I'm about to massively rewrite the TOS, Guidelines, and Privacy Policy documents

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Yes, you read the subject line correctly.

Let me explain:

Right now all the policy documents are some weirdass combination of the the default Discourse policies, some former forum rules (as best I can tell) and some small modifications that were made by @Leah and later @Penguin

This just isn’t logical or workable at this point so I’m going to give everything a major overhaul. Generally speaking things won’t change much, it’s more to clarify things and properly document some policies.

One huge change I’m making though? In the past @Leah and @Penguin granted some exceptions to the rule against stories involving children in sexual situations. When the new policy documents go live these will officially be revoked and any such stories will be removed.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand why those exceptions were originally granted, but I’m not comfortable hosting that content and the problems it can cause just aren’t worth it to me.

That said, to be very clear, stories involving minors will not banned unless they contain children in sexual situations.

Please feel free to ask questions or leave comments and I’ll try to get them addressed ASAP.

Also: Bit of warning, you want to be an ass to me, do it privately, not in public. I’m not naming names, but let me assure you that going forward we will not be giving you multiple chances to straighten up. You get one free warning. if you ignore it, you will be silenced for 30 days.

Ignore that? Suspension for 30 days.

Still a problem after that? Permanent suspension of your account with 0 chances of it being deleted, ever.

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Quick question on this:

Currently the Guidelines and FAQ links both point the basic guidelines.

Discourse does let you split those into two different pages. The question I have is this: would there be any objections to me doing so?

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Not an objection so much as a question… Wouldn’t it be better from a usability standpoint to have them as one thing…

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No, if you split them, the system links to them separately. It’s kind of a weird situation related to how they implemented the single sign on functions originally.

The idea was that when using the SSO function the FAQ link would actuallly point to the signin system’s FAQ index and the Guidelines would point to the forum specific rules.

They basically just made it possible to separate them in all instances later to stop people complaining about needing a custom plug-in to do that when not using SSO

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A…wise decision, I think. People are gross, and this seems like one of those situations where good intentions were begging to be abused.

I don’t know what exceptions existed before that meant this wasn’t already something that was explicitly against the rules, but it needed to be. Sexually explicit content involving minors in any capacity is gross and ruins what out to be a fun place we can all enjoy.

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One of the exceptions was based on a true story with a verified police report of the sexual abuse and how it ultimately affected the poster as an adult.

2 were stories were fictional stories in the same vein.

The only really odd (to me) exception was a story about two girls discovering their love of diapers (although one actually required them) and the discovery that certain manipulations of their bodies excites them while wearing, but it was only in two chapters and that one unlike the others could probably be salvaged with a fade to black.

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I can’t help but feel like, “based on a true story” or not, that sort of content is a bit off-putting on a forum like this.

This is, for lack of a better descriptor, a fetish board. The majority of people who come here do so with a certain mindset and end goal: to read things from which they derive sexual gratification. There are other sorts of feel-good, cozy stories in the mix, and stories that just feel like writing experiments, but the majority are essentially just smut with a fetish twist to them.

I don’t know, it just feels wrong. People posting stories that contain overt and undeniable abuse of minors, especially sexually explicit materials pertaining to it, just feels off-putting.

There are grey areas to be had, for sure. Just look at the mountains of stories involving minor characters who are coerced into diapers by overbearing parental figures. This isn’t what I would personally describe as overtly sexual content, but due to the very nature of this fetish, the argument could be made. It’s abusive for sure, but is it sexual abuse? I would say not, but if somebody else were to think of it as such, I wouldn’t necessarily argue with them.

The last story you mentioned, the one with the two girls, sounds like it would be hard to make a judgment call about since the way things are phrased and the level of detail can have a pretty substantial impact on whether or not it ticks the “sexually explicit” box.

There are a lot of “coming of age” type books and movies out there with characters that are inarguably minors, who engage in “adult” activities, but the authors typically leave the detail to a minimum or coyly use more innocent language that keeps the “steaminess” of the book as close to zero as they can.

I guess at this point I’m just sort of rambling. My point is just that, as much as I love a well-written story, I would rather not stumble upon stories of minors engaging in overt, unquestionably sexual content.

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In the case of that first one I mentioned, I can be a bit more open about it since the author left about a year ago and did request the stories removal.

In that specific case there were very specific rules laid out for it; a direct warning at the top of the story and an additional one once it reached the part with the sexual abuse. @Leah also insisted that they write it so it focused more on the emotional aspect rather than the physical aspects. And the third was that it could not be the main focus of the story, which it wasn’t.

And honestly? Having actually seen @Leah’s email archive? HOLY SHIT! to the number of stories that were outright deleted or requested exceptions and got rejected.

Not joking. Out of 3,571 stories with kids in sexual situations, between @Leah and @Penguin they only granted 19 exceptions and only 4 of them are still here.

Here’s the actual reasons the author of the true one requested it:

To which, as mentioned, Leah set some rules for what was required for the version posted here, but here’s an important detail:

The two similar stories were given exceptions because while fictional, still were based on something that happened to the authors as kids and was them processing it and wanting to share it with others in a context that could understand the affect on their adult sex lives.

In fact, the one thing they would not grant exceptions on was the insistence that a warning be included at the top of the first post of the story and before the actual post containing the content.

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This is a VERY good idea.

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After much thought and deliberation one of my stories may be in violation of these rules. It was never brought up as a violation after posting the chapters, nor at the time of its writing was I thinking that what I wrote was of sexual interest. I do feel that it may be misconstrued as such. Please either search me (sorry for the trouble) or should the new ToS, Guidelines or Privacy Policy clarify what is a violation I shall quickly alter my stories to follow the new rules.

The story in question being “Elven Stars DayCare” maybe “Mother; The Demon”

Edit: parts where it is clear adults are involved sexually, oh hell yeah! But I had no intent for characters depicted as children or under to be in sexual situations. Which is where I may be on a fine line and need to know if I am overstepping or not. So please let me know.

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Do me a favor. Can you send me a PM with what parts you think are an issue? I can’t remember seeing any that would be but I can double check. :slight_smile: