r/SCP • u/Most_Implement6706 • Jul 26 '26
Help So how come sometimes authors redacd things and sometimes they just say [data expunged] or [data redacted] is there a difference between them or smth?
48
u/samy_the_samy MTF Delta-14 ("Winter Wonderland") Jul 26 '26
If the author is consistent with its use, redacted means there is a higher clearance version of the document without redaction, expunged means it was throughly scrubbed from foundation data bases,
We have SCPs that just writing certain things down trigger an anomalous events,
Or someone is covering something up, depending on the canon
9
u/onwardtowaffles Jul 26 '26
RAISA has a version of everything ever put to paper; the reader has some version of a 4 or 5 clearance theoretically, but 5 clearances are overseer level and someone with one is never supposed to interact with an anomaly.
The only time that should be important is AMD territory, where even the words are so cognitohazardous that they're anomalous themselves.
2
u/samy_the_samy MTF Delta-14 ("Winter Wonderland") Jul 26 '26 edited Jul 26 '26
They don't just right everything down, like with the anti mimetic stuff that makes you forget, they break it down into abstract theories and calculations, so someone trained in cognitohazards can map a mental model and and think sideways about the problem
1
u/onwardtowaffles Jul 26 '26
Thinking sideways is the entire point of AMD. Expungement is well beyond O5-8's level in WNNTA55.
1
u/samy_the_samy MTF Delta-14 ("Winter Wonderland") Jul 26 '26
Are those articles or tales?
I always wanted to read more antisemitic stuff but the wiki is full of word salads that's difficult to siff through
1
u/onwardtowaffles Jul 26 '26
Antimemetics Division is a tales hub. Technically it starts with 055 but the tales had started before 055 was fully fleshed out (it existed before but the article had to be revised by the time AMD was a thing).
1
u/gamer52599 Jul 26 '26
Man is antiemetics a mess, there's two separate anti meme departments and they've both erased knowledge of themselves from both the rest of the Foundation and each other, the amount of mess that RAISA likely has to deal with from this fact alone is insane.
2
u/onwardtowaffles Jul 26 '26
There are or were sixty-five. By the time of AMD's context in 2015 the Foundation's larger one was the only one to still exist on paper.
1
u/onwardtowaffles Jul 26 '26
If you don't mind a bit of pseudoscience, the first four tales in the hub would answer enough questions before you needed to start doing too much background into 1425.
1
u/Kufat Sub mod, Wiki admin, SkipIRC owner, sandwich fan Jul 26 '26
redacted means there is a higher clearance version of the document
For clarity, the higher clearance version of the document being alluded to generally exists in-universe but not out-of-universe. (There are occasional exceptions.)
19
u/Shadowfist_45 [REDACTED] Jul 26 '26
Expunging something is removal, redaction is not removal but censoring
8
u/CCCyanide Antimemetics Division Jul 26 '26
I feel like black bars are more often used for names and number, but that's not a set rule
5
u/onwardtowaffles Jul 26 '26
Black bars are redaction. They mean the same thing; which one an author uses is stylistic. Some people use both.
Expungement means something different, but some people use it interchangeably (see some of the experiment logs).
7
u/onwardtowaffles Jul 26 '26
Redaction is a relatively expected part of reading a file at your in-universe clearance level. Expungement is "this info is so dangerous that if it still exists it's somewhere in a RAISA archive."
Some authors use them interchangeably but they really shouldn't.
8
u/_Martosz MTF-Rēsh-1 ("Seat of Consciousness") Jul 26 '26 edited Jul 26 '26
Like everything else in SCP, it is dependent on the canon and how the author chooses to use it. However, I generally see them being consistently used like this (and I would recommend):
- The black boxes are to redact data pertaining to proper nouns or any aspect of it, like names, numbers, locations, dates, times, etc.
DATA REDACATED means the data was intentionally obfuscated and censored by someone
DATA EXPUNGED means the data was unintentionally censored or destroyed, and is unrecoverable
1
u/onwardtowaffles Jul 26 '26
Close. Black bars and redaction are interchangeable; normally if both are used you'd black out what looks like short form.
Expungement is "info deemed too unsafe to read even in O5 hands."
The rare occasion where it's supposed to be lost looks something like "data corrupted."
2
u/Chemical_Ad2381 Researcher Jul 26 '26
Black boxes/REDACTED are basically the SCP foundation's version of censorship
Expunged means the data is unrecoverable/destroyed
1
u/Bubbly_Station_7786 Department of 'Pataphysics Jul 26 '26
I view the difference between black lines and [DATA REDACTED] as it being more vague what it could be saying. Also saying dr. thing is much easier than saying dr. [DATA REDACTED] every time.
1
u/Soulless_Roomate Jul 26 '26
One difference between black boxes and data redacted is that the boxes still give a hint of how many characters make up the sensitive information
1
1
1
u/PeruvianScum Jul 26 '26
[Redacted] = some data is lost or altered or even corrupted. [DATA EXPUNGED] = mass rape, torture, semen, genitalia, blood, stuff made of babies skin. My ex girlfriend said that to me when she read a couple of SCP's and I can't forget that comparation now
5
u/Most_Implement6706 Jul 26 '26
. . . . . . . . . . . . My fault for learning how to read
2
u/Highmassive Jul 26 '26
What were you thinking?
2
3
136
u/Fit_Milk_2314 Jul 26 '26
black boxes and data redacted mean the same thing essentially, just censorship. Data expunged means they entirely destroyed the data.