Hi Fanpoppers. It's been a while since I've posted an article in the Fanpop Club, but I wanted to let all of you know about a recent problem we've run into and see if we could implore you - the awesome Fanpop community - to help us out
(I know, I know, I'm sure many of you are thinking only one problem? There's a LOT of problems on Fanpop, Papa! A LOT!!! Alas, for today, we're only going to focus on one problem!)
As you know, Fanpop is home to a lot of clubs covering a wide range of topics and interests and within those clubs there's a great amount of latitude given to what kind of content you can post.
However, one type of content that has proven increasingly problematic for us is the posting of explicit or pornographic content on Fanpop.
Per the terms of service:
"You may not post content that...is pornographic or sexually explicit in nature..."
Since that definition might be a little ambiguous to some, allow me to elucidate (I apologize for being so blunt, but I want to be very clear): no exposed breasts or genitals, no butt cracks or full-cheeked buttocks, no explicit sex acts of any sort in which any of the former (genitals, breasts, etc.) are showing or engaged in...stuff. Two dudes hugging is ok. Two dudes hugging completely naked with their "junk" flopping around is not ok. Got it?
And as ridiculous as it sounds to say, this goes for real life photos as well as for cartoons. Specifically: no cartoon animals with genitals or cartoon animals engaged in sex acts (sadly we have been witness to My Little Pony doing improper activities with her pony "friends" on this site). If you want to celebrate your love of explicit fan art of randy woodland creatures we, unfortunately, have to ask you to find another fansite on which to engage with your fellow fans.
In the interest of erring on the side of caution, I would also advise against chest shots (even if covered), crotch shots, and photos with see-through materials that expose breasts and genitals. So-called under-boob, side-boob and "upskirt" type images also fall into this category.
The reasons we are asking for your help in policing and reporting this type of content is two-fold:
FIRST: We have a lot of people under the age of 18 on the website! While everyone needs to be smart about their web-surfing habits and while we don't want to over-sanitize the web experience on Fanpop, it's also reasonable to expect when visiting the "Penguins of Madagascar" Club that you will find, at worst, PG type content about those wise-cracking Dreamworks penguins. Nobody needs to see Skipper, Kowalski and Rico getting it on in a menage-a-penguin on the ice. At least not on this site.
SECONDLY: Problematic content isn't only a problem for us, it's a problem for our advertisers. Fanpop isn't cheap to maintain and operate. When we started the site back in 2006 we had maybe a thousand users visit us in the first month. Today we have over 25 million unique visitors to the site every month viewing over a 160 million pages a month. To support this high volume of web traffic we have had to purchase bigger, better and faster machines and more and more bandwidth. Running the site is not cheap. If advertisers are unhappy with explicit content on Fanpop, it means no money to operate and continue Fanpop. We love Fanpop. We hope you love Fanpop. We'd like to keep Fanpop running as long as possible!
By now you are probably asking: "So Papa, now that you've told me all about Penguins and My Little Pony, what can we do to help?" All we are asking is that, where possible, please pitch in a hand and help us clean up Fanpop going forward by reporting any problematic content you might encounter. It doesn't take much time and is easy to do.
Here are a few things that would help us:
See a pornographic image? Report it as "inappropriate"
Feel free to remind other users about the pornography policy on Fanpop in comments, private messages, forums and wall posts
See a pornographic club? Report it as "inappropriate"
See a naughty photo in a forum thread? Report it!
See a humanoid cartoon character with a tentacled sea creature doing things they never taught you in sex ed? Please report it!
See a pony, with a penguin and a...well you get the point...
Thanks for taking the time to read this Fanpoppers. Any help you can give us in helping to clean up the site is much appreciated. Keep on Fanpopping!
(I know, I know, I'm sure many of you are thinking only one problem? There's a LOT of problems on Fanpop, Papa! A LOT!!! Alas, for today, we're only going to focus on one problem!)
As you know, Fanpop is home to a lot of clubs covering a wide range of topics and interests and within those clubs there's a great amount of latitude given to what kind of content you can post.
However, one type of content that has proven increasingly problematic for us is the posting of explicit or pornographic content on Fanpop.
Per the terms of service:
"You may not post content that...is pornographic or sexually explicit in nature..."
Since that definition might be a little ambiguous to some, allow me to elucidate (I apologize for being so blunt, but I want to be very clear): no exposed breasts or genitals, no butt cracks or full-cheeked buttocks, no explicit sex acts of any sort in which any of the former (genitals, breasts, etc.) are showing or engaged in...stuff. Two dudes hugging is ok. Two dudes hugging completely naked with their "junk" flopping around is not ok. Got it?
And as ridiculous as it sounds to say, this goes for real life photos as well as for cartoons. Specifically: no cartoon animals with genitals or cartoon animals engaged in sex acts (sadly we have been witness to My Little Pony doing improper activities with her pony "friends" on this site). If you want to celebrate your love of explicit fan art of randy woodland creatures we, unfortunately, have to ask you to find another fansite on which to engage with your fellow fans.
In the interest of erring on the side of caution, I would also advise against chest shots (even if covered), crotch shots, and photos with see-through materials that expose breasts and genitals. So-called under-boob, side-boob and "upskirt" type images also fall into this category.
The reasons we are asking for your help in policing and reporting this type of content is two-fold:
FIRST: We have a lot of people under the age of 18 on the website! While everyone needs to be smart about their web-surfing habits and while we don't want to over-sanitize the web experience on Fanpop, it's also reasonable to expect when visiting the "Penguins of Madagascar" Club that you will find, at worst, PG type content about those wise-cracking Dreamworks penguins. Nobody needs to see Skipper, Kowalski and Rico getting it on in a menage-a-penguin on the ice. At least not on this site.
SECONDLY: Problematic content isn't only a problem for us, it's a problem for our advertisers. Fanpop isn't cheap to maintain and operate. When we started the site back in 2006 we had maybe a thousand users visit us in the first month. Today we have over 25 million unique visitors to the site every month viewing over a 160 million pages a month. To support this high volume of web traffic we have had to purchase bigger, better and faster machines and more and more bandwidth. Running the site is not cheap. If advertisers are unhappy with explicit content on Fanpop, it means no money to operate and continue Fanpop. We love Fanpop. We hope you love Fanpop. We'd like to keep Fanpop running as long as possible!
By now you are probably asking: "So Papa, now that you've told me all about Penguins and My Little Pony, what can we do to help?" All we are asking is that, where possible, please pitch in a hand and help us clean up Fanpop going forward by reporting any problematic content you might encounter. It doesn't take much time and is easy to do.
Here are a few things that would help us:
See a pornographic image? Report it as "inappropriate"
Feel free to remind other users about the pornography policy on Fanpop in comments, private messages, forums and wall posts
See a pornographic club? Report it as "inappropriate"
See a naughty photo in a forum thread? Report it!
See a humanoid cartoon character with a tentacled sea creature doing things they never taught you in sex ed? Please report it!
See a pony, with a penguin and a...well you get the point...
Thanks for taking the time to read this Fanpoppers. Any help you can give us in helping to clean up the site is much appreciated. Keep on Fanpopping!