SCP Foundation

Having been here for a while now and having read a considerable number of both articles, article discussions and forum threads as well as the official guides, I've come to notice that there a lot of reminders all over the place from various sources regarding the Keter class. Specifically, that Keter does not imply the level of danger, but the difficulty of containment. And it seems to be like this because people find it difficult to, well, not associate Keter with danger. And why wouldn't they, when the highest rater Keter articles are invariably dangerous ones like SCP-106, SCP-682 and SCP-610. Newcomers in particular seem to have a lot of trouble with this, and while we could blame it on them not reading the guides, we could also use some more clarity on this front.

Hell, even the Object Class description page itself describes Keter as "anomalies that pose an inherently serious threat to the safety of Foundation personnel and the rest of mankind" and "generally considered the most dangerous ones in Foundation containment". To have the official line be "Keter isn't about level of danger, but difficulty of containment" while at the same time leaving the description like that is bound to confuse people (as it confused me in the beginning), it's outright contradictory. We could, naturally, just change the description of Keter on the page, that'd be the simplest solution. However, since people seem to be so fond of dangerous SCPs (I'm thinking there's a reason that SCP-682 is so popular), I have a different suggestion.

The French have come up with a neat system to separate difficulty of containment from level of danger by designing a complementary classification system, to be used in conjunction with the standard Object Classes. They're simply called "Threat Levels", and a translated version can be found here. I suggest we adopt this system and apply it to all current and future articles, to decrease the evidently ambiguous usage of Object Classes (primarily Keter).

What are your thoughts?

This has been tried multiple times, but enough people seem happy with S/E/K being the sole metric for containment, what with it being literally one of the very first things standardized across SCP articles, that any addition/tweaking of the system will encounter massive resistance.

e: I think Djoric and a few others have included something similar-ish in some of their articles.

I personally think it'd be fine to include in new articles, rather than editing them into positively-rated works. But there will be a lot of people whose comments will consist of "I don't like this. SEK works fine. -1." So be ready for that.

And it seems to be like this because people find it difficult to, well, not associate Keter with danger.

The problem tends to be reflective of the nature of what it means to be Keter. Keter objects are supposed to be hard to contain, and it's generally easier to think of something dangerous as being hard to contain than something not dangerous.

A lot of my issue with the "threat level" concept is that it isn't really a useful metric. Compare a real-world industrial or college chemistry lab: one of the basic safety rules is that you treat everything like its dangerous, because every chemical can be dangerous in the right circumstances.

Just take the cleanup process: Distilled water can explode into steam when heated past boiling without a bubble catalyst. Keep it away from the lithium and beryllium series, too. Oh, and to store those you put them in mineral oil because the world is ironic like that. Soap can spontanously combust or explode violently when mixed with the right chemicals. Your other option, acetone, can make you pass out and is highly flammable. The concentrated acids used for more thorough cleanup react violently with even trace amounts of metal, and spontaneously boil when mixed with water.

Anomalies are like that to the nth degree.

Based on the definitions in the translation, this still totally confounds danger with containment. The only difference I can see is allowing for beneficial SCPs and a finer granularity.¹

I know SEKTEN+A² is arbitrary, but 1) it's tradition, so it's difficult to get people to change, and 2) It does its job from a writing perspective. It's nice and thematic, and it gives the reader a minimum of info that primes them for what's coming next. They can judge the danger for themselves in the immediately following containment procedures. (Which, following Scorpion's comment, they should be reading closely no matter what the object class is.)

It doesn't particularly matter to me on a philosophical level, although the Foundation caring more about containment than danger makes sense. In critique or comments, I almost view "This should really be <insert class>" as shit-crit, especially if it isn't offered with any other feedback. I don't even need the box test to figure out what class my objects are going to be, it's pretty obvious when I set out to write them.³

Edit: Two more thoughts:
1) All off my SCPs are either in themselves uncontained and probably uncontainable, or have some aspect that is. I don't see a listing on here that would fit any of them except for maybe SCP-2438.⁴
2) I'm not trying to be hostile. I can tell you what I tell everyone proposing a standard: Write good articles using it, and maybe people will pick it up. Or translate the French articles using it, which I'm legitimately interested in reading, and post them on here. Outside of extremely rare administrative efforts, because we operate solely by the upvote and the consensus that represents, that's the only way anything ever gets adopted.

Assessing thousands of articles and add Threat Level classifications to all of them would require an enormous amount of work and generate an absurd level of whining, and that's BEFORE people start nitpicking hundreds of articles with arguments basically irrelevant to the piece in question.

Anybody who would be trusted to actually do the work is unquestionably better off writing articles and/or policies that genuinely make the site better. The confusion over Keter classification would have to be unfathomably bad for the inclusion of Threat Levels to be a worthwhile endeavor.

You'd also have confusion of what scale the threat level is on. Say you have an anomalous 500 megaton hydrogen bomb that detonates when people think of three gray elephants within 5 meter of the object. That would be a safe classification, while obviously being capable of causing a lot of damage. Does that mean that the threat level is rising though? You'd have people bickering to answer that question.

The only alternative object classes that will probably become mainstream are Zeno and Apollyon, and even then the Apollyon object class would probably become stale, and if somebody can find a way to pull off making the Apollyon object class mainstream without making it stale, I will buy that person a beer unlessitsmebecauseimsixteenwowimsoedgywithmyteleportingcat.

Also, wouldn't that restrict creative freedoms? I know that's coming from me, somebody who attempted to force scientific literacy onto the site and was rightfully told to fuck off, but come on.

Also, if the Zeno class is to be used again (I have quite a few concepts that could use the ''Zeno'' classification, albeit with author consent), threat levels would have to be abandoned (At least in my opinion).

I mean, the problem I have about threat levels is what scorpion described: in chemistry,threat is generally not assigned by a definite metric. It only takes the right wrong chemicals to make an otherwise safe substance into something truly dangerous. It only happens that you probably wouldn't put as much effort into securing distillate water than you would at securing concentrated sulfuric acid.

SEK doesn't have to deal with this problem: Some Euclid can kill you if you blink, but you're pretty much fine because most can't deal with being trapped inside a cell. Make an SCP that can kill you and get out of cells and you're in trouble. Under the right conditions (being one of them not being trapped in a cell), most SCP could possibly kill you. It only happens the Keter class gets the chance to kill you in most circumstances.

I guess if you told someone "Keter is a SCP that has the most potential of affecting someone" instead of "Keter is an SCP whose effect is to kill someone", the contradicting problem would be easly resolved. It's only a matter of revision in the end.

Although I would not like a secondary classification system, it is not a bad idea

Not only are all Keters assumed to to be dangerous by new members, all Safes are all assumed to be harmless. The best example of a Safe class that could be highly dangerous is SCP-498. This SCP could literally tear apart the earth in 3 days, and it only takes 1 hour for this doom to be inevitable. This SCP however, is classified as Safe due to the simplicity of its containment, just press the button every 11 minutes.

As for the "chemistry", it is very unlikely for soap or some other substance like that to be unintentionally dangerous, making a it a low threat level. As for something like SCP-682, it is very likely for this to be unintentionally dangerous, making it a high threat level.

Even though this is a great idea, I don't think the Foundation would like to have secondary classification system. I do however, think we should make it more clear to new members or readers that SCP object classes are based on the difficulty of containment, and not the threat they present.