Hi everyone,

I thought this website was supposed to be "family friendly."  Although, since I joined I have seen many inappropriate profile pictures and trophies.  This actually prevented my uncle from letting my little cousin have a profile on the site.  Not only this, but to some (me included) these pictures are just obscene and immature.  What is the community's opinion on this?

3ET

I don't think I've seen anything that bothers me, or that would keep me from letting my kid on the site, but I am maybe not a good representative of the average person.

I think it's a tough situation, unless Tom can come up with a clear standard, which I think is very difficult.  Otherwise people will be continually testing the limits of what is allowed.

I think we'd need an example. I've seen a couple risque' trophies, but that's about the worst I've come across.

Ozyman wrote:

I think it's a tough situation, unless Tom can come up with a clear standard, which I think is very difficult.  Otherwise people will be continually testing the limits of what is allowed.

I have seen it get worse from when I started, that is why I think a standard is important if this site is going to be promoted to non adults and especially children.

Thingol wrote: I think we'd need an example. I've seen a couple risque' trophies, but that's about the worst I've come across.

How about the tournament trophy for "A lot of gravity with that moon."  This picture shows a nude female and there isn't an age limit on the site.

Even things not that bad like the gif of a girls boobs jiggling up and down (I'll keep the name anonymous, but I'm sure you've seen it) would keep me from letting my 10 year old son from getting a profile.  Go to Mad Bomber's trophy case and you see some more. Trust me I didn't even have to try to search for those and neither did my uncle.

It's a tough thing to decide - although it seems we do try to keep the language family friendly, and there is a bit of an informal standard there.  

But really, it's a game that is based on war, violence and competition. It's unsurprising - given the demographic around here - that things occasionally cross the line. 

That being said, an awesome trophy that doesn't have a naked girl on it is pretty easy to come up with and it's not hard to keep things clean: language, images, board concepts ect. 

Maybe a simple request, -something like you have here- will help members to think when making choices.  

However, I don't think you'll have a lot of luck actually enforcing any kind of standard above and beyond a respectful request to individuals.

3EyedTitan wrote:

How about the tournament trophy for "A lot of gravity with that moon."  This picture shows a nude female and there isn't an age limit on the site.

Assuming you mean "Strong gravity with that moon......2013", it's actually a suggestive tomato. 

i understand your concern, as i have two young ones myself. but i think tom and others do a fine job of keeping it clean here! don't let one bad apple ruin a bunch.  :)  have fun and don't lose sleep over killing me in future games. :)

@jbomb haha don't worry I won't.

This site does consist of mostly adults, so I see why this issue isn't really a concern to most.  IMO the site would expand to a younger audience better if it purposed to keep things a little more clean, but that's just me.

Doesn't the "at work" option eliminate profile pictures? Maybe tom could be requested to include removing trophy pics in that setting.

no, i use work mode exclusively.

tho there might be a setting to disable preview of profile pics.

EDIT: there is a setting to censor swear words and a premium setting to turn off profile images.

I would be more than ok with a parent PMing tom to 'enable' that on a youngns' account without paying for premium. assuming its possible.

Just throwing a random idea out there: I think it could be a good option to have a separate setting option for "youth player" that filtered some of the more risque content. People who upload photos for profiles or tournament trophies could even select a box that said "kid unfriendly", and then that photo would just display as something benign, like the wargear logo, for that player instead.

How old is your little cousin?

Kjeld wrote:

Just throwing a random idea out there: I think it could be a good option to have a separate setting option for "youth player" that filtered some of the more risque content. People who upload photos for profiles or tournament trophies could even select a box that said "kid unfriendly", and then that photo would just display as something benign, like the wargear logo, for that player instead.

My gut reaction is that any strategy that requires the cooperation of many strangers, many of whom do not know or care about your concern, is a guaranteed failure.

However here is a variant of the idea that may work.  Let anyone flag anything as "kid unfriendly" and have the replacement happen only for identified kids.  This requires less cooperation, and has little impact on most users.  (Since the flag only affects the display for a minority of users.)

That said, given COPPA (Child Online Privacy Protection Act), Tom is probably best off avoiding liability by explicitly saying that you must be 13 or over to use the site.  If he does that, then the modest amount of obscenity and risque content on the site is probably not an issue.

Note, I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice.  Meaning if Tom or anyone else follows my suggestion and gets sued, don't sue me over it!  (Note, if someone gives you legal advice and you follow it and it works out poorly - even if the advice is perfectly correct - you can sue that person for it!  That is why non-lawyers who know this often will say IANAL, TINLA.  This is also one of the reasons why lawyers charge so much, and then are careful with their advice.)

@Aiken   He is 10.

I like the idea of there being a youth setting option and being able to flag something as inappropriate if it is offensive to you, after all it is the internet.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but as soon as there is a nude picture on a site don't you have to have an 18 or older verification notification (not sure if both those words were necessary)? 

3EyedTitan wrote:

@Aiken   He is 10.

I like the idea of there being a youth setting option and being able to flag something as inappropriate if it is offensive to you, after all it is the internet.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but as soon as there is a nude picture on a site don't you have to have an 18 or older verification notification (not sure if both those words were necessary)? 

My understanding (IANAL,TINLA) is that the legal status of online porn is a mess.  An alphabet soup of laws have been passed, and many (but not all) of them have been struck down by the courts.  The ones that I am aware of that prevented showing obscene stuff to minors were struck down.  But I don't keep up with this stuff.

That said, I see far worse things on Facebook than I do here.  (Give some of my friends, a *lot* worse things.)  Even if there was a standing law that required something like that, this would hardly be the first target.

However the FTC is getting aggressive about COPPA violations.  If you start adding explicit "kid friendly" features and this gets popular with kids, then that would be a bigger worry.

I like the idea of having the settings for removing Player Photos and Trophy Photos (if added) available for all accounts, that could solve most of the picture problems.  Tom has normally been good and quick about updating game names that are inappropriate and for the most part I clean up anything on the Forums that is unnecessary (repeated) or too far (R+ rated) regardless of what filter is set.

btilly wrote:

3EyedTitan wrote:

@Aiken   He is 10.

I like the idea of there being a youth setting option and being able to flag something as inappropriate if it is offensive to you, after all it is the internet.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but as soon as there is a nude picture on a site don't you have to have an 18 or older verification notification (not sure if both those words were necessary)? 

My understanding (IANAL,TINLA) is that the legal status of online porn is a mess.  An alphabet soup of laws have been passed, and many (but not all) of them have been struck down by the courts.  The ones that I am aware of that prevented showing obscene stuff to minors were struck down.  But I don't keep up with this stuff.

That said, I see far worse things on Facebook than I do here.  (Give some of my friends, a *lot* worse things.)  Even if there was a standing law that required something like that, this would hardly be the first target.

However the FTC is getting aggressive about COPPA violations.  If you start adding explicit "kid friendly" features and this gets popular with kids, then that would be a bigger worry.

I think we have started to put too much thought in to this as to the point where we have got off track.

The point of this was to see if the site could purpose to be more family friendly or if that was already the objective.  I am not proposing that we make kids the target audience of the site.

Yertle wrote:

I like the idea of having the settings for removing Player Photos and Trophy Photos (if added) available for all accounts, that could solve most of the picture problems.  Tom has normally been good and quick about updating game names that are inappropriate and for the most part I clean up anything on the Forums that is unnecessary (repeated) or too far (R+ rated) regardless of what filter is set.

Glad to hear :)

To be honest I wouldn't want to be playing against kids. I like that this feels a fairly mature group of players.