Hi all! As promised, here is the proposed text of the newest version of the rules. The staff has gone through like eight drafts and literally thousands and thousands of matrix posts to get here, so please be kind. You can see @limeey's comment on the transparency post if you want more insight into how this sausage was made.
We are opening these rules to commentary from the community before they go into effect. To be clear, this isn't a vote, but we will take all community feedback into account and answer whatever questions we can before finalizing anything.
Please keep in mind that we are not Reddit, we do not have Reddit's resources, and safety and consent are our priorities.
I'll post the draft in two parts in two comments: The new sidebar, and the FAQ/clarifications page.
The problem here is hentai content based of anime characters. Most of these characters are under 18 canonically and thus any erotic content wouldn't be allowed under current ruling even though they look like and act like adults.
Then there's the gray zone for characters that have progressed or regressed in age in some way, a good example is Ciel from the visual novel Tsukihime who technically is past her 20s, but her body stopped aging at 26 due to lore reasons. Under current ruling it would be hard to be certain whether it's allowed or not even though she both looks and act like an adult (although a weird one as Nasu can't write a proper R18 scene to save his damn life). Another issue is aged up variants of characters where their canonical age is way below 18 but the art depicts them as above it.
That said I do stand by enforcing an age limit for real people, but when it comes to fictional characters (and anime characters in particular) it makes more sense to go by appearance, this rule would include all these characters while still disallowing Loli/Shota which is the main concern for other instances (see burggit for example). This draws a clear line with less ambiguity than "they are a child" as not everyone may have the same opinion and this could lead to more things getting hit in the crossfire than is necessary, yes I know this leaves characters like Megumin in the gray, but it's not as big of a gray zone as "not a child"
I think we'll just have to bite the bullet and make another hentai-instance. Hentai can not and will not work under rules like these.
What about short women? There's a community called Shortstacks. So are they considered underage because they're short? What about Midna from Zelda? Do we just need to add boobs to make a character into an adult? Are flatchests just completely forbidden since you can't assess wether someone is 17, 19 or 21? (Hell the Evangelion girls (Asuka and Rei) are 14 and 13 and look like somewhere between 17 and 19 to me)
Edit: I think the FAQ (haven't read it yet when I wrote this) solves the issue with underage hentai. I still think it's quite restrictive but hey it's probably the best we can get with all the Americans losing their minds over this.
Not sure if rhetorical, but I think most understand it pretty clear that no one is offended simply by short stature or flat chest.
It's short + zero body fat (including boobs) + no hips + twig arms and legs + pigtails + school uniform + baby face + baby voice + childish activity + context clues as to being underage, etc etc etc...
We all know what it means.
I think the wording of the rules in the proposal are fine, as there is no specific mention of "canonical age".
Boruto drawn as a 50-year-old may not be canonical (which is often the case in fanfiction anyways), but it's evident from the picture that their age is not 12 (in the picture).
So what about Midna from Zelda or Rebecca from Cyberpunk? Both are very popular in fandom. It also shirks around the question of the 3000-year old loli dragon. Technically that would be allowed.
Edit: Eh the FAQ is a pretty decent way of solving the issue. I'm ok with it.
Rebecca from Cyberpunk is clearly characterized as an adult who is small due to body modification and, IDK, hormones? Anyway she's not a child in any meaningful way. I see no problem there. I'm not a zelda guy so I can't speak to that other example.
Here's a better way of thinking about it. Isn't it alarming that the moment Game Freak release artwork of a new female playable character, every rule-34 artist is rushing to draw aged-up lewd art of them? All but one main series Pokémon game has you playing a ten-year-old, with Black/White being the only exception where Hilbert and Hilda are 15...
And another thing I should definitely raise to the admins, current rules of "no aged-up characters" are very inconsistently enforced, if not wholly unenforced on this instance.
I think a problem w/ moderating illustrated content is not everyone necessarily knows the characters being referenced, and what their age is. That's why community self moderating is important, even more so than just having a couple people trying to do it all alone.
TBF, the current rules were made in haste and have only been around a short time to mitigate things getting out of hand, so people could think with clear heads instead of putting out fires. also mods are kind of on a churn since we are still dealing with a user base that sees the new shiny and wants to do something with it before moving on (for various reasons, nothing against those people). so there are the occasional community that has a mod that has not done any posting or commenting in 20 days and active mods are trying to figure stuff out with limited tooling.
not to mention that the new rules go some way to helping with that, leaving the mods/admins to interpret the context of the piece and its surrounding media to determine and if any one of them feels it should be removed, it will be. i also agree with @kellySunshine in this message thread