The following proposal has been granted an exception by the admin team to be proposed during the policy freeze due to its important nature.
Hello everyone and welcome to the Adult Content Curation proposal. This is an attempt to establish an official process for reviewing adult pages and adding the adult tag/splash page to relevant pages that contain content that is deemed inappropriate for minors who read our site. I hope with this process put in place, the amount of adult pages missed or neglected will be reduced and also ensure authors are aware of our standards and feel as comfortable as possible with the system.
I will start by outlining all of the problems that have been described by other staff members and users over the past couple months. This is not a comprehensive list so if there are any other concerns please state so.
1) No team has specific responsibility for Adult Pages
- Thus, reporting of adult pages is slapdash and requires people to read new articles, be on the lookout, and be aware of what themes may be considered adult
2) Articles with adult tags applied have no specific reasoning. Gut feeling / specific mentions drives this currently
- Authors are not informed when their pages are made adult, nor are they given specific reasons why. At least one author has noted a desire to avoid the adult tag, and is now attempting to make edits to cut out adult content. This is difficult when no specific reason is provided.
- Readers have highlighted the fact that this makes the warning next-to-useless; it only serves to warn against all adult themes, some of which may present a greater challenge for a reader than others. Having a list of concrete reasonings for adult-tagging could help.
In an attempt to fix these problems, I have the following proposal that I believe will effectively solve our current situation.
The following changes will be implemented with the passing of this proposal:
1: Taggers will have a new task added to their workload. Whenever a tagger discovers a newly posted article that contains subject matter worthy of the adult tag/splash page, the article in question will be sent to the adult content curation sub-team of MAST. Regular user reports will still be necessary to catch pages posted before now, but having taggers immediately notify us will reduce the likelihood of pages being missed in the future.
2: Members of the Adult Content Curation sub-team will be tasked with reviewing pages that may need the adult tag and implementing the Adult Splash Page on relevant articles once a final decision has been made. This team will be considered a new sub-team of MAST, however it will not have a designated section head. Instead the leadership role will be given to the current and future captains and vice captains of MAST.
3: The review of pages will take place in a channel within MAST that will be viewable by all staff who are above the age of 18, however messages will only be allowed by members of the team. This is to ensure discussion remains on topic. I will also add that jokes and off discussion in this channel will not be tolerated.
4: When a decision has been made, the owner of the relevant page will be notified and the reasons for the adult tag will be communicated to them. If the author wishes to appeal the addition of the tag, all concerns will be relayed back to the team for secondary review. Authors may appeal more then once but substantial edits must be made prior to a second appeal. Due to the adult nature of this, appeals will not be posted to O5. This is to ensure that the page can be thoroughly discussed without risking the potential exposure of adult content to minors viewing O5 Command, as well as potentially putting authors on blast for writing about adult content. This is to be treated as a standard tag dispute, not a disciplinary case.
5: The guide for adult pages will be updated to reflect all of these changes and I will personally be handling this rewrite with the assistance of staffers who decide to join the Adult Content Curation sub-team. The guide will be improved to directly explain the process to authors, and will give a thorough explanation of how to contact The members of this new team, and how to appeal.
6: This proposal will also transfer the purview to define what the adult tag covers from TECH to this new team. Once this has happened, we will revisit the discussion on what would be considered "adult" and form a definitive list of content that will fall into this definition. The final call on what is considered adult will be up to the members of this team once the purview has been transferred and definitions have been determined, however we will be taking into account the opinions of other members of staff and regular users during the process. The redefining of this tag will be it's own separate policy discussion and vote.
7: Changes to the splash page will also be revisited after this policy is put into effect, and after clear definitions for what is considered adult have been decided. The team will be working to improve the page, but the splash page itself will still remain the sole purview of TECH. A prototype of the new page created by Estrella can be found here http://scp-sandbox-3.wikidot.com/vivarium. (The implementation of this page is not a part of this proposal). Any changes to the adult splash page will also be it's own separate policy discussion and vote.
If there are any complaints, or if you feel this is satisfactory, please state so below. If you are interested in joining this team once this proposal passes, then please make a note of that in your comment as well, preferably in bold so I don't miss it. This discussion will remain up for exactly one week and will then move into the voting phase.
Thank you for your time. Peace.
