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2019/2020 Community Council Nomination Discussions

Chlof said:
Accurate protrayals of healthy and unhealthy relationships? Being explicit about the intricacies of consent and power dynamics in certain pairings? Respectful handling of various kinks? There's a lot more to it than this, but I can say for certain that I know what the difference between healthy and unhealthy smut when I see it and "Taylor Hebert fucks her dad" and the thousand variations thereupon hosted on QQ is definitively unhealthy.
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I think there was an erotica quest by @Evenstar that was pretty good with rules? How's that for a general guideline for SV material?
 
FortePlus said:
I politely ask you to read rule 6 again. @Evenstar got director approval after a thorough review, and barring that, the tiering system of rule 6 requires warnings and spoiler tags for things well before they can be described as erotica. In other words SV already has guards against anything that counts as pornographic. The bar has already been set and I don't believe that SV will degenerate if it gets more erotic authors of that level of competency, nor will it suddenly become less work safe because a handful of user stories have more sex in them than some would like.
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I am unsure why you believe directing me to rule 6 undermines my point. I will quote the relevant section of rule 6 here-
"Content which has mature themes and which would generally be considered pornographic, outrageously explicit, or offensive - for example, actual pornography; Bible Black; Saw, Human Centipede, etc. - (where sex and/or violence are explicit and form the purpose or a significant portion of the work) is not acceptable on Sufficient Velocity, and may, depending on the circumstances, fall afoul of the Terms of Service prohibition against obscene content."

That Evenstar got some sort of specific exception is the unusual situation, not the restriction upon pornography. And Evenstar's platform is for a further expansion of pornographic content on SV, not a continuation of the current status quo. Therefore my position in opposition to said extension is not, as you imply, misguided. There are also in this thread many others who support the expansion of pornographic content on SV, in some form or fashion. I am speaking for the opposite position, which believes that the erosion of rule 6 is not in the benefit of SV as a whole.
 
Chlof said:
Accurate protrayals of healthy and unhealthy relationships? Being explicit about the intricacies of consent and power dynamics in certain pairings? Respectful handling of various kinks? There's a lot more to it than this, but I can say for certain that I know what the difference between healthy and unhealthy smut when I see it and "Taylor Hebert fucks her dad" and the thousand variations thereupon hosted on QQ is definitively unhealthy.
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Pawn Lelouch said:
QQ is very much not a nice place. That sadly barely scratches the surface of the shit on there.
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Yeah, it's honestly the only place I regret ever having posted my own work to.
And I've shown my smut to my parents (I was however drunk at the time when it first came out that I write smut, so I do have that excuse there.)
 
As an addendum to my previous post: you need to be aware that if you truly want to change things or keep things a certain way, you need to put in the work and talk to people.

As CC, you are not the most important person in the room. You are just one of many different stakeholders who have their interests tied up in SV -- the administration, the staff, the other Councillors, the users, the appellants, and so on. If you want to change something or keep something the same, you need to keep that in mind and accommodate their concerns, their opinions, and so on. You can't bulldoze your opinion through, and trying to do so will more likely than not actively backfire. You need to communicate clearly and respect the other people you're talking to -- perhaps not their person per se, but at the very least you have to respect that they all share a great interest in making SV a better place that works properly for its users. Build on that and try to understand them. But it will still take time, effort, energy, and a fuckton of patience, and you certainly won't win 'em all. Not even remotely. And if you become too bitter or disappointed by that, you won't be able to do your job.

You still have to be true to yourself and remain honest, because otherwise you cannot give good advice, but if you can't handle this kind of discussion, you'll be in trouble.
 
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Aedan777 said:
I am unsure why you believe directing me to rule 6 undermines my point. I will quote the relevant section of rule 6 here-
"Content which has mature themes and which would generally be considered pornographic, outrageously explicit, or offensive - for example, actual pornography; Bible Black; Saw, Human Centipede, etc. - (where sex and/or violence are explicit and form the purpose or a significant portion of the work) is not acceptable on Sufficient Velocity, and may, depending on the circumstances, fall afoul of the Terms of Service prohibition against obscene content."

That Evenstar got some sort of specific exception is the unusual situation, not the restriction upon pornography. And Evenstar's platform is for a further expansion of pornographic content on SV, not a continuation of the current status quo. Therefore my position in opposition to said extension is not, as you imply, misguided. There are also in this thread many others who support the expansion of pornographic content on SV, in some form or fashion. I am speaking for the opposite position, which believes that the erosion of rule 6 is not in the benefit of SV as a whole.
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Because of this part, I assume:

Content which has mature themes and which might be available in restricted distribution - for example, the Kushiel's Legacy series of books, or Game of Thrones episodes on HBO (where sex and violence are explicit, but still form part of a larger body of work) - you cannot post images, and you must tag text content, but, if handled in a mature and appropriate way, it will be acceptable on Sufficient Velocity.
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Evenstar received no exceptions. Instead, the staff decided that her work falls under this rule and is therefore acceptable on SV.
 
Vindictus said:
But mostly, it's a dumb argument because QQ's porn is basically all trash. Not even entertaining trash, just... boring and uninteresting.
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Eh, I disagree. While there's a lot of unadulterated smut, I've seen erotica that I expect would be acceptable here.

FortePlus said:
the directors couldn't exercise discretion.
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I explicitly said they would.

FortePlus said:
So it's interesting that you're suddenly super concerned with ""privacy"" here. If someone raises a concern with someone else in a relevant community that they've interacted with, and they have concerns about use of power, why are you shooting them down when they present evidence? Why do you want people not to substantiate their
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My worry about the policy shift was in part because of privacy concerns.

Regardless you've been consistently uncharitable in our interactions. I'd block you if I could, but as that isn't possible I would have to do this manually. Consider this goodbye.

Chlof said:
I'll say this as politely as I can: You have been here just over 6 months, making 68 posts 39 of which were posted within the last week in regards to SV policy chances. I really don't think you have any real grasp on what this community is, was or will become. Perhaps it would be better if you actually participated in this community before trying to make such sweeping changes?
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Maybe I shouldn't have said "becoming". :V

I don't think I'm supporting sweeping changes, just trying to resist changes I find unwelcome.

Evenstar said:
6: I'm in favour of LGBT rights, and will act to ensure that SV remains a safe and comfortable place for us to continue existing.
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I understand this. Do you have any ideas of policies you think SV could adopt to become more/remain welcoming?

Evenstar said:
1: Questionable Questing lacks Rule 2, and therefore its posters are held to an overall lower standard of discourse. This has significant cultural effects, not the least of which is that much of QQ is filled with transphobia.

2: Great erotica is a story that has to have an explicit sex scene in it in order to function. Highway Blossoms by Studio Elan is one of these. Merely good erotica is work that treats sexuality as meaningful and uses it to drive plot or build character - that doesn't just have sex for the sake of sex.

3: SV is more elitist than QQ, to put it bluntly. It actually cares about quality more. Moreover, SV's left lean correlates with sex-positive viewpoints, which correlates with being actually good at writing smut. As a result, the pool of available writers ought to be deeper here.

4: "IKEA Erotica" is erotica that reads like "Put tab A into slot B, repeatedly." It ignores the experiences of the participants to entirely focus on mechanical action. In short, it's bad.
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This was informative, thanks.

Evenstar said:
5: I'm against pain and suffering, in full generality, whenever they may occur, no matter who they occur to. They ought to be minimized if at all possible.
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I understand this, just not sure how it relates to SV.

Evenstar said:
7: Given my personal experiences with abusers, I cannot rationally debate you on the particular topic of this callout; I'm unwilling to shift from my position that this was a clear case of necessary reporting.
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Fair enough.

Suzu said:
We explicitly had numerous trans people come out and say this word makes them feel unwelcome and uncomfortable.
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Noted.

Suzu said:
Everything is political, whether one realizes that consciously or not.
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Pawn Lelouch said:
Fundamentally most topics are political in today's age. You may not have thought things were, but name a topic and I am willing to bet there is a political idea or slant that can be assigned to it.
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This is certainly a popular sentiment here, but let's agree to disagree.

Vindictus said:
Hey, you're new here so you might not be aware, but spaghetti posting is frowned upon.

And by frowned upon, I mean against the rules.
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What's spaghetti posting? Would you prefer I made several double posts instead?
 
Aedan777 said:
That Evenstar got some sort of specific exception is the unusual situation, not the restriction upon pornography. And Evenstar's platform is for a further expansion of pornographic content on SV, not a continuation of the current status quo. Therefore my position in opposition to said extension is not, as you imply, misguided. There are also in this thread many others who support the expansion of pornographic content on SV, in some form or fashion. I am speaking for the opposite position, which believes that the erosion of rule 6 is not in the benefit of SV as a whole.
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This is a misunderstanding of what the rules meant, and what happened with Evenstar bringing her fic over here.

To begin, you're correct that works like Black Bible and other purely prurient fics have always been banned- but there has always been an exception for works dealing with mature content, while also having a strong story.

The problem, I think, is that this allowance for erotica was signified by referencing Kushiel's Dart, a work which it appears basically nobody on the forums has actually read, and the discussion about what was allowed on SV was set by, well, QQ.
 
The rule regarding erotic content has been on SV for years. People simply had a misconception about its actual contents. Promoting a better understanding of this rule is therefore vital for the community as a whole.
 
Cinera said:
What's spaghetti posting? Would you prefer I made several double posts instead?
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Basically this
A number of other behaviors - while not necessarilyoffensive to discussion - are disruptive because they make discussion more difficult or raise the barrier to entry for others. Posting long spools of quotes snipped out of posts and responded to individually - "spaghetti posting" - is confusing and frustrating for users who are just browsing. In a similar way, certain sourcing practices - articles or videos in a foreign language without a translation or explanation, articles behind a paywall, videos without text, and so on - make it very difficult for users to participate in a conversation. If you are intending to rely on these kinds of materials, you need to make an effort to identify, isolate, and summarize the relevant parts in your post.
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You could just thank the people in your post, without putting a snippet of their post in your post, imo.
 
Vindictus said:
This is a misunderstanding of what the rules meant, and what happened with Evenstar bringing her fic over here.

To begin, you're correct that works like Black Bible and other purely prurient fics have always been banned- but there has always been an exception for works dealing with mature content, while also having a strong story.

The problem, I think, is that this allowance for erotica was signified by referencing Kushiel's Dart, a work which it appears basically nobody on the forums has actually read, and the discussion about what was allowed on SV was set by, well, QQ.
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Yeah, Rule 6 hasn't meaningfully changed since Sufficiently Sexy got shut down. It's always had that carve out for artistic merit if the content itself isn't literally illegal in Canada or Australia. I had a random masturbation scene out of the blue for the sake of a joke (that was also character development kinda) in the first quest I ran here way back when.

It's just nobody has ever read the rules and runs on what's basically folk law and whatever random shit QQ Rants says.
 
Apparently, what we needed all along was a gigantic undismissable banner that would explain what each rule means in plain text.
 
Suzu said:
Apparently, what we needed all along was a gigantic undismissable banner that would explain what each rule means in plain text.
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No problem, just doing my j- wait no I don't have one.
 
Aedan777 said:
I am unsure why you believe directing me to rule 6 undermines my point.
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Rule 6 already requires careful handling of all mature content making it "safe for work" by default.

The work we are describing also falls within the allowed portions of Rule 6 as others have mentioned.
 
Aedan777 said:
Functionally I see no difference between these two terms, I used the two primarily for word choice variety.


The latter. SV is, presently, workplace safe. Increased support and encouragement of pornography would jeopardize that, potentially. An argument might be made that a separate subforum for NSFW content would be an alternative, but reputation can precede this. If SV were to gain a reputation as a porn website, this could lead to greater restrictions by workplaces and other institutions that SV users might visit the site from.

Perhaps this could be characterized as an extreme scenario, and it is certainly speculative. However I do not believe that any benefit comes from being more open to pornography that would justify even a risk of this worst case scenario.
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My answer to you here is deeply rooted in my personal beliefs, to be frank - primarily my belief in the power of art, and the fact that I'm a trans lesbian.

There are some stories that are just easier to tell with sex scenes in them. There are, in fact, some stories that it's impossible to tell without having sex scenes in them. I want these stories to have an equal place at the table at SV - not to be given special privileges or exempted from criticism, but to be considered fairly on their merits, just as any other story would be.

Why do I feel that it's important that these stories be told? Because sexuality is a deep and vital part of human existence, and pretending that its frank description in a work instantly renders it pornographic - to use the word you've chosen, with all its ugly connotations of exploitation and debauchery - is blatantly false.

Moreover, as someone who's part of a sexual minority, stories where my sexuality is accepted and treated as right and worthy are inevitably of deep importance to me. In asking me to tell all my stories about sexuality without any actual sex in them, you're asking me to participate in my own censorship and erasure.

That's why stories about sex matter. Because sex matters. People grow close to each other through sex and fall apart over sex. People do stupid things for sex; people do tremendously clever things for sex. Some people don't desire sex, but end up having to navigate its waters anyway. Are all those stories not worth telling merely because they happen to involve explicit detail?
 
FortePlus said:
Rule 6 already requires careful handling of all mature content making it "safe for work" by default.

The work we are describing also falls within the allowed portions of Rule 6 as others have mentioned.
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Honestly I should just write that goddamned Abortions for Moloch essay so I can prove the real meaning of Rule 6 once and for all.

Leading by (bad) example and all that.
 
FortePlus said:
Rule 6 already requires careful handling of all mature content making it "safe for work" by default.

The work we are describing also falls within the allowed portions of Rule 6 as others have mentioned.
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No, I don't think this is correct either.

Handling issues with due care doesn't make them safe for work. Sex is still sex, and sex scenes are still sex scenes, even when they are depicted mindfully and in accordance with the rules.

And the Kushiel's Legacy series includes sex- kinky sex, even- at the center of its story. To paraphrase @Evenstar, there are some stories that it's impossible to tell without sex. And that's fine. We should distinguish those stories from SFW content, but prohibiting a story from existing purely because it touches on sexual themes isn't something I want, and I don't think it's what the staff wants either.
 
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