Mahz's Dev Journal

[LegendBegins]

<Snipped quote by LegendBegins>

I agree with what Ellri said because erotica is an established genre.

<Snipped quote by Ellri>

I just think it's easier to have a sub-section within 1x1 for libertine interest checks and for the number one requirement of rules are for it to take place in PM's and of course, be 18+.

I'm still thinking for another term other than libertine that isn't informal so other people can know what it means.

@Kitty Pryde

Following that vein of thought, so is child pornography. However, that does not make it right. I'm not for mandating what can and cannot be said via PMS, but I cannot support giving 18+ a recognized status and the ability to use this. It can lead to a worse set of issues, from participating minors to harassment. When forbidden, the Guild holds no liability, but when these are given recognition, it suddenly becomes condoned by RPG. If nothing else, it can tarnish the reputation of the Guild.

[Ellri]

So you went there, @LegendBegins... Equalizing RPs with a potentially sexual content with child porn. How impressive. Do you feel proud of yourself?

There is nothing wrong with people RPing about sexytime or whatever they do there. So long as they do it in pm, it won't annoy Google adsense. Interest checks concerning international crimes like child pornography, however, cannot be permitted due to said internationally recognized laws.

And to be technical on age limits, 18+ is a fairly artificial number. We suspect more often than not that people writing such prefer to write with people of a similar age. At least that is what we would have preferred if we were to ever RP such. See this for more details on the legal age of consent.

The guild has no way to check members' ages, thus a rule about having to be a certain age to write such is kinda silly, especially if it's done in private.

Such RPs exist, and if going by the amount of gender pairings in the 1x1 IntCk section, it happens to a large scale. If this idea here helps those not interested in such, then there is only benefit in supporting it.

[NuttsnBolts]

Smut and child porn aren't the same. Comparing the two is just as bad as saying that BDSM is comparable to rape.

I think what people are forgetting that not 'every' pm RP that is 18+ has sexy time in it. Some can be violence, drugs, other adult themes, horror, etc. It's a class for those that don't want an RP to be made public. Smut is just a class that draws a lot of attention because of legal repercussions if the person is below the age, as well as many other issues.

You could have an Erotica tag and if some selects it they get a message stating that erotica IC post must be made in PM, or something along those lines. Eventually the option of subscribing to a hidden PM thread might be a solution, but at least having something there as an indication or tag to the style of RP you want might help with some of the interest check confusion .

[Ellri]

indeed, @NuttsnBolts.

Tags related to RPs that are restricted to PM could easily be available only in the relevant IntCk section(s). In fact, if Mahz creates additional tags with such restrictions, we could feasibly even have tags just for those Pairing RPs (MxM / FxM / FxF / etc). The original plan behind the tag system was to have it be more than it currently is. But our dark overlord is and has been busy, so it has not had time to give it such expansion.

[LegendBegins]

@Ellri

Despite the degradation that I do not appreciate, I "compared" the two not because they are equal, but because it is an analogy. Whether or not "there is nothing wrong" with it (which is getting into an argument of morality that is not worth discussing at this point), the purpose of any analogy relies on the fact that the two concepts are not equal, and wall attacking the concept itself, you created a straw-man, not arguing against what the analogy itself presented.

@NuttsnBolts

Similar to my response to Ellri, that has nothing to do with what I said.

[Ellri]

Bah. No point reiterating our own statements. Here's a far better argument:

I have zero issues with obscenity and the Guild is unrestricted by our personal limits as staff. I'm not even sure I have any. My goal for the Guild is for people to do as they please and to set boundaries that are optimal for the most amount of people.

I only care about a few things:

1. The Guild won't violate Adsense guidelines. I will rigorously re-examine those guidelines when the mature/adult system is actually the next feature in my queue (I still haven't even finished pondering what that system will be), but as @HeySeuss mentioned, and according to the guidelines last time I examined them, Adsense's restrictions only apply to each page the ads are on.
2. The Guild won't violate American federal law. This is another thing I will re-examine, but last I checked, there is no precedent for obscenity enforcement winning against written erotica. And for good reason. Imagine there was a fictional story that involves acts that would be illegal in real life, and imagine that it was illegal to write about such acts. But wait, the story ends with: "Note: All characters in this story are an alien race thousands of years old that only look like humans.". I'm not going to sit here and guess in advance what kind of content an adult system will fill up with. I just have to see how it goes and react accordingly.
3. Users must set their birth date and opt-in to see adult content. "Sensitive" content should be limited on the public Guild, and it should be tucked away behind an opt-in process.
4. People should be given the tools to manage multiple accounts. The Guild doesn't care about multiple accounts, as anything bad you can do with multiple accounts is already against the rules. People are going to make multiple accounts no matter what, and it's trivial to circumvent a system that prohibits them (for this reason I also don't bother with IP bans). Instead, I embrace them and would like to allow people to link their multiple accounts together so that they can quickly switch between them. For example, imagine a drop-down button next to your username in the top navbar that lets you switch between them.

Since the Guild's birth, its PM system has been filled with smut. People are going to do as they please. I'd rather at least offer the tools for these people to find each other in a way that doesn't impact the current system.

I haven't pondered the entire solution yet since I'm working on some other features. Maybe all it will be is an opt-in system that lets you tag and see checks with a set of adult tags and the content still takes place over PM. Not sure yet. Maybe that's the start and we'll go on from there.

@Mahz

[LegendBegins]

@Ellri

That really has nothing to do with what I said.

[Frizan]

@Ellri

That really has nothing to do with what I said.

@LegendBegins

Then cut the "analogy" bullshit and speak plainly. What is your point?

[LegendBegins]

<Snipped quote by LegendBegins>

Then cut the "analogy" bullshit and speak plainly. What is your point?

@Frizan

Analogies exist in order to make concepts simple and easy to understand, and the Dev journal does not exist to be hostile to other RPG members. My entire point from those words 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. It also has the potential to hurt the reputation of the Guild, all of which I outlined at the top of this page. A rule of thumb is that if a line cannot be drawn so you can point out a clear difference between what should and should not be done, the movement that requires that line should not be made in the first place.

[Ellri]

Doesn't get much clearer than this:

I have zero issues with obscenity and the Guild is unrestricted by our personal limits as staff. I'm not even sure I have any. My goal for the Guild is for people to do as they please and to set boundaries that are optimal for the most amount of people.

Since the Guild's birth, its PM system has been filled with smut. People are going to do as they please. I'd rather at least offer the tools for these people to find each other in a way that doesn't impact the current system.

@mahz

Right now, it impacts the system for those not into smut 1x1s.

[Frizan]

<Snipped quote by Frizan>

Analogies exist in order to make concepts simple and easy to understand, and the Dev journal does not exist to be hostile to other RPG members. My entire point from those words 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. It also has the potential to hurt the reputation of the Guild, all of which I outlined at the top of this page. A rule of thumb is that if a line cannot be drawn so you can point out a clear difference between what should and should not be done, the movement that requires that line should not be made in the first place.

@LegendBegins

Except that what Ellri and co are proposing is not to explicitly bring easy access smut to minors, it's to give the people that wish to participate in such things tools that would make the process smoother. Will some of these people be minors? Possibly. I'd wager it's a very, very small percentage of users though. It's impossible to tell real age on these forums anyway. I could be six for all you know.

And the reputation of the Guild as perceived by moralizing, busybody soccermoms(AKA the only people that would care about smut being on the guild via PMs) is on nobody's mind. Not even Mahz's. Why? Because they don't matter, and are not the kind of people the Guild was made for. It was made for people that like to write stories. Are some of these stories a tad raunchy? Yeah. So? They're still just stories, floating amidst the vast ocean of other stories on the Guild, smut or otherwise.

[LegendBegins]

@Ellri

You already quoted that and I am not arguing against it.

@Frizan

You are still cherry picking what I say. I already said that what people write in PMs are their business, but when the concept is brought into Interest Check, an open forum, it becomes everybody else's. Whether or not you agree with what I say does not change the fact that successful argumentative discourse requires an argument to actually be made against the claim, lest it devolve into juvenile "I'm right and you're wrong."

[Frizan]

@Ellri

You already quoted that and I am not arguing against it.

@Frizan

You are still cherry picking what I say. I already said that what people write in PMs are their business, but when the concept is brought into Interest Check, an open forum, it becomes everybody else's. Whether or not you agree with what I say does not change the fact that successful argumentative discourse requires an argument to actually be made against the claim, lest it devolve into juvenile "I'm right and you're wrong."

@LegendBegins

"Argumentative discourse" first requires an argument to be made in the first place. All I can see is you pontificating about what you FEEL is the case. Feelings are not arguments, they are opinions at best. I responded to your opinions with opinions of my own.

As for the Interest Checks...buddy, they're just Interest Checks. The RP isn't going on IN the Interest Check more than likely. And even if it were, one is not required to read it. If you need to be ABSOLUTELY SURE about the contents, you can open it up, skim a few posts or so, and decide whether or not it caters to your delicate sensibilities, and act accordingly.

[Cyndyr]

Analogies exist in order to make concepts simple and easy to understand, and the Dev journal does not exist to be hostile to other RPG members.

@LegendBegins

>"the Dev journal does not exist to be hostile to other RPG members."
>equates smut to child pornography
>Ok.

Still don't understand what point you were making personally, so I wouldn't say the analogy was very effective. All people want is a libertine tag, I don't see how that's such a horrible suggestion to the point where it's equal to causing a borderline argument.

[Kitty Pryde]

All people want is a libertine tag, I don't see how that's such a horrible suggestion to the point where it's equal to causing a borderline argument.

@Cynder

It's literally as easy and simple as that.

[Cyndyr]

It's literally as easy and simple as that.

@Kitty Pryde

Well, I understand why the admins have some reservations about it and they're right. I'm still behind the idea completely nonetheless. However, I don't think it's worthy of basically starting a debate in Mahz's Dev Journal. But that's just me.

[Shienvien]

Everything illegal is against the rules of the Guild as is. Hit people over the head with that a couple of more times and it should be evident illegal activities are not endorsed.

[Cyndyr]

Everything illegal is against the rules of the Guild as is. Hit people over the head with that a couple of more times and it should be evident illegal activities are not endorsed.

@Shienvien

Smut isn't illegal unless you are minor partaking in it. Unless you can show me some proof of it magically becoming illegal overnight and if this were true, a lot of people on RoleplayerGuild and Iwaku are in trouble. By making a libertine interest check tag, there is absolutely no endorsement of anything "illegal" and even without it, people on the Guild will still advertise it anyway.

[Shienvien]

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).

[LegendBegins]

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