Proposal for Site/Forum Image Standards Revision

[AKM sama]

Ironically, that these threads existed speaks against your made-up statistics of only 3 people having an interest in these things. Heck, there is a 19 page thread of users determining which characters have the largest bust size for each tier, which is open to this day.

I agree. And these threads were closed only because people started going overboard. It's fine to post pictures as long as rules aren't broken.

 

[CloverDragon03]

I agree. And these threads were closed only because people started going overboard. It's fine to post pictures as long as rules aren't broken.

The rules are what are being contested right now, though. And for the better I'd say

 

[Antvasima]

Is it possible to reach some kind of compromise solution here? On the one hand I do not think that we should be overzealous, and on the other we want a relatively clean environment that is safe for young teenagers.

 

[CloverDragon03]

Turbo bump

This do be a really important thread to hash out. My support for the proposal remains unchanged, and I frankly see this only being good for the wiki and don't get why the opposition is this fervent over a matter as simple as... not making your pfps or banners something sexual.

"But Clover," I hear some of you perhaps wanting to respond, "It's not that simple. We need to define what does and doesn't qualify as too much to be allowed."

Lucky for us, then, that Grath has laid things out quite clearly - with some additional addendums courtesy of Deagonx. I think things are laid out quite clearly.

 

[Antvasima]

I personally do not mind if we categorically avoid anything remotely sexual, but at the same time, as long as no nudity, underage characters, or intimate activity is displayed, it may be overly strict to not even allow fully grown women in rather tight dresses.

I personally prefer a clean and completely safe environment in our community, even though I haven't managed to master my personal likely too strong attraction to highly realistic drawings of beautiful adult women yet, but at the same time I do not want to be overly strict regarding mostly harmless activity, so I would prefer if we can find a compromise solution that most of us find acceptable here.

 

[CloverDragon03]

I mean I get the sentiment, but I'm not exactly sure how a compromise would be reachable for something like this. I'm open to hearing people out, but this seems more "one way or the other" compared to other wiki policy threads by my estimate

 

[IdiosyncraticLawyer]

Bump.

 

[CloverDragon03]

Bump

I would like for the opposition to consider that our userbase can be up to as young as 13 years old

 

[Mr. Bambu]

I will reiterate, in the name of reaching a conclusion, my support. I also do not feel a compromise is particularly suitable for something such as this. That said, it may assist us to compartmentalize the issue more, if that is what it takes to get the ball rolling. The OP deals in all sexual imagery, and defining what is permissible and what is not. It may be the case that a less broad approach may yield more immediate results (by immediate I mean anything within the near future).

A major element of the preceding issue, that being AKM's banner, was that it involved child characters, albeit drawn differently such that they might be considered "aged up"; I feel it would be appropriate to, failing a consensus on the broad issue, make a rule regarding this particular practice in art, and disallowing posting such pieces.

 

[Antvasima]

I will reiterate, in the name of reaching a conclusion, my support. I also do not feel a compromise is particularly suitable for something such as this. That said, it may assist us to compartmentalize the issue more, if that is what it takes to get the ball rolling. The OP deals in all sexual imagery, and defining what is permissible and what is not. It may be the case that a less broad approach may yield more immediate results (by immediate I mean anything within the near future).

A major element of the preceding issue, that being AKM's banner, was that it involved child characters, albeit drawn differently such that they might be considered "aged up"; I feel it would be appropriate to, failing a consensus on the broad issue, make a rule regarding this particular practice in art, and disallowing posting such pieces.

I personally do not mind this solution.

However, speaking generally rather than to you alone, should we really be so uptight that we consider fully grown women in somewhat revealing dresses to be more than teenagers can safely handle without damage? It seems too strict to me.

 

[Deagonx]

However, speaking generally rather than to you alone, should we really be so uptight that we consider fully grown women in somewhat revealing dresses to be more than teenagers can safely handle without damage? It seems too strict to me.

My counterargument would be that the "harm" done by this level of strictness is effectively non-existent. The vast vast majority of users do not have anything like this on their profiles, and the only inconvenience inflicted upon those that do is having them change the picture. It depends on what you mean by "somewhat revealing" but as was discussed earlier on in the thread, the degree of nudity is not the sole consideration on whether a picture is NSFW.

 

[Antvasima]

Well, I just think that it seems too strict and possibly prudish to not allow any images of beautiful women in dresses or superhero-style costumes. Our wiki itself features lots of such images after all, and I do not think that we should be considerably stricter than Fandom itself demands regarding what types of images we are allowed to link to here.

If somebody links to a comicbook page featuring Power Girl or Wonder Woman, should we suddenly not allow that now? This isn't the 19th century after all.

 

[Mr. Bambu]

I personally do not mind this solution.

However, speaking generally rather than to you alone, should we really be so uptight that we consider fully grown women in somewhat revealing dresses to be more than teenagers can safely handle without damage? It seems too strict to me.

I'm certainly less gung ho about images of adult characters (I think it is inappropriate, but not half as distasteful as the content of my message). This is why I feel that we may meet more common ground focusing on child characters, such as is the case with AKM's banner.

 

[Antvasima]

I'm certainly less gung ho about images of adult characters (I think it is inappropriate, but not half as distasteful as the content of my message). This is why I feel that we may meet more common ground focusing on child characters, such as is the case with AKM's banner.

Yes, I have no problem with that. I just think that we likely enter slippery slope territory in the cases I mentioned in my last post above.

 

[CloverDragon03]

Well, I just think that it seems too strict and possibly prudish to not allow any images of beautiful women in dresses or superhero-style costumes. Our wiki itself features lots of such images after all, and I do not think that we should be considerably stricter than Fandom itself demands regarding what types of images we are allowed to link to here.

If somebody links to a comicbook page featuring Power Girl or Wonder Woman, should we suddenly not allow that now? This isn't the 19th century after all.

I don't think any of us supporting this revision would agree to disallowing the example you're giving, for instance. It's more about pieces clearly intended to be sexual, first and foremost (like AKM's banner for instance, since that's the easiest example to use given that's what jumpstarted this revision). I think the line between things like that and drawings of women in dresses or superhero-style costumes is a very clear line to draw

 

[Antvasima]

Okay, but then we probably need to clarify that only images that are clearly intended to be sexual or that feature aged up underage characters should be added to our current restrictions, as, again, I do not want to march on a slippery slope towards the 19th century.

 

[CloverDragon03]

I mean such a clarification shouldn't be too difficult to make in a draft of this rule, so I'm fine with that. As long as the point gets across that any clearly sexual images aren't allowed, that's fine

 

[Antvasima]

I will reiterate, in the name of reaching a conclusion, my support. I also do not feel a compromise is particularly suitable for something such as this. That said, it may assist us to compartmentalize the issue more, if that is what it takes to get the ball rolling. The OP deals in all sexual imagery, and defining what is permissible and what is not. It may be the case that a less broad approach may yield more immediate results (by immediate I mean anything within the near future).

A major element of the preceding issue, that being AKM's banner, was that it involved child characters, albeit drawn differently such that they might be considered "aged up"; I feel it would be appropriate to, failing a consensus on the broad issue, make a rule regarding this particular practice in art, and disallowing posting such pieces.

I personally do not mind this solution.

However, speaking generally rather than to you alone, should we really be so uptight that we consider fully grown women in somewhat revealing dresses to be more than teenagers can safely handle without damage? It seems too strict to me.

Well, I just think that it seems too strict and possibly prudish to not allow any images of beautiful women in dresses or superhero-style costumes. Our wiki itself features lots of such images after all, and I do not think that we should be considerably stricter than Fandom itself demands regarding what types of images we are allowed to link to here.

If somebody links to a comicbook page featuring Power Girl or Wonder Woman, should we suddenly not allow that now? This isn't the 19th century after all.

I'm certainly less gung ho about images of adult characters (I think it is inappropriate, but not half as distasteful as the content of my message). This is why I feel that we may meet more common ground focusing on child characters, such as is the case with AKM's banner.

Yes, I have no problem with that. I just think that we likely enter slippery slope territory in the cases I mentioned in my last post above.

I don't think any of us supporting this revision would agree to disallowing the example you're giving, for instance. It's more about pieces clearly intended to be sexual, first and foremost (like AKM's banner for instance, since that's the easiest example to use given that's what jumpstarted this revision). I think the line between things like that and drawings of women in dresses or superhero-style costumes is a very clear line to draw

Okay, but then we probably need to clarify that only images that are clearly intended to be sexual or that feature aged up underage characters should be added to our current restrictions, as, again, I do not want to march on a slippery slope towards the 19th century.

I mean such a clarification shouldn't be too difficult to make in a draft of this rule, so I'm fine with that. As long as the point gets across that any clearly sexual images aren't allowed, that's fine

@Mr. Bambu @DarkGrath @AKM sama

Would this be an acceptable compromise solution for you as well?

 

[AKM sama]

Would this be an acceptable compromise solution for you as well?

No. This thread is not about restricting aged up characters. All the discussion that took place in this thread, apart from the last few comments, has been about women in general in revealing clothes. I see the aged up characters issue as an entirely different tangent. And if we want to discuss that, we should probably make a new thread for more participation seeing how this thread has already gone inactive.

However, if you want my opinion on that, it's the same as DontTalk said elsewhere. For fictional characters, "only" canonical age is not a suitable metric to decide when pictures should be allowed. Fan artists can age up the characters and draw them as adults just like manga or comic artists draw them. If character A is okay then character B should also be okay if they are drawn to be the same age irrespective of who drew them. People generally go by appearance in all other websites I have been to. In fact, people have more problems when canonically adult characters are depicted as minors in drawings, and that holds true for most of the sites I have visited.

So if you want to put down a rule for that, I would suggest to make it so people avoid "minor looking" characters irrespective of their canonical age. I don't think there should be any rule against the use of adult looking women. We have been over this in the past also. I have seen many members, including staff, having cropped **** and sexualized women as their profile pics in my time here, and every time it came up it was always deemed fine if it didn't break fandom rules. Anything more than that would be too prudish and restrictive and I don't think there is any real harm done based on these facts.

 

[Antvasima]

Okay, so only characters that are drawn in an underage manner as well as clearly sexualised drawings then?

 

[AKM sama]

Okay, so only characters that are drawn in an underage manner as well as clearly sexualised drawings then?

Yes, restricting sexualized women who look like minors is fine with me. But we should probably get opinions from most of the other staff members.

 

[Antvasima]

I meant that our staff seem to wish to forbid skimpily clad characters drawn in an underage manner in general, as well as adult characters drawn in a sexualised manner. I think that we already do not allow sexualised drawings of seemingly underage characters.

 

[AKM sama]

If we already have a rule forbidding that, then I personally don't see any need of adding anything more.

 

[Antvasima]

Well, we have to listen to what the rest of our staff think in that regard, and try to reach a compromise solution.

 

[Mr. Bambu]

No. This thread is not about restricting aged up characters. All the discussion that took place in this thread, apart from the last few comments, has been about women in general in revealing clothes. I see the aged up characters issue as an entirely different tangent. And if we want to discuss that, we should probably make a new thread for more participation seeing how this thread has already gone inactive.

However, if you want my opinion on that, it's the same as DontTalk said elsewhere. For fictional characters, "only" canonical age is not a suitable metric to decide when pictures should be allowed. Fan artists can age up the characters and draw them as adults just like manga or comic artists draw them. If character A is okay then character B should also be okay if they are drawn to be the same age irrespective of who drew them. People generally go by appearance in all other websites I have been to. In fact, people have more problems when canonically adult characters are depicted as minors in drawings, and that holds true for most of the sites I have visited.

So if you want to put down a rule for that, I would suggest to make it so people avoid "minor looking" characters irrespective of their canonical age. I don't think there should be any rule against the use of adult looking women. We have been over this in the past also. I have seen many members, including staff, having cropped **** and sexualized women as their profile pics in my time here, and every time it came up it was always deemed fine if it didn't break fandom rules. Anything more than that would be too prudish and restrictive and I don't think there is any real harm done based on these facts.

The point was indeed to pivot to something less broad, as was said. As there was not tons of consensus, the goal became a sort of compromise where the rule was less sweeping, targeting the specific issue that prompted this thread, rather than many issues unrelated to this thread. It is not inherently necessary to produce a new thread whenever a compromise is proposed.

Do these artists specifically state their age? "Misty is 33 here, it's super chill guys". I'm (perhaps obviously) not familiar with the practices of this particular art form, but is it not just our impression of how they are drawn? Regardless: I hold issue with the idea that people elsewhere are more tolerant to the notion of an underage character drawn to be non-canonically older, as we are here, where people have proven less tolerant. Our rule should cover us, not some other place like Reddit or Twitter. Aside from the fact that I disagree with their handling of it fundamentally, I just don't think this is a good argument in favor of keeping 'em.

I don't think making sexualized minors (regardless of how they are drawn, or the artist's style) a disallowed image element is overly prudish. Nor do I agree with the idea that because verses, too, possess fan service and so on that it justifies the existence of continuously more extreme images being posted. I don't think we've ever had a discussion quite like this one on the matter either; this is the precedent that will rise above the small conversations and permissions of the past.

 

[AKM sama]

The point was indeed to pivot to something less broad, as was said. As there was not tons of consensus, the goal became a sort of compromise where the rule was less sweeping, targeting the specific issue that prompted this thread, rather than many issues unrelated to this thread. It is not inherently necessary to produce a new thread whenever a compromise is proposed.

It doesn't matter what prompted this thread. We are speaking generally here. I see this as completely separate issue because a lot of people who take offense to issue 1 might not take offense to issue 2 or vice versa. Just to quote an example here, the person who created the thread has stated elsewhere that they don't have any objections to aging up the characters.

Do these artists specifically state their age?

No, like I said, people generally go by appearances. It is impossible to tell the age of a character in an art picture.

Well, we have to listen to what the rest of our staff think in that regard, and try to reach a compromise solution.

I see that only a small fraction of our complete staff have participated here. And out of them I see a split of opinion. If something doesn't reach a proper conclusion, we keep the status quo. That has been our practice.

 

[Antvasima]

Okay. Can somebody find and quote our current rules regarding this issue please, so we can more easily identify potential flaws in them?

 

[Mr. Bambu]

It doesn't matter what prompted this thread. We are speaking generally here. I see this as completely separate issue because a lot of people who take offense to issue 1 might not take offense to issue 2 or vice versa. Just to quote an example here, the person who created the thread has stated elsewhere that they don't have any objections to aging up the characters.

I think it very much does, as this discussion aims to mend our rules on a particular subject, and making it more focused than that mid-thread is not uncommon at all.

No, like I said, people generally go by appearances. It is impossible to tell the age of a character in an art picture.

These are two contradictory statements.

"We can tell by looking at it."

"It is impossible to know the age of a character in art."

It seems to me that we very much know the age of the characters, given they come from something with an explicit stated age.

Regardless. I will wait to see if others may have an opinion on it, I suppose, and failing that, allow this to sink back into the abyss of Unpleasant Things To Strive To Fix That Get Buried By Bureaucracy. It serves us no good to bicker, even for a good cause.

 

[AKM sama]

These are two contradictory statements.

Let me be more technical.

It is impossible to know the exact age of a character drawn by an artist unless they have written it in their drawing, that stands true for any fanart drawn differently than the original. But generally you could tell by looking at them whether they are grown adults or children simply through physique.

I don't think knowing their exact age is our business as long as they look like adults.

 

[DarkDragonMedeus]

I am also in the same mind set as AKM and DontTalkDT.

 

[Agnaa]

On the OP: I'm not 100% sold on "primary intent of sexual gratification in the viewer", since stuff can be SFW and be designed with that primary intent. This is from a **** comic, so I'd believe it's drawn with sexual gratification in mind, but it is literally just two people holding hands and blushing. The bar I'd draw would be around "sexual content beyond what a random person would expect to experience on a random beach in a western nation", but I understand how that wording is a bit strange/cumbersome to explicitly put into a rule. And I'd say that the banner that ignited this controversy should be allowed.

On aged-up characters:

1. If a character is exclusively canonically a minor, sexualized images should not be allowed of them unless they have noticeably different and more adult designs (and, it should go without saying, that they're not too sexualized for our standards, wherever they land). A simple disclaimer saying they're 18 would not be enough.
2. If a character is canonically a minor for part of the story, and adult for another part, sexualized images should only be allowed if they have the design they canonically had as an adult (or a fan design that is on the aged-up side of things).

 

[Antvasima]

Well, we already have restrictions for overly sexualised content, so we would probably need to define roughly where exactly that we should draw the line.

 

[CloverDragon03]

No. This thread is not about restricting aged up characters. All the discussion that took place in this thread, apart from the last few comments, has been about women in general in revealing clothes. I see the aged up characters issue as an entirely different tangent. And if we want to discuss that, we should probably make a new thread for more participation seeing how this thread has already gone inactive.

However, if you want my opinion on that, it's the same as DontTalk said elsewhere. For fictional characters, "only" canonical age is not a suitable metric to decide when pictures should be allowed. Fan artists can age up the characters and draw them as adults just like manga or comic artists draw them. If character A is okay then character B should also be okay if they are drawn to be the same age irrespective of who drew them. People generally go by appearance in all other websites I have been to. In fact, people have more problems when canonically adult characters are depicted as minors in drawings, and that holds true for most of the sites I have visited.

So if you want to put down a rule for that, I would suggest to make it so people avoid "minor looking" characters irrespective of their canonical age. I don't think there should be any rule against the use of adult looking women. We have been over this in the past also. I have seen many members, including staff, having cropped **** and sexualized women as their profile pics in my time here, and every time it came up it was always deemed fine if it didn't break fandom rules. Anything more than that would be too prudish and restrictive and I don't think there is any real harm done based on these facts.

Idk about other people, but my focus has always been on images that are explicitly intended to be sexual in nature. And I don't see how that's anything less than a good change.

Like, as I mentioned, our userbase can be as young as 13, and it's beneficial to not flashbang them with stuff like this. And what's the potential downside? "Oh, woe is me, I can't have sexualized characters in my profile anymore." I think we'll live

 

[Antvasima]

Yes, that seems sensible to me.

 

[Planck69]

This shouldn't have been that much of a debate. Like, I get being free to express one's self but it's not some grand sacrifice to just err on the side of caution and have a clean profile.

 

[AKM sama]

Well, we already have restrictions for overly sexualised content, so we would probably need to define roughly where exactly that we should draw the line.

I think fandom's rules are fine as they are. Fandom is also PG13, why should we have different rules? Everybody has already seen bikinis in beaches or in beach episodes of PG13 anime, etc. We can't protect anybody from something they already know. I think anything more than the current fandom rules would be unnecessarily restrictive and prudish for no real gain and makes us look overly orthodox and extra sensitive when literally every piece of media and even the platform we are in have moved ahead.

If our rules don't say it yet, we can add a mention of bikini like Agnaa said. And keep our profiles clean by staying within the rules like we have been doing for the last 10 years already.

 

[CloverDragon03]

I think fandom's rules are fine as they are. Fandom is also PG13, why should we have different rules? Everybody has already seen bikinis in beaches or in beach episodes of PG13 anime, etc. We can't protect anybody from something they already know. I think anything more than the current fandom rules would be unnecessarily restrictive and prudish for no real gain and makes us look overly orthodox when literally every piece of media and even the platform we are in have moved ahead.

If we're talking about "how we would look," then surely we can talk about "how we look now," no? And right now, we look like that one wiki with sexual stuff on our profiles because why not. And this is not an uncommon complaint.

What actual negative would come from DarkGrath's proposal? Because chances are, any perceived negative that's being thought up isn't actually one.

Edit: Also "we can't protect anybody from something they already know" is frankly a bad retort because it promotes complacence with such things. What if they didn't know before? One person is better than zero.

If our rules don't say it yet, we can add a mention of bikini like Agnaa said. And keep our profiles clean by staying within the rules like we have been doing for the last 10 years already.

You keep talking about "staying within the rules." The rules are what are being contested. The point is that given the kinds of things that are currently, apparently allowed, our current rules clearly aren't enough.

 

[AKM sama]

If we're talking about "how we would look," then surely we can talk about "how we look now," no? And right now, we look like that one wiki with sexual stuff on our profiles because why not.

Eh! I think that's a bit off. Nobody I have ever interacted with thinks like we are an oversexualized wiki. I have seen similar or more on that point in other wikis as well. Actually this is quite common across the board. In 10 years of this wiki being alive I don't remember this topic being discussed more than 2-3 times so I won't say it's a common complaint.

 

[CloverDragon03]

Eh! I think that's a bit off. Nobody I have ever interacted with thinks like we are an oversexualized wiki. I have seen similar or more on that point in other wiki's as well. Actually this is quite common across the board.

It's a common sentiment, for instance, that your banner has gotta go. If not on-site then definitely off-site (by our userbase, I mean). Having that sort of clearly sexual stuff out of the open is just... no.

 

[AKM sama]

But this isn't about a single banner or what people elsewhere think of it. If the banner goes, so will several other pfps. We are discussing the general rules not one particular banner.