Litphoria aims to be a site that isn’t exclusively 18+, but I think we’d agree it doesn’t exactly look like that as you browse around. We have a crowd of people interested in mature nonsexual discourse and roleplaying, but current features leave some things to be desired for filtering sexual material out of view of those less interested in it and genuinely offering an experience that isn’t primarily 18+. I suggest we have a content classification and filtering feature so as to achieve Litphoria’s goals of not appearing and being entirely a smut-oriented site.
Summary (the TLDR)
There’s two important goals to achieve: empower users to set content expectations in their spaces on the site, and to empower users to filter out the content they’re not interested in and see what they are interested in.
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Introduce a content classification model with the following ratings (or others, this is totally open for discussion):
- General – all non-sexual non-mature content.
- Mature – themes of drug use and violence, no explicit sex.
- Sexual – explicit sexual intercourse, plus all Mature topics.
- Certain content on the site will have content attached by the people who create it: profiles, roleplays/chats, feedback, profile options, and announcements. (Private messages won’t have a rating.)
- The rating for that content is pronounced wherever it appears, so that people understand content expectations. Depending on where you're seeing that content (in lists, viewing its page, etc) the rating may be more obvious and attention-grabby, or more subtle and out-of-the-way.
- You (the user) set the maximum rating you’re interested in, and you don’t see content above that rating.
- Guests default to a general rating.
We could have an “extreme” rating for extreme fetishes, but rather than worry about which fetishes count as “extreme”, we might be better off adding some kind of system for filtering things out when they’re tagged with specific interests.
We could also enforce that underage users can't access sexual content ratings. (This could connect to underage users indicating their underage status.) Realistically speaking, this would depend on and might affect peoples' willingness to be honest about those details though.
The details
Your rating will be an account-wide maximum content rating, chosen while creating your Litphoria account or in your account settings Guests always have a General rating.
Regardless of your rating, you’ll always see as full an experience as the site can give. If you visit the 25 most recent characters, it should show you the most recent 25 that meet your criteria. (Some sites, like DeviantArt, would just pick the most recent 25 including things you’ve opted not to see, then blank out/obfuscate those things. That would happen often enough to be disruptive and unpleasant for users filtering things out, so shouldn’t happen.)
A new content wall should replace the current age wall. If you directly visit a piece of content exceeding your maximum rating (such as via a link), instead of seeing that content, you’ll be told that content exceeds your content rating settings. You’ll be told where you can change your rating configuration. You may also click a button to view that content anyway this time (e.g. “OK, let me see this anyway”). Users will ideally not be pressured one way or the other to change their configuration nor click that button. (That view-it-anyway button may sound surprising, but this is about self-regulation, so I think allowing users to see things they want to see anyway sometimes without having to change their site-wide filtering settings is important.)
The content rating (e.g. general, mature, sexual) will show up prominently on a content’s page itself (a profile, a roleplay, a profile feature’s details page, a feedback item, an announcement) and more discreetly in any lists of those content (search, profile lists, feedback pages, front page, likely profile options on the profile edit page, etc).
Profiles have a rating chosen early in the creator, and won’t ever contain traits, trait options, or interests above the profile’s rating - nor will they show up in the creator/editor. If you want to lower your profile’s rating, you cannot lower it below the rating of any options present on your profile - i.e. a profile that has a Sexual interest cannot then be lowered to General rating until that interest is dropped. (We should be able to force it down to General, which means nuking all profile features on that profile exceeding our desired new rating, so we don’t have to hunt-and-peck for those profile features.)
Canons have a rating, but there will be no restriction for the characters you can create associated with a canon. You can still create General characters for a more mature-themed canon and vice versa.
Feedback: General feedback & bug reports have ratings corresponding to what you’re writing about. For automatic profile feature suggestions, this rating will become the rating of the profile feature you propose.
Roleplays and chats will have their rating displayed prominently to convey behaviour expectations. Like profiles, these can’t contain interests that exceed the room’s rating.
I think (but am not certain) that characters should be able to join channels regardless of their rating. This way adult characters can still participate in Main Channel, and you can switch to a Mature-rated character in a Sexual-rated channel (which seems sensible). Not everyone will be able to visit everyone’s profile page this way, though.
Private messages will be unrated, i.e. there’s no content expectations beyond what the two people in that PM work out.
Future potential features from here
Alternative profile versions could become a thing to assist people mingling between chats of different ratings. You can create a General-rated version of your profile, or a Mature-rated version, and people in chats of those ratings can see those versions. This allows you to present your character in a context-appropriate way without creating a whole new profile.
Content blacklisting, mentioned at the top, would allow you to filter in another way: blacklist certain types of content (interests?) you do not want to see, and you will no longer see ads or rooms tagged with those interests.
Classification filters on lists would be cool. Visit the profiles list, or roleplay list, and there could be a filter up the top saying "filter this list down to these classifications:". Particularly interested in Mature content right now? Filter it down to just that one. Are you more interested in ERP? Filter it down to just Sexual content.
How do we rate things then?
Good question! There’s lots of cases where the rating would be obvious (sex is sexual), but there’s also outlier interests where it’s less clear: is face slapping sexual because it’s only really an interest in sexual scenarios, or general because there’s nothing sexual by default about face slapping?
I’m not sure what the perfect answer is so we can work this out as well, maybe later.
My own opinion is to filter based on what context it’s most relevant to: ‘face slapping’ isn’t a detail that’s really relevant to highlight outside of sexually charged scenarios, and presenting it to General users is weird. There may be some cases it’d be good to have a fetishized/sexual version with that rating, and give other ratings a version that’s useful to them specifically.