Holy shit… this took a while to read as a whole and I am a fast reader. I am gonna put in my two cents here and leave it at that.
I feel like the content warning is something that should be implemented as it serves as a tool that can help those that are not comfortable with anything extreme be it feral, underage, non con, watersports, etc.
However… I feel like common sense is also an issue. If you see a character that is underage, feral, or into something that is something that you don’t like, you have the obligation to ignore it just like everyone else. Doesn’t mean be a dick and tell the person to f**k off, because of it as that’s extremely rude.
I do also like to point out that calling someone a pedo, because they like to play underage characters is something very dumb and very childish(pun not intended). That would be within the same boat as calling someone a rapist, because they like to rape characters.
In summary: Content Warning is something that is needed. Every site and app has it so why not?
As Talon said, but I wish to clarify: The current plan for the rules update is that any default-available tag should not be a problem in any part of the realm. We are addressing customized tags, whether new base text or new explanation-text to a default tag.
Global use of tag searching is popular enough we want to ensure it remains highly viable.
I shall note when you get off the train, you arrive at the train station and do not have to immediately enter into Sinder proper. You can jump right onto train platform 2, hop the grey line, and go to a variety of places.
We may want to consider adapting the rooms, and while the Sinder train station is technically Sinder, I think we’re not going to be excessively concerned about area application there. No one should be doing kinkplay on the train. Tom Greyback won’t stand for anything getting punched but your ticket.
(Mod note: There were a few posts flagged for review, and though the requesting user had a point I’m leaving the posts as they are since everyone here is doing a decent job keeping this discussion civil)
I would like to again point to what I am reading as a lack of clarity in the intention behind these rule changes. Raeth’s original post alludes to ‘issues’ and ‘concerns’ that the mod team has been discussing, but does not adequately explain what those issues are.
A lot of replies in this thread have been guessing or assuming as to those issues and what the proposed rule changes are meant to accomplish.
The three main conjectures seem to be 1) The rule changes are meant to protect staff and/or members from potential legal ramifications, or 2) the rule changes are meant to address the discomfort of members offended by members engaged in ageplay kink or 3) the rule changes are meant to make Wolfery more broadly appealing to the furry roleplay community.
I would like to voice my concern that the interpretation of the proposed rule changes, as they are written, make it unclear what counts as ‘overly explicit’ for information that is accessible from anywhere within Wolfery. Stating that any kind of sexual context for underaged characters is not appropriate does seem to suggest that using the LFRP or having ageplay tags in a character’s About section violates the rules as written. Again, more clarification would be appreciated.
I would also like to state that if these rule changes exist to bring Wolfery in line with legal pressures, then that should be the purview of legal council familiar with the matter and not left to the speculation of the userbase. There has been a lot of guessing about potential legal ramifications in the thread but without clarification from actual council, it amounts to fearmongering.
Finally, I want to point out what appears to be the unspoken understanding that these rule changes are a compromise against an outright and complete ban on ageplay in Wolfery. If that is the case I think it would be beneficial to have that confirmed by the mod team. Moreso, if that is the case, I think the userbase deserves an overt explanation as to why banning the activity is justified. Again, there’s been conjecture regarding zeitgeist, member comfort, legality, appeal to new players, but nothing has been confirmed.
Without clarity, it’s impossible to have an opinion on whether the original changes stated by Raeth, or the suggestions regarding CW flags offered by other members on this thread, will solve the actual problem.
There are limits to what I can say about what prompted this. The short version is this:
We had two people on staff leave primarily because they could not reconcile the content allowed on Wolfery with potential personal liability - most notably after the recent full implementation of the UK’s Online Services Act. (Before anyone asks/rumors/etc, I believe we have had no communication from the authorities under this.)
The remaining staffers, who represent a spectrum of opinions on ageplay content that is about as broad as what is on display in this thread, had an extensive set of discussions about this with two identifiable goals:
1: What, if anything, and how far should we go to protect staffers from this? As someone pointed out we all joined Wolfery knowing what its rules and Mucklet’s ToS are. (Mucklet’s ToS has changed once on this - again due to legal requirement.)
2: We’ve had the need for more clarity and rules around ‘extreme content’ such as ageplay for a while now. This is not a euphemism for ‘cracking down’, the need is more driven by us wanting to have consistent policy. That is, we want to minimize the amount of ‘rules creep’ either looser or tighter over time or mod-by-mod by having to interpret on the spot.
This is of course the ‘why we’re doing something’ and not the reasoning behind the suggestions, though at least (1) is somewhat related.
So if it’s more about staff legal liability than anything, I don’t think a dropdown is enough to shield anyone - especially not moderation, who has to be looking at everything to make sure it’s above board. I believe Yule pointed out that no matter what, once the feds come a-knocking, ageplay goes anyways.
This is a really logical concern. It does impose some limitations on LFRP that were not there before, and those do disproportionately affect underage Ageplay characters. I recognize that’s a potential issue, and maybe collectively we can find a more elegant way to solve this! It could take the form of a technical tool, or just a clever workaround. I do think there are still opportunities there (I already have an idea that may work right now using our existing systems), but for the immediate moment, I can at least say that I’ll be thinking on it, and I know the mod team will be—and are—discussing lots of things in this thread. This is part of why we brought this to the forum. It’s much easier to revise things and tweak stuff BEFORE it goes live.
Well, we want everyone to be comfy within reason! n_n; The rules and use of tools we’ve been working on are not designed to remove anyone from the community, or decrease awareness of those members.
Just to add some food for thought on this - if we were to take LFRP and add the ability to attach tags to it to say “Looking for Date Night ERP [romantic] [vanilla] [private] [teasing]” and only allow it to use system stock tags and not custom tags, do you think that would be something permissible?
If it’s not because it still has the potential of more extreme tags in the LFRP line, then could LFRP filtering like the prior mentioned content warning tools help out? Say if a user doesn’t want to see a [watersports] tag and has it set as a filter tag on their profile, they just won’t see anyone with that tag in their LFRP.
I realize that would probably require an extension to the LFRP class to handle tags, but it should be feasible with a little bit of code addition?
Tags are somewhat more intended as a reflection of the player’s interests. We know lots of people use them to represent the character, though. There’s some overlap! But you may note they do not change with Character Profiles. So, under these new rules, it would be totally okay to have Tags right in Sinder for content that isn’t appropriate in Sinder, like Ageplay or Combat. Fighting isn’t allowed there, but you can list your stats in About, or LFRP for combat by saying, “I’m looking for combat-themed RP with injuries.” Totally okay, because that’s not combat content. But where it might stop being okay is something like… “I want someone to ” or describing that injury in your About.
We have many times adopted a ‘soft rules’ approach to promote self-regulation and thoughtfulness, and interacted personally with users if they have questions. It’s part of why we created the Helpme channel and the Helper role. One of the goals of this post and inviting discussion is to alleviate anxiety!
One of the sticking points with any kind of tag filtering system is that it’s nontrivial to integrate that with custom tags. Certainly, we could administrate the difference, but that creates additional workload that may not be scalable. Plus, it’s not as compelling to invest in the technical debt if it’s not a complete solution.
If we lock LFRP to stock Tags, then we’re also favoring those. We know the default Tags are far from exhaustive, and we want to support all kinds of interests.
I think at that point, we’re back to making a customized content warning system where the content isn’t delivered to the player until they consent. That’s something that Sections can’t achieve currently.
Edit: It is well past when I should have been asleep, so I must go pass out!
I feel like protecting users from potential exposure to this is also important. We’re all supposed to be anonymous here, and that is how it should be, but supporters in particular are not. Not really. I don’t see how anyone can know enough about every government in the world to say that there will never be an instance of a Wolfery user being targeted by their government simply for using this platform as it currently is. Fact is, we don’t know, and that’s a problem.
Furthermore, I don’t like how some posts in this thread have treated NSFW ageplay as if it isn’t something that isn’t uniquely bad or different from other extreme kinks. It is, and I would like to express my thoughts as to why. But first, I’d like to say that I don’t really have a problem with SFW ageplay. It’s something I’ve engaged in myself with various characters, and I can appreciate how other users can find it useful as a tool for exploring past trauma. That’s all fine. What is not fine is any RP involving sexualized underage characters in any way. Real or not, human or anthro, it’s not just RP, it is actively harmful, and here is why:
I’ve seen the example of rape used several times. So, let’s start with that. As I am sure everyone is aware, you can not physically rape someone through a computer screen. However, one can certainly engage in explicit actions with a child through a computer screen. Are we all adults on here? I hope so, being under the age of 18 is against Wolfery ToS. How is that being policed? As covered in a previous thread on the matter, It’s not, not really. User reports are the only method for staff to find out if someone is underage as far as I am aware. An imperfect method to be sure, but one that isn’t overly intrusive when it comes to user privacy. With that being the case, I don’t see how anyone can realistically say that a child has never been abused on Wolfery or won’t in the future as things are, whether ageplay is swept under the rug by a future rule change or not.
Second, ferals. This one very cut and dry. My feral character is sapient, the number of legs he has is not relevant. What I mean by that is, in character, he is a person just like any anthro. He’s fully capable of giving informed consent. If he were real and not a fictional character, that would not change. A real child is not capable of giving informed consent. Perhaps one could argue a fictional one is, but as detailed above it’s impossible to know for sure if the person on the other side of the screen is an adult of not. The potential for harm is not there with ferals, but it is there for NSFW ageplay.
Now, let’s take it a step further in terms of extreme kinks, bestiality. Building on my previous arguments outlined above, this one is pretty simple too. If I choose to engage in ERP involving bestiality, I can be 100% sure that whoever is on the other side of the screen isn’t an animal. Now, one could argue that engaging in that sort of RP potentially could encourage that sort of animal abuse in the real world, and I agree. It certainly could. An animal isn’t capable of giving informed consent. There are some other more nuanced differences I could get into, but I don’t want to come off like I am justifying something I don’t agree with.
Continuing to allow NSFW ageplay on Wolfery is not only harmful towards the saftey of all children on the internet who may come across this site, it also has the potential to spread that sort of harm and abuse beyond the confines of this platform. Pedophilia is illegal for a many, many good reasons after all and as far as I am concerned, letting it fester in any form is unjustifiable. Even if someone is using their RP as a method to explore their trauma, I feel like there are better places to do that then a website that is mostly centered around adult themes, and that person exploring said trauma shouldn’t have a right to expose others to that sort of thing.
I’ll wrap up by saying that I am typing all of this because I care about Wolfery and what happens to it. I’ve probably written several novels worth of RP on this platform over the years. I have a lot of time invested in my characters and my area. I don’t want to leave Wolfery, but I also can’t be a part of something that is actively causing harm. Especially as other platforms have banned ageplay in the past several months leading to an influx of NSFW ageplayers. I know several people who have left over this, all great RPers, and I haven’t been able to recommend this site to others over fears of what they might see. That being said, I trust the staff to come to the right conclusions and do what is best for the community as a whole. However, if there is something on your website that you feel like you need to hide, then it probably shouldn’t be on there to begin with.
I would like to address this point directly because I believe it makes explicit a point that has only been alluded to and danced around in the thread up to now. Namely, that erotic ageplay is uniquely harmful and/or morally reprehensible.
I strongly disagree with this opinion. I have yet to see compelling data or testimonial that supports the idea. In specific, I believe Fain-rar articulates a common leap in logic in the ‘ageplay is indefensible’ camp.
That being that a hypothetical underaged person active on Wolfery would be predisposed to ageplay content more than any other. In the examples given, it is taken for granted that people engaged with nonconsensual or bestiality roleplay are adults. But this same assumption is not extended to ageplay. Why would an underaged person prefer to engage with scenarios where the other players are pretending to be underaged? From all available information, the opposite is true. Underaged people trend toward content that appeals to their conception of adulthood. If we are worried about the presence of underaged people on Wolfery, I think Umber is the more likely haunt over Lamplight.
Further, it positions ageplay content as uniquely harmful if exposed to a minor. Whereas I would argue that any of the erotic content written on Wolfery would be harmful, extreme kink of any flavor especially so. Again, to make my point abundantly clear: no child should be exposed to any of the NSFW content created on Wolfery.
But to claim that ageplay content is uniquely at risk of being exposed to minors assumes motives about people engaged in the ageplay kink that does not hold to scrutiny. Assuming that people engaged in the kink are abusers or are using online ageplay to satiate pedophilic urges is such an extreme claim that it demands comprehensive evidence.
Going back to the examples given, it was said in passing that roleplay involving bestiality could encourage animal abuse. This, again, is rooted in the idea that erotic preferences reflect real world desires. Flatly, that is not the case. To expose one of my own ‘extreme’ kinks, I very much enjoy erotica centered around incestuous dynamics. To claim that this means I have a desire, either conscious or otherwise, to have sex with my real life family members would be incredibly offensive.
I think we all understand the separation between what is fun in fantasy and what is fun in reality. I struggle then to understand why this understanding breaks down around this singular kink.
To summarize, the fear that one of the members engaged with an ageplay scene is more likely to be a minor misrepresenting themselves and exposed to harm is not supported. And the fear that ageplay content is at greater risk of being taken outside the context of those who wrote it and used to abuse a minor makes a moral assumption on the types of people who engage with the kink which is not supported.
Rape kink does not encourage real life rape. Bestiality kink does not encourage real life bestiality. Incest kink does not encourage real life incest. Ageplay kink does not encourage real life pedophilia.
First and foremost, I don’t want my words to come of as disparaging or dismissive, it’s clear you feel very passionately about this and hold strong opinions.
That said, the arguments you are making are the same slippery slope arguments that have been made throughout history to sanitize kink spaces and eventually kill them.
Using the examples you provided, the inverse concern is also true - you don’t know if the feral player on the other side of the screen is 100% a consenting adult. You don’t know that the person playing a 60-year-old turtle is an adult and the only defence we have is the TOS stating that you must be 18+ to use the service.
Taking things down to brass tacks, any explicit material upon Wolfery could be argued to be dangerous and a harm to minors, not just the more extreme kinks. In that case, should we just outright ban any and all NSFW content from Wolfery?
No, because that’s not what Wolfery is. It is a safe place for consenting adults to explore many things - including kink in its myriad of forms, which does include some kinks we may disagree with. Not everyone is going to like the same things, and some people may even have visceral reactions to the more extreme elements of certain kinks. To that end, as I have previously stated, I believe giving users the ability to say “I have absolutely zero interest in this and do not wish to see it” while being able to interact with the rest of Wolfery is the better approach rather than outright banning specific kinks.
We’re here moralizing fiction again. If legal action is what we’re worried about, the correct action is to block those states and countries where laws may cause issues for Wolfery.
The mods are not here to moralize fiction, just give content warnings. I don’t want to see this conversation devolve again into moralizing fiction, how x kink is worse then y. It’s rather irrelevant to the topic and pretty distasteful.
One reason I am more framing this as extreme content. Is things like umber, things like feral areas. Where characters about sections are likely to contain graphic and extreme content, is a larger part of the userbase here, and is putting an onus on the user to change their profiles or risk being reported.
Children are groomed online all the time. A quick google search turned up countless news articles detailing just that. This grooming can take many forms I don’t get how you can claim that there is no evidence. Especially when providing none of your own in your post. To be clear, I am not accusing anyone here personally of anything, but I also don’t see how anyone can say with 100% certainty that it can’t happen here. Here is just one example (just a news article, nothing explicit): Example
I disagree that NSFW ageplay isn’t harmful, as I detailed extensively in my previous post. The second part I agree with completely. No child should be anywhere near this website. That’s the point. Allowing any sort of NSFW ageplay on this website increases the possibility of a child being groomed on this website drastically and makes it much hard for that sort of thing to be detected by staff. I’d also like to add that simply saying something isn’t harmful, doesn’t mean that it’s not. It’s not just your post, and I don’t mean to call you out directly, but the number of people I see on this thread who claim that “NSFW ageplay is not uniquely bad and is just a kink” like that’s somehow just the default is astounding to me.
I did not say that RP involving RP would lead to animal abuse, I said it could lead to animal abuse. Which I think is perfectly reasonable to say. What’s unreasonable is making absolute statements that apply to everyone. Sure, saying one will not always act on all their erotic preferences that they RP out in real life is reasonable. I don’t see how you can then go on to say that it never happens. If that’s not what you meant, I’m sorry, but that is how you wrote it.
I think we all understand the difference between fiction and reality, and I am glad we agree on that point. The reason that thinking breaks down around this singular kink is because abusing a child is a uniquely horrible crime. While I agree that RPing NSFW ageplay out doesn’t necessarily mean that the people involved are going to act out their desires IRL. Said person can also find the idea of actually doing so abhorrent, but on the other hand, finding children sexually attractive still does make one a pedophile. Full stop. Again, not accusing anyone personally of anything, that’s just the literal definition of the word.
I’m sorry as, ike you, I don’t mean to be dismissive, but while I agree this situation is slippery, the only slope I see is the one you just outlined in your own post. I never said or implied anything of the sort.
You also seemed to have somewhat missed what I was trying to say with my examples. Being able to say the reverse is also true, is besides the point and here is why:
The point of the examples was to show that allowing NSFW underage characters on the site obscures and weakens the one barrier that protects all of us on this site and the platform as whole from any potential legal ramifications. That being the fact that one must be 18 years or older to make an account. The less that is called into question by anyone outside Wolfery, the better off we will all be as outlined in my previous post: