Forums » Smalltalk » Community discussion: Policy changes for adult RP

I can understand these concerns, though I'm not sure there's a way to verify age without some recouping of the administrative expenses it would incur. This is a mark in favor of it not being required, though!

Re: security, I suspect it would probably function much the same way we handle paypal or credit card information, in that we permanently delete it the very second it is no longer needed. For credit cards, this is basically a fraction of a second after you hit "purchase," it's not even stored into permanent memory.

For IDs, I'm guessing we'd need to keep the info on hand for more like a week before scrapping it. This would at least mitigate the risk by making it short-lived, and making the site a low value target, as not many IDs could even be looked at if someone went through the trouble of attacking it.

Can we make a "Looking for Adult RP Forum" link that just redirects to F-List?

RPR's mission as a social network -- those are the words on the front page -- is incompatible with the attitudes of people whose primary mission in roleplay is sexual gratification. "A hidden area will help!" Bury all the toxic waste you want, it's still garbage. At best every minute spent catering to those kinds of people is a minute less for everything else you've built. At worst, they'll pollute it.

I define "those kinds of people" as the ones making the kind of blatant requests for lurid adult roleplay that prompted this thread in the first place, but sexuality occurs to varying degrees in all kinds of roleplay. If you're going to segregate adult RP where do you draw the line? Does someone who wants to write a romance novel with the occasional sexual roleplay have to seek out a partner in the same place people are looking to get their fetishes gratified? What about a roleplay not originally intended to be sexual but evolves over time to consider it? Masters of these questions don't bother with any of this stuff, they just do try to reasonably ensure everyone is of age. Lawmakers do it, F-list does it, it isn't a coincidence.

I appreciate this discussion is born out of a desire to help and improve and you (Kim) are the most dedicated and transparent person I've ever seen in that regard, but as the old saying goes, please all and you will please none. If you notice a worrying trend in the community, the solution isn't to cater to the trend, it's to double down on the community. Put at the top of the rules in blinking lights that searches for adult roleplay are to be done privately and any sexuality in RP should be conducted with due diligence toward partner age; that's RPR, and if if that isn't good enough for someone they can go somewhere else.

I think the forum could be used by people who wanted to advertise for RP partners that were definitely, at least as far as anyone can reasonably know, an adult. So that might include someone wanting to RP absolutely tame, no swearing, no violence, no sex RPs, they just happen to prefer players more in their own age bracket. So far the idea is that we would only require that sexual RP requests went there, because there are legal implications with sexual RPs that there just aren't for others.

Since it will be opt-in only, it's a bit impractical to use it for non-restricted RP types, but I can't see myself booting someone out for posting a regular type RP request.

You can request a RP that's going to involve violence and swearing that go beyond the public limits on the current Looking For RP Forum without issue -- there aren't really legal issues surrounding it, and it is easy to say "There will be cursing" without listing all of the actual swears that the RP will contain. Requests for sexual RPs, on the other hand, can get people put in jail if the wrong person responds, AND often list the actual sex acts that are desired right there in the open forums.

I'm one of those people who enjoys roleplay of a sexual nature because I happen to like writing that kind of stuff. So far my actions have not polluted the site, in fact I'm a massive contributor to the site in more ways than just one. I have roleplayed many incredible stories that contain this kind of content, whether it's an outright request for sexual RP or whether it's a story that naturally evolves to it.

F-List is a site I avoid, and it seems to be primarily used by furries, so that doesn't seem like a valid option for a userbase as diverse as RPR.

The options Kim is considering will be tremendously helpful not just to the player base, but also to the moderator team. It will weed out a lot of problems that already exist and will continue to exist because sexual roleplay is and always has been part of the roleplay culture. A system like this will also put yet another safeguard into place that will avoid RPR succumbing to some legal troubles that got other sites eradicated from the internet. There's really no downside to the suggestion as far as I can tell. If you don't like it nobody will force you to participate or even see the forum. I doubt most of the community will even notice it at first if they don't follow the news updates.

I've only skimmed through some of the input here, and I'm not entirely sure where I stand. It's not something I generally put a whole lot of thought into since it's not the sort of thing I aim for, and when it does happen to come up anyway, I'm a fade-to-black person. I will throw out a couple statements, though.

One, despite being an adult myself, it always weirds me out a little seeing people specifically looking for sexual RP. Perhaps I'm just a prude, but there are unfortunate cases where I feel uncomfortable at the idea of interacting with certain people that I know nothing about except that they actively seek sexual RP at least some of the time.

Second, other RP sites I've been on have banned sexual RP entirely - or at least tried to. Rather than eliminating it, it simply became harder to track short of invading private communications, as it'd all happen in PMs or offsite. In my opinion, that actually gave a false sense of security at best. When I first started playing here, I was originally very hesitant to play via PM because it'd been drilled into my head that PM RP was just to hide risque stuff like that.

Don't passports count as valid IDs in the United States? I know that in Europe it's a form of ID that is legal and accepted without question if other forms of ID aren't on hand.

I'd like to point out that many of the issues being commented on here are things that would be included on F-List, like underage characters. The people wanting age-verification want a safe place to play adult characters in a fashion they enjoy. F-List has a number of things that would make it illegal for people from certain countries to visit, even if they can do adult RP here because Kim has purposely tried to set up a safe place for us to play. (I say "try" only because I don't know if there are places that would find the content here illegal, not a comment on you Kim!"

I appreciate where you're coming from, sland, but I respectfully disagree that primarily-sexual RPs are entirely incompatible with the RPR. We've had characters and RPers like this from day one. Most are extremely respectful and rule-abiding. Some are long-time, active members of the OOC community who are helpful and welcoming. Many have some "serious" RP characters covered in glowing kudos, in addition to their super-smut-all-the-time characters. Most want to keep their activities quite private, realizing that it is uncomfortable and/or inappropriate for those who run across it unwittingly. I'm a little surprised there's so much vitriol toward helping a segment that's always been there go back to being as private as they used to be.

No that's totally okay either way! All we can ever do is try, right?

Despite the fact that it took me 7 forms of ID to obtain my passport, no, in many cases, my passport does not count as valid ID. I have had multiple jobs refuse to take it as a form of ID, in fact. Other cases in which it has been denied has been due to the fact it does not state my address and residency of my state (it only says I am a US citizen). But that's neither here nor there.

Learned something new! That kind of sucks.

Speaking of EU folks Kim, would it even be possible for you to verify our IDs/licenses? I've no idea what process is involved with it.

I have no idea what the full process would be for US IDs, either! This is why all of that is very much pending a discussion with a lawyer, if we decide it's something we'd like to pursue.

And even if it isn't something we pursue, I still think it'd be nice to get a lawyer's opinion on the option, just 'cause it's good info to have!

This might be because a few of us have had unpleasant encounters with the more bold of the segment, Kim. I've had people on Furcadia be like 'do you really need that?' when I put the '[no yiff]' tag on my character description, but I always say yes, yes I do, because people will contact my character with nothing in mind but sex RP. So I think that might be where some of the critical comments are coming from. Personally though, I think the opt-in hidden forum would be a fantastic idea. There's nothing more disappointing to me personally than to see a bunch of prompts on RP Finder only to have them all 'adult themes'. It'd be really nice to not have to weed through the super sketch (and sometimes just yucky/gross personally) RP ads to find the good ones.

I'm a huge grump! But jokes aside, is that what's really happening? "Ideal" sexual roleplayers on RPR as you describe them...
...Don't appear to be the same people blowing up the Looking For RP forum. This "segment" isn't once-model members who've thrown discretion to the wind and need help to be "as private as they used to be". Like I defined in my first post, It's a totally new group of people without well-defined guidelines to how to go about their business here -- so we should define them, ideally along the lines of the responsible members you just described. My worry is that a separate forum would shunt these players out of sight without addressing their (lack of) discretion, and as CelestinaGrey points out (and 5 minutes on F-List proves), a lot of sex-driven roleplayers can be quite callous.

Of the three possible solutions served up in the OP, I could get behind #1 -- Looking For Adult-Only RP Forums -- if it came with the caveat that this is RPR, and people pursuant of primarily-sexual RP need to do so with a level of courtesy and respect befitting the community. With luck you planned to do this all along, in which case some confirmation would go a long way toward easing my worries.

Keep in mind that adult themes also include the excessive gore and language use, it's not just sexual themed stuff. Quite a few prompts are labeled this way for non-sexual adult stuff. I've frequently used this label myself for zombie-type roleplays that will, inadvertently, contain massive amounts of death and gore without ever having anything sexual happening.

Also remember there is a search filter to exclude adult themes.

Kim, is there any way we can quick-fix the issue of adult prompts being shown by automatically flagging the "Exclude adult themes" filter instead of having to manually activate it? All other filters are on by default so perhaps if you have to take that one extra step to list adult themes it will avoid minors seeing those right off the bat.

That would help for the time being until the new system potentially gets put into place, although we'll have to rely on our lovely mods to keep an eye on the Looking For forums.

It's not really a new group of people. These kind of people have been around since the beginning of the site's existence, but the problem is that it only takes one example for the rest to follow, because if one person does it, it must be okay. Then it just becomes difficult to nip it in the butt because people love to use the "But s/he did it too!" line. Our only issue so far is that the site policies have had gray areas and they need to be defined better to keep up with the dynamics of a growing community. That doesn't change the fact these people have always been around doing their thing.

Once again, F-list is not a leading representative for this kind of stuff, it's mainly used by furries who have a very different culture than what is on the RPR. Celestina is also referring to Furcadia, which is mainly a furry-type community. I've not had one interaction on RPR - not ONE - where sexual roleplays were a source for harassment. The only times people have ever contacted me for that kind of stuff was when I asked for it.

I don't think it's fair to base your opinions on what RPR needs based on what other communities do. Aren't we always shouting proudly that RPR is different from other communities in a positive way? We wouldn't be saying that if the userbase was having these callous issues as described. They belong in different places. It's pretty frustrating to read so many suggestions that are based on experiences that don't apply to this site.

Our goal is that we need to protect everyone from common teen ignorance so that nobody gets in trouble on either end of the spectrum. The last thing I want is to feel as if sexual roleplays have to be hidden shamefully from the public eye (edit: I want to clarify I don't object the appropriate place for these RPs, I just don't want to feel like we're being stuffed into a corner and pretend we don't exist as if we're some bad part of the site). It's bad enough that I feel I have to hide my identity by only using anonymous characters for these roleplays, I don't want to be pushed into a shame corner wearing a dunce cap as a follow up.

Absolutely!! This IS the RPR, and I do not envision ever having a board where the rules regarding being nice, treating others with respect, behaving with basic etiquette, and keeping posts on topic and appropriate go out the window. I am not proposing an un-moderated dumping ground where people are allowed to do and say anything.

I don't envision the board being particularly more graphic than anything that's currently in Looking For and has been allowed to stay -- just this time around, you'll get to choose whether or not you want to see that type of content before seeing it, people won't have to have quite so many creepy crawlies about the potential identity of the person posting, and the mods won't have mini heart attacks and run to investigate who is making every post because that investigation has already been done.

Also note the proposed board is an OOC "Looking For" Board, not a RP board, and the actual "act" would still need to find somewhere private to occur.

We are discussing how to keep these things away from people that shouldn't be seeing it. Sexual roleplay is sexual roleplay, and, frankly, there are other and more properly tailored places to do it, but if it must be found and/or done in a public location on the RPR it is in everyone's best interests to make it as removed as possible in order to address the problem at hand in this thread, if it must be formally supported by the website at all.

I am of the opinion that it shouldn't be, in part because it's just easier to deal with this problem in that way. Feelings of 'shame' or making individuals feel like 'dirty laundry' is, unfortunately, a side effect of explicit and restricted content on a website that is not designed for it, and should be secondary to the primary objective of ensuring the site is appropriate for all ages and enforced as such to make it a safer environment for all participants.

If we are going to argue based on feelings, let it be known that I am thoroughly mortified, indeed, entirely embarrassed, to have learned here that we are known for an overabundance of smut, that I am uncomfortable with the reputation of the RPR and of openly associating myself with it because of it, and that taking care of this problem correctly and thoroughly is therefore of great importance to me.

That is the last I have to say here on the matter! I wish the rest of the community the best of luck in defining a solution for this serious legal and public affair.

For the purpose of verifying your age, a passport is a valid form of identification. It is a legal document containing your birth date, issued by your country and recognized by foreign governments. So yes, in this instance, you do have a form of ID that is legal and accepted without question.

Okay, I am under the impression that most people agree that a opt-in, 18+ forum is a reasonable next step. I am also coming to understand that a fair portion of the community not directly engaged in it or in moderating it hadn't even noticed it, which leads me to further conclude it will probably hurt nobody to move it to where it will continue to go unnoticed.

I'm going to work on the required changes.