With the New Rules having been introduced and not being met with outright rejection, the Projects Section being opened up again, and the Wiki settling into a stable/usable state, we are moving forward with that as the foundation to build off of moving forward.
I’m hoping to be able to be able to continue to get feedback, critiques, and suggestions from the community moving forwards to get the site to what the community needs it to be and to have a readily accessible means of publicly responding and updating folks on what’s happening and a way to give your voices a place to be heard and shared. I apologize for the somewhat unorganized means of delivering this information so far, the previous topics were my attempts at a quick stop gap measure to get things out in the open sooner while we figure out a better long term way to go about it. This thread being what we came up with.
With that out of the way, the primary focus for this topic is that we are currently operating under the New Rules and abandoning the old ones the site has previously been using. However since there are likely things we’ve missed, or that some rules might need fine tuning and the like, we are using what I personally refer to as a “Soft Implementation” for the rules. For the month of April, we will be operating under the current new rules but also will be listening to feedback to allow for the rules to be discussed and actively refined by the community and the site staff together. Then at the end of the month the hope is that enough time and discussion has happened for the rules to be “Good Enough” to set them as the ‘officially agreed upon rules’ by everyone and we can “Finalize” them.
The secondary goal of this topic is to hear feedback and discussion for non rule related things that can be done for the site. Since we are in the process of a massive restructuring of how the site works, it seems like a good opportunity to give the site an update to address some of the legacy aspects that might be outdated or need fine tuning, hear suggestions or feedback on potential alternate ways of handling certain features, finding odd edge cases for interactions, addressing potential things that might get overlooked by the staff for being too close to the system backend to notice properly, and things like that as some examples.
We are bound by technical limitations and volunteer manpower however, so do keep that in mind with things you bring up. I do not say that to stifle creativity or feedback, but simply to establish that we can only do so much. But with that said, even if an idea might not be feasible, it could potentially lead to inspiration for something else that might be, so please don’t be shy with sharing your thoughts.
And since I know a lot of people tend to be ‘lurkers’ who tend to prefer to avoid engaging with stuff, here’s an anonymous poll to get a bit of a ‘vibe check’ to help us get a simple gauge for where we’re at. This is mostly me just trying to get an initial feel for what we’re doing more so than any ‘official voting/popularity poll’ type nonsense.
- This sounds like a good idea
- This sounds like a bad idea
- I don’t know/I don’t care
I would like to ask for clarification, when it comes to materials deemed obscene, the first prong of the miller test states "the average person, applying contemporary community standards", if those standards are based on the Communities they concern or is it the community of this site as a whole? More clearly, is it "vore content issues are judged by the vore community" and "Weight gain is judged by the weight gain community" Or is it "everyone on the site has a say"?
– BPStuartObscene, while not expressly limited to, mainly applies to the more universally agreed upon topics such as sexual or gruesome or violent type of content. Since WG, or vore, content, while a fetish, is still technically able to exist without an inherently obscene aspect. For instance, old kids cartoons of someone comically fat, or 'being swallowed by a whale' stories. So we are falling back on the miller test to judge that aspect for things that might cross the line. Games with sex scenes would count regardless of WG content, but the WG itself doesn't immediately flag it for instance.
– HeftyTotemThat is not what I asked. I will rephrase. Who sets the standard? Which community's standards are we operating under? Society at large? The Community of this board only? The community's involved in the work's contents? Mod discretion based off their own interpretation? I need to know which because they seem to be very different sets of what is acceptable.
– BPStuartUS Law sets the standard which could count as society at large. The way it works is vague enough that mod interpretation should suffice though. We can't leave it up to community interpretation as that has the chance for abuse such to say 'CSAM is ok and legal', which won't fly. Us mods can't overwrite CSAM justification either, but we should be able to justify 'It's not obscene they're just fat' that an Average Joe might not. Short answer is "US Law, filtered through mod interpretation of the content".To prevent WG from auto flagging as such and so the site bears responsibility, not just you
– HeftyTotemOk, makes sense. I would recommend putting that front and center in the section that mentions the miller test, because i have seen places that use the miller test framework but it is "community vibes" based not " What US law says" based. so instead of "(as dictated by the miller test)" something like " (as dictated by the miller test and US Law) " I know the sentence above it mentions us law, but having been on the other end of a 'miller test' that had nothing to do with what the law said one too many times makes me want to be absolutely clear. Hanged by a comma once too often ETC.
– BPStuart