The new skin rules leaveā¦ a lot to be desired.
Iām mostly just going to touch on the gore rules because itās what I personally care about the most, but itās worth notingĀ people have also taken issue with the lack of clarity with the religion rule as well.
To start with the positives, it IS good that theyāre plainly laying out what counts as gore that abides by site lore. Thatās good. Thereās still some clarifications to be made (such as with bloody bandages and the vagueness ofĀ ādragons sufferingā), but itās a start and I hope they continue to make clarifications as things come up.
The issue is this:
āThe aforementioned items provide hard lines that will be easier for our skin artists to follow. Please note that skins that donāt directly break these hard lines but still create an effect our team deems too extreme will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis as before. Itās difficult to predict every combination that may create a gore effect but we hope that these guidelines will make the approval process easier by spelling out specific items that will result in a rejection so they can be more easily avoided.ā
This is quite fucking literally what people took issue with in the first place.Ā
Skins that people made within site rules can still be rejected because staff THOUGHT it looked gory. Skins have been rejected when colored red but then allowed when printed as a different color, despite no other changes being made. Which is especially funny when the clarified rules state blood splatters are allowed, but theyāve rejected skins for looking like blood splatters.
I value freedom of expression immensely and I try to honor site rules as best as I can. The issue is staff is inconsistent and makes arbitrary exceptions to what is considered acceptable, while approving skins that arguably push the boundaries of the rules significantly more.
Skin makers are the ones devoting their resources and their time to making skins just because they want to. They really should be treated with more respect. Skin approvals are in desperate need some sort of update. I know itās pretty much impossible to eliminate human bias from these sorts of things, and with countless skins being submitted of course some slip through the cracks, but that doesnāt mean skin makers are in the wrong for being frustrated, and that there shouldnāt be more of an effort for objectivity in skin approvals.
Well, I just came back from a long hiatus caused, among other things, with all the drama revolving around Plague because staff made a stupid decision of introducing this flight and first thing I see is this mess and plaguelings that have a feeling that staff regrets even creating Plague. So I see nothing changed and Iām already discouraged from playing. But to the point: efforts to discuss this on forums are just deleted and the fact that they deleted without a word the very thread that started this, asking just for clarification with examples, is hilarious. People will still have their accents rejected because a mod saw a cross in a light flicker and this is a real problem which was not adressed in any way.
TheirĀ āclarificarionā clarified nothing. There was no word about falsely flagging obviously non gorey skins as gore (a space nebula on a space accent is apparently blood? what???), there was no further explanation what they consider gore or what not. The issue lies not in artists making nasty gorey stuff but with mods judging accents as they fit, so writing few half assed paragraphs that esentially did not clarify anything (skinsĀ ācreating an effectā of gore? really?). Banning gore all-together in this way looks just as an easy way out and community should just shut up and sit quiet.
I wonāt touch religious stuff but fact that halos are a no no when, at the same time, we have halo festival items is just plain stupid.
