Well, there's a bit of leeway when it comes to the age thing. Not much, but some. The definite black area would be a character who physically appears to be a child. For example, childish features, undeveloped breasts etc. Looking at the Dive1 cgs, I can already see a few characters like that. However, that's just my opinion, so you would need to find a site with a copy of the cg set and then send it to one of the P5 members such as Discar or Komodin.
So far as I'm aware there's no clean port or adaptations for Baldr Sky, though I suppose it might have a manga and I just never heard about it. And to be honest I believe we already debated it at length, including sending P5 members links of the cgs. Unfortunately, I don't think there's really much room to change their decision. However, if there are fandisks, sequels or other related works with acceptable content, you could probably get those restored.
Hmm, I'm not sure how I can get a CG set, beside ripping it from the game, which is probably illegal. But the game is quite popular, so just googling for the character names produces enough pictures.
The four girls that have sex scenes are:
Rain: http://www.google.com/search?q=baldr+sky+rain&tbm=isch
Nanoha: http://www.google.com/search?q=baldr+sky+nanoha&tbm=isch
Chinatsu: http://www.google.com/search?q=baldr+sky+chinatsu&tbm=isch
Noi (the one with an unlockable scene): http://www.google.com/search?q=baldr+sky+noi&tbm=isch
There is no age difference in appearance between them and girls from other visual novels that have sex scenes, do not have "clean" versions, and are present on the TV Tropes site. For example:
Grisaia No Kajitsu:
Makina: http://www.google.com/search?q=grisaia+no+kajitsu+makina&tbm=isch
Sachi: http://www.google.com/search?q=grisaia+no+kajitsu+sachi&tbm=isch
Cross Channel:
Miki: http://www.google.com/search?q=cross+channel+miki&tbm=isch
... and many others I could probably find.
The only difference I see between these visual novels and Baldr Sky is that there is no English translation yet for Baldr Sky, so the age-content-moderators probably have to rely on second opinions(?), or to try to judge character ages from superficial clues in the pictures(?), and the judgement then becomes "kawai(Japanese-cute) = underage". But this is a general Japanese stylistic thing, and should not be a basis for censoring the work, unless one is prepared to declare the whole Japanese culture to be hopelessly paedophilic and censor it all.
Ookay, calm down a little with the exaggeration.
From the voting system, it seems there has been two discussions about it already, once voted to keep (3 angel versus 1 devilhead), then later on voted to cut (3 devilheads versus 1 angel). So it seems that the first pass missed a loli that the second one picked upon.
And according to the ending discussion here
, it was Nanoha that was judged to be too loli like and thus condemned the work.
Soo for actually achieving anything, you'd need to wait until the actual P5 members pop up and talk to them.
edited 10th Apr '15 3:20:11 PM by Adannor
> Ookay, calm down a little with the exaggeration.
Which exaggeration do you mean?
> it was Nanoha that was judged to be a loli and thus condemned the work.
I think this proves my point. She is no more a loli than any other "moe" character.
How is Nanoha (http://g.e-hentai.org/s/531a6a86c4/100507-41
) any different from, I don't know, Saya from Saya No Uta (https://vndb.org/v97
), Kana from Kana Little Sister (https://vndb.org/c6547
), Sakura (https://vndb.org/c3660
) and Miki (https://vndb.org/c3661
) from Cross Channel, etc etc etc?
edited 10th Apr '15 3:32:08 PM by gRUR
Ok, thanks for clarifying this.
I'm kinda new to this, so not sure what are the exact steps I need to make. Should I just leave these comments in this thread and wait for a response, or do I need to actively send messages to people, and then, do I need to repeat all that's been said or just link to the discussion?
And, do my arguments have sufficient power, or am I missing something and need to find better arguments?
gRUR: There are websites with the full cg sets. I can't link to them, but they shouldn't be hard to find.
Grisaia and Cross Channel have versions without sexual content. This allows them to stay on the website no matter what sexual content they do have in them. That's one of the ways I mentioned that Baldr Sky could get around our content guidelines if applicable, but I don't think it is in this case.
Arha: Is it important to look at full cg sets? I mean, as long as there are enough pictures to see how the heroines normally look like, when they are fully clothed? It even feels kind of disrespectful to the women to have to discuss how their bodies look nude, when they are totally not about this in the game.
You're right about Grisaia and Cross Channel, they do seem to have 17+ versions, which I assume means cleared of explicit sexual content. Saya no Uta doesn't though, all of its versions are 18+.
<General argument> But, why should it matter whether a work does or does not have a "clean" version? If the rationale is to keep out the works that "pander to paedophiles, however slightly", then having this distinction does not achieve the goal, since a prospective paedophile-being-pandered-to can obviously play a non-clean version. So, if a non-clean version of a work is judged to "pander to paedophiles, however slightly", then the work as a whole should be so judged.</General argument>
Well, the reason we have the policy is actually because of difficulties with ad providers. The site was reported thanks to a couple pages that had unsavory content and we were told by Google to go clean it up. The guidelines established aren't exactly perfect, but that's partially because we don't really get to control what the guidelines actually are. If Google had continued refusing to provide ads to run the site, the site would have either failed outright, required a new source of income or been stripped back considerably. So if a work has a clean version we can talk about that exclusively, ignoring the problematic aspects of the work. That's the idea anyway.
That doesn't entirely address your issues, but um I can't argue too strenuously in favor of certain aspects of the policy because I don't really agree with or understand the logic entirely myself.
Yeah policy is a mix of "that stuff's creepy to have on the site, so we won't" and playing a guessing game of "what will piss off google and what will they let by". It has been extensively discussed and argued about, so it's very much set down as it is now.
What it adds up to, is that lolicon is much, much more damning than regular porn.
Anything that can be seen as saying 'kid sex is okay', even if that was not what was meant, is generally devilheaded out by P5. It's very much a better safe than sorry mentality.
Keep in mind both reports to Google that caused problems were anonymous as far as TV Tropes was concerned. There is no "right of reply" as far as Google Ads is concerned. Either you meet their often fuzzy and undefined standards, or you don't get ads.
A previously banned person theoretically could create a new account, insert lewd content, and then report it to Google Ads, and the ad people would shut down the ad content and only then bother investigating whether it was warranted.
There's a reason there's a wishlist in one of these forums (can't remember offhand) about alternate ad/revenue sources.
So the question isn't so much "is it lolicon/pedophilia?" as 'is it close enough to tick off Google?"
Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving. -Terry PratchettHmm. If this is a extra-site problem, having a policy is understandable. But, in addition to having general guidelines, the human moderators were appointed, in order, I assume, so that they could judge individual cases using common sense and not just by blindly following rules.
With respect to Baldr Sky, I came to the site hoping to read the tropes page for a fascinating game I rather liked, and then found it censored for what seems to me rather ridiculous reasons.
I believe neither ad providers nor Google could possible have any objection to TV Tropes having a page about this game. And I believe the moderators would agree, if they were able to play it for themselves. I don't know how to prove it, though... Well, I can link to sites with information about the game. Like this one, for example: http://seesaawiki.jp/w/baldr_force/d/BS/%cb%dc%ca%d4%b9%b6%ce%ac
.
It's in Japanese, but you can see that the discussions are about gameplay, strategy, and story, not about sex, and there are no pictures at all.
>But, in addition to having general guidelines, the human moderators were appointed, in order, I assume, so that they could judge individual cases using common sense and not just by blindly following rules.
Yes, for the whether the work is more porn than plot or if it's plot worthy.
Pedo content however, is much stricter. If there is lolicon, then the work is dead. In some cases, the character may be not a definite loli (such as we have here with Baldr Sky), then the P5 do discuss whether she actually crosses the line. They judged that she did.
> And I believe the moderators would agree, if they were able to play it for themselves.
That wouldn't be relevant. Look, you should treat it as two completely separate checks.
First is whether the game has enough non-porn content to be worth writing about. Baldr sky would probably pass it successfully.
The second is whether it has pedo pandering content. If the game trips that switch, the first check does not matter, it's going out.
The only way you can have an effect is to convince them that Nanoha is not a loli. Amount of plot content in the rest of the game will not help you with it.
>I believe neither ad providers nor Google could possible have any objection to TV Tropes having a page about this game.
That's what we believed about the pages that got reported. We were wrong. Twice.
Well, technically the mods don't do this work because the site administration wanted to seem neutral, but yeah, that was the idea. I don't think there's any reason we couldn't have a page for Baldr Sky (for example, though this could apply to anything that isn't entirely porn) if we trusted our editors to be mature about it and not talk about things Google would get mad at us for, but it was decided that that's a risk we don't want to take.
And yes, we do know Baldr Sky isn't porn. I've made articles myself that were cut as a result of this policy and I certainly wouldn't make a page for porn. Issues of pornography are separate from the lolicon issues, which is what most of the banned underaged stuff is on this site. Pornography gets a lot more slack in decision making, but the P5 doesn't have that kind of slack in their guidelines when it comes to their other job.
> The only way you can have an effect is to convince them that Nanoha is not a loli
But, she's not... This is like, obvious. When you play the game, this is established firmly, clearly, and for a long time before the sex scenes with her appear. There's nothing strange or creepy or whatever about her falling in love with the protagonist, having sex, and whatever.
But if someone didn't play the game, and instead only looked at her pictures, and probably not even all the pictures but only at her nude sex scene pictures, and not in a neutral state of mind but after explicitly being primed to look for "paedophile pandering clues", then sure they'd find them.
So that being the case, how should I go about convincing them that Nanoha is not a loli? I only came up with the idea of demonstrating that there is nothing more loli about her than about many other moe characters in the works that are already accepted on the site.
Okay, A Serbian Film: I understand it being locked, but why have no examples? Or then just cut the page?
I just wanna know, when did No Lewdness, No Prudishness seem to morph only into the former?

Hi Arha, thanks for your reply!
Could you clarify, what would it mean for characters to have a "too young physical appearance", when they are all anime-like drawn pictures? As far as I could tell, everybody had their secondary sex characteristics...
There was one unlockable scene with a girl who was stated in text to have a young girl appearance although actually being older than the protagonist, but there was no significant age difference in appearance, between her and other potential partners, again, as far as I could tell.
So, if the decision was made by people who didn't actually play the game, I would assume that they were misinformed about the content? Since the game is pretty good, I'd like to make a successful petition. What kind of evidence would I need to show?