Site organization; question of consent; public versus members-only areas

[paralepsis2016]

Hi, all. I had some thoughts on the site that I'd like to share.

In general, the site is well organized and well run. It feels inclusive and welcoming and like a community with members that support each other. There's not much to say when one thinks things are good, so let me say this: these aspects of the site are very, very good!

About the "Curvy Women Are Beautiful" section: Honestly, it's pretty confusing. There are tons of pictures in the videos section, and there are videos in the pictures section. I think it may make more sense to categorize just by I guess the person's role in society rather than the type of content, i.e., pictures or videos. Paysite promotions and requests are separate categories obviously. That leaves celebrities, plus-size models, content creators, and then everyone else. There is overlap between those categories, and maybe I'm missing some, but I think that would be less ambiguous than it is now.

That "everyone else" category brings me to another question. It's always bothered me that people post pictures of people who aren't public figures of some kind here without their consent. It strikes me as icky. I would prefer that not happen here, but I suspect that will continue. Given that it's going to continue, I think it makes sense to leave candids as its own sub-forum and create something like social media where people can post pictures they find on social media. That way, people who want to avoid that stuff can avoid it and people who want it know where it is.

I also think that consent question may apply to people posting pictures of their partners or exes. I think much of reddit is a dumpster fire, but there are some good ideas there. Some of the NSFW sub-reddits require a verification post with the username and sub-reddit name written on like a piece of paper. I think adopting that here might be good when there isn't a more formal relationship to the site. Even if it doesn't preclude someone from posting, maybe a "verified" sticker on the person's topics might help.

I think it would make sense to have public versus members-only areas and to be clear about which those are. One of the weird perks of being non-binary is that I'm often forced to choose a gender option that works the least poorly, and here, I picked to post in "men" because that area requires a login. If it's possible to allow topic creators to mark their topics as public or member-only, that would be great. Not everyone who participates here wants their stuff searchable on the world wide web. At least one person anyway: me! But I suspect others might like the option. Another option might be to have just two sub-forums: public and members-only, not divided by gender. I think have four sub-forums -- public women, public men, members-only women, members-only men would get super tedious.

I'd be curious to know the admins' thoughts. If this would be better moved to one of the more popular areas of the forums like "Serious Discussion," please feel free. Thanks!

[S77]

Hi, it's a very interesting suggestion. While we will certainly consider, I should point out that the process of migrating topics to a new categorization hierarchy is a very manual process. I hate to admit it, but it's unlikely that we have the task force to accomplish something of this nature at this time. It's not to discredit your ideas, as there is a lot to think on here. Just pointing out that this single hurdle is rather significant.

[paralepsis2016]

1 hour ago, S77 said:

Hi, it's a very interesting suggestion. While we will certainly consider, I should point out that the process of migrating topics to a new categorization hierarchy is a very manual process. I hate to admit it, but it's unlikely that we have the task force to accomplish something of this nature at this time. It's not to discredit your ideas, as there is a lot to think on here. Just pointing out that this single hurdle is rather significant.

Thanks for the response. I was inspired to post this after seeing in the pronoun thread that you are considering various changes. If I were to say what was the most important to me personally, I think topic creators being able to control whether their topics are public or member-only would be #1.

I have a software and data background, so I fully appreciate the whole "we have tons of data that would need to change categorization manually." It's pretty common to have a "moving forward" approach to new data and dividing up the old data into a "worth migrating now" bucket and a much larger "legacy to be migrated as need arises" bucket, and I think some of the changes would be easier than that to implement. I've never moderated or maintained a discussion board, but if you want to implement any of that or something else and need a pro bono consult, let me know.