Yes. This is a model designed in the 1970s-80s to protect revenue and depending on municipality either deflect or obey local regulation.
And I’ve already acknowledged that there is rational incentive for new keyholders to make IFDB a more effective lead source for the products they sell.
We are for content moderation . We don’t want a new user’s first look at IFDB to show up with my review of Monster Fucker One: Vampiredisplayed on the front page - at least until a user creates an account and selects that they are all right with showing entries including mature content.
This is the Team Never argument.
I’m Team Shouldn’t Always. Team Shouldn’t Always can help you keep this to a minimum by talking about other stuff. But that’s not enough for Team Never, and if Team Never has the keys, then I guess this is how it’s gonna be.
Ideally, you’d like a new user to see potentially curated “endcaps” on their first visit: “Hey, here’s Zork , a seminal work
…are you sure about that? It’s not hard to construct the “Zork is offensively capitalist and violent and not aligned with current community standards” argument, is it?
I’m jumping in from the lurky shadows because I don’t understand jcompton’s argument at all. If the default is the experience or whatever, and that default is safe for kids to browse, what’s the problem?
I have given the link to IFDB to kids, so yes, it is literally the job of the moderators to think of the children. Right now, you appear to be the sole guy in the back advocating for Horny Rights. Respectfully, it’s not a great look!
I’m saying if you want to hold up Zork as a problematic work that might potentially get censored under an imagined draconian policy, I’m countering that’s not the point at all.
(Straw-man = “problematic content shouldn’t be moderated because Zork could be considered problematic”)
This is a really nice idea. It might be easier and more successful positively to identify games that are suitable for children, than to filter out the topics that might offend some adults (filth, fascism, communism, or whatever). As a parent of a young child who’s interested in adventure games I’d be more comfortable with this.
Though some of the ideas for presenting a more “professional” front as the default option are probably good too.
So perhaps the best question for you, @jcompton is “What are you losing, with regard to IFDB, if users need to click through a warning to see an entry that others may have deemed mature or potentially problematic?” - other than your “there is a potentially slippery slope” argument?
I mean, the works you are potentially advocating for may not show up for a random, unregistered drive-by user - is this a matter of losing clicks or views? I don’t think IFDB was ever specifically about advertising games - it’s actually a database after all. Having entries visible on the front page isn’t really a good marketing model if that’s what you mean. It’s not a contest. If people are relying on IFDB as some kind of promotional tool, that’s hammering a nail with glass bottle.
I think anyone who’s ever released a game on IFDB outside a competition can testify to this. Games like that usually get 2-3 ratings tops, unless it’s from someone already famous or advertised elsewhere.
I know I ~recused~ myself from moderator duties earlier and thus likely showed my ass as somewhat of a flake BUT I would love to help make this happen. I think it’d be a great idea for parents, teachers, schools, and libraries alike.
That kind of goes along with the separate landing page for unregistered new users idea. From there it would probably be easy to design a “family friendly” link to show games that are tagged as such.
The “unregistered new user” experience could be a bit more guided with curated search links. Don’t like that? Make an account, or just click a “Show me the normal view” button.
What? You can hand kids a lot of things, but whether it’s appropriate or responsible or not is solely on you.
I’m still not sure why anyone would assume a database for archiving a form of media with no other criteria but that it exists and that someone wanted to add it would be considered by default safe for anyone and everyone. That’s insane.
What happens next? People going out of their way to make fun games without a ton of sex, profanity and murder? People making their own ‘adults-only’ IF database that thrives because it has a targeted audience? What’s the bad thing that’s supposed to happen next?
I think customizing the user experience is kind of the purpose of a database. I stand by the concept that the database admins understanding and categorizing content and notifying users what they’re getting into actually makes it more attractive to people who specifically are or aren’t wanting to see mature content.
lol “this is just the beginning…” cancel culture’s coming for ifdb, baybeeeee
First of all, people here seem to repeatedly confuse databases with archives. They’re not the same thing.
Secondly, this conversation was predicated on the default experience of IFDB. If your argument is that making the default experience safe for all users (regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, etc) is “insane,” you are REALLY showing your colours. Once again, not a great look.
Perhaps the issue is the word “safe” and the whole memed idea of “protecting the children” rubs people the wrong way. Maybe “customized experience” is a better way to think about it? It’s not just children who want to browse according to their tastes.
Customized searching is the entire point of a database isn’t it?
For some people that will mean “Please don’t show me anything I can’t play along with my kids.” Others will be like “Give me all the furry pr0n…” A user who has PTSD may not want to even deal with specific types of games. ?
I’m a little confused by how heated this discussion is becoming. All we’re talking about is the default experience for non-logged-in users, right? We could keep it at the status quo, which seems to be “anything goes,” and it wouldn’t keep the IF community from flourishing. Or we could change it to exclude certain kinds of adult material, and even if that was non-optimal it wouldn’t destroy anything. This isn’t a war of censorship-mad tiger moms vs. horny guys in trenchcoats.
In other words, while I would be more or less in favor of changes along the lines @dfabulich describes, I don’t see much reason to worry about a censorship slippery slope or about one side not showing a “good look.” Am I overlooking something?
This just proved my point more than anything else could have, thank you. There’s a clear bias here–not against pornographic material, that’s just the excuse–but anything that involves any sort of mature themes or intensity of emotion.
You’re seriously suggesting that a separate database that would allow you to remove those unworthy games which are not light comedic puzzlers and thus not “fun” off to somewhere out of sight of the main one for real IF, isn’t something you’d see as a bad thing?
I’ve seen so many arguments in the past for inclusivity and acceptance and against splitting the community, and things have just changed so quickly the instant that the tools were there to ostracize and drive authors out.
Nobody is saying “remove”. This is about content warnings, not censorship. Providing more user tools and knowledge to search for and potentially find or omit content they do not want to search for sounds like more power to the user, not less as you’d get with any form of censorship.
I think this is a sensible approach. That said, it is an absurd (and depressing) state of affairs when people are riled up by the idea of the word “safe”, as you suggest.
There is never going to be a 100% safe space for a user; no such thing exists. Similarly, there’s never going to be a method by which IFDB moderators or curators can provide that safe space. However, if we’re talking about default experience (as we were earlier, who knows if we’ve shifted away from that point now), I think the onus is on the mods/curators to make the default page as safe as possible, to cover as many bases as possible.