An important message for the year 2011!

[oceandezignz.livejournal.com]

Happy New Year everyone! May 2011 be fabulous for you. Now, this post here is a little bit serious, so I ask that you please read it carefully.

Artists_beware's purpose is to be an informative community regarding the negative (and the positive) in the world of commissioned and traded artwork, fursuits and professional going-ons in the world of art on the whole (advice, scam warnings, etc).

What we are not is a community that drama mongers, harshly critiques out of hand, performs witch hunts/trolling or openly drops dox _{(private information that could lead to real-life harassment for the exposed person)} on anyone posted here within the community. We are not a *chan-style board, therefore the shenanigans that go on there, do not happen here.

We are also not a community for voicing opinions on hot-button issues, or uses of various terminology. These discussions actually derail the true point of a post, and should be curbed as much as possible.

Please re-familiarize yourself with our community rules (which have received several updates over the last year), and treat the community like the professional place it is.

Thank you, and again Happy New Year!

EDIT/Clarification taken from a comment made by kerstin_orion:
We're not trying to make a new rule here. We just want people to PM or email us mods instead of commenting on offensive terms in others' comments, because while some people are mature enough to handle a 'hey, that term is offensive' comment, others are not. As moderators, if the person reacts poorly to our 'correction', we have the ability to deal with the offensive comment through thread freezing and (if it's bad enough) comment screening.

No new rules have been placed into this post, this post is a reminder of what our community is about, and to simply to re-read the current rules, and again, if something seems to go out of hand somewhere - contact us rather than handle it on your own.

Comments

[puppetmaker40.livejournal.com]

I am a Moderator and I support this message

[spiffystuff.livejournal.com]

Oh woop! Thanks so much for posting! I totally agree with this.

[theblackdragon.livejournal.com]

you guys have really been stepping it up in order to try and curb the drama that used to run nigh-unchecked. mad props for that. :3

[jakejynx.livejournal.com]

"We are also not a community for voicing opinions on hot-button issues, or uses of various terminology. These discussions actually derail the true point of a post, and should be curbed as much as possible."

Can you elaborate on this? It sounds like you're saying hat things like offensive comments should just be ignored.

[puppetmaker40.livejournal.com]

More like don't fan the flames believe that we will deal with it.

We can see what you see and either deal with it publicly or privately depending on the situation.

Just know that we are keeping a careful eye on things although we may not always speak. We also talk to the other moderators so we are in agreement about things we do like this post.

(To my fellow Moderators. I deleted a duplicate to this post because my Internet went crazy)

[genkigami.livejournal.com]

I think they're trying to curb the constant "OMG YOU SAID "GYPPED" THAT'S AN OFFENSIVE TERM" whenever the word comes up like the person who put it up was purposefully trying to be offensive.

Thank god. I was tired of people getting dogpiled and berated over terminology.

[leahtaur.livejournal.com]

This seems as good a place to ask as any. Is there an official policy on mentioning a person's real name and leaving it up? It's come up a few times and I'm just wondering if there is a situation where it would be considered okay, and what the deciding factor is.

[insane-kangaroo.livejournal.com]

In regards to real names, this group can get in trouble with livejournal. If said mentioned person is a member of livejournal and their real name is listed in a journal, they can file a report and have the journal entry hidden until the name is removed.

LJ Staff have allowed in the past initials in place of a real name.

[oceandezignz.livejournal.com]

Yes. Like IK said, we can get in trouble with LJ due to their terms of service, etc. We try to avoid using real names when possible, but if the artist in question goes by their first name in all of their business dealings, then the name is added to the tag.

But usually most artists on A_B go by so many danged nick names and 'identity changes', the real name can't even fit!

[greenreaper.livejournal.com]

Might not be a bad idea to update the list of sites, too. SoFurry? Inkbunny? ArtSpots? Furocity? Side7? The Dealer's Den? FAN Archive isn't there anymore, and GFXArtist seems broken.

[kerstin-orion.livejournal.com]

I actually posted several requests about that in late 2009/early 2010, as part of the process of updating the community information and rules. I got exactly zero suggestions. XD

As the info says, we are always open to suggestions for sites. Thanks for the suggestions/corrections! I will work on updating the list soon.

[foxhack.livejournal.com]

What if someone snaps at you for no reason, just for trying to help?

[oceandezignz.livejournal.com]

If they were insulting outright (name calling, etc), then we will step in. Otherwise, its more of a pick-your-battles sort of thing, and in the end the one who snapped will probably look a bit bad to the comm on the whole anyway. Just come at comments politely, and as helpfully as possible without being overbearing and you should be okay!

[poto-heart.livejournal.com]

Okay, I really honestly am not clear on this.

If somebody uses a word, for example, 'gypped'; this is not against the rules - but if somebody asks them not to use the word, that is against the rules? Am I understanding that correctly?

[oceandezignz.livejournal.com]

Well since I was writing a reply about this, I will just give it to you.

Just as a word or an inappropriate turn of phrase can be offensive to you, its also offensive and disrespectful to the OP for comments to go off topic, and/or comments that basically lead to drama mongering (aka posts of "in b4 omg gypped is offensive", etc.).

We moderators ourselves are going to try and keep these hot-button words out of posts (rejecting them or we might approve and tell them in the first post they might want to omit X-word), but if one should escape our notice, we are asking that the members attempt to ignore that slip of their internet tongue and just get to the root of the issue in the post itself.

I understand that some would want to see it corrected immediately, but we really are not the community for these types of things.

[otana.livejournal.com]

We are also not a community for voicing opinions on hot-button issues, or uses of various terminology. These discussions actually derail the true point of a post, and should be curbed as much as possible.

Wow. Instead of curtailing discussion about offensive language and "hot button issues", how about you ban the offensive language itself? Don't ban the discussion and education, ban the bigotry.

Damn.

[kerstin-orion.livejournal.com]

We actually do have a rule about offensive behavior, name-calling, etc. We are simply asking people to PM a mod instead of 'getting into it' with the person who used the offensive term.

[skanrashke.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the rules update, mods :) Its nice to have one of these "THIS AM WOT RULES AM" posts every so often, so those of us who are prone to forgetting such things can be like "Oh shit what was that rule for- oh! A POST EVERY HUNDRED POSTS THAT ILLUSTRATES THIS POINT SUCCINCTLY! FABULOUS!"

[stormslegacy.livejournal.com]

I have to admit, I'm all for keeping things professional but...this isn't the way I agree with. I'll stick around and keep commenting because I feel this community is a helpful place but these rule-changes definitely are getting into the category of over-modding.

There's a button every OP can click to not get comments emailed to them, and I really don't see the hardship to have some off-topic comments.

I'm not saying that I agree with Lilenth's tone above but telling her to go and not let the door hit her on the way out for voicing her opinion seems rough. It's a community, I totally respect that you guys "own" it but communities need members too. There are totally better ways to handle disagreement--namely discussion. Discussion doesn't HAVE to change the rules, but it will make people much less likely to be angry because they feel like children being scolded. I'd like to think I'm a very reasonable person and I find the rule-change to be a bit overbearing. Comments like this (http://community.livejournal.com/artists_beware/413339.html?thread=14046619#t14046619) from a mod is nothing short of offensive...that is not the way a mod should address members--it's insulting.

We definitely have had issues with some members making entirely inappropriate comments--namely things like telling I_K he's not welcome "in b4" comments, unjustified critiques and others, but I'm not sure the rule changes will address this at all. The people doing it are either ignorant to the rules or just don't care enough to act professional. That is the riffraff that moderation is supposed to clean up, not healthy discussion in the comments.

That said, I respect that this is Kerstin's community and will abide by the rules even if I don't agree.

[kerstin-orion.livejournal.com]

I agree that in a rules-related mod post, discussion about the rules should be allowed. I have screened the 'sandbox' comment and have messaged puppetmaker40 about it. I apologize for that. I do not take that attitude. I feel that the members are the heart and soul of the community and as moderators we are not here to be dictators. And I certainly don't feel that this is -my- community. I just happened to end up the sole moderator through attrition.

As for this post specifically, we're not trying to make a new rule here. We just want people to PM or email us mods instead of commenting on offensive terms in others' comments, because while some people are mature enough to handle a 'hey, that term is offensive' comment, others are not. As moderators, if the person reacts poorly to our 'correction', we have the ability to deal with the offensive comment through thread freezing and (if it's bad enough) comment screening.

It would be lovely if people didn't use these terms to begin with (what a place the internet would be if they didn't!)

[kayla-la.livejournal.com]

Dunno if this particular bit has been addressed yet (I just got home from having been out of town for what feels like forever), but for the record, we don't violently enforce the no off topic discussion thing. It's a judgment call from us. Basically, if you reply to someone going 'Nice icon!', we're not going to freak out at you, but if you start holding a 10+ comment off-topic discussion with your friend about the lunch you had yesterday, we're going to ask you to take it to PMs.

What people don't tend to consider is that it's kind of rude to the OP to hold off-topic discussions in their post. It's true they can turn off comment notifications, but I don't think it's fair to expect everyone to do that so people can discuss whatever they want even if it has nothing to do with the post. There's no reason people can't take their discussions to PMs in that case.

But like I said, some off-topic here and there won't get action. We just want people to have some consideration to the OP and take their off-topic discussions elsewhere. This honestly doesn't happen very often, anyway.

[ocelotish]

I have to say I'm really glad for the update. I mean, I do think that it's appropriate to report offensive language, but I'll be glad when legitimate posts aren't distilled into the one questionable phrase or word, losing any other validity it had. The prime example I can think of is when a party involved is transsexual and the poster happened to refer to them by the wrong pronouns. While I can understand why this is upsetting, their post is not devoid of other meaning just because they made a mistake, and the dog-piling that often happens almost renders it so. Suddenly it's not a post about the best course of action to take to get a refund, it's about the party's gender. I do think that the dog-piling detracts from the post's content, but there should still be an action to take if something is offensive in the main post or the comments.

[oceandezignz.livejournal.com]

Thank you for understanding.

[thaily.livejournal.com]

In response to puppetmaker40, people saying stuff like "gypped" or "that's gay" is essentially name calling. And I've seen mods jump down people's throats for ridiculous stuff, so either mod all name calling or none of it, ktnx!

[kerstin-orion.livejournal.com]

We're not saying we're not going to moderate it. We're saying tell the mods when you see it, instead of replying in the post.

[anjel-kitty.livejournal.com]

I fully support the suggestions given here, and should an issue arise I'll be sure to notify the mods.