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An Announcement from Derpibooru's Staff

Blossomforth
Thread Starter - Started a thread with over 100 pages
Flexible - Bendy Pony

The Flexible One
Over the past few weeks, Derpibooru has faced a level of stress and turmoil the likes of which we’ve never seen before. 2020 has been a bleak year, and things only seem to get worse as time progresses.
 
Last month, relevant political topics in the world started boiling over into the site and fandom. We tried to remain neutral at first, but allowed ourselves to be swayed into reacting. A lot of people reacted negatively to that. Then we allowed those negative reactions to sway us into another direction.
 
We have always had the best interests of our community at heart, but we failed to communicate with our community, and therefore only heard from the side that was currently angry. This skewed our perceptions of what the community wanted, and as a result we let you down. We made mistakes.
 
A few days ago, we made a change to our content policy. Immediately following this change, we received strongly negative feedback, and once again made the mistake of only hearing one side of the issue. This led us to believe that there was no support for this change, so we announced that we were retracting it earlier tonight.
 
In nearly nine years of running Derpibooru, this is our biggest failure with this site. The feedback we have received tonight has been overwhelming and illuminating.
 
We want to be clear – hateful content is not welcome on Derpibooru. We will be tightening our rules against promotion of discriminatory beliefs and hate speech.
 
We have failed our community, and we have damaged the trust our users have placed in us. We know we cannot just apologize and expect all to be forgiven. We understand we have lost everyone’s trust, so we will be striving to work with the community over the coming weeks to earn that trust back and have an open dialog with our users, as we always should have.
 
There is a lot for us to discuss on this topic, but one thing that has been clear is that we cannot make these decisions alone. From this point forward, any changes to the site’s policies will be announced in advance and communicated to our community very clearly, so that we can gather feedback from our entire community of users and fans.
 
From all of us at Derpibooru, we know we have failed you, and want to do all that we can to rectify this. We ask that you please share your thoughts with us on these issues as we all move forward.
 
—Updates—  
There’s been a lot of responses to this, so I would just like to go over the questions that are coming up most frequently.
 
Q: Does this mean that <x> is now banned?  
A: At the moment, our rules reflect what they were like at the start of June, but we will be enforcing our rules against racism, homophobia, hatred, bigotry, and so on more consistently and strictly. Any changes to the rules going forward will be announced and open to comments from the community before they are implemented.  
We want to make clear in particular that content such as a pony insulting a racial group with a slur (even a ponified one) as a racist “mouthpiece” is not okay.
 
Q: When will this decision change again?  
A: There’s a lot of work to be done. Any decisions made going forward will be made with full community involvement. We want to hear from our community about what our rules should be, to ensure that any decisions made ware the best for the community. These decisions will no longer be made by a small group of staff members.
 
Q: What is the current idea on making enforcement consistent?  
A: “Content containing blatant hate speech, or promotion of or propaganda for prejudicial views” is the most up-to-date idea we are using to move forward. It is not final, and will certainly be improved as we gather feedback.
Blossomforth
Thread Starter - Started a thread with over 100 pages
Flexible - Bendy Pony

The Flexible One
On a personal note, I let the stress of the last few weeks get to me a lot, and this has caused me to shut down in some critical times for the site. Raptorshy stepped up where I failed, and I will be forever grateful for her efforts to help the site. I want to be clear that she is not to blame for anything that has transpired over the past few days.
Background Pony #4420
I had no idea any of this was happening. I was just looking at ponies for the last few days. Which is what this site if for.
White-eyed vireo
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Big Mare Index
No politics…
 
Just pony…
 
Thank you
 
SYKE
 
What is this accountability? Do you not believe in the site’s mission of archiving works for display? This is insane! You just tried pure neutrality, and now you go in for the kill for everything offensive? This isn’t a New policy going forward—this is suicide.
Background Pony #9E12
So because a smaller section of the fandom got angry about the old rules being reinstated than was angry about the censorship rules being added, you’re going back to the pro-censorship ruleset and just adding communism to it?
Background Pony #E06A
Nazism and Stalinism are both god awful messes and should be avoided, yeah.
 
Hopefully the ban on communism isn’t going to extent to …well non-stalinists and people who just want to make the world a better place (as opposed to the paranoid ‘we must gulag the kulak’ ones)
evan555alpha
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PSA: R0 was changed!
Thank you for saying this.
 
That being said, please give an explanation of what is and isn’t allowed. No more of this vague talk.
 
But if this is a full announcement then please put up an announcement banner or something so that more people notice it. Don’t let it quietly happen in the forums.
Background Pony #F1DD
@Zatss  
This, please explain a hypothetical situation on what is allowed and what isn’t. “Hate” “promoting” and “harmful ideology” are all very vague terms.
Background Pony #65A6
Whelp, looks like more censorship after all. Question: if an image has a slogan from outside the Overton Window that does not call for violence or use a slur, is it still classified as “hate speech”?
Background Pony #E06A
A blanket ban on communism (as opposed to stalinism and maoism) alongside nazism is very…both sides of you
Nevaylin
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Neva Neva Neva
I think this is the best move. Something had to be done. This situation is really difficult to address and I strongly appreciate you and the other staff listening and reconsidering your actions.
doloresbridge
Solar Supporter - Fought against the New Lunar Republic rebellion on the side of the Solar Deity (April Fools 2023).
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Preenhub - We all know what you were up to this evening~
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Peace to all
@Blossomforth  
Yep. So, does this mean screencaps from 4chan are gone? What about stuff like say, MAS Twilight saying “retard”? DWK makes some edgy jokes. Unironic anti-human pony utopia stuff. Is that all out of bounds?
Background Pony #E06A
How did communism (‘we want to give workers control of the means of production’) get linked in with banning ‘I think people of X ethic group need to be exterminated’?
CouchCrusader
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The End wasn't The End - Found a new home after the great exodus of 2012

@Blossomforth
 
From this end, at the end of the day this is a volunteer gig and I do not hold it against you or any of the staff for needing to step away from the site to take care of yourselves.
 
That said… wow. While I’m closer to >first, read up on the paradox of intolerance, Sartre’s comments on the disarming tactics of the anti-Semite (edited link for better quotation) and how they’re used to defend the archiving of hateful rhetoric in a prominent place, and overall whether you really do think leftists are going to make the world a whole plain of grey rhetorical goo.
Boxless

stop using Derpi lmao
@Blossomforth  
Hold the fuck up. So basically, you’re just tightening down the rules again?
 
Pick one and stick to it already, i’m about to scrape what i want and book it to Rainbooru over your indecisive wobbling back and forth.
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