Forum:Reconsidering terms of use enforcement

It should come as no surprise to regular editors that I've long been uncomfortable with a laissez-faire attitude regarding clop and excessive violence. The wikia terms of use, which don't allow users to "Post or transmit any content that is obscene, pornographic, abusive, offensive, profane, [...]", can be interpreted very restrictively, like on the sister wiki (which doesn't allow even self-censored swearing). Or they can be interpreted very permissively, and this wiki is closer to that end of the spectrum than the other. I want to ask the wiki to edge closer to the centre.

It would make no sense to be as restrictive as the Friendship is Magic Wiki because we do cover, and should continue to cover, material intended for adults only. But it's undeniable that people who are underage also visit this wiki, and I don't think it's unreasonable to practice some restraint considering the source material. We slap at least one big red warning template on articles which cover material not suitable for children for a reason. Comments don't have that. It's not just children I'm thinking of; many adults are also turned off by excessive swearing and people freely posting links to porn, which impacts the wiki's appeal to potential new users.

I therefore propose:
 * For articles nothing would change, except that the About page should explicitly disallow posting a link to visual pornographic or excessively violent material. This wouldn't affect fan fiction pages. It probably wouldn't affect Banned From Equestria (Daily) except for the direct download links (which don't belong on there anyway), since furaffinity and inkbunny don't allow you to play the game without explicitly turning the mature content filter off, from what I understand. For the same reason, links to the deviantArt or furaffinity sites of artists who also draw stuff other than porn would remain fine as long as they're behind a filter.
 * I know some people have been having fun with adding images to the gallery which used to be pornographic until cropped or slightly altered. The thing is, when you brag about it in the comment section, that changes the context for the image for the people who didn't know. So if the original image would have been inappropriate, the cropped or altered version should be removed. There's no way to police that in every case anyway, but in cases where a user knows where the image came from, he or she can remove it. If you want to have a little fun, keep the image's origin to yourself to delay its removal. I for one certainly won't go around browsing explicit galleries on a hunch.
 * No direct links to pornographic or violent images in the comment section regardless of whether a warning is given. No embedding of any graphic or suggestive images of any kind.
 * No swearing. Self-censoring with stars or substitutions (like the inexplicably popular "buck") would be allowed, but discouraged. Can be implemented for the future via the abuse filter if I ever learn how to use the thing, and existing comments can probably be altered via bot.

Thoughts? --Tulipclaymore (talk) 18:29, August 1, 2012 (UTC)