Ellri

Mahz's Dev Journal

Doesn't get much clearer than this:

I have zero issues with obscenity and the Guild is unrestricted by our personal limits as staff. I'm not even sure I have any. My goal for the Guild is for people to do as they please and to set boundaries that are optimal for the most amount of people.

Since the Guild's birth, its PM system has been filled with smut. People are going to do as they please. I'd rather at least offer the tools for these people to find each other in a way that doesn't impact the current system.

@mahz

Right now, it impacts the system for those not into smut 1x1s.

What do you do when a RP slowly dies?

If it is one of ours, we either try to fix it, pushing a little on the players and such, or if all that fails, we consider giving it a full reboot if it has major Flaws that are less easily fixed.

Mahz's Dev Journal

Bah. No point reiterating our own statements. Here's a far better argument:

I have zero issues with obscenity and the Guild is unrestricted by our personal limits as staff. I'm not even sure I have any. My goal for the Guild is for people to do as they please and to set boundaries that are optimal for the most amount of people.

I only care about a few things:

1. The Guild won't violate Adsense guidelines. I will rigorously re-examine those guidelines when the mature/adult system is actually the next feature in my queue (I still haven't even finished pondering what that system will be), but as @HeySeuss mentioned, and according to the guidelines last time I examined them, Adsense's restrictions only apply to each page the ads are on.
2. The Guild won't violate American federal law. This is another thing I will re-examine, but last I checked, there is no precedent for obscenity enforcement winning against written erotica. And for good reason. Imagine there was a fictional story that involves acts that would be illegal in real life, and imagine that it was illegal to write about such acts. But wait, the story ends with: "Note: All characters in this story are an alien race thousands of years old that only look like humans.". I'm not going to sit here and guess in advance what kind of content an adult system will fill up with. I just have to see how it goes and react accordingly.
3. Users must set their birth date and opt-in to see adult content. "Sensitive" content should be limited on the public Guild, and it should be tucked away behind an opt-in process.
4. People should be given the tools to manage multiple accounts. The Guild doesn't care about multiple accounts, as anything bad you can do with multiple accounts is already against the rules. People are going to make multiple accounts no matter what, and it's trivial to circumvent a system that prohibits them (for this reason I also don't bother with IP bans). Instead, I embrace them and would like to allow people to link their multiple accounts together so that they can quickly switch between them. For example, imagine a drop-down button next to your username in the top navbar that lets you switch between them.

Since the Guild's birth, its PM system has been filled with smut. People are going to do as they please. I'd rather at least offer the tools for these people to find each other in a way that doesn't impact the current system.

I haven't pondered the entire solution yet since I'm working on some other features. Maybe all it will be is an opt-in system that lets you tag and see checks with a set of adult tags and the content still takes place over PM. Not sure yet. Maybe that's the start and we'll go on from there.

@Mahz

Mahz's Dev Journal

indeed, @NuttsnBolts.

Tags related to RPs that are restricted to PM could easily be available only in the relevant IntCk section(s). In fact, if Mahz creates additional tags with such restrictions, we could feasibly even have tags just for those Pairing RPs (MxM / FxM / FxF / etc). The original plan behind the tag system was to have it be more than it currently is. But our dark overlord is and has been busy, so it has not had time to give it such expansion.

Mahz's Dev Journal

So you went there, @LegendBegins... Equalizing RPs with a potentially sexual content with child porn. How impressive. Do you feel proud of yourself?

There is nothing wrong with people RPing about sexytime or whatever they do there. So long as they do it in pm, it won't annoy Google adsense. Interest checks concerning international crimes like child pornography, however, cannot be permitted due to said internationally recognized laws.

And to be technical on age limits, 18+ is a fairly artificial number. We suspect more often than not that people writing such prefer to write with people of a similar age. At least that is what we would have preferred if we were to ever RP such. See this for more details on the legal age of consent.

The guild has no way to check members' ages, thus a rule about having to be a certain age to write such is kinda silly, especially if it's done in private.

Such RPs exist, and if going by the amount of gender pairings in the 1x1 IntCk section, it happens to a large scale. If this idea here helps those not interested in such, then there is only benefit in supporting it.

Mahz's Dev Journal

The moralizing concept of denying people their ability to have shut RPs is something that doesn't belong on the guild. Sure, they had better do the textually graphic stuff to PMs, but it won't stop existing.

If we recall correctly, Mahz stated something about at least half of the guild's posting being in PMs. Thus, facilitating the RPs for those people is only fair.

Mahz's Dev Journal

Biggest problem with the term "libertine" is that we've got quite a few here who aren't in possession of particularly verbose vocabularies. Many of those won't get this term.

While we think it's good to expand their vocabularies, it might not be optimal to do it in this system.

Mahz's Dev Journal

maybe instead of "mature"/"immature", we could go with "PM"/"forum"?

The sexy-time, fetish and so forth will go in PMs in any case due to guild rules
Mature RPs that aren't sexual in nature would fit in the regular section, would they not?

Suggestion: Story Section

We do have the occasional aspiring author here, so why not have a literal gallery?

Mahz's Dev Journal

Browser, operating system and type of unit (desktop/laptop, console, phone, jungle Telegraph/wooden log, pirated government satellite feed, etc.) might also help to know.