I deeply appreciate this perspective. We are working very hard to negotiate a balanced compromise, and to offer the best possible solution. These decisions are strongly negative-sum, and it is impossible to engineer a universally ideal solution. We are proposing what we have, at great expense of time, worked out to be as carefully negotiated of a balanced solution as possible.
We would be very eager to hear of an idea which is better at achieving these objectives that we did not think of. But arguments that we should adopt an alternative choice at either end of the spectrum is not pragmatic, and we are not considering that. Calls for either an outright ban or entirely laissez-faire policy are not productive, and we are not actively considering them.
And I mean that eagerness- it’s not lip service. This issue is a source of extraordinary pain and stress for us, as a group and with regard to our community. We desperately want to find a solution that is as good as can be found, and if we hear something that meets the requirements and is superior, I assure you, we’re all eager to pounce on it.
Hence compromises such as new UI features providing content warning facilities for profiles, or allowing the use of collapsible fields to offer the same with a minimum of technical labor.
This problem really just boils down to a lack of content warning normalization on Wolfery. People are not being given adequate opportunity to curate the content they consume, and that is a violation of consent.
As one of the people affected by this new rule change, I really think we are 90% on-target with this plan. There is just some work to be done to minimize the negative impact, and that work is already being done.
I do feel the rules for public play should remain in play. Area suitable content only.
To the other end, I think a blanket over profiles with opt-in content might be a good middleground. People who opt into the blanket can report those who fail to engage the blanket appropriately.
I think the about section is important when scouting partners and I think the LFRP button can be providee the same blanket of “Press Agree to View: Ageplay, Blood, Drugs.”
It’s the internet. You can literally block any content you want to at the browser level. This is something anyone online is capable of doing.
Why shouldn’t we just have a policy of, “Don’t put illegal stuff anywhere?” and then simply let the user block whatever content they dislike with their own tags, like the internet is designed to be used?
Really, removing every element with text that matches some ageplay related word dictionary is a simple thing to do, and if someone really doesn’t want to see that content, they could just spend the ten minutes needed to block their own selves from seeing it.
Instead their feeling should cause others to have to censor themselves?
The rule as it’s proposed makes no sense and isn’t in any way balanced.
I would point out that that is the draw of a mud.
You don’t know what you are going to see when you run the look command on a character.
The ability to filter everything is counterproductive to the organic RP that draws many MUSH/MUD players. If one wanted to find people who only exactly had x kinks and not y kinks, than f-list is the better design for such, and I don’t see any reason for Wolfery to become f-list.
When one can’t filter, they can’t search out exactly what they want, so they have to look and interact with what they don’t want to find it. This creates public interactions which I would argue are a major driver behind a well functioning mud environment.
I do not share this perspective on what the draw of a MU* is. I, also, believe that there is no public context where content warnings are anything but a net benefit to everyone involved. Especially where the alternative is censorship — because the public zeitgeist is that certain kinks are morally outrageous and people engaging with them should not exist — I think this is a fair compromise, and I am eager to see what new UI features may be provided to soften the impact of this rules change.
It’s not a fair compromise for the very reason you mentioned.
It’s just a public zeitgeist. It’s not a reasonable request.
There is no difference between Adult A, and Adult B talking about the kink of ageplay, vs the kink of say impregnation.
Both situations are adults sending messages in text about kink roleplay.
The idea that 1 specific kink out of the myriads of kinks should be specially warned is crazy.
If a bunch of Christian furs move here, are we going to then start asking people to put warning on stuff that is gay? Wouldn’t it make someone feel uncomfortable if they constantly are being told, “Hey, other people judge your kink, so you have to warn them. Oh, and by the way, they don’t have to warn you about whatever kink you’d like to be warned about.”
The only way to be fair, is if every kink needs a warning. Else you’re just unfairly signalling one group out because of the feelings of another group.
I’d argue feelings just isn’t ever a reason to censor someone.
This reads as a threat more than anything. The implication is ‘pipe down, accept what you’re given and be thankful for the scraps’. Admitting that the rules are unfair but that affected members should be satisfied because it’s better than an outright ban is a vicious kind of tolerance.
Especially when it has not been adequately explained why “extreme” kinks should be subject to this kind of closeting.
It makes sense to have designated areas where people looking for certain kinds of play can gather. But why do people with particular kinks have to pretend like their preferences don’t exist?
I do not believe ‘other members find a kink distasteful’ is adequate justification for effected members to be made to alter their profiles. Everyone in this community is a consenting adult play-pretending with other consenting adults. By your own admission, it isn’t fair that the preferences of one part of the population should bring about banning discussions for another part of the population.
And a ‘compromise’ where affected members are tolerated so long as they are kept out of sight communicates very clearly that those members are less welcome than others.
I can not, and will not, ever condone the ‘facts don’t care about your feelings’ argument. Facts are independent, but the only reason they ever matter, in any context, ever, is through the implications they have on the actual lives and experiences of the people those facts, and the policies they influence, effect.
Honestly agreeing with this. I have quite a bit of truama over things cheating/cucking related. Yet I don’t get all pissy when it see it in peoples profile
This feels like laying a blanket rule to addresses the elephant in the room.
I would like to offer an alternative, or two.
Because the about field is 1) already written for most people and 2) not the same thing as a description and 3) would mean editing all of your profiles to move something from the about field to the description field.
What if we changed about to be viewable only from the same room and add a third field for remove viewing. We could call it Public Bio. Or something. To make it clear that this is subject to the new rule, have it be auto filled with the rule until overwritten by the user. Can say you didn’t know this way, either.
Another idea I would like to propose is that the great big list on the left of everyone online be replaced with a list of only characters in the same zone (and subzones?)
And I think someone’s said this already, but what is and is now allowed to be said really needs to be defined. Is it okay for my vampiric (like… not actually a vampire) character to explain that they drink blood in the about? It is different than the blood tag. Is it okay to say that the mythological creature they are based on engages in vore, but that I the player am not interested in actually rping a scene involving it? Why do I have to ask this?
What about people in Umber, are they not allowed to have a tag with their gang affiliation? Gang means violence minimum, that could be an implied violation of the rule as it is written here. Maybe you’ve had discussions as to what is or is not a violation, but we need to know too.
Please spell it out so that we don’t have people trying to take advantage of the vagueness to harass others, I’ve seen it happen too many times.
I do not disagree at all with the ethics you are citing here. I agree, this public zeitgeist is the result of fallacious moral reasoning, and that we should not privilege one kink over another only because it is less offensive to a frankly overzealous majority.
That said, I feel that the consequences of sticking to our guns here are worse than accepting this middle path. I must remind you that I am someone who is subjected to this public zeitgeist. I am and have been subject to harassment as a result, here and otherwise, directly and not. I would rather continue to have my scenes in private — I do not feel safe having them in public, and no policy will ever change that because of how popular it is to shit on people like me — and so finding a middle path is a valuable improvement.
I see your rhetoric of compromising with the unjust, and I do appreciate that, but there is also the reality that we are dealing with a large number of people that do not share our perspective, and are going to take action accordingly. This compromise is a minimization of harm.
I would like clarification, but I am pretty sure the elephant in the room is ageplay and that this is meant as a way of addressing peoples discomfort with it without singling it out.
Say that you did. In doing so, you create an environment in which some people are not comfortable. That is exactly the reverse of what happens now. You are made uncomfortable by the notion of censorship, they are made uncomfortable by the notion of lack of shielding. Our objective is to find a middle path that minimizes the total amount of discomfort across the board. We are torn between two incompatible objectives, with a net loss all across the spectrum. We have to minimize that loss. We have made our best effort, negotiating among ourselves, to find a middle ground.
Yes, this IS a threat, but not one the moderators (and I am NOT a moderator) have created.
What we have is a public that has shifted away from tolerating what they once did, and as a result some topics are no longer as acceptable as they were before. It’s not an issue of who is incensed more over one thing or another, it’s an issue of how broadly the base of users feels a concept is wholly unacceptable. We have long since crossed that point and the bridge that some topics stand on has been rickety for a while. This is not new, for example NSFW cub art has been getting banned from site after site for YEARS and most new sites in the past decade start off with it banned.
This is not ‘pipe down and be grateful’, this is ‘we have built this final wall to keep you safe, don’t go outside it’.