Looks like it's time once again for everyone's favorite topic.

The user CountPacula has been on a crusade, it seems, to mark many sex posts as rating:q, many of which I feel are definitely rating:e. Posts like post #758744 are understandable, but posts like post #747160, post #554239, and post #708930 are not. Just because a post is in the Making Love pool does not make it any less explicit. We have to keep the ratings consistent and nonobjective as possible, or everyone will start saying "well I don't think this post is that bad..."

Am I alone here?

The last 3 posts definitely are rating:e in my book.

I'm okay with the 1st one being questionable; but the other three are rating:e.

forum #37461 would probably have been sufficient here. And yeah, those three are rating:e.

howto:rate said:
Questionable:
Actual intercourse, if portrayed in a restrained and tasteful manner (this can be tricky and is necessarily a judgement call, but if it concentrates on the act and omits anatomical details, it's likely okay)

He's citing this clause as justification. I guess it needs to be clarified.

glasnost said:
forum #37461 would probably have been sufficient here.

I forgot about that thread. Why isn't it stickied?

Coconut said:
I forgot about that thread. Why isn't it stickied?

Good thought. Can we request that it be stickied?

Coconut said:
He's citing this clause as justification. I guess it needs to be clarified.

I'd say that just about anything with a censor mosaic doesn't qualify as 'restrained'. post #708930, on the other hand, is a tough sell for 'tasteful'.

Nice to be accused of being on a 'crusade' without so much as anyone sending me an email. Sheesh...

Just to be clear here: I'm not trying to push or break the line between rating:q and rating:e. Nor am I trying to say that anything tasteful enough to be in Making Love can't be considered explicit. I was simply trying to follow the guidelines in howto:rate, and re-rating some posts that seemed to be rated stronger than they should have been.

I wasn't going about this blindly either - I did have a discussion with one of the mods regarding post #747160, who did seem to understand my reasoning enough to keep the post rating:q for the time being - though also saying that it was a matter of judgement and the correct interpretation wasn't clear. (I hope I have this right anyway - my apologies if I'm paraphrasing incorrectly or otherwise misrepresenting what I was told.)

I guess the problem here is that either I've misunderstood the guidelines, or that they are too ambiguous on this particular point. I fully agree that we need to keep "the ratings consistent and nonobjective as possible". The fact that the very guideline itself admits that the matter is "a judgement call" might be an indication that the definition needs to be tightened up a bit.

Just so I don't get accused further of being on a 'crusade' here, I'll refrain from re-rating posts that depend on this particular guideline until we have a better consensus (or a ruling from Above) regarding the matter. I'll also go back over the posts that I had downrated to q and set them back to e if there is any doubt in the matter.

...*whew*...

CountPacula said:
The fact that the very guideline itself admits that the matter is "a judgement call" might be an indication that the definition needs to be tightened up a bit.

I was being somewhat tongue-in-cheek when I said "no censored images", but thinking about it further, this may be an effective clarifying modification to the definition. My rationale here is that any image that shows a penis entering a vagina is not 'restrained' enough to qualify for rating:q, and the existence of censorship implies that that's what we would be seeing, were the censorship removed.

This does leave the question of images like post #449447, which I still tend to think should be explicit (though it is much closer to the q<->e border than other images in this thread), but it should reduce the number of judgement calls that have to be made. Does this sound like a good idea to anyone else?

Shit, to me post #449447 looks pretty explicit.
I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO THINK ANYMORE

Thats totally explicit.

glasnost said: Does this sound like a good idea to anyone else?

Yes, this, you said what I was thinking for me.

Well, in an effort to clarify things further, let's consider a few specific situations and give some thought about which side of the line each case should be.

• #1 - Clearly visible genital contact and/or genital fluids. (post #368377)
• This is a very clear and unambiguous line, and I think it's safe to say there is no argument about posts like this being considered explicit. In theory, we could make this the dividing line between questionable and explicit - there would be no question about which side a given post would belong on.
• #2 - Intercourse or other sex acts occurring, but with all the specific details hidden by the positioning of the participants bodies. No mosaic censoring used because none is needed, with absolutely no visible pubic hair or genital fluids. (post #211918)
• Can we safely agree that this is the kind of post that the "restrained and tasteful" in the current guidelines was meant to cover? Is there any argument about posts like this being considered rating:q?
• #3 - As #2 above, except for a minuscule amount of mosaic or other censoring covering up what would otherwise be no more than a hint of genital contact. (post #273252)
• Not quite so clear here, but my own feeling is that this kind of post should still be rating:q, especially in cases where there would be no visible genitalia even if the censoring were to be removed.
• When genitals would be visible to a small degree without censoring (post #747160) seems to be one of the main points of contention here. My own feeling had been that, if the visibility was mostly incidental and the focus of the image was on the act and not the anatomical details, it would still be considered rating:q. However, this obviously seems to be contrary to the general consensus here, and I have no problem with rating such posts explicit, so long as the guidelines are clear on the subject.

[continued in next post due to comment being too large (!!)]

[continued from previous post]

• #4 - As #2, but with some small amount of genital fluid visibly leaking out between the participants. Could range from almost invisible (post #471627), to a couple drops that might pass for sweat (post #449447), up to unmistakable puddles (post #414762).
• This is the area where I personally was struggling the most, and I'm certain that my judgement was horribly inconsistent. I was trying to go by the rule that if something truly might be just sweat, I'd put a rating:q on it. The problem was that sometimes it was really easy to unconsciously overestimate how ambiguous something was, making it hard to decide when something really should be considered explicit. I really have no idea where or even how to draw the line here, but I do think it would be a shame for stuff like post #471627 to have to be considered explicit.
• #5 - Finally, let's consider the other extreme for a moment. What about the idea of -all- posts depicting sex of any form being considered explicit? In other words, sex should automatically implicate rating:e. "Questionable" would be reserved for images of a suggestive but non-sexual nature, with no actual intimate contact allowed, with the possible exception of kissing. As an example, even something like post #195300 would be considered explicit.
• I really don't think that anybody thinks we have to go this far, but, like #1, this is a very unambiguous line, and we likewise really could make the distinction between q and e at this point.

(...holy crap... in before TL;DR? *cough*)

Just for the record, post #449447 is exactly the kind of post I was referring to when I said how easy it is to convince oneself that something really could "just be sweat". That said, I still think this post is quite close to the borderline, and I'm glad at least somebody else here thinks similarly. If it weren't for that little puddle between her thighs, I would still argue that this post should be considered rating:q under "restrained and tasteful" in the current guidelines.

[OK, seriously, this really is enough for one night - I'm shutting up now...]

Hmm where is Hazuki? He's the one who instituted the new rating system. The old one had pretty much clear-cut boundaries, I'm not sure the new system lends itself well to well defined cases.

He's taking a break to catch up on stuff.

Am I missing something here? The explanation given when giving a post a safeness rating says that "explicit" includes things like sex, penis, pussy, etc.

Seems pretty easy to say that the presence of any of these makes an image explicit...

That's the old system. It used to be:

If (genetalia, sex, or body fluids) : Explicit
Else if (strong innuendo or frontal nudity): Questionable
Else : Safe

It got revamped several months ago to allow questionable and safe to include things like tasteful nudity or non-pornographic sex, but it makes the categories more difficult to explicitly define.

It's time to use some common sense already.

The wiki could be right or wrong, or not written up to intended, I just know that explicitly depicted sex scene such as post #449447 is explicit.

The "tasteful" bit mentioned was referred to artistic feeling such as post #174028. And if you can't tell the difference between the two posts, well, I have nothing more to say.