Split from PG-13, People....

[The Parkus Empire]

The whole Orgazmo NC-17 was indeed the biggest crock of shit I've ever seen from the MPAA (and I've seen a lot). Film was PG-13 material.

[Meryuma]

The whole Orgazmo NC-17 was indeed the biggest crock of shit I've ever seen from the MPAA (and I've seen a lot). Film was PG-13 material.

I think the reasoning was "U SED ORGAZM TROLOLOL".

[Maurepas]

The whole Orgazmo NC-17 was indeed the biggest crock of shit I've ever seen from the MPAA (and I've seen a lot). Film was PG-13 material.

Yep. Though admittedly of little relevance to the thread and NSG, if we're gonna talk about the MPAA and Movie ratings, and why PG-13 is stretched as far as it is(as well as constricted opportunistically), it's highly relevant.

[Meryuma]

The whole Orgazmo NC-17 was indeed the biggest crock of shit I've ever seen from the MPAA (and I've seen a lot). Film was PG-13 material.

Yep. Though admittedly of little relevance to the thread and NSG, if we're gonna talk about the MPAA and Movie ratings, and why PG-13 is stretched as far as it is(as well as constricted opportunistically), it's highly relevant.

As the MPAA would say, "ERRBODY NOZE ORGAZMZ R 4 ADULTZ, TROLOLOL".

[Maurepas]

Yep. Though admittedly of little relevance to the thread and NSG, if we're gonna talk about the MPAA and Movie ratings, and why PG-13 is stretched as far as it is(as well as constricted opportunistically), it's highly relevant.

As the MPAA would say, "ERRBODY NOZE ORGAZMZ R 4 ADULTZ, TROLOLOL".

Well, unless the Weinstein Company pays them off. Then teenagers should be watching straight porno in the theaters.

[Reploid Productions]

Posted this over in the "What if you were a mod?" thread, and thought it might also be just a tiny bit relevant in here as well, for folks complaining that the PG-13 thing is new/decided by a single mod/totally and completely unfair/etc. Please make sure your sarcasm detectors are active, because the following has a high concentration of it:

A Brief History of the "New" PG-13 Rule
A long, long time ago, sometime around October or November of the year 2002, Max Barry created a little webgame to promote his book. At that time, although there were rules, there weren't any moderators to enforce them. They were simple rules, as Max expected his game to remain simple, and very small. You can even see these well-preserved ancient relics with your own eyes.

What can I post?

You can discuss and argue about almost anything, so long as it's vaguely relevant to politics or NationStates and doesn't fall into any of the categories below. You don't have to be politically correct, but you must maintain a minimum standard of behavior.

What can't I post?

Any content that is:

• obscene
  
• illegal
  
• threatening
  
• malicious
  
• defamatory
  
• spam

A few months later however, and Max realized that he needed moderators to help actually enforce these ancient edicts, and to help clarify them for players who proved to have some difficulty in interpreting these instructions. Sometime around April 2003, Max appointed the first mods, and thus began the taming of the forums! It was a difficult time, full of porn spam and shock images, because some players thought things like goatse and tubgirl were perfectly okay and great fun to post! But those brave pioneers of moderation stood steadfast against the seething tide and pressed ever onward in their long campaign; across the vast and rolling plains of NS, the craggy peaks of the then-UN (before Mt. Cease & Desist erupted, destroying the UN and raising the WA in its place,) the soggy depths of General, driving the rulebreakers before them!

Then, sometime around May 2005 (unfortunately a more accurate date cannot be located, only an estimate derived from old edit logs indicating modifications to the original text that remain in more recent editions) several of the mods convened and discussed gathering explanations and clarifications into one great tome of knowledge, so that all could easily know and understand the rules, because apparently the edict "Don't be a dick." wasn't understandable enough. For weeks they toiled, collecting the past couple of years worth of policy into the One Stop Rules Shop, which was then presented to Max. Max read it, and it was good. Alas, archeological evidence of the PG-13 rule and exact dates of its inception have been lost for all time to the Great Jolt Forum Purge, but modern copies of the original text remain remarkably intact and in readable condition!

Obscene and Explicit Content: Sexually graphic images and posts, and violent images such as bloody corpses. Very strictly forbidden. Obscene imagery and content in the forums should be reported to the Moderation Forum. Please provide a link to the topic, but do not quote it while explaining its illegality. Then we have to find and delete your posts too.

The standard for both forums and game is the US movie rating "PG-13". Mild swearing may be tolerated, mild sexuality may be hinted, but explicit or excessive versions of either or both may result in proportional mod response.

Over time, the moderators relaxed in their duties, thinking the wilderness of the forums was tamed forever and that the denizens of NS General and the other regions of the forums knew and understood the rules. Unfortunately it was not to be, and the forums began a slow but steady creep away from civilization, a decay that set in slowly, pointing the way back to the dangerous wilds of 2002.

Hope was not lost, however! On Apr 03, 2010, one of the oldest and most experienced moderators, a scarred veteran from the original campaigns against the pornspammers recognized the danger, and in council with the other moderators, she outlined her plan of attack!

I'm proposing a mild shift in our enforcement to do a bit of social engineering in NSG in particular. Nothing like getting all warn-happy or temporarily making a big production out of banning a topic of discussion, just locking the threads that get going and are into TMI territory. If these types of threads keep getting locked, the users should (in theory, at least,) lose interest in trying to post them. In a way, I think they've been creeping toward trying to find a hard line in the sand, and we've let it go for so long that people think some of this stuff is totally okay, which in turn has started to draw the Undesirable Types over.

Thus began a quiet campaign of PG-13 enforcement, not heralded by trumpets and banners but by the quiet click of a lock's bolt sliding home. It worked to a degree, however the subtle retraining of the users that Reploid Productions hoped for refused to emerge, instead moving to the darkest recesses of the recently rediscovered lands of Forum 7. With the attention of the moderators focused on taming of those territories, NSG was once again allowed to wane and the moderators returned from Forum 7 to discover they had lost ground in General again.

Refusing to give up, it was Reploid Productions once again who rallied the troops, this time on April 12, 2011, just barely a year after the previous campaign!

A quick glance around NSG shows they're getting a bit frisky again.

Perhaps it's time to gently get lock-happy on the more adult themed such discussions again and steer our users away from that particular line before they think they've pushed it farther than they ought to?

In council with the other mods, it was determined that a quiet campaign had proven only partially effective in the past, and that the users probably needed an edict by one of the senior moderators, speaking for the whole, to inform the users that This Isn't Cool. It was Katganistan who volunteered to put herself forward to endure the angry barbs and wrath of users unhappy about having their activities curtailed, though fortunately for all involved modern users are far less violent than their ancestors from the harsher times of yesteryear in regards to rules enforcement.

Just in case it isn't clear from the text above, this IS dripping with sarcasm. But it is also an accurate history of the particular rule, how it came to be, and who's responsible for poking people into cracking down on violations. If you have a problem with "the PG-13 rule", then you can bring it up with me.

The tl;dr version: The rule has always been there, but periodically people start pushing hard against the line and occasionally need to be reeled back in. This is just the latest iteration of a cycle that's pretty much been running as long as the site itself has.

[Nanatsu no Tsuki]

This is the reason why I think NSG should have an 18+ rating. Or, as some have suggested, a mature section.

It's absurd that now we cannot discuss a topic maturely because there are minors around. Sex can be discussed without being graphic. But as TNB said, hopefully the Spring fever dies soon and we can get back to normal. Hopefully.

[The Parkus Empire]

This is the reason why I think NSG should have an 18+ rating. Or, as some have suggested, a mature section.

It's absurd that now we cannot discuss a topic maturely because there are minors around. Sex can be discussed without being graphic. But as TNB said, hopefully the Spring fever dies soon and we can get back to normal. Hopefully.

It was pretty much made clear what I thought: this isn't an effort to ban sex threads, it's just an effort to prevent NSG from becoming a sex-sex-sex forum. I also doubt Max Barry wants a forum devoted purely to sex (which is what an "adult" forum would end up being).

[Reploid Productions]

This is the reason why I think NSG should have an 18+ rating. Or, as some have suggested, a mature section.

It's absurd that now we cannot discuss a topic maturely because there are minors around. Sex can be discussed without being graphic. But as TNB said, hopefully the Spring fever dies soon and we can get back to normal. Hopefully.

The big problem is, it seems like 99% of the time, any discussion with any remote sexual connotation stays mature about as well as a hammer floats. And Max has told us more than once that even mature discussions of sexual details are a no-go.

[Nanatsu no Tsuki]

This is the reason why I think NSG should have an 18+ rating. Or, as some have suggested, a mature section.

It's absurd that now we cannot discuss a topic maturely because there are minors around. Sex can be discussed without being graphic. But as TNB said, hopefully the Spring fever dies soon and we can get back to normal. Hopefully.

The big problem is, it seems like 99% of the time, any discussion with any remote sexual connotation stays mature about as well as a hammer floats. And Max has told us more than once that even mature discussions of sexual details are a no-go.

It's his site, in any case.

[Meryuma]

This is the reason why I think NSG should have an 18+ rating. Or, as some have suggested, a mature section.

It's absurd that now we cannot discuss a topic maturely because there are minors around. Sex can be discussed without being graphic. But as TNB said, hopefully the Spring fever dies soon and we can get back to normal. Hopefully.

The problem lies more in the absurd division of the NS population into clueless, "innocent" minors and and rational, mature adults that is constantly implied in statements such as these.

Minors, myself included, were making legitimate contributions to sexual threads. You are contradicting your own experiences... quite irrational.

It's not even a matter of law. There's no law saying minors can't discuss sex.

I don't see why the hell you say this.

[The Blaatschapen]

This is the reason why I think NSG should have an 18+ rating. Or, as some have suggested, a mature section.

It's absurd that now we cannot discuss a topic maturely because there are minors around. Sex can be discussed without being graphic. But as TNB said, hopefully the Spring fever dies soon and we can get back to normal. Hopefully.

The problem lies more in the absurd division of the NS population into clueless, "innocent" minors and and rational, mature adults that is constantly implied in statements such as these.

Minors, myself included, were making legitimate contributions to sexual threads. You are contradicting your own experiences... quite irrational.

It's not even a matter of law. There's no law saying minors can't discuss sex.

I don't see why the hell you say this.

We have rational mature adults? Where?

[Nanatsu no Tsuki]

This is the reason why I think NSG should have an 18+ rating. Or, as some have suggested, a mature section.

It's absurd that now we cannot discuss a topic maturely because there are minors around. Sex can be discussed without being graphic. But as TNB said, hopefully the Spring fever dies soon and we can get back to normal. Hopefully.

The problem lies more in the absurd division of the NS population into clueless, "innocent" minors and and rational, mature adults that is constantly implied in statements such as these.

Minors, myself included, were making legitimate contributions to sexual threads. You are contradicting your own experiences... quite irrational.

It's not even a matter of law. There's no law saying minors can't discuss sex.

I don't see why the hell you say this.

Did I mention the law or are you going to start your 'ageist' crap again? Learn to read and be less antagonistic. It would do you oodles of good.

That you are able to discuss something, adequately, doesn't mean others in your age group can or will, for that matter. It makes you an isolated case. Nothing else.

I advice you take a step back and recognize what others are saying. Yes, I think NSG should be 18+. Will the mods or Max Barry implement this? Probably not, as demonstrated by Reppy's post. There is nothing irrational here, just you.

[Wiztopia]

The problem lies more in the absurd division of the NS population into clueless, "innocent" minors and and rational, mature adults that is constantly implied in statements such as these.

Minors, myself included, were making legitimate contributions to sexual threads. You are contradicting your own experiences... quite irrational.

It's not even a matter of law. There's no law saying minors can't discuss sex.

I don't see why the hell you say this.

Did I mention the law or are you going to start your 'ageist' crap again? Learn to read and be less antagonistic. It would do you oodles of good.

That you are able to discuss something, adequately, doesn't mean others in your age group can or will, for that matter. It makes you an isolated case. Nothing else.

I advice you take a step back and recognize what others are saying. Yes, I think NSG should be 18+. Will the mods or Max Barry implement this? Probably not, as demonstrated by Reppy's post. There is nothing irrational here, just you.

The rule itself is irrational especially given the reason. Since the schools only use the game and not the forums then the complaint that minors will automatically read those threads is wrong.

[Nanatsu no Tsuki]

Did I mention the law or are you going to start your 'ageist' crap again? Learn to read and be less antagonistic. It would do you oodles of good.

That you are able to discuss something, adequately, doesn't mean others in your age group can or will, for that matter. It makes you an isolated case. Nothing else.

I advice you take a step back and recognize what others are saying. Yes, I think NSG should be 18+. Will the mods or Max Barry implement this? Probably not, as demonstrated by Reppy's post. There is nothing irrational here, just you.

The rule itself is irrational especially given the reason. Since the schools only use the game and not the forums then the complaint that minors will automatically read those threads is wrong.

Theres nothing irrational in it. I've seen many underaged posters say they post in NS, the forums, from school. Even with security filters. They use proxies. So yes, if the wanted to post in the threads, or read them, they can.

[NERVUN]

Did I mention the law or are you going to start your 'ageist' crap again? Learn to read and be less antagonistic. It would do you oodles of good.

That you are able to discuss something, adequately, doesn't mean others in your age group can or will, for that matter. It makes you an isolated case. Nothing else.

I advice you take a step back and recognize what others are saying. Yes, I think NSG should be 18+. Will the mods or Max Barry implement this? Probably not, as demonstrated by Reppy's post. There is nothing irrational here, just you.

The rule itself is irrational especially given the reason. Since the schools only use the game and not the forums then the complaint that minors will automatically read those threads is wrong.

Did you even bother to READ Reppy's post?

And no, schools do have access to the forums. It's even on the NS for educators website.

[Wiztopia]

The rule itself is irrational especially given the reason. Since the schools only use the game and not the forums then the complaint that minors will automatically read those threads is wrong.

Did you even bother to READ Reppy's post?

And no, schools do have access to the forums. It's even on the NS for educators website.

Never said they couldn't access them. I'm saying they wouldn't automatically go to the forums when playing the game.

[Nanatsu no Tsuki]

Did you even bother to READ Reppy's post?

And no, schools do have access to the forums. It's even on the NS for educators website.

Never said they couldn't access them. I'm saying they wouldn't automatically go to the forums when playing the game.

Are you sure of that? Because the game is played in the forum. It wouldn't be a stretch to scroll down the page and see NSG. From there, you can probably gleam the next.

[Wiztopia]

Never said they couldn't access them. I'm saying they wouldn't automatically go to the forums when playing the game.

Are you sure of that? Because the game is played in the forum. It wouldn't be a stretch to scroll down the page and see NSG. From there, you can probably gleam the next.

So the issues page is located in the forums now? They can see it it does not automatically mean they will click. Plus seeing a thread title wouldn't be harmful at all.

[The Blaatschapen]

Never said they couldn't access them. I'm saying they wouldn't automatically go to the forums when playing the game.

Are you sure of that? Because the game is played in the forum. It wouldn't be a stretch to scroll down the page and see NSG. From there, you can probably gleam the next.

Actually, the game is played in many different ways. Some of those ways require the forums.

[The Peoples of Xaer]

The rule itself is irrational especially given the reason. Since the schools only use the game and not the forums then the complaint that minors will automatically read those threads is wrong.

So, if a rule on the site that's as old as Reppy's post says it is bugs you that much, why are you still here? I doubt the mods are going to go against Max's wishes about it.

[Wiztopia]

Are you sure of that? Because the game is played in the forum. It wouldn't be a stretch to scroll down the page and see NSG. From there, you can probably gleam the next.

Actually, the game is played in many different ways. Some of those ways require the forums.

I don't think the the students are RPing.

The rule itself is irrational especially given the reason. Since the schools only use the game and not the forums then the complaint that minors will automatically read those threads is wrong.

So, if a rule on the site that's as old as Reppy's post says it is bugs you that much, why are you still here? I doubt the mods are going to go against Max's wishes about it.

Who said it truly bothers me? I'm pointing out the stupidity of it. I've pointed out other stupid rules Max has made too.

[Nanatsu no Tsuki]

Are you sure of that? Because the game is played in the forum. It wouldn't be a stretch to scroll down the page and see NSG. From there, you can probably gleam the next.

So the issues page is located in the forums now? They can see it it does not automatically mean they will click. Plus seeing a thread title wouldn't be harmful at all.

Reading a thread can cause problems, and I'm not talking about terns getting ideas. I'm talking about parents overreacting. There was such a case not too long ago, where the parent of a poster made him erase all his posts and I think said parent even threatened the mod staff with legal action. All because their kid was posting in NS and the parent didn't like what he/she read. It seems you're either ignoring this or not comprehending. Not sure which.

In any case, this is Max Barry's site, and if he doesn't approve of something, as much as I may disagree, that goes.

[The Blaatschapen]

Actually, the game is played in many different ways. Some of those ways require the forums.

I don't think the the students are RPing.

But they might be involved in the WA considering that they're all a part of it.

[The Peoples of Xaer]

Who said it truly bothers me? I'm pointing out the stupidity of it. I've pointed out other stupid rules Max has made too.

Yeah, those disagreeable rules on a site you have to pay nothing to use are completely and totally unreasonable.