My perspective and Shienvien's have essentially no differences, as far as I can tell.

Okay.

Why is this something being argued about now of all times that 18+ has been active here?

Seriously, as soon as I put up a request for libertine and general 1x1's to separate, an argument ensues about the MORALITY of those roleplays.

??????

Just, seriously, what.

It's been around for over two years.

Why didn't you argue about it two years ago, clearly you were still around.

Never implied it is. It was more against the notion that people might interpret such tags as also endorsing more dubious activities. If we clearly and unambiguously state that people will have to abide by US state and their local laws in whatever they do here, and that any breaking of such laws, if caught, won't go unpunished, then it won't by no means interfere with people doing whatever legal they wish as long as they keep to any other guild rules (including writing 18+ content in PM).

Except we already enforce rules against smut out on the public forums.

As long as no one actually attempts smut rp in the public forums, no rules are being broken. It's already acknowledged that it's a PM thing only. All you need to do is read up on the rules and you can already see we don't endorse having smut rp out in the open. besides, people put 18+ in the title of their 1x1 thread. There's no point in really hiding that.

Just google rpg +18 and you will get results anyway.

There is nothing to indicate that the guild supports breaking US federal law, or any other kind of minor protection laws.

My perspective and Shienvien's have essentially no differences, as far as I can tell.

Actually they do. Shienvien states he is afraid the 18+ tag might endorse dubious activity, and is worried about the legal aspect. which I disagree with, but you bring up different points, while they may be similar in nature, they are completely different.

You seem to be stuck on the morality part of it. You LITERALLY compare child porn to smut, as if you think smut is somehow just as bad as child porn?

I would even venture to say you are "virtue signaling", essentially telling the guild no because THINK OF THE CHILDREN.

That may have not been your intention, but your posts make me feel you have an issue with smut itself rather than the addition of a 18+ tag, which kitty points out has been around for ages.

Shienvien states he is afraid the 18+ tag might endorse dubious activity.

Quite oppositely, I'm stating that such concerns are unfounded, and that having respective clauses in rules is enough to clear up any misconceptions, should anyone have those, as well as back up our legal standing.

Reading comprehension, folks.

(Also, I'm a she.)

So here's a comparison for roleplaying and the way the forums could be operated.

Ever walked into a news agency? Sure you have. Magazines, newspapers, comics, all those random little trinkets to buy. Basically the guild is like a news agency and the different roleplays are the categories of magazines. Cars, fashion, holidays, business, computers... all these are like the genres of a roleplay.

Smut is an adult section. Special magazines wrapped in plastic that show all those naughty secrets and sexy ladies. Everyone knows it's there. There's nothing illegal about it. However selling to a minor is illegal without the proper identification. The magazine category is like the RP tags, the plastic wrap is the PM system, and the store clerk is the GM and Moderator. If they refuse to sell you the purchase, ie enter the roleplay, then you don't take off that plastic wrap and enter the PM of the Smut. If you can't enter the RP... then you will never know what's inside.

THAT is how you do an anology.

An analogy works best when it is compared to a neutral base. Adding a term like child porn will always start up an argument because it is a sensitive topic. There is nothing wrong with smut. Nothing... but there is something wrong with child porn.

<Snipped quote> Quite oppositely, I'm stating that such concerns are unfounded, and that having respective clauses in rules is enough to clear up any misconceptions, should anyone have those, as well as back up our legal standing.

Reading comprehension, folks.

(Also, I'm a she.)

My bad on both accounts then. Reading it made it seem that way anyway, and rereading it I assumed that was it's message, but I see now I have made a mistake. I sincerely apologize about that. And the he thing, I usually use that pronoun for everyone, so I'm sorry for that too.

But that just proves my point about legend that your arguments are not the same fundamentally anyway.

@Nytem4re
Is it just the ultimate goal of those here to ignore literally everything I sat that doesn't fit their frame that they have created?

Granted, then. They're not the same. That invalidates nothing.

@NuttsnBolts

Don't go down a morality argument route without being prepared to fight a long and painful battle. If you choose that, you have to define right and wrong, separate good and bad, draw lines that nobody will agree on. You cannot say one concept is ethically good or non-evil while another concept is wrong without some form of basis for that belief. I've specifically avoided arguing morality because that will never get anywhere and nobody will agree.

A critical error has occurred; the program will now close. We apologize for the inconvenience.

(Let's not transgress further into who said what, please. This is no longer a constructive discussion.)

@NuttsnBolts

Don't go down a morality argument route without being prepared to fight a long and painful battle. If you choose that, you have to define right and wrong, separate good and bad, draw lines that nobody will agree on. You cannot say one concept is ethically good or non-evil while another concept is wrong without some form of basis for that belief. I've specifically avoided arguing morality because that will never get anywhere and nobody will agree.

So what are we fighting right and wrong about? I just simply compared the Guild to a news agency and said that there is nothing wrong with smut. Is all this because you don't like smut?

@Nytem4re
Is it just the ultimate goal of those here to ignore literally everything I sat that doesn't fit their frame that they have created?

Is it just your ultimate goal to pretend you didn't make a crap analogy and expect everyone else to magically understood what you said?

Okay, you said "Following that vein of thought, so is child pornography."

And so everyone told you smut does not equal child porn. But then you claim it isn't that.

You then explain your analogy was to show "...is that the simple fact that something is an established genre does not mean it needs to be encouraged or given easy access to for minors."

And child porn is encouraged and easily accessed where? Last I checked merely searching child porn will have you put on a list. You'd have to go onto the dark web to actually find anything like that. And I would hardly say it's an "established genre".

Smut itself is hardly that illegal, nor is it that persecuted.

it was a poor analogy, and the only way people could have perceived it was a morality issue. Nothing you said really made the analogy any better nor did it make your argument any more coherent. Which I'm still confused about atm really.

@Mahz, I'm just basically requesting libertine roleplays and non-libertine roleplays to be separated and for them to have a sub-section within the 1x1 Interest Checks.

The rest of what followed after my OP...

Looks like I missed out on a good argument. I'd put my 2 cents in, but the argument has finally died out and I see no reason to restart it.

Looks like I missed out on a good argument. I'd put my 2 cents in, but the argument has finally died out and I see no reason to restart it.

In fairness, if you truly want a discussion on it, there's always the roleplaying discussion forum which is a more appropriate place for the discussion.

It wasn't that interesting a discussion... Mostly static with nobody convincing any of the other participants.

That being said, let's not start it up again. The only one able to do anything about the presented idea is Mahz.

Catching up on some Guild work today.

@Mahz

Will the full friends list be fixed?

What issue are you having?

@Mahz Do you think you would want to see a model of a dice rolling system?

Sure. Honestly I've started building a dice system ~5 times but tend to lose steam once I realize I don't really know how people would want it to work on a forum.

This is unrelated to the spambot invasion but I was wondering if it's possible to have another sub-forum for 1x1 Interest Checks and roleplays that are explicit in sexual content to separate those that are not? It's warding off a lot of potential 1x1 roleplays that are interested in doing something that has nothing to do with mature/sexual content. There are very few threads that are in the interest checks that are not 18+ on content and it's really annoying to have them shoved off because of all the people bumping on their 18+ thread with literally everyone trying to have their 18+ thread on the first page.

Please considering doing something about this because it'd be a huge improvement as I'm a preferred of 1x1's but not of libertine, sexual content and I'm absolutely sure a lot of others can agree with me.

Yeah, it a good idea. This has come up a few times but I wasn't sure what would be best. Perhaps it'd be simplest for there to just be an 18+/adult section that people must opt-in to seeing.

Originally I was working on a unified roleplay/int-check search system where you filter by tags (so I'd just introduce some adult tags like "18+"), but it's too big of an undertaking for it to hold up features like a private adult forum. I think a subforum is the best compromise. I'll make an issue for it.

It's true that we discourage adult content in the public forum due to the terms of agreement with our advertising provider (Google), but the enforcement has been so lenient that the whole thing will best be resolved by a private adult subforum that doesn't serve ads.

Right now I'm trying to finish my rate-limiting system (and supporting modkit) so that I can turn registrations back on.

(I'll post more on that in a moment)

@Mahz, this page only lists latest ten online on friends list:
roleplayerguild.com/me/friendships

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Easiest stage 1 for adult stuff is an IntCk forum for such. Stage 2 could be the opt-in section.

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Considering that the 1x1 tag only shows up in that forum, perhaps you could make the basic pairing tags and only have them available in 1x1? (tags like MxM, MxF, FxF, FxOther, MxOther)

Eh, I don't think more than having a separate IntChk is strictly necessary, at least from my perspective - my main issue being that these threads have been long drowning everything else in 1x1 out.

Rate-limiting system sounds suspicious. (Mind you, I've seen warnings for as low as 5-15 seconds purely by accident. Mostly when setting up threads and/or asking a quick question after an IC post.)

The first feature we need is a regressive ratelimit. The fewer posts/PMs you have, the longer you have to wait between posting. This addresses the issue of a single spambot creating posts as fast as the forum can accept them (as it was in the recent spambot attack). I will also ratelimit by IP address so a spambot can't just even their spam across a bunch of accounts so easily.

For example, if an account has 0 posts, they would only be able to create a topic or post every 10 minutes. Once they get 5 posts, they can post every 5 minutes. Not sure of the numbers yet, and I obviously don't want to kill the momentum of a new user, but that's the idea. Really depends on what kind of spambot behavior we have.

Existing established users wouldn't be ratelimited (beyond perhaps a sanity-check of a few seconds to prevent double posting once and for all).

When addressing spambots, in my experience, you don't need perfect countermeasures, just countermeasures that makes things annoying enough for them to stop (if there's a human driving them). It's possible that a ratelimit alone is enough for me to re-enable registrations while I work on the following features.

The second feature is a moderation-queue for new accounts. It should be a list of the first 5 or so posts by each newly registered account. From there, mods can nuke spambots or, more importantly, promote new-but-legitimate users into full members so they can escape the ratelimit. That would make our lives a lot easier, bless our moderators who have had a very shitty modkit over the last two years.

The third feature is a general report-post/report-user system. Something we've needed for a long time but kept getting procrastinated due to our two-year lucky streak of minimal spambot issues.

The fourth feature, though more of an unlikely wishlist feature, would be a system for trusted users to vote to nuke spambots without mod intervention. Mods would simply see a feed of accounts nuked by the community which they could then reverse if there was some sort of wrongful nuking.

I'm implementing those in order (ordered by urgency) and hopefully the ratelimit alone is enough to discourage the spambots that attacked us last weekend.

Hmm... Nice idea...

But what about people being welcomed quickly in the "Hai" section?

Excellent other features.