Perhaps some (not you and certainly not an accusatory sense) can understand why trying to find solutions to this… disconnect seems like too gentle of a word… is so exhausting.
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There isn’t a solution that will leave all people happy.
You have to decide whether this site is going to have hardline content restrictions; the site is going to have features that allow people to block what they don’t wanna see. Or whether it’s going to be a; this site is what the site is, and if you don’t like it then sorry it might not be for you.
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If what’s being asked is for people to tolerate the existence of people who strongly dislike ageplay, fine. We’re not going to be changing their opinion on that anytime soon. I don’t even mind being asked to hide public content away behind content warnings, or being more gentle with approaching people.
As long as the other half of this bargain is upheld, and the mods take a firm stance against the intolerant behavior on the other camp. Who keep wanting to devolve this into an irrelevant moral argument. Who want to continue advocating for their banning. Who seem to blame the existence of ageplayers for people who have left? Geez.
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Feels like the start of the “They first came for the…”
I’ve been reading this thread and trying to remain respectful, because sincerely I see why people are upset and yet why there need to be some moderation actions.
(IMO, the rule as proposed is a decent middle of the road option, and we’ve turned it into a proxy argument here in the chat for a wider issue that everyone is trying to thread the needle on)
But can we maybe not equivocate complex moderation decisions and people sharing their own viewpoints over a fraught topic over a role-playing website to the goddamn Holocaust? Like. Y’all. At the very least can we act like reasonable adults here?
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Just want to add that I have a small wolfery adjacent discord server. Like this thread, members of said discord have differing opinions on this matter. It’s something we have discussed there more then once. Within our group I can think of seven where the ageplay content was either a contributing factor to them leaving the platform, or is causing them to consider leaving.
These people very much do exist and suggesting otherwise, isn’t helpful to the conversation. Clearly, as evidenced by this thread, this is a topic many people feel strongly about on both sides. I’ve certainly voiced my opinion as have many others.
It shouldn’t be surprising that either side could end up feeling like they are being forced out one way or another. I think the mods are doing their best to find a balance, and I am hopeful that the other thread will lead to a solution that will end up working for everyone.
No one is less welcome here, but the frictions between people who are not welcoming are highlighted in a forum that seeks to solve the problem. All this was present, and if it wasn’t seen before, it’s because we have been doing our jobs well enough to hide it as much as possible.
Now hiding the friction has pushed several of our community’s most invested members out. That is a problem that needs addressing.
We have taken a firm stance on this. The firm stance is that everyone has to tolerate one another. We are working on policy and game updates to make that more palatable.
It seems like a nuanced outline is not serving, and there has been a repeated request for a stance. Here is the stance:
It is okay for people to think ageplayers are pedophiles. It is okay for ageplayers to think they're bigots and queerphobic for thinking that. It is not okay for either group to use that as an attack against the other. In this forum discussing these issues, expressing both outlooks, civilly, is acceptable. Elsewhere, it is not. Thinking something terrible about someone is okay. Acting on it is not.
And really, the thing is, we have cited, chastised, and disciplined far more people for calling ageplayers pedophiles than we have ageplayers for calling their opposition bigots. Because, yes, ‘pedophile’ is a much stronger insult than ‘bigot’.
People ‘just want to exist’, and we want everyone to exist. Being humiliated and indicated otherwise hurts, I KNOW. Being told you are something you’re not hurts. I KNOW. This solution is an attempt to let everyone exist. But it requires accepting that even though you deeply, passionately, categorically disagree with someone, the person that they are who disagrees with you has the right to exist as who they are.
We are trying to make it so you just don’t exist adjacent to one another to hurt one another.
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There’s a level of kayfabe here that one has to manage. I like to think about it in terms of how it might be perceived IRL and work my way backward. If two (or more) consenting adults are role-playing being some kind of child or teen in the privacy of their own home, do I have a moral or sociological impetus to tell them what they’re doing is wrong and they should cut it out?
Not really. They know it’s fantasy, they’re doing their own thing, I don’t have any involvement. So if we view ageplayers online by a similar metric we now need to understand what makes online different.
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fantasies can be more fleshed out and written about online, and are concrete words that could be taken in certain ways if read by certain people. - yes, but if we’re maintaining the ‘the folks in this space have consented to this’ idea, then return to the ‘behind closed doors’ point.
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people can see characters as their own distinct entities from their players online much easier than irl - yes… but you also have to keep in mind while you’re here that people are adults behind their character models.
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it makes some folk deeply uncomfortable to see sexualized underage characters in a solicitous manner in a space they’re trying to be an adult in. - here’s the rub. Ultimately, having some level of ‘This is an underage character, dm me to know more or visit lamplight to know more’ isn’t a huge burden here to keep a base level of consent across the platform for folk. CW warnings are great, and as far as i know there’s solutions being worked on. For now, is it not just decent to take things in good faith, do our best to follow the rule, and then figure it out as things play out?
I’ll be the first to admit I came in here with a ‘it’d just be easier to ban all ageplay’ viewpoint that’s now softened due to examining some of those biases. I still am not comfortable with the topic. It still feels a bit dangerous to be in a space with it - to me. But, a compromise is the best we’re going to get here and this compromise - all things considered - is not the worst one.
Let’s keep discussion on topic, treat each other with respect, and do our best to make a community that’s safe and healthy for folks. Right now the world is a lot, especially for us Americans. We’re all at each others’ throats. We have to have some base level of decency if we want a space that’s safe for all folks, and the grace to know that no one can get it perfect and that everyone is trying their best.
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I sympathize. You want your friends to be comfortable on wolfery, but please let’s remember one thing here.
They’re uncomfortable on wolfery because they either are 1) assuming the worst about their neighbours, or 2) unable to compartmentalize their distaste for the topic enough to be in the same room.
That’s it.
And those are literally the only two things causing this dispute. As long as these people who left can’t do 2) in particular, I’m not sure any actions the mods take will be sufficient for your friends to come back.
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They already aren’t coming back, and this outlook is deeply reductionist and dismissive of peoples’ genuinely held moral outlook.
Yes, I generalized out to a thousand foot viewpoint. I don’t think i was being reductionist, though.
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Policy regarding this kind of issue is make-or-break in the details. Assuming the worst about their neighbors implies that the issue is that they are presuming that ageplay means that someone is engaging in other activities that are agreeably immoral. It does not acknowledge that they may believe that the ageplay itself is unacceptable.
On the other point, inability to compartmentalize is the problem we are trying to solve with policy and software. The purpose of this policy is to compartmentalize the players, because asking people to not speak up on an issue they feel strongly about, either way around, is not viable.
This policy, and the proposed gameplay supports are designed to neither make ageplayers shut up and hide in the closet, nor to make anti-ageplayers sit on their hands and suppress their moral inclinations. Both positions see it that way because they believe they are objectively right and that the only appropriate course of action is for us to agree with them and take their side
What this policy is, is that we are putting up a curtain between the two groups and asking them to please talk amongst themselves instead of fighting. It’s just a curtain. No one is being sent to a gulag. You can cross over if you want! But if you cross over to raise a fuss with the other group, we can act on it instantly now.
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I do hate to bring this up, but you think there’s nothing that makes me uncomfortable?
You know what, there is.
You don’t hear about it from me because I tolerate people with other viewpoints. To me this feels like such a basic moral obligation it’s shocking to see it isn’t viewed that way by others.
There are certain things that must be considered unacceptable. I’m talking about murder, theft, rape etc, and advocating for same.
But to me, none of the unacceptables are engaged here. Once again, it’s all adults in a closed room engaged in kink roleplay.
At a certain point the reality of the situation has to actually matter.
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I called out Fain-rar on this, from the other direction, and I will call you out too: it is not reasonable to apply your own standards, based on your experience, to others and call that the essential bar to which people can be held.
We’re not talking about comfort here. If we wanted to make anti-ageplayers comfortable, we would be instituting a full ban. If we wanted to make ageplayers comfortable, we would issue a blanket condonement.
What we are talking about is what people find acceptable versus unacceptable, and it is not acceptable to project your own outlook, attitude, and perspective onto others, and hold them to your own standards, based on your own experiences.
If to you, none of the unacceptables are present- excellent. That means we’re doing our job well enough to handle that region of the information space. That doesn’t mean we’re done, though.
No one person, no one group gets to draw the line in the sand. The policy proposal above is not the product of any one position’s construction. It is no one’s favorite.
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Oh dude, no, i think your compromise is fine. I’m more talking to the unpresent people who left at this point, and their friends and advocates.
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This ‘people can have their own opinions’ is all fine and good… maybe not the stance I was looking for. Hiding the friction isn’t good and we are here to discuss how it has an impact on policy.
Fox has been here a few times in this thread to point out that they’re not looking to take a moral position on the matter, just minimize the friction. Just, this all feels like kicking the can down the road till the next time someone invariably gets upset about content on the server.
In the three years I’ve been on this server I’ve never once seen a public solicitation of a minor character. Most I know even refuse to hang out in the park just to shoot shit and talk. If I have anxiety about this issue it’s cause I know if people aren’t happy now with the situation, they’re really not going to be happy until there’s a full ban.
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Yeah, that’s the thing. There’s a group that absolutely will not be happy with less than a full ban.
So, isn’t the only option there to either say yes, ok, we’ll ban, or no we won’t.
I appreciate the mods have chosen the second, genuinely, and for the sake of the uncomfortable who would like to stay this content labeling thing is fine. It’s completely innocuous.
But don’t bend towards hard liners. Bend because it makes sense for the people who can stay.
Edit, i guess this is a question of how the rules and tools are implemented.
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I’m not taking a stance on the morality one way or the other, but attributing the cause of people leaving to the presence of extreme ageplay is accurate, as I (and the people who left) already explained. The question is how to respond to this fact.
I’m tired of my friends leaving, boss. That is my only concern. I can ignore people doing things I’m not into.
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I would like to briefly step out of my quiet place to state unequivocally that these statements all align with my needs, personally, and that — while they do not address my fears about our status on Wolfery long-term — they do offer the protection I was looking for from abuse on the site.
I recognize that we are in a context where our guard must necessarily be lowered in order to facilitate discussion about policy, and that this was lost in the weeds of our discussion about harm. I recognize, also, that you pointed this out already, and that I did not quite pick up that signal.
Hearing it stated unambiguously that the language here is permissible only because of its context, and that in other contexts it would clearly be unacceptable, satisfies most of my immediate concerns.
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People will talk about legality and moralism and that’s fine I guess, but it’s a lot more useful to talk about actual real world effects. That’s what I was always talking about in other topics and it was glossed over by everyone involved, especially when I started talking about my very personal experiences.
Like, I’m not interested in philosophizing about whether or not something is equivalent to another thing. I know for a fact that written VCSAM is used to groom people and it is used to desensitize people. I lived that experience myself. It’s not a speculation for me, it’s something that really happened in my life and the person who did it used it to make other people more willing to either ignore it or get into it. If you wanna lump that into the ‘trauma’ group then whatever, but it’s also about the kind of discursive effect that radiates out from this shit?
I really, really loved this community. I made friends that are going to last forever in my heart. I also lost people just because I had this ‘opinion’ like, I don’t want to see or interact with or be in a community that’s OK with something that almost ruined my life forever. Every time I try to talk about this stuff, someone pops up to talk about how it’s not illegal or something, but I don’t care about that. Legality isn’t the same thing as morality isn’t the same thing as ethics. I care about what it means, what happens as a result, and what people do with all of that.
We can all go on diatribes and compare sapient feral characters to child characters, but is that seriously useful? It’s not the same scenario in any way. It’s a false equivalency. What are the real world effects of ‘ageplay’ on the people who participate with it? It sure as hell doesn’t help me with my trauma. If it does for yours, cool. It makes my skin crawl viscerally because VCSAM was used to rape me.
I dedicated a large part of my academic study to the effects of VCSAM, I’ve written papers on it, I’ve compiled information. I think, from a positivist scientific perspective, that it is not fucking great and it makes people more likely to do things they wouldn’t have done before.
That is where I am coming from. That is why I don’t want it in this community, that is why I have been outspoken about it.
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