Unacceptable example: Three very busty anime characters wearing similar swimsuits with their breasts poised in obvious presentation, with said imagery occupying more than a third of the image's total scene.

#SaveNet0

I see no reason to add all of these rules, using common sense to determine if something is fine or not should be more than good enough


"is it sexually suggestive? does it promote drugs / illegal shit / racism / etc." ---> bg is not fine

any bg this doesn't apply to is fine 9/10 times, adding all these rules is just gonna make things more complicated than they have to be

https://twitter.com/JoeCastleVen/status/1088591814653812743

remember i made some polls regarding why the bg rule seems ambiguous and what can be actually considered +18/lewd?

the community has spoken, and we dont agree about these rules youre trying to implement.

Mordred wrote:

I see no reason to add all of these rules, using common sense to determine if something is fine or not should be more than good enough


"is it sexually suggestive? does it promote drugs / illegal shit / racism / etc." ---> bg is not fine

any bg this doesn't apply to is fine 9/10 times, adding all these rules is just gonna make things more complicated than they have to be

Well, that in itself would be an issue since people could argue about what is considered promoting illegal activity. Could a bg of some anime character killing a bunch of people be considered promoting illegal activity? no? anyone can and will for a fact argue about these issues if there arent clearly defined guidelines.

and here we have an example of how not to use common sense

Mordred wrote:

I see no reason to add all of these rules, using common sense to determine if something is fine or not should be more than good enough


"is it sexually suggestive? does it promote drugs / illegal shit / racism / etc." ---> bg is not fine

any bg this doesn't apply to is fine 9/10 times, adding all these rules is just gonna make things more complicated than they have to be

what do you define as sexually suggestive? using net0's background as an example, some people find it suggestive, some people don't. who's right and who's wrong here?

otherwise yes, i agree with you, adding these rules complicates things and restricts more than it opens up. i see no other way of having this kind of regulation enforced even remotely fairly without these rules though, and that appears to be a big issue that i've seen voiced.

Joe Castle wrote:

https://twitter.com/JoeCastleVen/status/1088591814653812743

remember i made some polls regarding why the bg rule seems ambiguous and what can be actually considered +18/lewd?

the community has spoken, and we dont agree about these rules youre trying to implement.

There is no real reason why you would ever need a BG like this for your map other than for clickbait. Just pick a normal background which isn't sexually suggestive, jeez. This is a rhythm game, not a dating sim.

why not doing something like this? https://osu.ppy.sh/s/44666 (I mean, there is a lot of violence in the video of this mapset but the user prevent people with the picture of the mapset and in the description)

Or maybe adding a warning that we can put like the epilepsy warning in the map options? People can't put something in a BG because we can see it on the website or IG without playing the map but can put it in the SB or in the video, and mappers will put the option "add warning for gore content in SB/video" or "add warning for soft sexual content in SB/video" or "add warning for NSFW/vulgarity lyrics in the song" (of course, I don't talk about 18+ sexual content) and player can put in their game options "parental control" or "disable SB/video with 15+/gore content" that will automaticly disable SB/video with those contents when played (can have same thing for epileptic) Th

Astreachan wrote:

why not doing something like this? https://osu.ppy.sh/s/44666 (I mean, there is a lot of violence in the video of this mapset but the user prevent people with the picture of the mapset and in the description)

Or maybe adding a warning that we can put like the epilepsy warning in the map options? People can't put something in a BG because we can see it on the website or IG without playing the map but can put it in the SB or in the video, and mappers will put the option "add warning for gore content in SB/video" or "add warning for soft sexual content in SB/video" or "add warning for NSFW/vulgarity lyrics in the song" (of course, I don't talk about 18+ sexual content) and player can put in their game options "parental control" or "disable SB/video with 15+/gore content" that will automaticly disable SB/video with those contents when played (can have same thing for epileptic) Th

a warning is not currently on the cards, else it'd be the most elegant solution to this kind of thing. even if we did have a warning, we'd still need some guide to help direct what exactly qualified for the warning, get what i mean?

Tenshichan wrote:

Joe Castle wrote:

https://twitter.com/JoeCastleVen/status/1088591814653812743

remember i made some polls regarding why the bg rule seems ambiguous and what can be actually considered +18/lewd?

the community has spoken, and we dont agree about these rules youre trying to implement.

There is no real reason why you would ever need a BG like this for your map other than for clickbait. Just pick a normal background which isn't sexually suggestive, jeez. This is a rhythm game, not a dating sim.

its not my fault that you think the bg is sexually suggestive, youre the one making the thoughts/comment about it being like that when most of people doesnt consider it sexually suggestive neither is breaking the rules

Ephemeral wrote:

Mordred wrote:

I see no reason to add all of these rules, using common sense to determine if something is fine or not should be more than good enough


"is it sexually suggestive? does it promote drugs / illegal shit / racism / etc." ---> bg is not fine

any bg this doesn't apply to is fine 9/10 times, adding all these rules is just gonna make things more complicated than they have to be

what do you define as sexually suggestive? using net0's background as an example, some people find it suggestive, some people don't. who's right and who's wrong here?

otherwise yes, i agree with you, adding these rules complicates things and restricts more than it opens up. i see no other way of having this kind of regulation enforced even remotely fairly without these rules though, and that appears to be a big issue that i've seen voiced.

I think the way we handle things currently is fine, from what I've seen it looks like backgrounds such as that one are discussed between qat / gmt internally and if they are deemed not appropriate they get disqualified. Imo this would just have to be done more often than not (not that it'd be necessary often anyways, looking at the qualified section as of right now, all the bgs in there seem fine)

Joe Castle wrote:

https://twitter.com/JoeCastleVen/status/1088591814653812743

remember i made some polls regarding why the bg rule seems ambiguous and what can be actually considered +18/lewd?

the community has spoken, and we dont agree about these rules youre trying to implement.

Dude... the community does not consist of 312 people. Stop plugging your twitter everywhere and treating some random poll like it's the be-all-end-all of discussion. Even if we took that metric, the poll was incredibly close. You aren't the speaker of the community, so don't act like one. Leave your own opinion and be done with it.

E: Common sense is fine, but you also have people like <redacted BN name> who flip out when "common sense" does not match what they feel is correct. Concrete rules would be helpful, but either way is fine by me.

Ephemeral wrote:

Astreachan wrote:

why not doing something like this? https://osu.ppy.sh/s/44666 (I mean, there is a lot of violence in the video of this mapset but the user prevent people with the picture of the mapset and in the description)

Or maybe adding a warning that we can put like the epilepsy warning in the map options? People can't put something in a BG because we can see it on the website or IG without playing the map but can put it in the SB or in the video, and mappers will put the option "add warning for gore content in SB/video" or "add warning for soft sexual content in SB/video" or "add warning for NSFW/vulgarity lyrics in the song" (of course, I don't talk about 18+ sexual content) and player can put in their game options "parental control" or "disable SB/video with 15+/gore content" that will automaticly disable SB/video with those contents when played (can have same thing for epileptic) Th

a warning is not currently on the cards, else it'd be the most elegant solution to this kind of thing. even if we did have a warning, we'd still need some guide to help direct what exactly qualified for the warning, get what i mean?

beside trolls, if someone is offensed by the video, we put a warning

being offensed by something can depend of people, some people can be offensed by a swimsuit unleass some people will just say to them "don't go to a swimming pool, bro" so at least, discuting about "put a warning or not" than "making them forbidden or not"

Joe Castle wrote:

Tenshichan wrote:

Joe Castle wrote:

https://twitter.com/JoeCastleVen/status/1088591814653812743

remember i made some polls regarding why the bg rule seems ambiguous and what can be actually considered +18/lewd?

the community has spoken, and we dont agree about these rules youre trying to implement.

There is no real reason why you would ever need a BG like this for your map other than for clickbait. Just pick a normal background which isn't sexually suggestive, jeez. This is a rhythm game, not a dating sim.

its not my fault that you think the bg is sexually suggestive, youre the one making the thoughts/comment about it being like that when most of people doesnt consider it sexually suggestive neither is breaking the rules

Personal bias. You know very well what kinds of people the community majorly consists of right?
Anyway, still no valid reason to include a bg like that.

Ascendance wrote:

Joe Castle wrote:

https://twitter.com/JoeCastleVen/status/1088591814653812743

remember i made some polls regarding why the bg rule seems ambiguous and what can be actually considered +18/lewd?

the community has spoken, and we dont agree about these rules youre trying to implement.

Dude... the community does not consist of 312 people. Stop plugging your twitter everywhere and treating some random poll like it's the be-all-end-all of discussion. Even if we took that metric, the poll was incredibly close. You aren't the speaker of the community, so don't act like one. Leave your own opinion and be done with it.

E: Common sense is fine, but you also have people like <redacted BN name> who flip out when "common sense" does not match what they feel is correct. Concrete rules would be helpful, but either way is fine by me.

do you know what an estimation/survey is? that in general can speak a lot, but hey its your own opinion right?

An estimation or a survey is exactly what it is. Just an estimation. You cannot be sure an entire populous would agree to such a change, and especially considering that the vote was close, you cannot 100% affirm that this is the community direction. If you used the survey to support your own opinion, that's one thing, but this line ("the community has spoken, and we dont agree about these rules youre trying to implement.") was not necessary and is incorrect.

Ascendance wrote:

An estimation or a survey is exactly what it is. Just an estimation. You cannot be sure an entire populous would agree to such a change, and especially considering that the vote was close, you cannot 100% affirm that this is the community direction. If you used the survey to support your own opinion, that's one thing, but this line ("the community has spoken, and we dont agree about these rules youre trying to implement.") was not necessary and is incorrect.

if those are your thoughts about it, thats great, but its your own opinion, not everybody has the same thoughts regarding how the bg rules on this proposal are basically restricting quite a lot when the bg in question isnt even +18 (and taking in consideration the current results of the poll, 60% is quite a mayority, btw no poll isnt necessary). If that was the case, a second round can be made to confirm those opinions [like the loved section polls for example] or actually make an official survey regarding this topic

I propose the formation of the TATATAT. (The Anime Tiddies And Thighs Appreciation Team). It will be comprised of an odd-number of community members, ideally 11, who will vote on whether a map's background is "NSFW". Because visual content is very subjective, decisions arrived by vote would be better than one person imposing their values over another. A vote of at least 4/11 would be enough for a background to be considered too licentious for osu!

the The Anime Tiddies And Thighs Appreciation Team

what is the point of having an odd number if not using a majority system? make it 12 and 1/3 in that case lol. but i actually think that's a pretty good idea since it's basically what Eph proposed without having to deal with the GMT over and over

Monstrata wrote:

I propose the formation of the TATATAT. (The Anime Tiddies And Thighs Appreciation Team). It will be comprised of an odd-number of community members, ideally 11, who will vote on whether a map's background is "NSFW". Because visual content is very subjective, decisions arrived by vote would be better than one person imposing their values over another. A vote of at least 4/11 would be enough for a background to be considered too licentious for osu!

Why can't monstrata be peppy?

Common sense, where are you? :eyes:

@Nao

Yea it doesn't make that much sense with odd right now haha. I was subconsciously thinking of adjustable margins, like 5/11 or 6/11 etc... depending on how the upper management wants to regulate what is NSFW what is not. For example if a vote of 4/11 produces too many cases that management thinks should still be barred, we can increase the margin to 5/11 or "majority (6/11+)".

Two related cases (of BG image used being NSFW) with different weight in just a month.
It seems that the broadness of the rules makes judgements differ from one person to another, causing these kind of stuff....

It may like be making the rules/guidelines seems like more strict by adding or making a much more defined wording on what is ok and what's not, but leaving things as it is, worded as broad that anyone can translate it by thier level of understanding, makes things a little confusing by betting common sense and self judgement as a determining factor on whether the action taken was deemed acceptable or not.

It doesn't mean that we need to word out a phone book thick definitions to make the rules and guidelines be as clear as daylight; it just have to be properly written down for a wide spectrum of demographics to understand correctly.

Are we that incapable to take care for that without having such a hilarious state? It has wprked so far somewhat well (because seriously, just ignore the crybabies complaining about every single crap) and move on. We're not having these 'unfortunate happenings' everyday. Or just at all, and we most likely won't have them again.

To put definitions of what is acceptable, and when it's not anymore is near impossible and treated case by case. Rules will make the situation worse by default and won't solve anything. It'll only limit people by their availability and cause more likely these "explosions" we recently had.

Even if it means to have these girls with oversized breasts because people most likely use them for their maps lacking of attention and interests, it's still better than to draw a line that cannot be (really) exceeded in certain cases.

I think this goes beyond all of us here, i mean nsfw stuff is pretty subjective to everyone based on their own culture, without talking about cults and religions.
Imo we should set our standards same as standards from games such as "Pan european game information" also known as "PEGI"

PEGI 12 wrote:

Video games that show violence of a slightly more graphic nature towards fantasy characters or non-realistic violence towards human-like characters would fall in this age category. Sexual innuendo or sexual posturing can be present, while any bad language in this category must be mild. Gambling as it is normally carried out in real life in casinos or gambling halls can also be present (e.g. card games that in real life would be played for money).

Talking about anime tiddies, technically this falls in this age category, if nothing else such as genitals or entirely naked bust are explicitly shown.
Starting to set standards/labels from something which already exists and applied in thousands of games is probably something i would do instead.

Astreachan wrote:

Ephemeral wrote:

a warning is not currently on the cards, else it'd be the most elegant solution to this kind of thing. even if we did have a warning, we'd still need some guide to help direct what exactly qualified for the warning, get what i mean?

beside trolls, if someone is offensed by the video, we put a warning

being offensed by something can depend of people, some people can be offensed by a swimsuit unleass some people will just say to them "don't go to a swimming pool, bro" so at least, discuting about "put a warning or not" than "making them forbidden or not"

I think what Eph is trying to say is that defining where a warning is needed is just a proxy to the issue this thread is trying to address.

Cherry Blossom wrote:

I think this goes beyond all of us here, i mean nsfw stuff is pretty subjective to everyone based on their own culture, without talking about cults and religions.
Imo we should set our standards same as standards from games such as "Pan european game information" also known as "PEGI"

PEGI 12 wrote:

Video games that show violence of a slightly more graphic nature towards fantasy characters or non-realistic violence towards human-like characters would fall in this age category. Sexual innuendo or sexual posturing can be present, while any bad language in this category must be mild. Gambling as it is normally carried out in real life in casinos or gambling halls can also be present (e.g. card games that in real life would be played for money).

Talking about anime tiddies, technically this falls in this age category, if nothing else such as genitals or entirely naked bust are explicitly shown.
Starting to set standards/labels from something which already exists and applied in thousands of games is probably something i would do instead.

If they are going to handle this situation as fairly as possible, they MUST stick to this category and accept they have made a mistake when resolving the situation that triggered this proposal.

If they refuse to stick to the standards of PEGI it means they have other reasons than keeping their content suitable for preteens.

Keep double standards aside and keep things as objective as they can possibly be (i.e.: sticking to PEGI).

Establishing the perspective

The main reason we are having this discussion is because some people have reached out osu! staff prior and have complained that similar imagery is inappropriate. By the looks of it, many here would think their claims might be unjustified. As much of a community driven game we are, the staff would need to deal with eventual complaints from various people on why a bg that features over-stressed portions of sexually associated parts of the body is allowed in the game. How would you explain that to an over-sensitive consumer who is offended by such imagery? So that's a perspective to consider from staff's point of view.

------

Arguments raised prior

The "if that beatmap did it, then so can I" excuse is a peculiar one. I don't believe that excuse can be used to justify the map's bg in any way because it's doing nothing to explain why the bg is appropriate, but instead it's a highlight of an issue regarding there being inconsistency in the enforcement of the rule. If anything, it's a valid excuse to halt further action and attempt to resolve the issue, spark discussion on what needs to be done to correct the inconsistency, which is pretty much what we are doing now.

There are statements that argue why even use these kind of images since they have nothing to do with the beatmap and that other imagery, the ones which are considered less NSFW, can be used. This one strikes me odd because I don't think you can refute this in a way that argues such images are appropriate, and that there is no preference for such not-yet-proven-appropriate images. Well this no different then asking why use controversial material when you can simply can avoid it. The answer is to challenge other peoples' opinions on the subject. I can't think of no other reason to refuse less controversial material, and here we are now, challenging the rule.

Some of you went ahead to do % measurement of how much of the portion of the image inappropriately deemed part(s) of the body are taking up. I do not think anyone here is qualified to say how much % is passable until it has been decided how much % is passable. I do not even know how one would go about deciding how much % is passable, and I fear for whoever decides to do so in this thread. The ridiculousness you can get via applying this to justify images is interesting too, "well this part is taking up 12.99% of the image, which is less than the 13% threshold needed for it to be considered NSFW, so this is appropriate". Ultimately I think this approach has too many issues to being a considerable option.

A poll is nice and all, but it fails to address the issue for all cases. We are not going to launch a poll every time such kind of bg is used. This needs to be discussed appropriately to define what we consider to be nsfw for all possible cases.

There is some mention of cultural distinction, a valid point, and a sad one at that. I think the real issues lies here. How everybody will define what is appropriate or not is based of the culture they come from. Some cultures, like in Japan, people are more open to such imagery than culture like in U.S.. The only way I can see to argue this is challenging the cultural unacceptance of such imagery. This involves understanding why is it unaccaptable and arguing why the cultural viewpoint is invalid.

----

Possible solutions

Cherry Blossom is on the right track by trying to refer to standards set by other game developers.

Personally, I would start with the Miller Test to determine how to go forward with this since we are at a loss in defining how the bg is nsfw to begin with. The following is a simplified version of the Miller Test altered to complement the current rules. All three conditions have to be satisfied for something be considered obscene:

1. It can be argued that that the work, taken as a whole, encourages or promotes sexual, violent, or drug related interests
2. The work depicts or describes ideas/concepts in an offensive manner
3. The work, taken as a whole, lacks literary, artistic, political, or scientific value

When we apply to the bg in question, then what we get is the following:

1. Prove that it promotes sexual interests
2. Describe how this is offensive to you or can be offensive to someone else
3. I think the bg, taken as a whole, lacks literary, artistic, political, or scientific value unless someone can claim otherwise and show how

By successfully using this framework to prove that the bg is indeed nsfw I think we can start to define the criteria for nsfw and incorporate them in the rules.

K4L1 wrote:

Unacceptable example: Three very busty anime characters wearing similar swimsuits with their breasts poised in obvious presentation, with said imagery occupying more than a third of the image's total scene.

#SaveNet0

Someone who has abused their power as a BN certainly deserves the restriction.

I know very little about what has happened in the past 48 hours, but if there needs to be something done about this I think what abraker proposal about Miller Test is really good way of deciding if a bg is nsfw or not. I think an important part about this Miller Test is that if it can be argued to spark a large discussions, it should be taken down. But how they handle things right now has been working fine it seems.

Ashton wrote:

Someone who has abused their power as a BN certainly deserves the restriction.

he doesn't deserve a restriction imo. the only reason they restricted him was because he didn't change a bg that isn't even nsfw. sure, it is sexualized in a way, but it's not nsfw. lots of maps done this and got ranked, and no one cared about the "nsfw" bg. and how did he abuse his power as a bn? he was just trying to defend himself by saying that there's nothing wrong with the bg. net0 getting restricted is basically the osu staff saying, "if there's too much anime tiddies, then you're gonna be fucked up for life.."

and #savenet0

I suggest people stop lingering over what was done and start figuring out how to resolve the issue at hand, the result of which will determine whether what was done was justified or not.

Stefan wrote:

Are we that incapable to take care for that without having such a hilarious state? It has wprked so far somewhat well (because seriously, just ignore the crybabies complaining about every single crap) and move on. We're not having these 'unfortunate happenings' everyday. Or just at all, and we most likely won't have them again.

To put definitions of what is acceptable, and when it's not anymore is near impossible and treated case by case. Rules will make the situation worse by default and won't solve anything. It'll only limit people by their availability and cause more likely these "explosions" we recently had.

Even if it means to have these girls with oversized breasts because people most likely use them for their maps lacking of attention and interests, it's still better than to draw a line that cannot be (really) exceeded in certain cases.

^

MinNin wrote:

Ashton wrote:

Someone who has abused their power as a BN certainly deserves the restriction.

he doesn't deserve a restriction imo. the only reason they restricted him was because he didn't change a bg that isn't even nsfw. sure, it is sexualized in a way, but it's not nsfw. lots of maps done this and got ranked, and no one cared about the "nsfw" bg. and how did he abuse his power as a bn? he was just trying to defend himself by saying that there's nothing wrong with the bg. net0 getting restricted is basically the osu staff saying, "if there's too much anime tiddies, then you're gonna be fucked up for life.."

and #savenet0

He abused his power as a BN by popping multiple maps for reasons that were not exactly correct. This was done purely out of spite and was the primary reason for his removal from the BNG as well as his subsequent restriction. Please don't spread misinformation with lines like "the only reason they restricted him was because he didn't change a bg that isn't even nsfw."

People, get on topic, please. We are not here to discuss Net0's removal.
I think this thread needs moderation, GMTs appreciated.

As of now, we have come to two options:

-stick to PEGI
or
-use the Miller Test

These are solid options to solve this issue.

you missed the third option which was explained well by Stefan: don't change the written rules

this whole thing is being blown out of proportion due to the immature reactions/handling of people involved with Net0's map. as long as GMT/QAT are present in moderating beatmap content, and mappers are compliant, none of this is an issue

I think the actual solution here is to give moderators a proper way to do their job, i.e. actually change/remove parts of a beatmap themselves (so they don't have to "ask" the mapper to do it when it's less like "asking" and more like "telling")

clayton wrote:

this whole thing is being blown out of proportion due to the immature reactions/handling of people involved with Net0's map. as long as GMT/QAT are present in moderating beatmap content, and mappers are compliant, none of this is an issue

Are you talking about the osu!staff?

I mean, we are discussing this because they handled the situation the wrong way.

just my opinion, possibly not entirely informed because I wasn't involved in this situation:

I think Net0 overreacted (not talking about the bubble popping stuff, just in the modding discussion) by spinning this situation as some fundamental issue with osu!'s content rules, when in reality they are very well laid out and the only "issue" is that sometimes osu!'s moderators are a little slow to apply rules (which, I think is understandable, given that osu! moderation is almost 100% volunteer and there aren't that many of them)

I think Ephemeral jumped the gun on drafting this new ruleset because he just wants to avoid some osu!staff PR crisis or whatever. Though the reality is, I believe, how Stefan wrote it in that this is a one-time issue that was mostly caused by Net0 overreacting about not wanting to change a background image

so @ last poster, I guess I am talking about mostly Net0 and somewhat Ephemeral. not sure if any other major players are involved in this ruleset

@clayton
As you can see by both approaches proposed above, the BG was fine and it didn't need to be changed at all.

So it is good that we are discussing this to educate better the osu!staff, they are human too and have things to learn yet.

whether the BG is fine or not depends on standards set by the osu! team, not other agencies

recently ranked examples + Stefan's word suggest to me that this background in particular is probably OK (though leaning towards grey area), but seems like it could go either way. which is why I think the moderator's / Ephemeral's word should be final here