Giggle

More kitten sillyness! ^^

Put on a more serious note:

To Cruzin:  On the issue of possibly allowing some clemency in terms of members who were banned to return, particularilly in regard to this issue I'd there's a few things I'd like to say.

• As has been pointed out throughout this thread, the decision to ban these individuals was not one that was made lightly and occured only after repeated violations of the TOS and after all the previous steps were taken to both curb future transgressions, and to allow the members in question a chance to continue in the Community.

Having said that, I would point out the following, but I ask everyone to bear in mind that the information to hand is limited and also being viewed subjectivily.  In other words I could point to a wall that was white and claim that it was light grey and argue about it until I was blue in the face, but that wouldn't neccessarilly change the actuall color of the wall.

The bans that were made, in the purest technical terms, were as I understand it made with justification and with due process.  This is with the understanding that every member who signs up for an account here does read and agree to the TOS and with the process of warnings and if neccessary a temperary ban being done prior to a actuall life-long ban.  The changes made to the TOS in regard to potential underage nudity are provided for in the orginal TOS so in the purest technical terms the actions taken are wholly justifed by the TOS contract which was signed by everyone.

There are a few things I think which need to be considered.  The system of warnings/temp bans/ and or final bans is set up on a cumulative bases, and has no statuet of limitations.  As I understand it in some if not many cases this proved to be a problem for some of the members who were banned because previous incidents that happend years prior to the ones that cost them their memberships and may well have been completly unrated were counted up against them.  It's my opinion that it might be better to revamp the system a bit so that at some point these older warnings or incidents are no longer counted up against a member possibly being banned for example.  Of course, I also think there should probably be some exceptions to this, and in all cases that while the cumulative effect would be removed, that it would remain on the member's record for reasons discussed previously in this thread.

I'm not by the way suggesting a short period of time before that cumalitve effect would be removed, but after for example a year it might be reasonable to consider it.  Ultamitly I think this would give the moderators and administration more power to act in cases without neccessarilly resorting to the step of perminate banning, because it would mean one could once again issue either a fresh warning or temporary ban, again letting the person know this was not acceptable, without having because of the cumulative effect of old offenses having to go right away to a perminant ban.

I do think that sometimes people can make comparitivly minor mistakes often unrelated to each other and spread far apart and that that needs to be a consideration.  Let me give a personal example of what I mean.  Last night I saw a render that featured a old song title as it's own title.  I rather liked it and since the song itself is very old I thought I'd quote it's lyrics from memory for those not familiar with them.

This morning I recieved both a e-mail and a PM from this site basicly saying that I needed to remove the post with the lyrics for copy right reasons.  I completly understand where they're coming from and will do so later today but at the time it never occured to me that it would be an issue, an honest enough oversight I think on my part.  Weather or not this counts as an official warning on my record wasn't really made clear to me, I'm going to ask for clarrification in fact, but let's assume for a moment that it was.

Now let's also pretend hypothetically that the one render of A3 I have up that has nudity involved in it is removed for something like potential underage nudity (it hasn't been and won't be I don't think since there are no morphs to A3 at all so by the moderator's own statements she qualifies as being adult, but let's pretend for a moment).  Okay, so now I have two strikes against me.  I go through my ban period, come back and commen sense says at that point that I should tread very carefully if I want to stay a member here.

So for the next year or so I keep my nose clean, I'm very carefull stop leaving comments on other people's works at all keep to myself, etc. etc.  So now it's a year or two after all this has occurred.  Now let's say one day I do something else unrelated in nature to the first two offenses that violates the TOS or a change to the TOS in some way.  Say for example there was a policy change that now says we're no longer allowed to show a particular type of armor (I use alot of armor props in my stuffs) because it's been deemed inappropiate for whatever reason or something.  So I post an image with that armor, maybe I just missed the e-mail or what have you telling me about it, point is it's now up in the galleries.  It gets removed, and because of the two previous and unrelated marks on my record that happened years prior to this, It's my third strike.

That raises some concern because while the situation I've posted is relativily hypothetical there are have been serveral actuall cases mentioned that might fall into this sort of catagory.

I also think that if some members are allowed back, that it would probably have to be on something like a probational membership.  This would mean for example that certain safe-guards would have to be in place.  For example they would not be permited to post any images at all to the galleries without submiting them first to a moderator, even if the content was obviously 100% withen the TOS guidlines they would still have to submit it for approval first before it could even be posted.  That's one example of a possible restriction perhaps after a certian amount of time when the member on probation had proved themselves worthy of the freedom that comes with regular membership they could then be restored, which I think would give them something to work for and more reason to cooperate as well.

I'm sure there would be some that if such an offer was made might reject it as being insulting or being made to feel like criminals, but I also think that with reasonable terms for probationary re-instatement some people who genuinly care about the site and would like another chance might take it.

Anyways something to think about.

To Bonestructure: I would agree it can be a frustrating issue, but not I think an unsurmountable one, or else I wouldn't still be here talking trying to find away to better clarrify and compromise on things with everyone.  Oh, and one small correction, Sailor Moon if I recall correctly has the main characters like Serena (IE Sailor Moon) in highschool, although there were a couple EPs towards the end of the series where the Sailor Scouts did meet older versions of themselves.  I'm not sure about BubbleGum Crises, I've heard the name but I'm not familar with the particular anime.

While there are certianly quite a number of animes that deal with younger based characters, their are also a fair number of animes that deal with compartivily mature adults and are more adult orientated in theme.  To name some recent examples that have appeared in the US: Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex.  Witch Hunter Robin.  Wolf's Reign (I'm pretty sure I got the name wrong I only got to see one EP but the one I did see was very brutal and action based and also brought me to tears with one scene in which one of the characters is killed falling from a building during an attack).  Those are some that have been around awhile but are still compartivily recent here in the US.

Most anime characters are generally geared towards their target audience in terms of characters.  So for example Sailor Moon which was aimed at the younger female audienceand used a group of girls as it's main characters with enough variety withen the group to allow for the different personalities it was meant to appeal to, and the supporting cast of characters was built to compliment that primary group.

The various Dragonball series were meant to appeal primarilly to the young male crowd, and so most of the characters tend to be ampified personifications of various traits that crowd would find appealing.

By comparison, Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex was meant to appeal to a older audience, primary adult, and in fact many of the traditional younger anime US fan base found it boring and unappealing because of it's general focus longer plots and dialoge and compartivily brief action sequences.

So there's certianly a variety of different styles of anime and character out there.  ^^