FA+
Shop
Discord communications from staff re: update on AUP 2.7
2 years ago
I'm creating a journal to get some information out there to discuss what is or is not allowed based on discussions from the Discord policy update to help clarify some points. I'm going to list what criticisms there are of it from myself and others, and the mods' responses to those. Please disseminate this journal to artists you feel have been impacted.
Content warning: The information below discusses changes to site policy regarding what the site views as sexual depictions of underaged characters.
Misgivings I personally have:
• The timing of this announcement was horrid. Communication may not be forthcoming on this change until Monday and today's lack of communication hasn't been great. With the lack of a forum and the Discord limited to PG-13 discussions it was only until four or five hours after the announcement that any form of public discussion existed via a thread in the Discord's forum for extended conversations.
- The MPS admin generally overseeing communication regarding this matter had no control over the timing and (lack of) organization and an apology has been given regarding that as well as poorly worded initial communications. If you have any misgivings, feel free to join and address them if the thread regarding the policy change has not been locked yet, otherwise please don't start shit in the server. Please do not flood or brigade the Discord. The mods are having a tough time of things and all of them are not to blame for the changes. Otherwise open a trouble ticket on site (hamburger menu > support > report a problem > file under "NSFW underage content" as the MPS admin is handling communications regarding the change)
• The wording of the rules was initially incredibly vague and ill-defined. There's no way to know what art is impacted vs which art is not. There was a later clarification published that only Pokemon and Digimon art is affected, and the existing rules on "childlike appearance" have already existed for a while, but that still doesn't clarify how that impacts a number of artists, specifically ones who do fall into those categories or who draw fakemon from issues with Patreon.
- Documentation is used internally for all AUP issues that according to one mod is roughly 100 pages long, with parts of that covering section 2.7. While proportionality is used as one criterion for whether a character is appropriately aged up other factors are taken into consideration. An announcement with clear examples is pending from the MPS admin but verification and approval on that announcement needs to happen first, which may take a bit because of the weekend.
• The change this is compounding on went through without anybody really noticing or raising a fuss. Only one artist I know of had publicly complained about an impact to the rules change. For others, it's difficult to understand where feral, semiferal, chibi, macro/micro, and other "cute" art falls, and whether the content isn't dinged because it's safe or because it's simply evaded notice. The change seems like it relies on arbitrary standards where one moderator may have different opinions about what is acceptable versus the next. Proportionality, context, and other factors are difficult to judge objectively.
- Documentation is used alongside second opinions from other mods. In cases where there's ambiguity, the moderation team tends to err on the side of the artist. Rules on what is or isn't considered underage have been in effect since 2015 with the most recent change prior to this being in January, to include fetishized minors.
• The announcement requests that offending artists delete all art they think offends the guidelines prior to the deadline.
- A ticket can be submitted to verify whether art meets the AUP or whether it's in violation and needs to be taken down. There's no punishment for good-faith attempts to reconcile your gallery.
• The announcement also states that first-time offenders receive a one-week ban and any future offense will result in a permaban. This is especially of concern to people whose art is at risk by its nature, as well as people with prior disciplinary measures from staff who seem to be risking an immediate perma.
- This has been stated to apply to bad faith actors where the art obviously goes against the AUP in bad faith as an attempt to upload sexually suggestive/explicit cub art to FA. For accidental uploads against this policy the discipline track would be less severe. The grace period for reconciling issues is longer than that for most other policy updates, giving artists six weeks to contact mods with concerns as well as to verify whether existing art is safe. The age of prior infractions are taken into account in determining the severity of future infractions.
• For people with existing infractions, this seems rough, and people are facing infractions for a change to the existing rules that didn't exist when they initially uploaded.
- The age of past infractions is taken into account when determining the severity of future infractions. The grace period on this change- six weeks- is also one of the longest given for a policy change so people have ample time to communicate and correct changes as needed to their galleries.
Note that I don't agree with every point provided by the moderators in response to what has been said, personally.
Content warning: The information below discusses changes to site policy regarding what the site views as sexual depictions of underaged characters.
DISCLAIMER: THE RESPONSES FROM THE STAFF HAVE BEEN VETTED BY THE MPS ADMIN BUT VERIFICATION AND CONFIRMATION FROM HIGHER AUTHORITIES REMAINS PENDING.
ALSO, PER THE ANNOUNCEMENT, THE POLICY CHANGE IS EFFECTIVE JULY 1, NOT IMMEDIATELYMisgivings I personally have:
• The timing of this announcement was horrid. Communication may not be forthcoming on this change until Monday and today's lack of communication hasn't been great. With the lack of a forum and the Discord limited to PG-13 discussions it was only until four or five hours after the announcement that any form of public discussion existed via a thread in the Discord's forum for extended conversations.
- The MPS admin generally overseeing communication regarding this matter had no control over the timing and (lack of) organization and an apology has been given regarding that as well as poorly worded initial communications. If you have any misgivings, feel free to join and address them if the thread regarding the policy change has not been locked yet, otherwise please don't start shit in the server. Please do not flood or brigade the Discord. The mods are having a tough time of things and all of them are not to blame for the changes. Otherwise open a trouble ticket on site (hamburger menu > support > report a problem > file under "NSFW underage content" as the MPS admin is handling communications regarding the change)
• The wording of the rules was initially incredibly vague and ill-defined. There's no way to know what art is impacted vs which art is not. There was a later clarification published that only Pokemon and Digimon art is affected, and the existing rules on "childlike appearance" have already existed for a while, but that still doesn't clarify how that impacts a number of artists, specifically ones who do fall into those categories or who draw fakemon from issues with Patreon.
- Documentation is used internally for all AUP issues that according to one mod is roughly 100 pages long, with parts of that covering section 2.7. While proportionality is used as one criterion for whether a character is appropriately aged up other factors are taken into consideration. An announcement with clear examples is pending from the MPS admin but verification and approval on that announcement needs to happen first, which may take a bit because of the weekend.
• The change this is compounding on went through without anybody really noticing or raising a fuss. Only one artist I know of had publicly complained about an impact to the rules change. For others, it's difficult to understand where feral, semiferal, chibi, macro/micro, and other "cute" art falls, and whether the content isn't dinged because it's safe or because it's simply evaded notice. The change seems like it relies on arbitrary standards where one moderator may have different opinions about what is acceptable versus the next. Proportionality, context, and other factors are difficult to judge objectively.
- Documentation is used alongside second opinions from other mods. In cases where there's ambiguity, the moderation team tends to err on the side of the artist. Rules on what is or isn't considered underage have been in effect since 2015 with the most recent change prior to this being in January, to include fetishized minors.
• The announcement requests that offending artists delete all art they think offends the guidelines prior to the deadline.
- A ticket can be submitted to verify whether art meets the AUP or whether it's in violation and needs to be taken down. There's no punishment for good-faith attempts to reconcile your gallery.
• The announcement also states that first-time offenders receive a one-week ban and any future offense will result in a permaban. This is especially of concern to people whose art is at risk by its nature, as well as people with prior disciplinary measures from staff who seem to be risking an immediate perma.
- This has been stated to apply to bad faith actors where the art obviously goes against the AUP in bad faith as an attempt to upload sexually suggestive/explicit cub art to FA. For accidental uploads against this policy the discipline track would be less severe. The grace period for reconciling issues is longer than that for most other policy updates, giving artists six weeks to contact mods with concerns as well as to verify whether existing art is safe. The age of prior infractions are taken into account in determining the severity of future infractions.
• For people with existing infractions, this seems rough, and people are facing infractions for a change to the existing rules that didn't exist when they initially uploaded.
- The age of past infractions is taken into account when determining the severity of future infractions. The grace period on this change- six weeks- is also one of the longest given for a policy change so people have ample time to communicate and correct changes as needed to their galleries.
Note that I don't agree with every point provided by the moderators in response to what has been said, personally.
IF YOU INTEND TO USE MY JOURNAL TO COMMUNICATE PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD BE CIVIL.
I'm using this section for Q&A stuff if future questions pop up that people want covered. I'll post here with questions people ask and if staff have a response they have the authority to provide I encourage a response here. Otherwise I'll work on getting a response from the Discord as I'm able.
Screenshot #2
Luffy doesn't have the authority to definitively answer this question. Pending more clarification from a director.
The admins have verified that the changes are far wider in scope than they actually are in the announcement. It doesn't sound like there's any chance of any of it being walked back, so a lot of users are going to be impacted.
They are hellbent on harming as many people as possible with this rule change.
I left the server when they muted me for reminding them that FA used to be 17+ and that minors used to be banned on sight until they were 18.
The Discord is literally filled with minors.
They're trying to ban content these people are not even allowed to view.
And then encouraging the minors of the group to harass anyone that comes into the Discord wanting to discuss things.
Meanwhile I've had a report sitting around for two whole years about a 14 year old who is making NSFW art for adults,
and the so called "head of child abuse reports" has literally done nothing. It's like they're literally waiting for this person to turn 18 before closing the ticket.
I know for fact that that people have no intention on making this rule to actually help anyone.
At the moment my money's on it being a response to fingers pointed in FA's direction whenever a Pokémon artist objects to being stamped with the cub label elsewhere. Dacad's e621 thread was only three months ago after all.
The second reply in e621's thread on this FA policy update is an adminwho tag-locked a 50-edit Dacad post 6 days ago talking about how they're tired of people trying to argue that a post's status on FA is evidence of characters being not-underage.
I had to look, and they are indeed on Conditional DNP.
Usually when you have that, people are sort of forced to respect the artist's tags.
I actually go in and clean up my tags all the time, and make sure I add comments to the history.
User's that ignore or refuse to respect the notes in the tag history are frowned upon, and it's a reportable offense of tag abuse there.
Usually a comment of "I am the artist, I know what I made." puts an end to tag abuse.
It's really strange that the department of mods claiming they aren't responsible for the poor communication of the nature of the change includes Luffy, who has single-handedly caused the most confusion and misinformation in this whole situation (misinformation in the sense that what he communicated does not correspond to the official statements made above). Also they're the ones complaining about being swamped by the trouble tickets everyone is being told to submit, as if people should just handle the situation in the exact way the admins recommended? And at this rate the number of such tickets will continue to increase until they cannot actually answer them all by the deadline they set for artists. What happens with people who can't get an answer in a timely fashion?
Like how can people trust them to implement a vague policy when the admins are out here publicly making direct, unreconcilably contradictory statements about what it means in practice. One says it isn't a blanket policy regarding species but applied based on what adults of that species look like. Another says unambiguously that on-model adult yoshis violate the rule. One says it's not just about proportions, the other just repeats the word "proportions" over and over as an explanation and posts charts of head-to-body proportions as a guide.
How can we even trust that they actually have and use that internal document establishing standards when the people allegedly using it have fundamentally incompatible interpretations?
Like the clarification that only pokemon and digimon are affected, yet an administrator said yoshis are subject to it as well? One of those two statements must be false for the other to be true.
Whoever is running the FA twitter account has continued to explicitly contradict both Luffy and whomever was the source of the above statements in an ongoing fashion, so either internal communications have broken down or someone is just making false statements on behalf of the site.
The statements circulating around Twitter are from a thread that's no longer accessible due to a moderator's blunder in attempting to lock it as the OP was a non-staff member that kept fucking with the thread title to be inflammatory. I can't back this up as a result but in-situ the comments weren't as questionable even though they were still vague and on the point of rambling. Luffy's since walked back those statements and apologized for the lack of clarity. They can be handily dismissed and all messaging from staff discord communications in this journal she vetted Saturday afternoon and evening in a clearer state of mind to ensure accuracy on what's stated. Past that I've been keeping record of further staff communication in the Discord to disseminate as possible to affected artists. If something gets contradicted or reneged on I'll ensire that's reflected here.
I can't speak for Twitter comms as I just don't use the site anymore.
*particularly responses to the trouble tickets people were asked to make seemingly contradicting public statements made that seem to be consistent between multiple staff sources and so probably correct--and I believe this happened on Friday so that might be the discrepancy. But even so, the fact that responses to trouble ticket requests for clarification are in effect "official" rulings means inconsistency there is a big problem.
They didn't reference any additional context. Like, if that artist for example was using that pikachu as cub it would be understandable for them to mention it as the reason, but it's not the case.
It brings the reliability of site moderation in general into question if the mods are making on the spot judgment calls when they have so little mental bandwidth they can't check with the internal document to make sure they're actually making the decision correctly.
It's pretty bad to flub explaining how a policy works to a userbase that is getting nervous and upset. Worse even than delegating to someone else or leaving it alone until clearheaded. But it's far worse to potentially give incorrect official responses in one's official capacity as moderator in a trouble ticket.
There are a lot of people in the Discord though that just feel the need to fight with everybody at every turn and it's been a tiring experience.
I'm not calling for punishment or something, it sounds like the stress of the past weekend has been more than enough of that.
I just have lost trust in the site staff because of this rapid series of pretty glaring issues by several parties and they're going to have to really show some positive efforts as an organization to improve if they want to get it back.
For what it's worth I know Sciggles has had a reputation in the past for being antagonistic but the only interaction I've had with her in this whole thing has been civil and reasonably directed towards trying to clear away the miscommunication that had been given to users previously.
I didn't expect this much clarification. lol