feedback

Im just going to do a breakdown of my feelings on the journal post

```1. What does the rule say?
Content featuring minors is not allowed when the minor is in the presence of sexual activity, sexual objects, or nudity, though exceptions may be made for non-sexual depictions of birth and breastfeeding. Presence is defined as being in the same scene, such as sharing a comic panel, contiguous image, reference sheet, or specific section of a story where characters are engaging each other.

Minors may not have detailed bulges or outlines of normal or hyper genitalia, clothed or otherwise. Minors may not be fetishized. Minors younger than 13 may not be depicted as pregnant. Minors are defined as real or fictional humanoids with a childlike body or younger than 18 years old, and any adolescent animals or fantasy creatures.```

I hate to say it but right from the start this is going to be completly subjective, loosly saying sexual isnt allow is already being vague. Any fetish can be implied as sexual, a character eating or being overweight can be implied as sexual and depends entirly on who gets to judge. Also who exactly is an expert in what a non human minor is supposed to look like?

```2. When was this rule created?
The terminology of “childlike body and adolescent animals” is a clarification that went into effect on September 8th, 2015 (7+ years ago) to an already existing rule that was created on November 24th, 2010 (12+ years ago) that banned content featuring minors in sexual situations.```

This is not really a good way to start because it comes off as being defensive and making excusses.

```3. Why did this rule receive clarification in 2015?
While minors were banned from being in sexual content in 2010, users were still uploading children in sexual situations, saying that they were adults (e.g. 1000 year old vampire child) and therefore didn’t violate the rule as they were not minors.

At the time, Fur Affinity was owned by IMVU who had a firm stance against children presented sexually, and the rule was clarified by defining a minor as: “real or fictional humanoids with a childlike body or younger than 18 years old, and any adolescent animals.”```

This rule is understandable because everyone can generally agree what humanoid is (adolescent animals however is basically subjective since whos an expert on every species?), but its not really good to say it was done due to previous owner because the logic then is, roll back the rule since they dont own it now.


```4. Why am I hearing about this now?
While this policy has had several small changes that were announced throughout the years, enforcement was never taken against the Pokémon or Digimon in sexual content that look like children or cubs although they violated the rules. After years of receiving user feedback via trouble tickets, we have decided to end this internal policy on July 1st, 2023.```

This makes the whole situation sounds more of an issue with moderation struggling to keep up with being flooded, at the end of they day the art isnt real and the characters are fictional. Context is a much better judge but obviously that is very subjective and difficult to do, telling people they have to age it up or not draw them is basicaly discriminating against an artists drawing style which they may have worked hard on for decades is an insult to them.

```5. What Pokémon and Digimon cannot be in sexual content without being aged up?
While we cannot present an exhaustive list of thousands of characters, common canonical inclusions would be “baby Pokémon” such as Pichu, Mime Jr., Riolu, and Smoochum, other Pokémon such as Cubchoo, Cubone, Torchic, Ralts, Eevee, and Gothita, and Digmon such as Agumon, Impmon, Gatomon, and Veemon as these characters have childlike proportions or look like adolescent humans or animals.```

This is where the majority of problems come from, you are calling out specific characters while completly ignoring that there are a million other cartoons/games/seies/media with characters in. The fact those franchises have been called out and being put at the center of attention not only causes anger to direct fans but opens up the risk for more characters/IP's being added over time.

```6. What does aged up mean?
We are not concerned with whether or not a character is emotionally mature, a certain level, or evolved. The physical proportions of the character would need to be altered. It is not enough to change the size of a character. Scaling a character up or down doesn’t change its proportions. Making an adult smaller doesn’t create a child and making a child bigger doesn’t create an adult. If the character has no difference from birth to elder, you will have to draw them non-canon for them to be acceptable in sexual situations.```

This is just completly contradictory and an attack on artistic freedom, your limiting artist and putting their livlyhood at risk just because of their drawing style. If I like a certain character but a random mod or malicious user doesnt they can decided its a child and report the artist and or me. Yes the report would probably fail but I dont know if I can take the risk and I am obviously not going to pay an artists to not draw the characters I like and enjoy.

```7. How do you judge proportions?
Generally speaking, as characters age, their proportions change. For humanoid characters, we compare to the proportions of humans and for feral animals we look to their earth counterparts or similar for fictional species.```

Again, everyone can generally agree on humanoid and ferals. But fictional species or earth counterparts? How does that even work to try and guess based fiction on reality? if someone has a rat for a character the life span of a rat is quite short so any rat character is obviously under 2 years old and completly offlimits. You could try and relate it to humans years to the same way as dog years are estimated but moderators are not experts in every living species.

```8. What about the size or size difference between characters?
Since size is not the same as proportions, size and size difference rarely has any weight in decisions we make, whether the character is macro, micro, or several feet in difference apart in relation to each other. Corgi, otters, ponies, and other short creatures, will not be affected based upon stature alone.```
This just conflicts with the previous one directly, its opening up more and more reasons and side rules to expand the net, other users have already been informed their short characters arnt allowed.

```9. What about characters without larger reproductive features?
A common misconception is that we will remove content because a character has smaller genitalia or breasts. The size of genitalia and breasts have no impact on our decisions as they may not change with age.```

I dont see how this helps anyone because the people reporting dont care about the size, they are just reporting it for existing.

```10. What about “shortstack” and “chibi” characters in sexual content?
A shortstack character is one who is short in stature with larger than average features. Shortstack characters generally have adult proportions with short stature and would be allowed.```

Again the word proportions being thrown around again, it means nothing without explaination.

```Chibi depicts short and cute characters with oversized heads. The chibi style is often used in media when characters are acting silly or out of character, and some of these circumstances may not be allowed if they appear too childish; however, in many situations the style of the character has a large head and small adult body and would be okay. Ultimately, body proportions are what we will be looking at when making a decision.```

Appear childish, this is again entirly in the head of whoevers looking at it and not a solid evaluation.

```11. How do you make the decision as to what content is allowed?
When content is reported, a staff member will review it based upon the criteria that we have discussed in this journal. If a cut and dry decision cannot be made, it is reviewed by a group of senior staff members for a consensus. If the content is removed and the user does not agree with the decision, it may be disputed through the ticket system, or if the user is suspended, via the email address provided to them and will be reviewed for accuracy and uniformity.```

If a user or artist has got to this point it is usually too late, youve potentially marked them for life. Ive seen multiple artists over the years been harrased completly off FA just because someone didnt like their art style and decided it looked too young even on art with no genitalia present they can be pushed off the server.

```12. I don’t know if my content is allowed.
If you have questions as to whether your content is allowed, please open a Trouble Ticket under “General > Question About Site Policy” with a link to the content in question and we will provide you with an answer.```

This is completly unreasonable, your asking users to vet their own entire gallery which may have years of work, for some people there are THOUSANDS of uploads to look though. But it only take 1 submission to get you reported. That burden is too great on user. And to suggest they should ask a moderator would be insane, no one has the time to check every single upload ever made.

```13. I’m scared that I’m going to be banned from the website.
Although this rule is not new and has been in effect for over 7 years, we understand that there are concerns from users who may not have been familiar with the rule or understand the criteria for removal. Because of this, for 90 days after July 1st, all violations of UP 2.7 will NOT be escalated as severe offenses and will instead be treated as normal rules violations.```

This is just such an aweful way to put it, your admiting its your fault for not regulating it but now your potentially going to punish ever user for something out of their control. You could AT LEAST give immunity to any upload before the change, perhaps only allow old art to be reported and removed but DO NOT mark it down as a rules infraction on their account.

```Furthermore, we do not support harassment of any kind on Fur Affinity. If someone harasses you, we encourage you to block them. If the harassment is serious or bypasses that block in any way on the website, please report it to us through the ticket system and we will review the situation.```

I understand you dont support harrasment but looking over the discord topic the last day or two, it became clear to me that a tiny group of users seem to believe they are the judge jury and arbrators of FA and whats acceptable and have admitted to basically hunting down artists and scouring for evident to use against them from external sites. FA should only deal with content on FA, users who link private discords or other sites clearly have ill intentions. Moderators of FA should not be expected to be investigators, users should not feel they can hunt down a user.

Honestly the big issue seems to be malicious users and the moderation being overwhelmed with trouble tickets, people are saying they report people for incorrect tagging or forgetting to mark as adult. This is literally something that can be solved by a user by just telling the uploader directly and getting it sorted, unfortunaly some users feel the need to rush to moderation and peanalise mistakes which puts undue stress on the moderation team with extra work that could be easily avoided.

If moderation cant keep up then you need to be blunt about it and explain the situation to the community and re examin the trouble ticket system, how many reports are valid, how many reports arnt, how much of it is just attempts at attacking users, how much of it could have been solved without needing to send a ticket in the first place.

Honestly this all goes back to, user see's something they dont like and reports it for existing. This is why people keep asking for the ability to blacklist so users can just move on instead of going on crusades because something popped up on the browse page. Yes I get the rule is meant to target a big issue but the fact is that issue is very specific and most of the time people forget art is fictional. Let the actual authorities deal with the people causing real harm, and if the concern is oh no the children might see this, make FA 18+ only.

This entire situation is so sad because lets face it we are a community and most of us only interact with a tiny portion of it. I cant stand the though of losing the few friends I've made on this site over the years to the risk of them being persecuted because they once drew a character for someone. Even worse if an artist was reported and banned because of something I commisioned years ago and thought nothing of it just because a random user didnt like the character I liked.