Intro & Context

Some people have made forum threads like this one from last month arguing that backgrounds should be more strictly moderated. In addition, some users like sst3w have argued in YouTube videos that such backgrounds harm the community in various ways.
However, a recurring pattern is that none of these discussions mention the relevant rules. I'll be laying them out and analyzing them in this post.

Other than the aforementioned posts and reasons, I'm not bringing this up in relation to any particular event(s).

The rules on beatmap backgrounds, as with all images or other visual content in the game, can be found in the Visual Content Considerations. It states that:

Analysis

The rule that is generally used against images with excessively revealing swimsuit designs is that against "erotic content or graphic displays of sexuality". This would be an extremely high standard, if not for the principle about applying to "questionable" content as well.

This principle is derived from community rule #5: "We are an all-ages community". The practical interpretation of this rule by moderators is that content generally accepted as suitable for users over the age of 13 (such as swearing) is acceptable, but content only suitable for people over 16 (or otherwise disturbing/content-warning-worthy content) is generally not allowed.

While the rules state that "swimsuits of reasonable design" are allowed, they do not say swimsuits of unreasonable design are disallowed. The "reasonable design" rule is there to prevent someone reporting any image with a swimsuit and (for beatmap backgrounds) allowing them to close the report as falling under "the most obvious cases".

The practical result is that BNs, NATs, and GMTs doing Content Review for such backgrounds must decide whether the swimsuit design is appropriate for the average 13/14-year-old to view. Since a swimsuit has to be very revealing to be deemed likely inappropriate for a 13-year-old, most such backgrounds pass.

Backgrounds that pass are permanently usable due to the rule that "The result of any vote is final".

The rule regarding "sexual content involving or targeted at minors" means that if a background contains a character that looks childlike (such as lolicon or shotacon), the bar to deem that background unacceptable is reduced to the significantly stricter standard of merely "sexual content". (Note that some people are stricter and interpret "minors" to mean anyone that could reasonably be under 18.)
Notice the implication that in other cases, "sexual content" is allowed to a degree. Just like with rating boards in real life, milder sexual content is deemed acceptable for an audience over 13.

My Opinion

I find the current system acceptable for general visual content, but agree that it would be helpful to make the rules stricter for swimsuit designs in beatmap backgrounds.

(the last section was heavily edited)

It's simply an issue of the rules being inconsistent, likely ascribed to the age of the game itself. There can't be a 'middleground' for NSFW content; either it's NSFW or it isn't. Either this game is all-ages, or it isn't. Currently, it leans towards to the latter, so why even bother advertising it as so.
I've seen plenty of content which I could consider 15+ on backgrounds, pick a Sotarks map. (MA15+ is an Australian classification, not sure how it is elsewhere).

At the very least I think under 13's shouldn't be allowed to register, not sure if that's something already implemented since I'm not planning on making a new account and getting ban-hammered.

Ymir wrote:

It's simply an issue of the rules being inconsistent, likely ascribed to the age of the game itself.

The VCC as we know them were cleaned up in late 2020 IIRC. The rules across time periods may be inconsistent, but that's literally just rules changing.

Ymir wrote:

There can't be a 'middleground' for NSFW content; either it's NSFW or it isn't. Either this game is all-ages, or it isn't.

There can be (e.g. suggestive poses, topics related to drug abuse, or other 16+ topics that aren't 18+/explicit, but not all-ages either), but that's not the point.
At no point do the rules state they're trying to hit some middle ground. They're trying to follow a standard of what would be deemed socially acceptable for all ages on the Internet.

Ymir wrote:

I've seen plenty of content which I could consider 15+ on backgrounds, pick a Sotarks map. (MA15+ is an Australian classification, not sure how it is elsewhere.)

We have a 15+ rating in Denmark too. However, the 15 rating is the highest rating we have, and our scale translates relatively poorly to international scales.

I wouldn't generally consider an image of someone in a swimsuit inappropriate or disturbing for someone aged 13. At that age, one does start to develop their personality and sexuality, as it says in the link. In addition, even if it's not explicit content they've seen, most people will have seen more suggestive things at that age.

Ymir wrote:

At the very least I think under 13's shouldn't be allowed to register, not sure if that's something already implemented[...].

Age verification is notoriously hard to implement, and I'm sure I would have heard of it somewhere had it been introduced.

I do agree in principle, though - children under 13 should avoid osu!'s social features (e.g. comments, chat - especially #osu, etc.), including passively looking at them. The most inappropriate content is found there.

This is a pain to format with quote boxes.

>thats literally just the rules changing
That was what I was getting at, yeah.

>There can be (suggestive poses etc)
Anything suggestive is NSFW, that's not a middleground.

>I wouldn't consider an image of someone in a swimsuit innapropriate
I agree; provided there's good context for the image being used and it's just a regular swimsuit image.

>At that age, one does start to develop their personality and sexuality
This isn't an excuse to allow children to see suggestive content. If anything, this kind of talking point just makes us look bad to people outside of the community.

>Age verification is hard to implement
You're right, taking a look at Social Media as an example, there are many children who use it before they're allowed to. However despite this, Social Media is still 13+; a child being on there is a violation of rules. If they were to reveal their age their account would get locked or deleted.
There's no way to do an age verification system that can't be bypassed, but at the very least it should be a rule that children shouldn't be here, and if caught they should be dealt with similarly to how MultiAccounting is dealt with.

Ymir wrote:

>thats literally just the rules changing
That was what I was getting at, yeah.

My post is an analysis of the current rules. Inconsistency with past rules is unavoidable unless you never change the rules.

Ymir wrote:

>There can be [suggestive poses, etc.]
Anything suggestive is NSFW, that's not a middleground.

Even accepting that this is a common definition of the term "NSFW", this isn't the point I was trying to make. My point was that there is no middle ground the osu! rules are trying to hit. They're on the side of being clean and not suggestive.

Ymir wrote:

>I wouldn't consider an image of someone in a swimsuit inappropriate[...]
I agree; provided there's good context for the image being used and it's just a regular swimsuit image.

I think you should consider the "changing rules for beatmap backgrounds specifically" idea then; I think you would agree with it.

Ymir wrote:

>At that age, one does start to develop their personality and sexuality
This isn't an excuse to allow children to see suggestive content. If anything, this kind of talking point just makes us look bad to people outside of the community.

My primary argument here was that an image of someone in a swimsuit is not generally inappropriate for someone of that age. I wasn't arguing for children aged around 12-14 to be exposed to significantly suggestive content.

Ymir wrote:

>Age verification is hard to implement
You're right, taking a look at Social Media as an example, there are many children who use it before they're allowed to. However despite this, Social Media is still 13+; a child being on there is a violation of rules. If they were to reveal their age their account would get locked or deleted.
There's no way to do an age verification system that can't be bypassed, but at the very least it should be a rule that children shouldn't be here, and if caught they will should be dealt with similarly to how multiaccounting is dealt with.

I think they should just be blocked from using chat, forums, etc. as if they were indefinitely silenced. It doesn't make sense to block them from showing up in leaderboards, and if they log out, they can view comments, forum posts, etc.
Deleting accounts for this reason should definitely not be a thing that happens, since that means if someone creates their account while under 13 (like I did), they'd be unable to have an osu! account, ever.

>my post analysis is of the current rules
My point is that these rules are inconsistently held up both by the changes and the ones meant to enforce it. If rules change now then efforts should be made to rectify what was okay in the past, deleting map BGs (without punishment).

>there is no middleground that the rules are trying to hit
There isn't; the reason it seems that way is because rules are inconsistently held up. The reason we have suggestive backgrounds is precisely because people can bend the rules and get away with it.

>changing rules for beatmap backgrounds
Sure. That's the main thing.

>On the topic of Swimsuits
Yes, it is cultural. But (in my perspective) suggestive references are different to suggestive visuals.
Obviously, kids are still going to be looking at that kind of stuff in their teenage years, but we shouldn't facilitate it considering we advertise as an all-ages game site. Suggestive and Not-Suggestive is largely up to personal perspective at times though.

>blocked from using chat
This is a good suggestion.

Ymir wrote:

>changing rules for beatmap backgrounds
Sure. That's the main thing.

This can be done, in my opinion, by stipulating that beatmap backgrounds should additionally avoid having highly revealing
clothing designs (unless it would fall into the VCC exception of "minor nudity", but that doesn't really apply to swimsuit BGs).
I wouldn't really know how to phrase it in a wiki-like manner, though.

Ymir wrote:

>On the topic of Swimsuits
Yes, it is cultural. But (in my perspective) suggestive references are different to suggestive visuals.
Obviously, kids are still going to be looking at that kind of stuff in their teenage years, but we shouldn't facilitate it considering we advertise as an all-ages game site. Suggestive and Not-Suggestive is largely up to personal perspective at times though.

I've since changed perspective and now think it shouldn't be about age rating as much as being able to keep within what would be considered socially acceptable to a general audience (without being too restrictive). This would do more good than harm to the community.

Ymir wrote:

>blocked from using chat
This is a good suggestion.

I think there should be some limited exceptions to this such as DMing GMTs/NATs, reporting bad behaviour, and maybe the Help forum.

Would this map qualify as "explicit" regarding its visuals? Ignore the audio. The explicit wiki page is unclear whether overtly sexual visuals count as explicit.

iiryx wrote:

Would this map qualify as "explicit" regarding its visuals? Ignore the audio. The explicit wiki page is unclear whether overtly sexual visuals count as explicit.

"Explicit" as in the Explicit tag? That tag has to do with the audio alone.

The article states that "[The Explicit tag] does not apply to visual elements of a beatmap — those must adhere to the Visual Content Considerations".

Do you mean whether it would violate the Visual Content Considerations? Because I considered reporting it at the time, but I don't think it would have been removed since the sexual innuendo was not significant enough. Content in Ranked maps is rarely retroactively removed