Staffing Making a Comfortable Site

[Uaithne 543]

I disagree, @Raven.  I don't think it's appropriate to make administrators have content on their board that they're not comfortable with, especially if they're also responsible for moderating the site as well.

 

Can you imagine how much the highly-religious person I mentioned in my first post would struggle?  No sexual talk, no violence--those might be fine to avoid if they're tagged.  No swearing?  Geeze, I don't like swearing and even I still swear sometimes in threads; it would be pretty hard to find a thread without swearing.  No talk of supernatural?  So have to tag all threads that have mentions of ghosts.  No talk of other religious or religious events means avoiding all threads with Christmas or Kwanzaa or birthdays or whatever (none of which Jehovah's Witnesses celebrate).  No talk of premarital sex means that the person wouldn't be able to RP with any characters who were having sexual relations outside of marriage.

 

Etc, etc.

 

18+ means many things.  My site is technically 18+ because I only want writers over 18, but even if I could afford premium, I would not want an "anything goes" sort of site, warning tags or not.  I'm still responsible for the material to some extent, and I can't sit there and avoid every thread.

[Guest BETA BLUE]

Consider this too. There are people that have an extreme fear of the opposite sex due abuses that they have experienced.  We see this in shelters across many different countries. Having a safe place even online in beneficial to them. If writing is a therapy for them and someone creates a site that is protective for them, more power them to help them feel safe and take those steps towards healing. 

[webs 14]

When it comes to administrators not being comfortable with certain topics, I think it has to be weighed up whether they want an outright ban on topics that they absolutely cannot handle (for whatever reason, personal, anxiety, etc.) or if they want to allow the content but employ content/trigger warnings. The latter I prefer, but I think they're misunderstood.

 

Content/Trigger warnings aren't so much an 'avoid' but a 'prepare yourself' deal. For instance, when reviewing I have one main thing that I'd prefer not to read (and being on a team means that I often don't need to read such apps) which is descriptions of somebody dealing with terminal illness. Now, if there was an app with this tagged, I would be able to review it when I feel that it won't cause me undue stress, because I would be aware of it being in the app and thus can ensure that, if it starts to feel too much, I can self-care.

 

If it is untagged, I am not prepared for it. I will read it, come across a point, and this can cause an anxiety attack at worst, or just a build-up of anxiety as I go deeper. This can then affect me for the rest of the day, because unprepared it will strike my emotions further than if warned ahead of time. I would not have various things that help me calm down at hand ready.

 

The rest of my team may not share the same trigger, so it wouldn't be fair to ban it because only one admin (who is the newest to join the team, at that) can't always handle it. Each individual has different topics that invoke strong feelings, whether anxiety or not, and members have different ones as well. Content/trigger warnings can be used as an 'avoid this if you're uncomfortable with it', but more importantly it is a pre-warning to say 'this app contains graphic/detailed triggering content, if you're comfortable with it then read on, if you're not then you can come back when you do feel comfortable or you can skip over it'. 

 

It's different for everybody, and how they handle it will be different as well. I would rather have an optional way of saying that a thread or app contains graphic content. It becomes mandatory when the graphic content goes into actual gore or full-on sexual content territory.

[Raven 18]

@Uaithne That is fair enough if you're the only one on the team, and it definitely depends on what you want in a website. By 18+ I meant 3-3-3, which was erroneous of me. What I mean to say is that if your board has a 3 rating for sex, I would consider it an extremely inappropriate thing to ban non-consensual plots, or lesbian sex, or any other single thing specifically because you morally opposed that thing.

 

If your board has a 2-2-2 rating, then that is perfectly fine to be 18+ or 30+ or whatever number you want, and to ban all of the more extreme violence/sex/extreme language.

 

If you want to have sex, I think it is inappropriate for a board administrator to say that you could only have straight, missionary sex. If you are uncomfortable with sex, put a 1 or a 0 for your board sex rating.

 

 

 

Similarly, I think it is inappropriate for a board administrator to say that you can talk about their religion positively, but not about any other religion.

Edited January 6, 2018 by Raven

[Uaithne 543]

I agree, @Raven, that it's not fair that one religion can be talked about but others cannot. Or other things that are banned but similar to an allowed thing, like saying people can talk about Lord of the Rings but Harry Potter is banned.

 

But I still disagree that if someone has a 333 site that they should not ban any topics. They should be clear about it, and its up to the members to decide if it's the sort of site they want to join. Administrators should be allowed to ban things that they don't want on the site, whether it's for moral or other reasons. Heck, even the site that doesn't allow male players should be able to run as they wish (though my thoughts on that topic have already been thoroughly explored earlier in this thread).

[Raven 18]

@Uaithne That also makes sense. I'm certainly not going to go around Fighting all the sites that ban homosexuality. I think it's inappropriate and I'd never join a site like that, but it's better that they're clear of their expectations rather than springing it afterwards.

 

I think, ultimately, my biggest issue (specificially in regards to banning something that is similar to a thing that can be talked about, but also with not being allowed to talk about things in general), is that I've grown up in a very religious area, my whole life. I've personally dealt with a lot of pushing to join religions and I've dealt with what was (in my opinion, at least) extremely cult-ish behaviors... and, tbqh, I've fallen for them. The idea of not being allowed to discuss certain topics at all, really squicks me out. It terrifies me. And so it's definitely a personal thing, but I personally would say that it's better to have safe, constructive ways to handle conversation, rather than banning it. I'd also agree that I wouldn't want to ban any specific group, although I think that the idea of having a board that is more oriented to female energy would be fine - although again, I may not necessarily join it, depending on how it was handled.

 

I'm extremely wary of "echo-chambers", and it would definitely unsettle me to be on a board where specific views were banned where their equivalents were not.

[Uaithne 543]

@Raven, I myself would be much more comfortable on a site that doesn't cherry pick what is and isn't allowed (when they would be considered of equal rating), but I do respect the fact that some people need to not allow things to make their sites more comfortable for the staff.

 

That said, most of the times what is banned IC is not always banned OOC to the same extent. Things are often more graphic when written out in roleplay posts, which often is the problem. For example, I could mention in chat about being in a car accident, but that's different than actually roleplaying it out where I'm writing the sights and sounds and emotions of the accident. Even if nobody is hurt in the accident, there is a lot more detail in the post.