Unofficial BLM-related Policy Change Discussion Thread

I’d like to know if this policy is open to feedback, or if this is a matter of ‘just deal with it.’  
Are the staff talking amongst themselves about it?  
Comments made seem to indicate this was not a unified decision.

Holy sauce, all my BLM pics are having to be locked. WHAT is 4chan doing!? And they all have Derpi accounts to boot??

@Background Pony #651C
 
I mean, I see what’s going on, I just don’t necessarily have to like what my fandom has become with all these fascists.

@I Literally Dont Care What You Want  
You can’t blame 4chan forever.

@I Literally Dont Care What You Want  
Yeah, darn that individual known as 4chan.

@I Literally Dont Care What You Want  
>I just don’t necessarily have to like what my fandom has become with all these fascists.  
you haven’t seen actual fascists in your life, my friend.
 
You might have had to deal with republicans/conservatives going mad and doing stupid things in social media but definitely,your country doesn’t have any chance to reach fascism (it would even go libertarian before that). Just because right wing people don’t eat up the politically correct discourse, it doesn’t mean that they don’t believe in democracy nor they want to remove the constitution or amendment that guarantees the rights and order of that country.
 
A fascist wouldn’t even bother to discuss with you nor tolerate anything, they would aim at you instead for believing in a democratic regime and institutions that they don’t like. Also,fascists hate capitalist economies.
 
Antifas have more relationship with fascism than the average republican out there.
 
If those “”“fascists””” (that is to say,right wing people) didn’t exist as the enemy, the antifas would go after the democrats and socialists without a doubt.
 
Be careful with your wishes.

What I don’t understand is that the justification given for the rule is “drama is hard to moderate, so you can’t intentionally make and post art that incites drama”. And yet there are multiple pictures with >50 comments arguing about politics, and/or with seas of deleted comments, which are still up.
 
Why not just directly go out and say “pictures which criticise the side we like during current events are gonna be deleted, while pictures which side with our point of view are gonna get the usual treatment of manually moderating the comments and drama despite this new rule existing that supposedly makes this much easier”?

The “Ask the Mods Important Questions” thread has been unlocked.  
I assume this thread remains the place to talk about this particular issue or should questions and concerns be posted in the other thread?

Reminder: In any given thread please post as yourself, or anonymously. Replying to yourself or using the anonymous features of the site to appear to be more than one person in any given thread is against our rules.
 
Anonymity is ok with us - please just don’t abuse it to sockpuppet.
 
@Background Pony #AC85  
You’ve posted in this thread 10 times … yes - this is the thread where you talk about the thing you’ve been talking about here since the thread was created. When the other thread is unlocked then whether this discussion will move back there or not will be something that will be discussed when the other thread is unlocked.

@Derpy Whooves  

 
Wanna point out that it’s unlocked right now, in fact that’s what prompted @Background Pony #AC85 ’s post

@Background Pony #CF7D  
Oh, ok - did not notice that.
 
Since this is a speciality thread for this particular issue, maybe it would help people ask questions about other problems they might he having with the site, like questions about profiles, etc, if we kept the discussion about this topic here.
 
So … I guess that’s the discussion of what to do.
 
Please keep talking about the topic of this thread in this thread. That would be nice.

@Derpy Whooves  
Thank you, i was unsure whether mods would continue to respond to this thread or just the main question thread.  
I apologise if that comment about sockpuppeting is directed at me, it is not my intention to try and obfuscate my identity.
 
As for your response in the vent thread, specifically my posts deletion, that’s exactly why i wished to discuss it here instead of that other thread.  
Can we actually discuss it though, i’d rather not waste both of our time if you believe me to be talking in bad faith.

Racism in police exists, but destroying everything isn’t going to help.
 
If a black person wants white power there are people trying to give blacks white power.
 
STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) is a white dominated set of fields looking to adopt as many minorities as possible, but they don’t need people who destroy to deal with their anger.

@Background Pony #AC85  

 
I don’t know if anyone wants to continue talking about it either. The comment about sockpuppeting was not directed at you - you’ve been really good about picking one and only one way to present yourself in threads, so don’t worry about it. And I don’t really want to discuss it - I’m just trying to answer what seem to be the questions that I probably can help with. I assume your questions are actual questions that you actually have, so I’m answering the ones that I think I can help with.
 
@Ninji  
Yeah, we can fix things. We don’t have to start over from scratch. There’s too much “throw it all away and rebuild it from the ground up” because for some reason THAT would be easier or more satisfying than making changes to deal with the existing problems.

My Republican neighbor says black people said “white people, why are you burning your own stuff?”
 
I’m the kind of person who would be out there picketing with a sign, but yanno- covid19 is a thing and I rather suspect I like living, when I’m not being trolled to death by a bunch of haters.

@I Literally Dont Care What You Want  
… I’m not sure how this is related to the policy change on the site. Did you mean to post this in the Politics General thread?

@Derpy Whooves  

 
yes. link?

@I Literally Dont Care What You Want  
Forums -> Generals -> Don’t blame me, I voted for the other guy. (Politics General)  

Okay. I have severe concerns about this policy. Deleting stuff that is blatant trolling I’d feel a little leery about but I can understand it all from a standpoint of moderating those toxic comment sections and such, but I take particular issue with the tweet here:  
https://twitter.com/Derpibooru/status/1268599324834959363  
Particularly the that they would adjust content in the future based on current events. I personally could care less about banning /pol/ content, at least if it was restricted to blatant political propaganda. What makes someone like me uncomfortable is that there is a lot of gray with that and in stance is unclear. Is stuff like this banned even in a memey context?  
https://derpibooru.org/images/2268047  
The other side of the coin is that there is a lot of things within our fandom that I could see running to controversy like this and I do have concerns with the site being able to keep its status as a archive. From old and extremely edgy content like Pony.mov to the off color jokes in Totally Legit Recap. There is plenty that can run into controversy and there is a faction of the fandom that is calling for a pretty broad and vague push to eliminate “alt right” elements and be more inclusive and I can’t help but feel that with another event or two we could be at a place where hosting content like this will run into controversy and be just as much of a battleground. From what I’ve seen of other communities that aren’t big social networks themselves that become polarized they tend to segregate or split apart and I do have significant concerns for the future of this place as an archive.
 
@Derwol  
@LunarMadness  
I know many of us are upset at the fear of this place purging content and turning into a censorious hellhole but we can’t give up or just act in blind anger. We need to be claim, collected and keep be watchful for them to move the line to them outright banning disagreement or destroying the purpose of this site. Try to be understanding of those that disagree and show them how such an arrangement could hurt them as well.
 
@Minus  
My other biggest problem with the tweet is that it said they would ban content that downplays BLM and that I fear all criticism against the organization could easily be made an unacceptable position to even have at all with how some treat it. I have nothing against the motto, but my position against them would probably take too long to detail and be best left to the political thread

@Derpy Whooves  

 
Fair enough, i’ll simply state how i see things and merely ask that you clarify anything i’m incorrect about.  
I’ll also refrain from walls of text and keep to simple seperate statements.
 
The new (or rather, extended) policy of rule 0 is intended to make the mods job easier by removing sources of major conflict from the site.
 
User-to-user conflict can now include real world groups and humanity in general.
 
The current system of tagging, filters and associated rules regarding said tags and filters was deemed inadequate.
 
This is not retroactive, existing content will be unaffected, only new uploads.
 
This will occur on a case-by-case basis, at mod discretion.
 
Removed content is not permanently banned (unless breaking a secondary rule that warrents such), but the timescale is at mod discretion.
 
Derpy is cute.

@Background Pony #AC85  

 
I do not believe that is the intention of the statement that was made. I thought the statement clear when it said; “Derpibooru’s administration fully supports the Black Lives Matter movement and are abhorred by the onslaught of police brutality across the United States”.
 

 
Again, I don’t know what you mean. People will always be in conflict of some sort, we have people here in conflict because someone drew an image with their waifu having sex with someone other than their oc, so they’re CERTAINLY going to be in conflict over IRL events. But we do ask that people keep politics in the Politics General thread, not shit up artist’s images with off topic debates (which includes turning an image of a pony with a flag into a debate of the sociopolitical history of movements or arguments about whether certain groups of people should be allowed to use this site, etc).
 

 
Ok, now I have absolutely no idea what we’re talking about. Our filtering and tagging is one of the premier things about the site - yeah, it’s got problems, but who said that it was inadequate? And what does that have to do with this?
 
You STILL are expected to not break Rule #2 or Rule #4. If someone doesn’t tag something properly (especially if they do it to circumnavigate things like artist’s DNPs) or if someone is whinging on about something they could easily filter, we’re still going to talk with them, and if they don’t change their behavior we will ban them from the site.
 

 
Yeah, that’s right. This is just like the Rule #5 change that happened years ago.
 

 
That is literally how we do everything.
 
I’m replying to you, because in this case it seemed that it was worth taking the time to reply to you. Case-By-Case. I’m not replying to others, I am replying to you. Some others see this as favoritism or censorship. I don’t know if that’s right, but as a volunteer I reserve the right to ignore shit that I don’t feel like dealing with.
 

 
If something was deleted for breaking a rule like Rule #1 or because it broke Rule #3, #6, or #0 - something where the image clearly broke our rules, then it broke our rules and we’re not going to restore it.
 
What do you mean by ‘discretion’? We’re volunteers working together in a common chat channel asking if something breaks a rule. If folks look at it and we agree that it breaks a rule, then handle it as such. Is that what you mean by ‘discretion’?
 
I mean, we’re not a juried gallery - but we DO have a form of ‘jury review’ where the jury is the staff. And one of the things we do is ask whether a rule is applicable to a particular image or situation - again; case by case. Maybe an image breaks Rule #0 but it’s also Rule #1 because the artist is DNP - in that case the simple solution is Rule #1 so we Rule #1 it.
 
Is that what you mean?
 

 
I agree.