So, this came up back on Hypnochan, and I suppose it ought to be raised here:

Many countries consider any girl under 18, or more often under 16, to be "underage", and there are plenty of characters which really obviously fit into this category: girls who are definitely and obviously underage both in canon and because of their body shape / context (e.g. clearly a junior or middle-school student in the image).

Since this is basically all considered illegal in some states/countries, if you're interested in "protecting" your users, you should allow them to filter it out.

It wasn't practical on hypnochan to have a "sort of basement" for girls like Kousaka Kirino (Oreimo), Mikoto Misaka (Railgun), Shana (Shakugan no Shana), Winry Rockbell (FMA), most of the Negima cast, etc., but it would be trivial to add a tag for them here.

Perhaps even one for under_16, one for under_18.

It wouldn't be that hard to add the tags (perhaps they even could be linked to the appropriate character tags, so that the character's name auto-adds the age-tag), and it would protect those of your users who live somewhere where the age of consent and laws about illustrated nudity differ from your own.

Good idea!

We're not doing that. Those people should probably just stay away from the site if they're that worried about it.

I know it's potentially a pain from a tagging perspective, and I don't like to be the voice of censorship, but arguably "those people" includes regular people in a number of American states (depending on precedent and the local community's legal standard of obscenity).

If people are here for naughty images of adult women, but want to exclude schoolgirls, jailbait and the like, I figure they should have that option.

From the perspective of growing the community, particularly on a site where user accounts are required and the rules are a little more relaxed, it's important to be able to demonstrate to people that this isn't "4Chan" or whatever, and they won't be exposed to anything of questionable legality just by signing up to be a member.

A little more effort now, when the site is still new, will pay dividends later.

Danbooru doesn't do it. Gelbooru doesn't do it. Yande.re doesn't do it. E-Hentai doesn't do it. Rule34 doesn't do it. I see no reason to do it.

Besides, I view it the same as loli pics, canonical age doesn't matter. Appearances are all that matter, and there isn't nearly the difference between teens and adults as there is between loli and not. I've seen pics of 12-year-old girls drawn in their 20s. It would feel unbelievably stupid to slap an "under_16" tag on that. Not to mention a giant pain in the ass to look up every character's canonical age before tagging, and asking artists how old their OCs are supposed to be. And characters who age in the series they're from? Pssh.

I don't think we'll get anywhere trying to cater to every dumb law out there.

"A little more effort now?"

maybe if we had a whole team behind this, what you suggest MIGHT be feasible but we don't have that kind of manpower (at least not the kind that is consistently available).


Where was this kind of scrutiny when hypnobooru first launched? I don't remember anyone complaining about age specifics back then. As mindwipe just said, if the laws are that strict or if they are that concerned about the content then the best thing for them to do is to just stay away completely.

edit: I apologize if I come of overly harsh in this post.

Fair enough, I was just playing Devil's Advocate.

If you don't like it, don't do it, I'm just passing on something that came up for me during the moderation of both the hypnochan and deviantArt communities, and seemed like it might help to grow the community if we implemented it on the new site.

After all, we don't have to be the same as those other sites you listed. We should be thinking of the ways we can be better.

Yes

And don't get me wrong, I'm glad you're throwing out ideas. I'm just being realistic with what we can implement and enforce. And I know we're under no obligation to be like those sites I listed, but all those guys are pretty popular, and I'd really like to be like them.

I yell at Mindwipe whenever he uses "but the other boorus do this/don't do this!" as his reason. I loled at the peer pressure that showed in his post just above mine.

That said, I feel it has merit this time around. Especially the fact that the issue never came up on the old software. The existence of canonically underage characters on the booru has not changed since then and now, yet there have been no complaints as of yet.

Besides, as far as I'm aware, most U.S. laws (you mentioned U.S.) don't look at canonical age of the characters. I don't know about state laws, but I know that federal laws don't outlaw loli/shota at all. The closest thing to loli/shota being outlawed federally is the law against "obscene materials". For something to be considered obscene, it has to fall under strict criteria; three criteria in total, one of which is that it can "have no artistic value". It would be mighty hard for art to be declared lacking in artistic value.

In any case, I understand your worry. I've thought about it, myself. But honestly, with laws that strict, pretty much the entire internet is a minefield of illegal hentai for those people. I'm probably shooting myself in the foot by saying this, but one site taking this into account will hardly make a difference for anyone when the rest remain dangerous.

... Errrr..
To be perfectly honest. I do NOT see the problem with having a tag like 'under_18' or whatever on any future pics.
Nevermind the connections so that if you add that to your blocklist and the others auto filter too. I'm just talking the tag, in and of itself.
I do not see a problem with it. Nor do I see a reason why it would be denied that is actually... I 'unno -valid-.
So... Blu, personally? I like it. Any pic I submit in the future will have 'under/over_18' added in as a tag =) At least I'm taking the suggestion...

Sure, you got the loli/shota tags. But what about characters that LOOk to be a Loli, but actually aren't? Yeah... I can see the reasoning behind adding it.

And for the laws, I have no freaking clue. I'm in Canada, not the states. All I know, is that pedophilia and anything pornographic involving children is illegal. THEREFORE, I'm all for adding that into future posts of mine.

This makes no sense. If they LOOK like a loli, they are a loli. Loli is a body style, not an age. We are not using these tags. Period. We cannot enforce them, let alone implement them at this late in the game. If anyone tries to add them, I will personally remove them.

It's stupid that someone could draw a pic of a full-grown woman, say "she's 17", and then it instantly becomes illegal. I know the law works like that in some countries, but quite frankly, I don't care. It's stupid, and I will not be a part of it. Like Vanndril said, if you're that scared that the government will bust down your door for looking at a drawn image of a girl who looks like she's 27 just because the one cartoon she was in said she was 15, then it's probably best to avoid the internet entirely. Also, for the love of God, don't watch any anime.

Late in the game?
Site was JUST opened to the public what? 3? days ago.
NOT late at all.

Personally remove them?
That is a fucking jackass and abusing right that admins have then.

Fuck.
If someone wants to tag something like that [that does NOT have any bearing on anything else, is SOLELY for notice regarding the characters age], then OMFG THEY ARE NOT ALLOWED.

Ugh.
Whatever.
I'm still doing it. And if it is added, then removed, I will fucking readd it.

I personally think they should be there.
LOLIS ARE CHILDREN.
Penny Gadget, for instance, is classifed as a Loli because she is a child. Sure, her body is not matured but she is STILL A MINOR.

[Not sure if it's BBCode or html here, so I'm jsut capping what I would bold until I know]

Buit hey.
Who fucking cares about my opinion.
I agree with BluRider, but that's just me. Whatever.

At least I guess it's a good thing I only really come here to submit shit. Fuck. This is perfect proof why I should NOT be here, be somewhere that there are others.

So. I'm going to shut up and just back out before I piss everyone off.
As I'm willing to bet I've already started.

Whatever.

EDIT ::
Also, this is perfect proof of why I shouldn't be on a forum, or on the internet.

I'm going to leave what is here, but I'm not adding anything more. I'm not coming back, solely because I know I start shit.
Or keep the fire burning.

Sorry MindWipe, I never meant to come off as a bitch, but I really do NOT agree with the whole 'no tagging' for that. I think that's bullshit. I really do.
Penny Gadget is a CHILD. And would be under Loli.
An adult character that looks like a child would be under loli. BUT IS OF AGE.
Do you see the problem with that?
There ARE people out there who like the loli look ------ but NOT the minor aspect. They ONLY like ADULT's the LOOK like loli's.
So I'm in full support of a simple tag [which... by the way, would be NO PROBLEM AT ALL to add in for future submissions! NO EFFORT NEEDED!]

So, before I drive this in even farther, I'm done.

Does anyone really think any law enforcement agency is going to spend time looking up characters to find out what age they are in fiction if they look fully-grown? I highly doubt it. And, I'll add another assumption here, I highly doubt that, if you were busted for looking at a nude drawing of Remilia Scarlet in her usual loli body, any law enforcement official would care that she's actually around 500 years old. She looks like a minor, and that's what matters. Appearances are everything, because fiction is fiction.

Yes, it is late in the game. I consider this the next step in the evolution of Hypnobooru. All our pics and tags were transferred over. There are over 8,000 pics here now. 8,000 pics that would need to be tagged in this way for it to have any effect. If you're only adding it to new pics, then it's completely useless.

But it's not just that it would take too much work to implement, we can't even ENFORCE it. What about OCs? How are we going to contact every artist whose art is posted here to ask how old his/her OC is? Should we assume? How is that different from assuming every character not tagged as loli/shota is 18 or older? What if an artist draws a schoolgirl and says she's 32? Should we not add the "under_18" tag and then explain to people who complain why the tag isn't there?

And that's the next point. WHY the FUCK is this an issue NOW? The booru was up for nearly a year and this NEVER came up. It has NEVER been a problem. WHAT changed? Why is it suddenly necessary to change our whole tagging policy? I don't get it. I really don't. And it's infuriating to me. We finally get this new site, and even though there are some features that still don't work the way they should, it's lightyears better than what we had, AND we can finally allow content that had no place to go after Hypnochan closed... and people complain that we aren't spending even more time adding things for small groups of people. I don't know what you want us to do. I really don't. It's unrealistic to ask us to cater to literally everyone.

And as for our bullshit admin powers, again, I don't know what you want us to do. We're the admins. We run the site. We make the rules and we enforce them. That's literally our job description. We can't let people do whatever they want. You know how many different tags we would have for the exact same thing if we did that? You'd never find anything on this site. Choosing what tags stay and what tags go is one of the things we do here. And we can also ban people that willfully choose to not follow the rules we set in place and ignore our rulings on certain things. Let me be clear, this job sucks sometimes. Hell, it sucks MOST of the time. I feel like more bitter a person than I've ever felt whenever I make official comments on our policies and practices. But, dammit, I want to see this site do well. I want to help as many people as I possibly can enjoy this site. And I also want people to understand that we do not act like jerks to be jerks. We just can't do everything that everyone wants us to do.

wow, seriously? this is still going on? My god guys, this site isn't even a week old and we already have people making demands on new features? when did this community get so bratty?

Not to mention, when does personal responsibility play into this? If I remember correctly, the only real rules of pornography is "don't ask; don't tell" and "Be responsible"

if the person thinks they'll get punished that badly if they're caught, then they shouldn't even be here in the first place.