Ponybooru Moderation Feedback

Ponybooru Discord’s rules are designed in forums in mind, rather than for chat.  
Banning double-posting (Rule #2) make sense for forums, but not for a chat program. This is the main reason why I didn’t say a single thing after joining: I’m afraid I will slip-up, post multi-message instead of multi-line and will be banned.

Rules need bettering. Am too tired to say more.

@Anonymous #08E7  
Rule 2 in discord is basically saying don’t type one word at a time, like a teenage girl who cant keep her finger off the enter key or something.
 
As  
long  
as  
you  
dont  
talk  
like  
this
 
in individual messages, no one cares about sending multiple messages back to back. As the rule says, just avoid anything that would be considered actually ‘spamming’ the server like the example above and you’re good.
 
Besides, its not like staff will ban you without letting you know if you’re doing something wrong first - We’ll always let you know, and ask you to stop if you’re doing anything against the rules.

I just want to stress that y’all are going to be walking a fine line on a lot of things. You’re actively trying to avoid a direct adversarial line against Derpi while at the same time being the main destination for disgruntled Derpi users. You’re also trying to allow more edge while still being welcoming those who are less comfortable with it. I think these goals are admirable and I do understand the first and support the latter but you need to think long and hard and making sure everybody is on the same page and being able to articulate this well for where you sit right now maybe only as wide as a knife’s edge from being too far in one direction or the other.
 
…also, Evan is best staff but that really ain’t a topic for this thread, just truth
 
@CDV  
This too.

I am not satisfied with my experience. I demand a FULL refund of my hours spent here + reparations for emotional scars the jannies have caused!

>Luzion  
>zion

Seeing a lot of suggestions related to the rules  
key take aways seem to be, its a lot to read and digest, and its too similar to derpibooru.
 
For the size of the rules, I had an idea to make the rules condensed or a brief summary for each rule and then a button to click to expand to the full size rules. The FAQ page features a similar implementation to what I have in mind.
 
As for being similar to derpi, we’ll to be frank, their rule set is pretty well written and covers most everything that needs to be covered. I can certainly try to rewrite them to be less plagiarizing. I think the vagueness of some rules could use a little work, but that might lead to them being longer then they already are.
 
Let me know what you guys think about the condensed rules with a button to expand idea, and your thoughts or ideas about moving away from our rules being nearly a copy of derpi.

@Luzion  
I personally think longer rules are fine. Especially if that gets rid of the vagueness. And we really should make the rules OUR rules, without the censure-baiting from derpi.
 
I think I good idea is to go through each rule individually and ask for site wide feedback on it. Then make rewrite the rule based on the feedback. If there is a decent number of still unsatisfied people, then get more feedback, rewrite, and repeat until all is well.
 
IMO, Rules need to be agreeable for 85% or so of the general userbase on here. They are very, very important to get right.
 
One rule I take issue with is rule #11:  

 
Name-calling completely encompasses “making racial, sexual, homophobic, or otherwise demeaning slurs”, so mentioning them is little more then virtue signaling(not to metion that what is a “slur” is never clear and varies from region). While “abusive content” is so fucking vague of a term that it can apply to anything you don’t like. And the word troll has so many meanings at this point that it’ll be better to just state the intended meaning to avoid confusion.

@Havoc  

 
Brought to the attention of the staff, we’ll discuss the feasibility of it and the best way to possibly approach this idea. If we decide to do this, it may take a significant amount of time, as I imagine this could lead to some significant back and forths
 
@Havoc  

 
100% agree. Ive already mulled over this idea quiet a few times before and will certainly continue to. Hopefully a good middle ground of not too wordy and not to vague can be reached.

@Havoc  

 
We saw that first hand with getting deleted  
I’d say twibooru has the best current rules and wording, they were also receiving feedback from the thread for their rewrite of it.

@Anonymous #4AFE  
Twibooru also serves a different goal, namely, complete (no takedowns or DNPs) archival with fully anonymous uploading and commenting, which means their rules won’t work for Ponybooru.
 
@Luzion  

The problem is that the rules are, by definition, defensive and will always lag behind the offense - that’s why they need to be somewhat vague and provide ability to ban rules-lawyers.  
It’s pretty similar in idea to the concept of “fighting words” - it’s absolutely possible to use completely normal non-slur words to provoke someone, and the provocation needs to be reacted to, as opposed to the resulting rules violation by the provoked user.

@Luzion  
The key here to being different (and better) than Derpi is to ensure that rules are being enforced equally on all users, even on the admins and mods. Most of Derpi’s problems stem from inconsistent rule enforcement because of cronyism and narcissism among the inner circle of staff members that formed over the years. You’ve seen it with your own eyes how the Derpi staff had no problems modifying an artist’s work without asking the original artist’s permission in their 2021 art collab, and not to mention years of turning a blind eye to targeted harassment and mangling the definition of words like “doxing” to justify deleting someone’s post or getting them permabanned. Whatever a user gets permabanned or silenced here for, make sure the same happens to staff members who do the exact same thing.

@Humble Oriathan  

And then refusing to own up to their fuckup of not publicly indicating that the submission in question won’t be accepted, and going by their reaction, failing to PRIVATELY indicate as such as well.
 
Also actually enforcing the rules is important, as opposed to thinking that someone’s offtopic attention-fishing is “harmless” - this is what led derpi to become autist-infested shithole.

Derpibooru’s rules were always fine, at least on paper. It’s the way as the staff twisted and abused them to protect their pets and harras whatever and whoever they hated on a personal level what caused the problems they had there.  
You can’t expect to blatantly protect a selected group of users without them becoming a huge source of problems for others, and neither can expect to treat selected groups like craps whithout them catching on and losing trust on the site, and much less you can expect to solve all problems by threatening everyone with bans, insults, smugness and meddling with their accounts behind their backs.
 
At the end of the day, a site is only as good or bad as the staff behind of it.

The issue I have with people complaining about rules can be summarised quite well by @Anonymous #746B here. At the end of the day, the character of the mods is what decides how well a website is run. No written site rule will change that.
 
Rules will always be bent or broken by those who don’t respect them no matter what. The fundamental problem with DB is that the mods are more interested in being leftist activists then they are in being impartial arbiters.

@FeatherTrap  
Or selectively enforcing their rules on certain users.

@Luzion
 
From what I’ve seen the staff here have been friendly, respectful, open to feedback and willing to admit when they’ve made a mistake and to try and correct it, reports have been resolved rather quickly (usually in just a few minutes) and I’m pretty sure Zizzy hasn’t moon banned half a country for being “channer scum”, In short I have no complaints about the moderation,  
I think you’re all doing a great job.
 
@Luzion  

 
This does sound like a good idea, If the summaries are done well It could make the rules page more clean and easier to read without necessarily having to shorten the rules or skimp on information, though if done poorly it could make it more annoying to skim through since you’d need to click the expand button on every single rule, If you decide to do this I would recommend also having an expand all button at the top of the page, at least to begin with. I am definitely in favor of having longer rules though since rules should ideally be clear and not open to interpretation, for the sake of both users and the staff who has to enforce those rules.
 

 
Honestly Derpi’s rules where mostly fine if a little vague at times, like others have said Derpi’s main problem is that their staff consists largely of seemingly rather misanthropic and very politically polarized people who are either unwilling or mentally incapable of putting their personal biases aside to moderate fairly, Derpi could have completely rewritten their rules to be as fair and unbiased as (You) can imagine but nothing would have changed unless their staff also decide to change, what really matters is not so much the rules but who’s enforcing those rules and I think the staff here has shown themselves to be capable of enforcing the rules fairly in spite of any personal biases they may or may not have.

>derpi’s rules were fine  
>literally had to add a second catch-all rule because they kept abusing the original one and bending it to the point where it became an actual rule instead of an #n  
lmao ok
 
Actual feedback time:  
You fuckers are retarded for going back on ‘limited time only DNPs’. But you already know that and will keep simping for the twittards.  
Rule 11 in particular is also fucking retarded. There’s no point to a- oh, wait, you’re the ‘shining beacon of liberty on the hill’ while the ‘nazi channer scum’ get to stay in the shade. Of course you’re going to keep the virtue signalling and extremely vague usability of it around to fuck with people’s posts.  
I’d say you have forgotten your origins but this entire booru and situation already reeks of being just a year or so behind whatever the fuck Derpi does. And yes, complete with the same cast of characters, even if their actors are different.  
I already gave the rest of the dressing down before the thread was made and announced in the mod audit log thread (i automatically block banners on BoR/Philoboorus because they’re always used as a nuisance or the same shit for months on end).  
Do with it what you will, i can almost guarantee the only one that will get any action on it is automated auditing because it keeps the community off your ass and keeps you from having to manually make entries in a thread.
 
inb4 reee vulgarity ban he

Always gives me a bit of a chuckle when the staff here think they’re so much different from derpi.  

@Boxless  
There are TWO DNP-less boorus (one of which is all-anon and doesn’t have community forums, and the other one has less users than the first) already, retard. Having a third one accomplishes exactly two things: jack and shit. Oh and appeasing your ego about “being different from Derpi” I guess.  
Meanwhile having DNPs baits artists into thinking they’re pandered to, and either revealing their sources* or letting their art be uploaded, which leads to it being manually uploaded or fetched onto both the archival boorus. It’s a honeypot that leads to net increase in amount of pony art archived.  
>lmao ok  
>>they kept abusing the original one and bending it  
>aka the rules are fine, the execution is shit  
It’s the thing you everyone collectively fail to understand: if execution is flawed, no amount of changing the rules will fix it. “Hurr durr ur gonna pull a durpee” can be claimed EXACTLY AS WELL for Twibooru and Ponerpics because the rule specifics are irrelevant for their abuse, abuse depends entirely on the staff team. And corrupt, cronyistic, biased staff can easily happen regardless of the rules, whether they’re “yes we like artists please interact” or “WE ARE PIRATES FUCK YOU AND FUCK FURRIES”, because again, the HR process is completely independent of the ruleset.  
The real argument would be “implement automatic audit log so that mod action reporting doesn’t rely on trust system”.
 
*Speaking of which, I think DNPs should require a public artist link, with private being unacceptable, specifically for this reason.

The staff and I are currently working on a rule rewrite proposal. Once we are happy with it, we will make it publicly available for critique.
 
overall key changes will be the removal of as much vagueness as we can afford without opening up the possibility of “well it wasnt in the rules :^)”. To account for every single possible circumstance will be nearly impossible so some flexibility will likely still remain. We’ll also be bolding key points to allow for skimming and quick reference more easily.
 
Rule 0 will become more of a Global Rule and be slimmed down significantly as it contains a lot of repetition already present in other rules.  
Rule 1 is more of a policy and will likely be moved to a dedicated page  
Rule 2 We will attempt to significantly condense the word count, some policy might change, DNP section of Rule 2 will be condensed significantly and a link to the DNP page included.  
Rule 3 will be condensed and most information that is guidelines rather than rules will likely be incorporated into tag guidelines if not already included. this should help reduce the word count.  
Rule 4 Will likely remain unchanged  
Rule 5 is a bit more of a guideline and we’re considering removing it, and including a small guideline in the global rules as an alternative.  
Rules 6 will likely remain unchanged at least until public review.  
Rule 7 will be rewritten and condensed but should effectively be enforced as is.  
rule 8 will get the same treatment as rule 7  
Rule 9 will actually be expanded upon slightly with more clarification. shouldnt impact users much if at all as the intent of rule 9 is to protect everyone, not hamper their experience.  
Rule 10 rewritten but effectively the same  
Rule 11. Probably the most heavily debated/hated rule. Significant rewrite planned. Condensed, vagueness removed and should end up being a little more clear on whats allowed and what isnt. We’re not going full wild west, but we do plan to lessen the restraints a bit.  
Rule 12 has actually already been moved to the About page but still remains listed on the rules page, will be removed  
Rule 13 Similar to 12 but moved to takedown request page, pending removal from rules.
 
Keep in mind, when these are released for review, they will be in a rough draft state and will not be enforced until we’ve had a chance to receive input and suggestions from the users. This post is more or less us saying “we hear you, we’ve got at least part of a plan and we want to hear from you again as soon as we are ready”
 
 
_{Rules 4 through 13 have already been rough drafted, rules 2 and 3 will need a more time to be scrubbed to keep the word count down, ETA on the “final” rough draft probably no earlier than 1 week.}
 
There is also consideration for automated moderation logging, though not decided on or finalized. We’re only in the discussion phase that the moment.
 
apologies in advanced for any typos, its very late for me.

I think that a sense of humility is important to improvement.

Boredom is very dangerous.

I forgot the policy, are canon non-equid characters-only images from equid show like Filly Funtasia allowed? Example:  
https://www.deviantart.com/haretrinity/art/Battiwigs-and-Mirror-Wizard-icons-476671425  
Battiwigs and Wranglum from Filly Funtasia.