Policy Updates

I made changes to the policies found in https://ani.social/legal in response to users creating communities that might not be fit for ani.social. The new policy is titled “Community Creation Policy” which aims to limit the scope of communities created in ani.social. Below is a breakdown of the entire policy:

1. The community should be related to anime, manga, or other related otaku and moe culture.

This should be obvious but “anime” is very broad. Especially the term “otaku culture” which could mean things not completely related to anime and manga (like trains or military) so I would like to limit those. Though in the globalized context, otaku is associated with anime, so I’m thinking of calling it “globalized otaku” or “otaku” (with scare quotes) as suggested by Patrick Galbraith.

2. The community should have a clearly defined purpose or intent available in the community sidebar before any post, icon, or banner is submitted or uploaded.

This is very specific but I’d like to avoid communities created without any real purpose. This is mostly to avoid spam.

3. The community should have rules available in the community sidebar. Likewise, the community must not deviate from the AniSocial TOU.

This is self-explanatory. All communities should have rules, otherwise it can’t fulfill Rule 2 of this policy. Also, no community can be “above” ani.social’s policies.

4. The community should not feature content displaying genitalia, scat, extreme gore, snuff, or beastiality.

This is to limit “hentai” communities from being created here. I think it’s best that hentai communities are created in other servers that can better support pornography. But I’d like to revise this so that discourse on hentai is allowed.

5. The community’s purpose or intent should not exclusively focus on any of the following topics or niches:

Artificial Intelligence or AI-generated works; Cults or religion; Piracy, leaked media content, or violations of copyright laws; Political ideologies; Sexual intercourse or masturbation

This is to limit niches that might be better suited in other servers or to avoid controversy. It doesn’t necessarily mean these topics are completely banned from the server. It just means the purpose of a community cannot be specific to these.

AI, piracy, political ideologies, and sexual intercourse already have their own Lemmy servers. I also banned cults and religion to avoid offending people.

Feedback

I’m looking for feedback specifically for the new Community Creation Policy. I’d like to make changes based on what the community thinks so if there’s any changes you’d like, you can post it as a comment here so others can also talk about it. It can be for the other policies too.

I’ll just note that policy changes are never really “final” as they change and evolve over time to address new issues and changes in the social atmosphere.

As for now, I’m considering adding these to the current Community Creation Policy to further avoid possible unwanted scenarios:

• Limitation on number of communities created
• Age of account or karma required to create communities
• Limits on commercial activities

As much as possible, I’d like to very specific with the policies to avoid being overbroad. I would also like to avoid a “admin’s descretion” clause to avoid abuse.

(a few other things)

I’m slowly adding more tasks to @Gaen@ani.social. Recently I added keyword filters to remove certain spam that might come up in the local feed. If Gaen mistakenly removes your post, you can send me a message.

The instance now requires registration applications. This was something I was completely against but we were removed from join-lemmy.org again because of open registrations. As compromise, new sign ups only have to type “I agree” in the text box as part of agreeing to the TOU which will be auto-approved (thank you Lemmy.World for the idea). Also, Gaen denies disposable emails and will send a welcome message to new users. Overall, I think this will turn out to be a good change.

There will probably be more posts like this in the future. Other than policy changes, I’ll make a post on updating the site logo in the coming months.