hi hows it going i hope you're having a good day wow thats so cool nice

the current visual content consideration page (this thing), and by extension the internal #content-review visual content assessment protocol (this document), have posed a lot of issues since conception that have resulted in extremely weird judgment calls on completely innocuous backgrounds.

the main problem comes from the vcc's overemphasis on "suggestive" features as opposed to every national ratings boards' approach to focusing on hard content. suggestiveness on its own is not something that makes something inappropriate, but the vcc spends at least half of its wording focusing on it. this is exacerbated by the gmt's rulings, leading to a lot of instances of saying a bg is unsuitable due to "blushing" or "lots of thigh showing" or "camera angle" or other things of that nature, despite the characters being fully clothed and in normal everyday human poses. these things would all be suitable for a pg or even a g-rated audience but the gmt still make a differing verdict. this is exacerbated by the vcap, which directly states to treat all the suggestive stuff as a checklist (here), and if a single point on that list is checked, then the bg is a no-go.

a much more logical placement of the suggestive stuff should be in a separate section, being used only as a secondary check on imagery that also checks hard content such as minimal clothing or explicit actions. several of these supposed "suggestive" issues are also not issues at all for something that is supposedly pegi-12 or even pg, and so should be removed.

rc proposals require me to draft a rewrite but this is an entire page of redrafting so uh

PROPOSAL
the following sections of the vcc should be moved outside of this "one check equals ban" section into a separate section dedicated to determining if an image falls under the exceptions or not, only to be used as evidence if major boxes are already checked:

1. Sexual innuendo
2. Explicit or sexual posturing

as well as anything similar to this line being removed/moved accordingly
in the vcap, this would cover all of the following bulletpoints:

1. Mimicry of any sexual acts
2. Performing sexual acts on objects
3. acts of "fanservice" or deliberate solicitation
4. Presence of any questionable fluid or other bodily fluid analogue
5. Pin-up poses with secondary sexual characteristics on full or partial view
6. Lascivious or beckoning, inviting, “come-hither” poses
7. Any content that could be reasonably inferred to appeal directly towards a sexual fetish or paraphilia

some bulletpoints should also be removed entirely as they are not things that should be addressed:
"Any content that could be reasonably inferred to appeal directly towards a sexual fetish or paraphilia" is noted to primarily refer to anime feet, which believe it or not is actually something totally ok to show in pegi-12, shocking i know. this bulletpoint should be removed.
A subdescriptor of "pin-up poses blahblah" says "“Cum gutters” or highly visible pelvic lines on both masculine and feminine characters" which first of all what the fuck why did you make me read this and second of all pelvic bones are not something that is an issue in pegi-12 imagery as it is just a feature of human anatomy. this bulletpoint should be removed.

ofc this is open to discussion, this thread is mostly for that anyway since its a big overhaul proposal and so ofc would need a lot more voices. please post what you htink should or shouldnt be included in the "one-strike-you're-out" sections especially.

I agree that the focus should be on legitimately explicit content (visible boobs, implied sexual acts like sucking on popsicles dripping ice cream on breasts blah blah) rather than inserting "sexualization" into everything as the standard.

The focus on "sexualization" is bad for one main reason. Focusing on it leads down a slippery slope of basically any depiction of an anime girl getting justified as sexualized. The lengths to which people went to justify that decision about God Save the Girls were patently absurd - "if she was standing up the skirt would not go near her knees therefore her sitting that way is sexualized because it allows you to see further up her legs than if she was standing" (paraphrased). Similar justification would presumably apply to backgrounds like beatmapsets/825377 , beatmapsets/401354 , beatmapsets/32011 , which ignores mapper intent (maybe not for No Title) and restricts people by assuming that everyone is using osu backgrounds for fap material and trying to regulate it like that.

should just apply common sense instead of overanalyzing everything for something that could be potentially suggestive or "explicit" in 1/100 scenarios tbh

if you have to try and find something that makes an image "inappropriate" there likely wasn't anything wrong with it to begin with

It bothers me so much when I see "official" osu! documents and they are written imo very poorly. Someone needs to get on this and edit all the idioms etc. out of it.

Good proposal. Anything that isn't what we have currently would be a change for the better. The fact is that the current vcc was created with extreme prejudice and bias towards personal beliefs rather than common sense. I wish the community itself would speak up more often about questionable rule changes (like the hybrid nominations changes) instead of letting the loudest minority holding the most power shape the entire community landscape to further push their own personal beliefs on how the game should be.

OP doing great work.

many thanks for this proposal.

I strongly agree with UC here. a lot of this is insanely ridiculous jesus, thank u for bringing attention to it

the VCC is not informally written at all. anyone who says that clearly hasn't read it, which is usually the case for 5 page+ documents on shit most people wrap under 'common sense'

the VCAP *is* informally written and that is because its purpose was to provide a casual, common language (including the supposedly "ephemeral" wording of things used to describe things) set of examples for content reviewers to follow, hence why until yesterday, it was a private document limited only to participants in that channel, who all broadly understood its context and application as a "casual checklist for understanding how to apply the VCC".

the document is pretty yuck to read because it provides examples of all the horrible shit content reviewers are supposed to be looking for.

everything past "part 1" of the OP is shit and i nearly locked this thread because of how bad faith it was. RC threads are supposed to be focused, objective discussion and everything past part 1 is essentially just the author's personal opinion

any changes suggested to the VCC are of course very welcome, but they also have to factor in that osu! is an all-ages game and thus specifically has to bend to that very broad, PEGI-12 inspired classification.

edited the op to focus on what was once part 1 instead of the other stuff. i had assumed putting everything in a big doc would be more convenient for discussion, but prioritizing the main issue being talked about is probably for the best, i can make other threads later if i need to

and sorry about the vcc line, somewhere along the way during this writeup my brain smushed the vernacular from the vpac into how i was reading the vcc, should have been more careful there

just as an extra aside, does anyone know of any global, all-ages audience platforms that have any existing rules for this kind of stuff? some kind of "sibling" example to look at and compare our standards to would be really helpful in determining a fair approach forward here

Youtube?

they have age-restriction for anything even remotely controversial afaik (we wouldn't allow age-restricted content)

that being said, engage with youtube's policy on non age-restricted content and compare it to ours, what's different?

A few points regarding the voting process:
- The VCC should clarify how many people have to vote in order for the result to be valid
- Proof of said vote should be posted on the map discussion page for transparency, along with a detailed explanation as to why the content in question is deemed inappropriate. This is currently lacking in most cases
- Decisions should not be final because judgments can be rushed or flawed sometimes. The mapper should have the possibility to appeal a decision if it's considered unreasonable
- The GMT should participate more in discussions that were initiated by a post from one of its members on a certain map

Ephemeral wrote:

just as an extra aside, does anyone know of any global, all-ages audience platforms that have any existing rules for this kind of stuff? some kind of "sibling" example to look at and compare our standards to would be really helpful in determining a fair approach forward here

Here's an example for you and everyone to look at and comapre: https://videostandards.org.uk/MzCms/ContentImage.ashx?cpath=000\000\969\579\Controversial+Content.pdf

This is the VSC (Video Standards Council) document for Controversial Content, which is pretty much the stuff we want to standardize. This council is in charge of reviewing content for the PEGI classification (https://pegi.info/page/how-we-rate-games)

Additional information can be found here: https://videostandards.org.uk/RatingBoard/ratings-downloads

DakeDekaane wrote:

Ephemeral wrote:

just as an extra aside, does anyone know of any global, all-ages audience platforms that have any existing rules for this kind of stuff? some kind of "sibling" example to look at and compare our standards to would be really helpful in determining a fair approach forward here

Here's an example for you and everyone to look at and comapre: https://videostandards.org.uk/MzCms/ContentImage.ashx?cpath=000\000\969\579\Controversial+Content.pdf

This is the VSC (Video Standards Council) document for Controversial Content, which is pretty much the stuff we want to standardize. This council is in charge of reviewing content for the PEGI classification (https://pegi.info/page/how-we-rate-games)

Additional information can be found here: https://videostandards.org.uk/RatingBoard/ratings-downloads

interesting, the VCC as it currently stands is very close in most ways to the standards document you listed there (in my discernment), and this is from a council that is accountable to a government agency in the United Kingdom, no less. food for thought

Ephemeral wrote:

DakeDekaane wrote:

Ephemeral wrote:

just as an extra aside, does anyone know of any global, all-ages audience platforms that have any existing rules for this kind of stuff? some kind of "sibling" example to look at and compare our standards to would be really helpful in determining a fair approach forward here

Here's an example for you and everyone to look at and comapre: https://videostandards.org.uk/MzCms/ContentImage.ashx?cpath=000\000\969\579\Controversial+Content.pdf

This is the VSC (Video Standards Council) document for Controversial Content, which is pretty much the stuff we want to standardize. This council is in charge of reviewing content for the PEGI classification (https://pegi.info/page/how-we-rate-games)

Additional information can be found here: https://videostandards.org.uk/RatingBoard/ratings-downloads

interesting, the VCC as it currently stands is very close in most ways to the standards document you listed there (in my discernment), and this is from a council that is accountable to a government agency in the United Kingdom, no less. food for thought

This is the wrong take. While the rating PEGI 12 allows for sexual innuendo and sexual posturing, the current VCC doesn't allow anything remotely suggesting or that contains sexual innuendo. In fact, I would say that PEGI 12 is more lenient that how content has been handled for the last couple of years before we started using this VCC and that dreadful google doc.

And this is from one of the most conservative countries on the world. You know, the same country that attempted to ban all porn because reasons.



All the community is asking for is common sense, not a long list of what you need to look for before thinking "Yeah this is good enough".

i'm not of the opinion that we've ever really allowed or explicitly permitted examples of sexual innuendo in stuff, with only maybe a few exceptions which probably need to be looked at (MTC, etc). can you provide some examples of existing maps with it that you think would be disallowed under the VCC currently?

also people are getting very hung up on the PEGI-12 thing when the VCC clearly says:

At a baseline level, osu! attempts to adhere to the PEGI 12 classification with some further additions as explained below. Where the two classifications clash, osu!'s "house rules" described in this article always take precedence.

and then when you factor in the community rules which essentially broadly direct the path the VCC takes:

We are an all-ages community. This means that 18+/NSFW content such as drug use or topics of a sexual nature are not welcome here.

what part of any of that provides tolerance for sexual innuendo? the rule extremely clearly outlines that 'topics of a sexual nature are not welcome' here, and that's been a thing for ages.

on an unrelated note, i've done a pass through the VCAP (aka the google document referenced in this post), cut out most of the casual examples people drew issue with, expanded a few sections and added some disclaimers for the reader to exercise their own judgment on these things and a general suite of advice not to seek out the presence of things which aren't immediately obvious at a glance.

this should hopefully address much of the concern about that document's wording and usefulness

people are getting very hung up on the PEGI-12 thing

Feel like having "all-ages", "adhering to PEGI-12" and "18+/NSFW content are not welcome" all for the same judgment just sends mixed signals about what's acceptable, making the baseline itself seem inconsistent.
So, people just pick the one that seems most appropriate for osu's perceived age demographic and stick to it. If you want it to be "PEGI-12 in some aspects and not in others" it'd be better to just put it that way, or refer to VCC as "inspired by various PEGI ratings to accommodate for the community's needs". Could also explain why some things are looked at differently, and what osu's goals are with these considerations in either VCC or VCAP.
That'd be useful for the reviewing process, I've seen some people mention that they've lost touch with what they aim to achieve with reviewing content.

The Devil's Advocate in me wants to ask if osu is truly all-ages, or if that's just a nice label we want. But, the ever-increasing accessibility of technology and Lazer pushing for availability on mobile answers my own question. Still worth considering that for some ages parental guidance will be needed, that's the unavoidable nature of anything with user-generated content.

The changes to VCAP seem a good step forward especially with the guidance regarding how to judge things, focus on discussion beyond just checkmarking and general cleanup.

Worth mentioning to the people here that the VCC also is being worked on here. Personally find this a good base but too much into the extreme of keeping it simple, cuts too much information.
eg. a reader wouldn't know, or might not be able to imply, that 'large amounts of blood' is disallowed from just 'excessive violence' alone. Would be better to take a small step back, listing notable things included under each bullet point without elaborating on them like the previous version did.

"all-ages" is the one we want to go for. PEGI-12 was included as part of the VCC discussions as a general "real world reference point" to aid in identifying problematic content, though it seems that it has done basically the opposite and just given people cause to lawyer on differences between our standards and theirs.

maybe we should just remove the reference to it in general?

edit: i've also pushed some wording changes to the condensed VCC that expand upon "excessive violence" to make it very obvious what is meant, and also what can be considered as an exception for it

Changes seem to address what I mentioned, Thumbs Up

I'd be careful with removing PEGI-12 and leaving it at that.
I found "all-ages" poorly received on its own, people see it as catering to ages much too low for osu's general environment. Think Disney Movie or PEGI-3 tier kind of safe, blood wouldn't even be a thing.
That also drastically shifts the perspectives of content-reviewers into moderating unnecessarily harshly.

As alternative, could try referring to a different rating system, PEGI is not the only thing out there.
Have you considered aiming for something like PG (Parental Guidance)? Details here https://www.filmratings.com/Content/Downloads/rating_rules.pdf , Article II - section 3 - C. Taken from https://www.filmratings.com/ (ok sure it's film but you get the idea).

Few reasons I suggest PG
- It closes the gap between PEGI-12 and "all-ages", by recommending guidance for younger children while remaining all-ages in essence
- It's not directly age related, and rather based on how children would react. Would they need guidance or is content too impactful for guidance to be helpful?
- ^ makes fringe cases more obvious .. in my opinion
- Unranked maps will always exist. Unless you're aiming to moderate every piece of content uploaded, there will always be potential for exposure to unsafe material
- A lot of material directly refers to content that isn't all-ages at all. Mainstream anime like Attack on Titan or Psycho Pass contain themes (visual and otherwise) way too heavy for younger children. Parents might want to be aware of this so they can be prepared when their kid stumbles on the source material
- PG aligns with song content moderation, where strong language may be allowed in absence of harmful themes


That said, a lot of countries and even platforms apply their own kind of rating, no matter if it's for television, mobile apps or video games .. Age rating is very complex.

From there, osu! could consider itself its own platform like it does for many things. I'm trying really hard to identify what small things the VCC should adjust to convey that. So far I think
- osu!'s needs should be put on the forefront
- avoid all-encompassing terms or existing rating systems
- touch on why visual content is moderated a bit more deeply to give that custom frame of reference

? Food For Thought

+1 for replacing PEGI-12 with PG. Using ages to consider content restriction feels too forced for me, as most chilren nowadays probably experienced heavier contents than the age rating suggests. (doesn't mean that I recommend bringing such content to chilren's exposure, just that we should consider things practically)

I also agree that instead of overanalysis on what may be "implied" it's way more systematic and fair to base things on what is visually present.

Thing such as nipples, panties, etc that are visually present should be disallowed, as before, but the "implied" intention seems to just gives room for too much subjectivity.


RE: making osu PG
PG allows for partial nudity but cannot be sexually oriented. Which probably include stuff like exposed buttocks, side boobs, etc? Not sure if this is exactly what we want lol


On other note, I wonder if we could pay one of these agencies to give osu! an age rating, might be an interesting test to see how we should proceed from now on, as we'll get an expert's perspective on things.

i've removed all mention of PEGI-12 from the current VCC draft because people could not contain themselves from using it instead of our own

i also set the VCAP document listed in the OP to viewer only after a slew of retards decided to comment spam the entire thing without realizing that denying all of them at once takes 2 mouseclicks from the editor (oops)

@kibb osu age rating from an official ratingsboard would 100% be something in the 17+ department due to song lyrics and potentially also due to online interactions, wouldnt be super helpful here, where the discussion is mostly just on imagery

VCC draft Ephemeral is mentioning can be found here btw: https://github.com/ppy/osu-wiki/pull/4561

I'm surprised it wasn't linked

ty for link, i think things just started moving faster than the thread lol

My take on "not having the loud minorty dominate."

I probably focused too much on sexualization here. Well, that seems like the major issue. Sorry bout that.



1.
Side thought, not really focused on content change on this part

People will continue using "common sense" as a reason for justification until you give them a list: this supposed VCC. Since their common sense is not good enough according to standards, they're gonna look for exact descriptions which don't apply to their common sense, or so I assume.

Why is it, then, that the more newly publicized VCAP contains more detailed descriptions? Not everyone is aware of this yet (or so I think). People will really end up disagreeing.

Like, look at the recent Walk This Way! mapset. According to the thread responses, no one finds this suggestive. After all, there is no sexual suggestion. There is an upskirt pose. Stockings make it ambiguous. The best we get from the VCC opposing this is: "If a character's age is not immediately obvious in their depiction... any content that could conceivably and reasonably be perceived as sexual is completely disallowed. This includes questionable depictions of characters drawn in the "loli" style, regardless of their established narrative age." It doesn't really talk about upskirt shots or angles, so no one would cross it out. However, the VCAP does.

Can't they just be one thing so that the argument is shortened to "is this too strict? do we need to keep it or cut it?" instead of having "please publicize the reasons of disqualification!" in the mix when it's actually just confusion or disconnected information.




2.
Before this, generally IMO +1 for PG for reasons everyone's already stated.

Kibb
"RE: making osu PG
PG allows for partial nudity but cannot be sexually oriented. Which probably include stuff like exposed buttocks, side boobs, etc? Not sure if this is exactly what we want lol"

This is exactly the problem. Problem? Point? Something like that. Recent incidents fall under this "partial nudity" without sexual orientation, and yet they're a problem.

Look at the issues on upskirt shots. How much of the thigh must not be seen to be considered sexually oriented? After God Save the Girls I agreed, but when I saw the debate on Walk this Way, I questioned just how much under the skirt can't be seen, because I don't really agree with the DQ there but I understand the DQ potential in other's eyes. What, give an angle? Can we not go lower than 180 degrees? 195?

They're okay under PG, but they need some discussion to ensure that the lenience for partial nudity is not abused.

In attempts to fix that problem, what about giving how much of the thighs are visible? Maybe say,

"Seeing the upper half of the thighs are not allowed."

Then we can discuss whether other cases which pass this are to risque.

agree with last post that the split between VCC and VCAP is unnecessary. there's no reason to disconnect guidance of how moderators should perform and what users should be looking out for

I don't know how to have an opinion abt this whole thing cuz it's hard to tell what osu!'s goal for moderation is. "all-ages" (the wording that appears across all these documents & /Rules) is vague at best and more likely a lazy wording that doesn't mean what it says. for example there's closer scrutiny over possibly-sexual-if-you-really-look-for-it bgs now, but that gives me the impression you wouldn't want young kids even reading #osu given the content there sometimes, and it opens right when you log in.

there's also no reference I could find that describes what moderation here is for. are you trying to protect a certain audience? give parenting advice? shape the community in some way? I'm assuming the intention is a varying mix of those & more, but it's not communicated well

VCC has been summarized and updated to be considerably more legible: wiki/en/Rules/Visual_Content_Considerations

major changes:
- PEGI-12 linkback is gone, it is no longer relevant as a guiding point for understanding the VCC
- article shortened to like 20% of its original content without any of the rules functionally changing, should make it easier for people to understand
- the content review process BN side has been expanded to include the BN, GMT and NAT together, with the BN vote being used as a tiebreaker where the GMT/NAT vote cannot achieve consensus (aka neither reaches 60%). maps that cannot achieve consensus both ways are considered too contentious to allow and are treated as if they failed the vote.

overall, the conversations over the past few months re: suitable content have not proven fruitful or productive at all. everyone has very different opinions about what should and shouldn't be allowed, and they tend to veer almost universally towards 50/50 deadlocks after weeks of heated discussion, which is nasty for everyone involved.

all of the changes made above have been to make it easy to understand the general idea of the VCC and also to both massively accelerate and remove the discussion vector for a lot of these cases, eliminating as much friction as possible for the appraisal process.

we're investigating ways to use machine learning to help provide a "neutral" standpoint for the future, but for now, this should all suffice and be at the very least, more inclusive of broader opinions on contentious content than was allowed previously