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Tsagualsa wrote:

 Wolfblade wrote:

Apple fox wrote:
I think for now, let the mods look at where best to move on from here.
These things take time, and they do work hard.

It's been something like a month and a half since the "real" start of this discussion, and about 8 days since the rules were "finalized" it seems, but they have not been updated anywhere I could easily find (except for here, in this thread). If the rules are ready to go, it doesn't take that much effort to swap out one portion of text for another.

I don't see how any of this is a 'rules problem' situation. How hard is it to say 'We do not want this specific sick s**t on this forum, don't come back before you removed it'? The rules can be cleared up at the moderations convenience later on, just remove the freaking rape-endorsing gross stuff and its owner for the time being. I feel like i'm taking crazypills here, the double standards are so thick you can cut them with a knife. Nothing about this makes penning the perfect set of rules right now necessary like, at all, because this stuff is way way way over any line any reasonable rule would draw. This is not about a cheeky tit here or there or a risque political satire, it's about unmitigated, spiteful, mean-spirited dreck.

It's a "rules problem" because that's what dakka's mods have said. That's their defense of why it's taken so long, why they haven't banned/suspended anyone, and why they've only locked threads, and deleted posts that are "off-topic. I totally agree that it should be unacceptable, and I think a lot of other people do too. And did when this issue was first raised too.

 Wolfblade wrote:

Tsagualsa wrote:

 Wolfblade wrote:

Apple fox wrote:
I think for now, let the mods look at where best to move on from here.
These things take time, and they do work hard.

It's been something like a month and a half since the "real" start of this discussion, and about 8 days since the rules were "finalized" it seems, but they have not been updated anywhere I could easily find (except for here, in this thread). If the rules are ready to go, it doesn't take that much effort to swap out one portion of text for another.

I don't see how any of this is a 'rules problem' situation. How hard is it to say 'We do not want this specific sick s**t on this forum, don't come back before you removed it'? The rules can be cleared up at the moderations convenience later on, just remove the freaking rape-endorsing gross stuff and its owner for the time being. I feel like i'm taking crazypills here, the double standards are so thick you can cut them with a knife. Nothing about this makes penning the perfect set of rules right now necessary like, at all, because this stuff is way way way over any line any reasonable rule would draw. This is not about a cheeky tit here or there or a risque political satire, it's about unmitigated, spiteful, mean-spirited dreck.

It's a "rules problem" because that's what dakka's mods have said. That's their defense of why it's taken so long, why they haven't banned/suspended anyone, and why they've only locked threads, and deleted posts that are "off-topic. I totally agree that it should be unacceptable, and I think a lot of other people do too. And did when this issue was first raised too.

Ignoring all the preceding story for a bit, i just don't understand how there's any shade of ambiguity in this whole situation. If i came up to the mods and asked 'I want to use this forum to advertise my webshop where i sell artwork of sexual abuse. Specifically sexual abuse, not only sexual situations or erotica. Some of the persons depicted are also recognizably modelled after well-known politicians that i personally don't like' the verdict would be pretty clear, or at least i'd sure hope so - on a forum that proclaims to aim for 'family friendly'. The only difference between the actual situation and that hypothetical seems to be that 'it has always been done that way' and nobody bothered asking before posting that stuff.

Edit: For the record i'm not trying to stir something up, i just stumbled on the various threads about that problem, read up on it a bit and am just totally nonplussed about all of it.

Tsagualsa wrote:

Ignoring all the preceding story for a bit, i just don't understand how there's any shade of ambiguity in this whole situation. If i came up to the mods and asked 'I want to use this forum to advertise my webshop where i sell artwork of sexual abuse. Specifically sexual abuse, not only sexual situations or erotica. Some of the persons depicted are also recognizably modelled after well-known politicians that i personally don't like' the verdict would be pretty clear, or at least i'd sure hope so - on a forum that proclaims to aim for 'family friendly'. The only difference between the actual situation and that hypothetical seems to be that 'it has always been done that way' and nobody bothered asking before posting that stuff.

Edit: For the record i'm not trying to stir something up, i just stumbled on the various threads about that problem, read up on it a bit and am just totally nonplussed about all of it.

To be fair, the whole thing has become a bit of a tangle, so here's a recap:

Dakka's previous content policy was fairly broad, with NSFW content allowed within certain visibility guidelines, to allow for people to make up their own minds about what was and was not appropriate for their own hobby.

A small group of people with little interest in actually participating in this community, spurred on by discussions on another forum, decided that a model released a decade ago was suddenly a pressing issue that needed to be resolved immediately. While disagreeing with the way they went about presenting that case, the current mod team agreed that the model in question was in poor taste and reflected badly on the community at large, removed the 10-year-old thread, and initiated discussions internally on updating the content policy.

Dakka's current active moderation team is very small, and we and the site's owners all have other demands on our time right now, so that discussion is slow, but ongoing.


To address the issue of posting links to other sites - as a reminder, NSFW content is not inherently a problem, so long as it is posted appropriately. The updated rules ban abuse content, not all nudity. Links to inappropriate content would, in my view, be covered by the same rules as posting them directly to the forum. If it's not ok to post it here, it shouldn't really be ok to link to it either, although that's going to depend on the context of the discussion that prompted the link.

That being said, links to appropriate content on sites that also happen to include inappropriate content are not inherently an issue. If we ban links to sites that may or may not have offensive content on them, we put the moderation team in the position of having to police the content of other websites to determine if links are ok or not (which is, frankly, a ridiculous demand of a team of volunteer hobby site moderators) and we wind up banning links to, off the top of my head, Deviant Art, Reddit, Facebook and Twitter.

That model was brought up as an issue years ago too, let's not pretend it wasn't an issue then too.

The dakka mods just cared even less back then despite the fact it goes very explicitly against the site's rules. Also, part of the reason some people (myself included) drifted away from dakka was due to stuff like that getting a pass. That, and to be completely frank, what seemed like a mod team that always seems to take the easiest path or ruling on anything certainly didn't help when people would get various threads shut down (i.e. anything related to female space marines) by acting like complete gak stains while suffering no reprecussions.

I'm not going to debate with you on site rules from a decade ago, because that seems more than a little pointless.

I will point out, though, that your perception of the 'easiest path' is tinted by the fact that much of the work the mods do is not visible.

Taking female space marine discussion as a prime example - yes, the topic was eventually somewhat unofficially banned for some time. That came after a considerable amount of effort on the part of the mod team to keep similar discussions on track. The latest iteration of that discussion, in a thread that wound up running for 16 pages, involved several days of me and other mods shepharding the thread, deleting inappropriate tangets, banning several users who refused to play nice, and posting to keep the topic focused. That involves a considerable investment of time, effort, and mental energy on that one specific thread in order to allow that discussion to exist. And then, when it had finally run its course, there's the peanut gallery on another forum complaining about the moderation team here taking the 'easiest option'.

For the record, the easiest option would have been to just delete the thread after the first post.

You have absolutely no conception of the amount of work the volunteer moderators here do to keep the site running more or less on track, and what else we all have going on behind the scenes. You sit there on your other forum bleating about what a terrible job we're all doing and how you have no interest in the community, and yet here you are insisting on stirring up drama because we're not responding to your demands quickly enough for your satisfaction.

The mods do what they do because they care about the site, and they signed on because it was a chance to help the community to keep going. the way we do that won't always be the way you would do it. It likely won't always be the best way to do it... because we're a team of volunteers who do this while real life is also happening to us all.

And if that's not good enough for you, then, honestly, so be it. Go back to your other forum where you can make snide comments about how crap we all are rather than wasting everyone's time here.

 insaniak wrote:
because we're not responding to your demands quickly enough for your satisfaction.

I disagree with what you've posted but I think that's irrelevant considering you don't want to discuss it, and more importantly, I think you said that is untrue. My issue is not "you're not responding fast enough!" I literally asked twice, about three weeks apart to try and make sure the topic was not forgotten. Now, if around six weeks isn't enough time to look at a single section of the current rules and make changes to them (which it clearly was), and a week wasn't enough time to update the site's rules, make an announcement post, and inform the users directly affected (i.e. vinni) then frankly, things are moving awfully slowly. From experience, it doesn't take much time to replace one section of text with another. I mean, ingtaer posted an updated section of rules that seems like a final update, but it still has not made it here despite a little over a week since it was posted. I'm not even sure the rules were announced anywhere else but here, and potentially in PMs to OPs of affected threads.

And of course, we still have the weird "family-friendly for kids" swear filter at odds with allowing NSFW content.

I'll refrain from commenting on the general moderation issue because, while I have opinions on how things are run, I doubt it's going anywhere constructive and I'd rather not get banned for it. So just the specific NSFW issue:

 insaniak wrote:
A small group of people with little interest in actually participating in this community, spurred on by discussions on another forum, decided that a model released a decade ago was suddenly a pressing issue that needed to be resolved immediately.

I admit that I don't know what was happening on some other unnamed forum but I think it's kind of unfair to frame this as "digging up old stuff to start drama" when the person responsible for the rape fetish model in question is still an active poster here and still advertising his store, including both that particular rape fetish model and various other blatantly pornographic BDSM fetish stuff. Maybe someone wanted to start a conflict, maybe it's just that current events made someone take a second look at the guy selling rape fetish stuff involving a victim from a country currently suffering from horrifying war crimes, it's still an issue that is currently relevant to the community.

we wind up banning links to, off the top of my head, Deviant Art, Reddit, Facebook and Twitter.

Why? Why not use common sense with the policy and recognize the difference between linking to a general-purpose site with millions of users covering an immense range of topics, most of whom have no connection to each other, and linking to a store page that doesn't technically contain the inappropriate material on that very specific page of the seller's store? It seems pretty obvious that one of these is going to lead much more directly to inappropriate material than the other.

Aecus Decimus wrote:

Why? Why not use common sense with the policy and recognize the difference between linking to a general-purpose site with millions of users covering an immense range of topics, most of whom have no connection to each other, and linking to a store page that doesn't technically contain the inappropriate material on that very specific page of the seller's store?

Because the moment you draw an arbitrary line, the complaints start about that line being in the wrong place, and more importantly because, ultimately, a policy that requires us to check links in order to determine whether or not the target site contains inappropriate content anywhere would be ridiculously impractical even if we exclude the major social media sites from it.

The job of the Dakka Moderation team is to moderate content and discussion on the Dakka website. It is not our job to police the entire online miniature wargaming community.

 insaniak wrote:
Because the moment you draw an arbitrary line, the complaints start about that line being in the wrong place, and more importantly because, ultimately, a policy that requires us to check links in order to determine whether or not the target site contains inappropriate content anywhere would be ridiculously impractical even if we exclude the major social media sites from it.

The job of the Dakka Moderation team is to moderate content and discussion on the Dakka website. It is not our job to police the entire online miniature wargaming community.

How is that any different from complaints being made about a line not being drawn, like the complaints in this very thread? I think you're way over-thinking something that's a very straightforward thing to handle. If it's a link to a general-purpose site that might somewhere have some inappropriate content that isn't particularly related to the thing being linked to then it's fine, and err on the side of allowing it. If it's a link to a notorious seller of rape fetish and pornographic BDSM miniatures you get rid of it even if the specific link is technically only to a page which links very directly to the objectionable content. It's not policing the entire online community, it's preventing "well I didn't technically link to it directly" being used as a way to evade the content policy and direct traffic to objectionable material. You know, as a certain notorious seller just did (and got his thread locked for), complete with open acknowledgement of what he was doing.

And why is it a problem to check links? Obviously you don't proactively check every single link that is posted, that's what the report function is for. If someone reports a post for objectionable material you check to see if the report was accurate. And if you can't pretty quickly find the objectionable material, well, that seems like a pretty strong argument that the link is fine.

I'm on another forum with a strict don't link NSFW policy. All it really does is lead to significant use of google with occasional help in post. This time won't even need the help, his webstore is the first thing that pops up when you type in his username. So basically the policy becomes something that doesn't really do much but other than cause work for the mods.

Aecus Decimus wrote:
I think you're way over-thinking something that's a very straightforward thing to handle..

From my experience, when a solution seems really simple but other people are overlooking it, it usually means that the problem is more complicated that I realise.

What this would do is add a huge amount of workload to the moderators, forcing us to spend a bunch of time investigating other websites (where that's even possible... what about content behind a paywall, like Patreon?) instead of spending our time here on Dakka.

Hell, a large part of the problem wouldn't even be those websites that actually have questionable content. We have users now who periodically report huge swathes of posts as containing political content. The reported posts almost never do contain political content, but we have to check them all anyway. Adding a policy like that being suggested here would result in us fielding endless vague 'Linked website contains inappropriate content' reports, which we would have to check out in the vain hope of figuring out what it is that people are finding objectionable. Or if there even is anything objectionable, and it's not just someone with an axe to grind against that particular manufacturer, or someone who dislikes nude models, or someone who thinks that female models are inherently political.

 insaniak wrote:
What this would do is add a huge amount of workload to the moderators, forcing us to spend a bunch of time investigating other websites (where that's even possible... what about content behind a paywall, like Patreon?) instead of spending our time here on Dakka.

How long does it take to click a link, check if it has any obvious inappropriate material (probably assisted by people saying where it is in the report or in-thread discussion), and deal with it appropriately? And like I said, if the inappropriate content isn't fast and straightforward to find then the link is probably ok unless someone can give very specific reasons why it isn't. You're talking about what, 30 seconds to verify a link? A minute or two max?

As for paywalled content the obvious thing would be to just ask one of the people objecting to it to send a screenshot of it. If they genuinely object to it and aren't just trying to generate drama they should be perfectly happy to help with that. And if they can't clearly articulate what is objectionable and provide an example of it, well, that seems like it ends the conversation and any need for moderator action.

We have users now who periodically report huge swathes of posts as containing political content. The reported posts almost never do contain political content, but we have to check them all anyway.

It sounds like the problem isn't the rule, it's that you have users who are blatantly abusing the reporting system and not getting banned for it. Warn them that their behavior is not acceptable, ban them if it continues. That seems like it would deal with the majority of the nonsense reports.

(And of course if you don't want mass reporting for political content you could always un-ban political discussions!)

Tell you what, how about the mods send you all the content and links that need reviewing, then you can report back to them every day letting them know what you think needs further investigation.

How long would that take?

 Azreal13 wrote:
Tell you what, how about the mods send you all the content and links that need reviewing, then you can report back to them every day letting them know what you think needs further investigation.

How long would that take?

Based on the number of questionable posts I've seen on this forum, not more than a minute or two per day. Probably less once a certain seller of rape fetish stuff is banned. But sure, let's do this experiment, give me admin powers and I'd be happy to run this forum.

Oh, no, no moderation power, just adminstrative drudgery. You shouldn't be happy to spend other people's time in a manner you aren't prepared to spend your own.

 Azreal13 wrote:
Oh, no, no moderation power, just adminstrative drudgery. You shouldn't be happy to spend other people's time in a manner you aren't prepared to spend your own.

I'm not. I just volunteered to spend my time the same way. Giving the work of reviewing but not the moderation powers is not spending time the same way, it's creating a new and lesser role just to have something to attack me over.

You're suggesting adding time to the "working week" of the voluntary moderation team for no increase in power or perks under the rationalisation that it wouldn't take long.

I'm merely suggesting that if it wouldn't take long, then you'd have no objections to undertaking that extra work yourself on the same basis.

I'm not attacking you at all, I just feel I've made a perfectly reasonable suggestion to get you what you want without putting extra demands on the existing mods.

 Azreal13 wrote:
You're suggesting adding time to the "working week" of the voluntary moderation team for no increase in power or perks under the rationalisation that it wouldn't take long.

I'm merely suggesting that if it wouldn't take long, then you'd have no objections to undertaking that extra work yourself on the same basis.

I'm not attacking you at all, I just feel I've made a perfectly reasonable suggestion to get you what you want without putting extra demands on the existing mods.

This is completely absurd. Aside from the fact that you don't have any power to offer such a deal in the first place having me review all of the material without moderator powers to act on those reviews would require more time from the existing moderators than just dealing with it themselves. They'd have to assemble and forward me a list of links to review and then evaluate my recommendations, something which would require them to check the links themselves anyway to see if they agree with me. This isn't a reasonable suggestion, it's you coming up with an absurd "gotcha" trap that isn't nearly as clever as you seem to think it is.

I'm not offering the deal, I'm suggesting you volunteer. Then it would be up to the mods and Lego and Yak if they felt it was workable.

But, yes, of course, my entirely Machiavellian plan was to highlight your hypocrisy in demanding other people spend more of their freely given time to enforce an already dubious policy, when we all know that most of us wouldn't be prepared to spend even a fraction of that time.

Frankly I'm staggered you saw through me. I may need to go and lie down. You must be very clever.

I'd spend the time to enforce the policy with a workable solution (involving actual mod powers).

I would not spend the time to "help" enforce the policy with a deliberately dysfunctional and inefficient solution created for the sole purpose of winning an internet argument.

I am such a hypocrite. :(

Saying "do the mod's job but without any of their powers," means they wouldn't be doing the mod's job.

 insaniak wrote:

Aecus Decimus wrote:
I think you're way over-thinking something that's a very straightforward thing to handle..

From my experience, when a solution seems really simple but other people are overlooking it, it usually means that the problem is more complicated that I realise.

What this would do is add a huge amount of workload to the moderators, forcing us to spend a bunch of time investigating other websites (where that's even possible... what about content behind a paywall, like Patreon?) instead of spending our time here on Dakka.

Hell, a large part of the problem wouldn't even be those websites that actually have questionable content. We have users now who periodically report huge swathes of posts as containing political content. The reported posts almost never do contain political content, but we have to check them all anyway. Adding a policy like that being suggested here would result in us fielding endless vague 'Linked website contains inappropriate content' reports, which we would have to check out in the vain hope of figuring out what it is that people are finding objectionable. Or if there even is anything objectionable, and it's not just someone with an axe to grind against that particular manufacturer, or someone who dislikes nude models, or someone who thinks that female models are inherently political.

Why would any of that follow from acting in this specific situation? Is it not possible to make an exception now, for precisely this one problem, and leave the rules in general alone? I don't see how taking action in the case of this spefic user and store makes sweeping changes to the whole moderation system necessary, it's literally one dude among hundreds of users and threads that more or less behave themselves as they should. I genuinely don't understand why that increase in workload would follow... Are you -as in 'the moderation team' - afraid of making a single clear exception for a single very egregious outlier case? If so, why - i think most people would understand, again, in this specific case.

 insaniak wrote:
A small group of people with little interest in actually participating in this community, spurred on by discussions on another forum, decided that a model released a decade ago was suddenly a pressing issue that needed to be resolved immediately. While disagreeing with the way they went about presenting that case, the current mod team agreed that the model in question was in poor taste and reflected badly on the community at large, removed the 10-year-old thread, and initiated discussions internally on updating the content policy.

Another forum which only exists because you banned any talk of politics here. It’s not some other random forum, it’s a direct offshoot of this one and made up of members from here. Brother Vinni isn’t some random issue now after ten years, I’ve seen his thread complained about several times here off and on over the years with nothing being done about it before now. It only got brought up on the other forum as a response to the mod team deciding again that his post was to be free from criticism and it was not allowed to point out that he makes and sells slavery and abuse models based on real people. (I almost wish N&R topics were free from criticism so we didn’t get multipage tangents of people who don’t like Primaris clogging up every 40k thread…) And then you only deleted the thread after over a month, and apparently Then began discussion on rules updates?

 AduroT wrote:

 insaniak wrote:
A small group of people with little interest in actually participating in this community, spurred on by discussions on another forum, decided that a model released a decade ago was suddenly a pressing issue that needed to be resolved immediately. While disagreeing with the way they went about presenting that case, the current mod team agreed that the model in question was in poor taste and reflected badly on the community at large, removed the 10-year-old thread, and initiated discussions internally on updating the content policy.

Another forum which only exists because you banned any talk of politics here. It’s not some other random forum, it’s a direct offshoot of this one and made up of members from here. Brother Vinni isn’t some random issue now after ten years, I’ve seen his thread complained about several times here off and on over the years with nothing being done about it before now. It only got brought up on the other forum as a response to the mod team deciding again that his post was to be free from criticism and it was not allowed to point out that he makes and sells slavery and abuse models based on real people. (I almost wish N&R topics were free from criticism so we didn’t get multipage tangents of people who don’t like Primaris clogging up every 40k thread…) And then you only deleted the thread after over a month, and apparently Then began discussion on rules updates?

I'd also like to add that several regular users of the other forum are also still active members of Dakka, like myself. I typically post more regularly here at the moment. It isn't just a disgruntled diaspora...

Wait, wait, wait, wait. Wait.

Wait.

A group of people who didn't like the rules here decided to go elsewhere, this topic came up there, they decided to come here and kick a hornets' nest, and now they're upset the mods aren't catering to their wishes... do I have that right?

You guys know the mods don't work for you, right?

Nope, wrong.

It's good to see the Vinni thread has been locked. I don't think it's acceptable to have a company that has miniatures listed as 'Ukranian slave girl', a nude in submissive pose/rape victim, in relation to what's happening in the world right now. And the guy continues to have the miniature described as that, so he is obviously comfortable with it. I don't think 'PoS' comes even close to describing someone who gets kicks out of doing that sort of thing, and the good human being in me hopes that he never has anyone he knows or loves exposed to that sort of horror.

So going off the absolute fething moral cowardice of allowing him to continue to have an active thread, if he continues to post and is allowed to advertise his sick miniatures then I'm gone. Annoying as hell for me as there is a great little community down that I enjoy posting and interacting with, and I've been a member on Dakka for a long time, but I can't reconcile with a site that allows that sort of sick gak to be posted here.

The funniest part is that they have a dedicated thread on this other forum that is based around gossiping and crap-posting on this forum and its moderation, like the way a group of ex-girlfriends collectively dump on a person they previously dated. They then basically use threads like this to make snide comments afterwards as if it proves their superiority in having mostly left this forum.

Kind of hard to claim a moral high horse when they're clearly doing all this from having a chip on their shoulder about the forum.

Insaniak,

A couple of them have already stated what their end goal is, they want Vinni off the site completely, not his NSFW models but him gone. So either,

Give in to the mob completely and don't be surprised the next time the pitch forks come out for something else.

Tell them explicitly no, reopen the SFW thread, edit the OP if you feel you need to and then give people who constantly post off topic a mandatory vacation and move on.

 Grimskul wrote:
The funniest part is that they have a dedicated thread on this other forum that is based around gossiping and crap-posting on this forum and its moderation, like the way a group of ex-girlfriends collectively dump on a person they previously dated. They then basically use threads like this to make snide comments afterwards as if it proves their superiority in having mostly left this forum.

Kind of hard to claim a moral high horse when they're clearly doing all this from having a chip on their shoulder about the forum.

Whatever their motives may or may not be on some hypothetical unnamed forum doesn't change the fact that pornographic rape fetish models are not appropriate content for this site (or for the hobby in general). I have nothing to do with this supposed other forum and I agree 100% with the need for a rule change and enforcement of that rule.