Site Rules Updated

Hello everyone!
 
We would like to announce that the site’s rules have undergone a major re-write so that they would be more organized, clearer, and easier to understand. This has been a long process that involved a number of revisions and a lot of community feedback, and we would like to thank everyone who contributed to the discussion.
 
It is very important to note that this update is not changing the site’s overall policy, or what is enforced. Instead, the purpose of this re-write is to simply to improve the overall transparency of the rules and clarify what they are. The stance on what is/isn’t allowed on this site is exactly the same as it always has been.
 
In addition, a few rules have been merged together and/or rearranged, so rule numbers may be different for deletion reasons, bans, and reports. However, the more commonly referenced rules are numbered identically as to the previous revision of the rules.
 
Be sure to check out the rewritten rules page, and if you have any questions, comments, or concerns, please feel free to leave them in the comments below!
 
Thanks!

Also, please note that I claim no responsibility for the text of the site-wide notification.

typo
 
Forum threads that are intended to contain sexual or violent comment should be marked by including [NSFW] in the thread’s title.

rule 4 tho  
this is good

@Kaz  
s added.

Thank you and everyone involved for all your hard work on these.

Naice

thanks for the hard work, I hope people actually read them.

Finally,been waiting for the change.

Slight grammatical error on rule number five.  

 
Instead, it should be “…of Germany and France, therefore…”.
 
Forgot to mention; thanks for the new and improved rules. It does seem more concise.

@Eeveeinheat  
That’s because it used to say “the United Kingdom, Germany, and France”. Whoever removed the UK at the last minute forgot Northern Ireland….
 
/goes off to start poking the devs

@Joey  
It did feel like something was missing, but that would have required me to make assumptions.

@Eeveeinheat  
You can read the final draft of the rules before they were published here - there were a few very minor changes made between that getting approved and them actually getting published:
 

@Joey  
where are the new rules?  
can I see them?

@FilthyRichFan25  
Click the Site Rules link at the bottom.

So the laws of the UK no longer apply to images? Does that alter the ban on humanized foalcon? That was a UK only law last time I checked.
 
EDIT: “Do not indiscriminately downvote images based on their tags and/or content. Instead, filter content you do not wish to see.”  
This is from Rule #6, but it feels like a Rule #4 thing. If the point of the rewrite was to make the rules not blend together so much, then this part of Rule #6 really doesn’t help.

@Minus  
France still has a law against this kind of content so it is not in the clear, however we do not have anything other than the mailserver located in the UK right now so its laws may not be given as much thought for our userbase if we decide they have gone too 1984 for us.
 
coughcough Theresa May cough

@Minus  
We consider mass indiscriminate downvoting to be more of an “abusing site functionality” thing, since that is not the intended purpose of downvotes. Especially since there’s been plenty of instances of people downvoting images because they do not contain content.
 
For example, if someone was way too obsessed with AppleDash, they may do a search for “Applejack, Rainbow Dash”, and downvote everything that is not AppleDash. It’s happened - it’s not the easiest thing to catch, but people have done that before.

@FilthyRichFan25  
The blue text in the original post is a link to the rules page.

@Joey  
Out of curiosity, if rule zero is a thing, doesn’t that make certain tags inherently against it?
 
The drama tag, for example, indicates that the tagged image incites strong feelings one way or another.
 
The Op is a duck tag is stating “This guy is an asshole, you should shit on him”
 
One is fine since it’s about the image, the other is clearly intended to antagonize the poster.

@Background Pony #89F0  
Those tags aren’t instructions for how future readers and commenters on images should respond, they’re reflections of “what’s gone on in here in the past” so that people who want to avoid images with a lot of drama, or images that are intentionally posted to upset or troll others, can do so.

@Background Pony #89F0
 
>The Op is a duck tag is stating “This guy is an asshole, you should shit on him”
 
Pretty much what Ciaran said. The long description for the op is a duck tag is:  

It’s not a blank check to ignore Rule 0. It’s a warning so people can avoid having to deal with things that are trying to be unpleasant.

@Exedrus  
Yes, but then you’re making assumptions about the intentions of the poster. Which is again, antagonistic.

@Ciaran  
The drama tag should be more than sufficient for that purpose. Op Is A Duck, whatever the description of it tries to imply, is clearly making an opinion on the poster, and not the image.

@Background Pony #89F0  
And I’ve seen it used on images where OP was not being a duck, at least not on purpose. So it has already been misused. But that’s when you simply untag it. No need to remove the whole tag for a minor amount of misuse.  
But there are many times where you’re not making an assumption. Where it is very clear what OP’s intent is. Having a tag for that does far more good than it could possibly do bad. What else would we tag such posts for people that want to filter things made to upset them on purpose? Well, I think we do have a few other good tags, mostly for a specific kind of duckery though.
 
Also the “drama” tag does not imply any malice in the post, whereas “OP is a Duck” does. Making them VERY different. I’d skip an OP is a Duck post, but I like to read drama ones.