea?
The original idea came into being while a student was looking at PostSecret (to which we most humbly give credit and applause). A recently increased awareness of UNC-Chapel Hill as a community prompted her to wonder how the model of PostSecret might work if scaled down to the community level. After she was introduced to a certain college gossip website, she created the UNC-CH Secrets Project 2008 as a place where people could share only their own secrets, be totally anonymous, and expect not to be judged.
5. How do I post a secret?
See How It Works.
6. I submitted my secret a week ago and you haven't put it up. What gives?
Perhaps we were just out of town, or in the middle of midterms, or having a beer with Roy. If you suspect that was not the case, it is possible we rejected your secret. Before you re-submit/track us down with bloodhounds, you should ask yourself a few questions.
- Was it really a secret? You'd be surprised how many non-secrets we get.
- Was it anonymous?
- Was it longer than a few lines?
- Was it soliciting advice? While we wish you the best of luck with whatever your issue may be, that's not what this site is for.
7. But the guy who posted at 11:34pm last Saturday's secret doesn't look like it follows those guidelines. No fair!
This blog really and truly is a work in progress. As we see what works and what doesn't, we change guidelines to make the final collection as close in format to our vision as possible. It's likely that the secret was submitted before we made up that rule about never using the letter W in a post, or that it just slipped by us.
8. How do I submit a comment?
There is a Comment link below each post. We review these too, so it may take some time for your comment to appear below the secret.
9. I posted a comment a week ago and you haven't put it up. The hell?
Again, a few questions.
- Was your comment negative or judgmental toward the poster of the secret?
- Was it actually about the posted secret?
- Did you offer unsolicited advice?
- Were you engaging in a discussion with other posters? While we're so pleased that the project is prompting discussion, we'd like to keep the focus of the site as simple and straightforward as possible; we hope you opt to talk about the secrets offline instead.
10. But I see comments on other posts that don't follow those guidelines. You are deceptive, unjust, and ill-dressed!
Again, the guidelines for the project have evolved over time, so what is accepted now may be different from what was accepted before. Secondly, the Moderators are human, and things may slip through their notice. Thirdly, the selection process is somewhat subjective, it is true. We may choose to post that which is in the spirit, if not the letter, of the law, and vice versa. Lastly, it's laundry day -- so sue us.
11. Why don't you update more regularly?
Our lives are just as busy as yours, this is a side project, and we update as often as we can, Scout's honor.
2 comments:
I hate how you guys get to decide which "secrets" and comments go up and which don't. I know it was your idea to create the site, but I was under the impression that it was a collection of secrets from the UNC community, not secrets from the UNC community that you deemed "appropriate" enough, or that you felt met the ever-changing, ever-growing list of rules.
It feels fake now, because I bet there are tons of secrets or sentiments or whatever the UNC community wants to share that aren't put up on the site. Whatever we read is filtered.
I realize the need for moderation. But why can't you just review what goes up, taking down what is absolutely necessary instead?
Thanks for your feedback. In response to a few of your points:
Our goal for this site hasn't changed. We really strive not to censor the secrets that are sent to us, and we've thought long and hard about the guidelines we've put up, many of which were suggested by the readers, and few of which have anything to do with the actual content of the secrets. We outline them so explicitly because it seems like the next response to the offensive and off-topic comments would be to disable commenting altogether, and that would be a damn shame.
We're sorry that you feel like the site is "fake" now. Please believe that we post all but a very, very few secrets and nearly every comment.
As for your suggestion of filtering after comments go up, that would, frankly, be too much work to go back and scan every post individually. The way we have it set up makes it feasible to handle the incoming comments and secrets.
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