Site Post » Minor Rules and Reporting Update · 6:52pm Jan 8th, 2020
Hope everyone is enjoying the new year.
Some small changes have been made to our rules as well as to the reporting process.
Rules
"No attacks directed at individuals or groups due to race, gender, gender identity, religion or sexual identity."
This better clarifies our previously ill-defined hate speech rule and includes groups as well as individual attacks.
"No celebration, glorification or encouragement of real life criminal activity."
This includes past, present and potential future crimes.
Speaking a little off the record here, I am vehemently against biased actions on political beliefs. I have beliefs that I hold, as do the rest of the staff and of course all our users. I believe it's important to maintain platforms that allow all kinds of people and beliefs. However, Fimfiction is a website that is designed for my little pony fanfiction, and I want to keep it somewhere that's generally fairly happy and welcoming. I am extremely against censorship and biased moderation on platforms like Twitter that act as large public meeting grounds but I hope you can understand why I want to keep Fimfiction a little more restrictive, given its rather more niche content.
Not all decisions will be agreed with by all users, or indeed by all members of staff, but we have always tried to be as impartial as possible and will continue to do our best on that front.
Please try to keep discussions civil, and perhaps consider that Fimfiction might not always be the best place for discussing particularly hot button issues.
Reporting
A couple of slight changes are being made here. For one, you now must always enter a reason when reporting. Previously you could enter an empty report under the assumption that the report was obvious enough on its own. This has not really been the case. We frequently get a lot of low quality reports that don't give us any information to work from. This change should help that somewhat. The page also makes it more clear that content should be linked to or included in the report.
Lastly, we'll be trying to do a better job of following up on reports where the information isn't clear enough. A lot of people want total transparency here but due to the tricky nature of reports sometimes, this cannot be the case and I will therefore not promise it. With this extra effort on our part though, we will take more action against people who persistently (very persistently) falsely report content they have been told is acceptable. This should not put you off reporting, just keep it in mind.
Nice to see an improvement to the reporting system. I've always wondered just how many reports you guys actually get that are legitimate and/or in-depth enough to work with.
*gasp* The Brother of Silence remains pure!
Gee. Wondering what prompted this...
~Skeeter The Lurker
Happy new year, Knighty. Hope it's treating you well so far, thanks for maintaining the site!
Is good!
Thank you for taking steps to address these issues. I hope to see positive results out of this!
Nice, hope you and the staff have a good 2020 as well!👍
Just a few reminders here.
* Knighty is not American.
* This site is not run by the United States government. It is Knighty's private possession.
* So for anyone about to scream"FIRST AMENDMENT!" Guess what? It doesn't apply.
And with that said, I'm just gonna log out for the next six hours and hope the firefight dies down.
Happy new year :)
5182206 This has been bothering me for a while; why do you append every single message with a signature? We know who you are. We can see your name. It's right there, above your avatar. Your messages area already personalized by design.
Question: I am making a lot a dystopian and Orwellian sci-fi stories and horror that deal with fictional governments that could be referencing real life governments or exaggerating unspoken public rules. Would I violate the politics clause if I make stories that have purely fictional governments that could be misinterpreted as current politics would those stories be banned because of coincidence?
5182212
It's also a privately-owned website, so even if this was based in the US, First Amendment rules don't apply, and the site owner has the right to refuse service to anyone.
5182215
There's nothing wrong with mentioning things like that. The rules are mostly covering non-story related content. The line for what defines something as being glorification of a crime is fuzzy but I imagine the very fact you're asking that question probably means that isn't an issue in your case.
5182214
I've answered that enough times to post why on my profile.
~Skeeter The Lurker
All I have to say is this site is dedicated solely to the mlp fandom. Please keep it that way. For some, (self included) it's a way to forget about all the crap that goes on in this world, and I'd hate to see that crap brought here. Asking for charity is one thing, but I don't wanna see hate being spewed all over the place. Try to remember what mlp is all about, because it's actually something that you can apply in real life, and when you do, it makes things in everyone's lives much better.
5182219
Hey Skeeter, why do you post a signature on your posts?
5182214
It's technically against the site rules.
awesome stuff
Cool. At least now this hopefully calms things down. Only time can tell though.
5182215
To be clear, this has come about after a discussion I had with the mods asking why many, many comments I have reported on this website - calling for the rape of users, or for calls to genocide against muslims and Jews - were not followed up on in any way, over periods of weeks and months.
Until now, you could get away with saying that, for instance, the Christchurch shooter was a call to action for all Good Christian Soldiers, because it wasn't targeted against any specific muslim individuals.
You're probably going to be fine to write stories with political undertones or whatever.
Are you planning on including a way to directly report comments? It'd be useful, IMO, even though experience tells me that people like to hit report every time someone disagrees with them (or merely dares to exist in a few cases). At least there'd be a direct relationship between the report and the content in question.
But only real-life races, religions, etc., right? Because I'm sorry, but despite the propaganda, elves are from a racially inferior stock compared to humans and we should be free to say so here.
I like this sentiment, but what are the bounds of this statement?
To give an example, Robin Hood is a story of a hero committing crimes in order to help the people of the kingdom put to the brink of starvation by unethical taxation practices. Sure, the government is dystopic, and completely unlike ours, but the crimes that are committed are still real crimes, and they are indeed glorified. It's not encouraging doing such things without good reason, but under this rule it is suspect. Would a Robin Hood-like story be disallowed on Fimfiction?
I mean, I don't think this situation will come up that often, but I am curious.
5182222
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5182222
Overtly large and grandiose one, yes.
WD clarified it for me when the rule was made.
~Skeeter The Lurker
Does this include my rampant criminal abuse of cliffhangers that i keep getting away with? Hold on, i think the police are at my door.
5182226
WE used to have comment reporting and it was a disaster. We've talked about bringing it back but I don't really want it again because the amount of low quality reporting is just too much.
5182228
Rules like this always have wiggle room. It is impossible to create a rule that covers every single situation, hence why real life law is something that involves constant iteration and testing of the bounds to create new case law. Something like Robin Hood is a good question, but I'd say that's fine unless people are covertly using it with obvious other implications. It'll be handled on a case by case basis as everything is
5182234
At this point, there has to be the question; How are you defining 'low quality' reporting?
5182230
Honestly same
5182234
Why not get more mods and give them the job (checking reports)?
5182231
media.giphy.com/media/Fml0fgAxVx1eM/giphy.gif
5182237
People reporting users for "attacking other user" and leaving literally no information. No information on what user was attacked, or what they said.
5182219 Maybe you should embed a link to your explanation in your signature.
5182241
So the attack reports weren't investigated to find that information/request?
5182227
I smell a Witcher fan.
5182212
Quite little faith in your fellow bronies, huh?
5182218
I know what you're talking about, but I suspect a lot of folks on here don't use Twitter or follow you on there.
5182225
Good on you for working to keep the place friendly. Thank you.
5182228
Based on what's been said, you'd be fine.
5182231
Ah, is THAT what that rule is for? I got someone else to stop posting a signature under their comments because of that rule, formatted similarly to yours, because I was unaware of the distinction.
5182243
I'm guessing too much mod pressure.
5182243
Unless it was clear from the admin userpage what was going on, generally not. An empty report is basically not a report at all as far as I'm concerned.
5182243
I can't even tell you how many times I've PM'd somebody asking for more information because the report wasn't clear, and they just never respond.
5182242
If you're too lazy to look, I can't help you there.
Most tend to just regard as a curiosity/minor irritation/etc. And just move along.
Anyway, this is off topic from the blog. Wanna chat more on this, then feel free to PM me.
~Skeeter The Lurker
5182234
Why not try again with that and apply the more detailed requirements to that as well?
~Skeeter The Lurker
5182248 5182249
And because of that you removed basic moderator functionality...?
5182258
What? No, you can still report the user. Which actually makes it easier to investigate in cases where the thread or blog or story or whatever got deleted. All that's changed here is that we require people to explain themselves from the start.
If there actually is harassment or something bad going on, every minute I spend waiting on the reporter to get back to me and actually explain what happened is a minute that the person can keep doing whatever they're doing.
5182248
I can sympathise with that one. And sometimes, even if that information is included, it doesn't clarify anything, because people will report the dumbest shit. The number of times, on derpi, I had to deal with people reporting someone swearing in comments... or just reporting people they decided are evil for arbitrary and ill-defined reasons. The problem is, there's no technical solution to grudges and short-sighted behaviour, when it comes down to it.
ANYWAY. I, for one, appreciate the changes you've outlined, if it wasn't clear.
5182263
Yes, that is what is being described in this blog. This blog is (partly) about the fact that we are no longer allowing empty reports.
5182210
What file format is this?
5182263
The text below the report box has *always* said you should leave notes if it's not clear from the report itself. That is not users using the system as intended. And nobody other than you here has insinuated it's a change we made due to "dumb users"