Content Policy Discussion

18 would be the American standard so referring to it as that doesn't make any sense. Please stop telling people we use American Standards when we don't. It only confuses people.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_consent#.22Age.22<br> It's actually 16. For porn it's 18.

I still think it went from 8 to 80 (from I don't care OR I'll ignore it). The porblem is not how what's por and what's not porn is evaluated(!) but how paedopandering is evaluated. That's what I believe that needs more discussion and tuning. I know that tropewise there are good works that are being cut for paedopandering, even though they show under 16 year-olds in a less usual situation (this less usual ways can be stopped, for example, on a regular beach every day) in a small but not insignificant scene (that I know of) were cut. I don't mind that this happens for series or movies where everything is just some excuse to pass nudity and just almost porn in a way that the sensors won't cut the work (E.g.: to-love-ru). But I do care that this is happening for other shows that do have good content and/or good trope discussion in them, it fact is unfair.

For the ones where this "less usual situation" is an insignificant scene were kept.

Just my POV

edited 17th Sep '12 11:39:13 AM by brunoais

Look, the fact of the matter is that with the content policy, we're going by Fast Eddie's standards for what he wants to stay/go, and when it comes to pedopandering, it's pretty much zero-tolerance. Want to change that? Take it up with him...

Sorry, having trouble parsing that. Can you rephrase?

What we do is often a judgment call. We were given standards by Eddie and the staff, and it is our duty to interpret those standards and judge works against them. If there were clear-cut, 100% quantifiable rules then FELH 2's wikibot could do all this work without any sort of human input.

Yeah.. I know. I tried to contact Fast Eddie directly to understand better the situation on that regard and to discuss in an intelligent way. I sent an e-mail 3 months ago and a PM 2 months ago. I still got no answer from from him. With no answer form the big boss, my only possibility is to talk with the guys who give their "face" to the audience on this matter which are the P5 and the moderators that come to this part of the website.

(this trooper still thinks that that zero-tolerance is an abuse)

Ok, I'll work on that as soon as I finish this post.

Yeah... I know... . IMO you are doing a good job in the porn part, not much to say, if it's porn with some plot and not plot with some porn, they have no real trope value. About paedo-pandering... I don't know maybe it's the way I'm interpreting the rules and my Portuguese culture background... The portuguese culture is more relaxed in that subject (when the church does not brag in with its "morals").

I still would like to understand beyond what's public what made that (zero tolerance paedo-pandering) happen...

edited 15th Sep '12 1:32:53 AM by brunoais

(Note: not a mod statement.)

The stuff that should get cut falls into either of two categories, which I like to term "Explicit" and "Excessive".

• "Explicit" is easier - anything which explicitly depicts sex or sexual acts with children is out, and anything which implies said acts with children is also out for the most part, barring some very rare exceptions. Certainly, anything which glorifies or condones such behaviour falls afoul of this.
• "Excessive" refers to content that contains anything less than the above in terms of intensity (e.g. age-inappropriate clothing or nudity, sexual innuendo, uncomfortable situations) but simply contains too much of such content, such that the tone of a significant part of the work can be interpreted as pandering to paedophiles. This is probably the part which some people will have issues with, as we recognise that what qualifies as "acceptable limits" will vary from person to person; hence the appointment of P5, which is supposed to be a representative sample of the TV Tropes community.

As for the issue with "zero-tolerance": Stuff that's deemed paedo-pandering is cut, plain and simple. The board is here to determine whether or not a work falls into this category, so that we don't end up cutting or passing things wrongly.

Why this, all of a sudden? Keeping that sort of content attracted some very creepy edits / editors. As for the timing, the problem was always there; it just took that Google Incident to bring it to light for action to be taken.

edited 15th Sep '12 2:07:01 AM by Pyrite

Well said, Pyrite. That's pretty much the way I've viewed it as well.

Does anyone else think there should be a link to the voting queue on the sidebar under Tools?

I doubt the relevance of that. That said, a link to The Content Policy and the 5P Circuit on the flagging tool might very well be warranted.

If what Pyrite says is true (and judging from the lack of corrections, I'm assuming this is the case), that means the actual problem was neither the pages themselves nor the negative reactions they inspired from people outside TV Tropes. They probably didn't help, but seeing as how we've got pages on things a tad worse than drawn childlike characters bathing and that several derogatory comments have been made on stuff on this site other than the alleged heavy amount of paedophiles, it seems to me that getting rid of the unwanted editors and edits is your top priority.

Naturally, this leads to many questions, so I'll start with the most obvious one: did you try simply deleting the edits? As we all know, clicking on the "Related" button on a page shows where other people have mentioned it, so one would just have to regularly make sure no one talked about it in an unnecessarily perverse fashion, no? That's not too hard to do.

Inded, we could scrap the no porn policy if we had enough editors willing to keep the edits and pages clean. And if we had sources of income safer than Google.

We've heard that Fast Eddie is trying to find safer ways than Google, but until both requirements are met, the policy will have to stay in place. And requirement 1# is not nearly as easy to meet as you think it is.

The no paedo policy is in by Word of Admin. Yes, we could argue about all the Double Standards involved until the end of time, but it won't change.

edited 21st Sep '12 8:49:26 AM by SeptimusHeap

I would say that pages getting creepy was part of the problem. I also recall that Eddie made the decision that he didn't want TV Tropes to serve as a directory for pornographic or pedo-pandering works, which is his prerogative as the site Admin.

I think the issue is more complex than what could be boiled down by any single troper's opinion, so I don't want to come across as though I'm putting words in Eddie's mouth. Regardless of the underlying causes, this is the direction that he ultimately decided to go in, so we can only try our best to meet the goals he put forth.

edited 21st Sep '12 8:59:52 AM by Meeble

Septimus Heap: Roughly speaking, how much per month does the site need to stay up? You'll have to excuse my lack of knowledge regarding website management, it's not exactly my field. Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the beef with Google about pages starting with "Rape is OK..." and not specific series? It's the 5P members that decide what stays and what doesn't, not Google. Some shows have even returned.

In any case, it's understandable that Eddie would want the site up. What's less understandable is abiding by the rules to the letter if, as has now been admitted, the pages themselves are not problematic. Let's break it down: we have pages covering certain content, and we have editors making edits about the content, in this case (perceived) paedophilia. It'd make sense, at least somewhat, to delete pages where these editors actually did make comments of a "creepy" nature; I wouldn't agree with the deletion and would argue for a mere lock, but it would at least make a basic amount of sense. On at least one account, however, a page that didn't inspire any unsavory writing has been deleted (I think you know which one I'm referring to) just because it could theoretically attract the wrong kind of writing (a quick search around the Internet for what kind of fans it mainly had would debunk that claim, but I digress). If someone were to think that it actually was meant as fanservice, I'd respect that person's opinion, but I don't think it and pages similar to it deserve to be deleted if they don't actually contribute to the issue at hand.

Just to make things clear, I'm not saying child molestation is something to support, I just think a group consisting of just five people should decide what is and what isn't acceptable, especially not when the subject in question isn't even illegal and it isn't even directly causing the problems. That's called moralising.

Meeble: TV Tropes is not a soapbox, and creating rules to facilitate a societal opinion ("Simulated child pornography is just as deplorable as real child pornography") and forcing the users to abide by them is using the site as a soapbox. I know Eddie owns the site, so he is by all means allowed to turn it into a statement on the horrors of naked children, but I personally still find it hypocritical, and I imagine I'm not the only one.

And TV Tropes would only serve as a directory for risqué works if the only things mentioned were what made it risqué. That's not the case for a lot of things you've deleted. I'm perfectly fine with removing disturbing edits, but that's where I draw my own line.

But since you're unsure, would it be unreasonable of me to ask the man himself to explain his thought process?

Lindaeus, it's all about perceptions. Like it or not, there is/was a perception out there that this wiki was condoning pornographic and pedophilic works by having pages on them and discussing the sexual bits. This affects our readership (and thus revenue) by turning off people who don't like that sort of thing. It also makes a great way to troll the wiki: go make some "pro-pedo" edits and then call the Moral Guardians to say, "Look at the kind of stuff they allow!"

We are cutting that off wholesale. If we get accused of veering too far towards censorship... well, those are the breaks. It's very much a case of Why Fandom Can't Have Nice Things: because the people who do want to use the wiki to get off to porn ruined it for everyone else.

I'll be quite frank too: one of the reasons people look at anime and manga as being about underage sex and naughty tentacles is that a significant amount of it is about that, and it's apparently considered entirely normal and even mainstream in otaku circles, who then develop a kind of Fan Myopia about its acceptability in the world at large.

In the end, it's an editorial choice on our part. We don't want to give the impression that we support such things, so we're removing them. Eddie has spoken and the moderation staff largely agree with his reasoning. The P5 was selected so that we could have a body of reviewers that most tropers would accept as representative of themselves — peer review, if you will — rather than the mod team handing down apparently arbitrary decisions from on high. This is as close to a democratic process as we can make it without holding a wiki-wide vote on every work.

This, too. We aren't artificially conflating fictional child sex with real life child sex. We are saying that the depiction of child sex is something we won't permit, period, irrespective of medium. There is no double standard. A double standard would be allowing it in one medium while banning it in others. If you consider that a soapbox, then so be it. But be careful - we've banned people for pedo apologism before and will continue to do so.

edited 21st Sep '12 10:01:25 AM by Fighteer

May I just point something out here?

No-one here made that statement, no-one here is equating one to the other, no-one here is facilitating that opinion, and as far as I am aware, no-one here holds that opinion. One need not equate the sexualisation of fictional children to the sexualisation of actual children to say that the former is morally and ethically repugnant; and even setting that aside, one need not think that the former is so repugnant to think that it is inappropriate for this site.

The fact that you make these assumptions of others does not strike me as made in good faith, and honestly seems hypocritical to me. You claim that others are improperly conflating things that are not the same and using the site to broadcast those opinions when you are doing exactly that.

Please, stop that.

edited 21st Sep '12 9:58:24 AM by JHM

Yes, perhaps it's true that people did just that. I said before that I'm fine with you deleting that kind of writing. Where it goes overboard, in my opinion, is in deleting entire works just because it could maybe result in people continuing to write about it in the wrong way. You're already getting rid of the problem in not allowing discussion of "the sexual bits", there's no need to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

I don't like excessive praise and creator worship (actually, I don't like worship in general). Does that mean I have the right to demand that you remove our pages on the Nostalgia Critic or My Little Pony? No, I accept the fact that people have different views than me, and whenever someone makes a rude edit by praising either of these, I simply hope that someone comes around to remove them.

I understand that people are turned off by "children" (and I'm using the term loosely) being presented in a sexual way, and I understand that there are cases I disagree with others about whether it actually does sexualise children or not. There are a lot of things we disagree on, not just me and you, but everyone on the wiki. By that token, using childlike characters as fanservice is not a crime, it is something you can have wildly differing thoughts about, and the only thing that makes it different from, for example, whether a violent scene in a movie is over-the-top or not is that it's more extreme, for lack of a better word. It's not actually different.

You don't "ruin" something by talking about stuff other people might have a negative opinion on. The only thing that was worsened by TV Tropes allowing content with varyingly pornographic portrayals of children was the site's esteem in the eyes of people who can't accept that others don't think like them. I don't know about you, but I don't particularly care for that kind of people.

But this issue is apparently economic as well, which complicates things. If this was only about the money (as in, the site couldn't survive if it allowed pages on certain works, not that the possible decrease in traffic resulted in a minor loss) I wouldn't have any real objections. But it isn't, and that's what we're discussing.

If just having pages on media that may or may not contain loli/shotacon constitutes as supporting it, doesn't that mean you instead support, say, racism and elitism? Having a page on something is not the same as supporting it, especially not when no one talks about paedophilia to begin with.

All right, I'm really sorry I insinuated that anyone here actually thought the two are as bad. But I'm still allowed to think that calling a drawn image of a child in a bathtub "paedophilia" (or "paedoshit") is exaggerating.

edited 21st Sep '12 11:00:07 AM by Lindaeus

Lindaeus, while I see where you are coming from (it's interesting to know what having a page on Kodomo No Jikan did to our reputation as opposed to a page on Mein Kampf), I've seen these arguments in all the previous discussions on the policy and I can see this going nowhere from far. I'd recommend to table this discussion for a bit.

We're really past the point where we're willing to discuss this anymore. It's been done to death. The policy isn't perfect, but that's because the internet isn't perfect and our editors certainly aren't perfect so we have to make do.

Seconding motion to table discussion. I don't think you are understanding our definitions of what constitutes pedopandering, despite it being clearly explained more than once.

edited 21st Sep '12 11:21:59 AM by tdgoodrich1

It doesn't feel right to tell someone to stop talking about our policy in a thread that is about said policy; but all the points that were made recently have already been addressed earlier in this thread, so I'd like to make this request: that everyone participating in this discussion for the first time at least take the time to read through this thread (and everything linked in the OP.)

I was under the impression we were not interested in discussing that aspect of the policy anymore.

Frankly, I was under the impression that those remarks are disingenuous, being more about the Popotan cut than any serious discussion of policy. If posts are in good faith, I have no issue with continuing the discussion, but, put bluntly, I honestly don't think they are.

(edited to stop beating around the metaphorical bush)

edited 21st Sep '12 11:52:48 AM by tdgoodrich1

What typically happens is someone gets mad that we cut a particular work and goes on a rant against the policy in general.

I've been wanting to discuss the policy ever since I noticed that pages were disappearing, which was around spring this year, I believe. While Popotan was still up, however, I had more interesting things to write about, which is why I haven't made any posts until now. I am and has always been of the opinion that what is fair goes before the wants of the majority, no matter what the issue. "Fair" would in this case technically mean that Eddie gets to do what he wants with the site, and although I do consider this entire ordeal to be unnecessary, I'm not demanding that he should share my views. He has his point of view, I have mine, he owns the site, I don't. I get it. But I'm not doing this just because a page I liked got deleted. I find it a bit disheartening given how much time I spent on making it bigger, but it's just a wiki article, it's not the end of the world.

In any case, I've read through this thread. I've yet to read the old one linked in the first post, so I'll do that now. If I find answers to my questions, I won't bother you. If I don't, I'll point out what I don't think you've covered. Whether you want to answer me or not is up to you, I'm not going to spam until I get banned.

How I feel about the The New Content Policy...

Dont Be Creepy and Family Friendly are great guides to follow but they should apply to Tropers not works and tropes, Tvtropes does not think this any more and the have been cutting works and tropes for being "porn"(often ones that don't actually break their new guide lines, so some Tropers have to go to the petition to restore forum and give proof that it does not) as if saying something that may give someone a boner has no other artist quality. If an official work has tropes in it then it should get a page, and if a trope has enough examples it should get a page even if the page should be left to description alone, even Naughty Tentacles.

The works and tropes that have been cut are here the ones up for debate are here, a page that goes into more detail and give the history of the policy is called Content Policy and the forums where you can see what goes on deciding What Is Porn, which involves a lot of Complaining About Shows You Don't Watch, is here and if you want to discuss The New Content Policy itself well, this would be the place.

I do think Tropers gushing about there Fetish Fuels should be cut, but because its Natter not because it's morally questionable or offensive.

About the pedo-pandering, I take umbrage with this flagrant use of the word pedophile, someone can't just be called that, they have to have done something first, if someone drew a picture of a dead body that doesn't make that person a murder, someone actually has to commit the crime to be given the label, and using pedo is a cheap move because nobody's going to argue pedophilia is not wrong but I just don't think they understand what it really is, or they are intentionally using hyperbole to Strawman and hide behind a cynical morality, but you know, Hanlon's Razor.  

I am of a certain proclivity so my view on what is offensive might be different then others, but this is a site of fiction, stories, and fantasy not reality, no one is being hurt and no one is being saved when a work or trope is cut, so let's just say the MST3K Mantra together before Tvtropes Jumps Off The Slippery Slope right over the shark.

I don't think this new policy will change, and if implemented properly it does not really effect me, but I can't help but be a purest and want everything tropeable to be troped, but this is to make the website a better place so I can't be too upset.

I am putting this here just so I have a place to send people about my feelings on this subject in general, I am not trying to stir anything up, but feel free to point out any errors in my logic.

edited 22nd Sep '12 2:36:50 AM by GraySloth