Keep it "safe-for-work" (SFW). It's fine to discuss controversial topics, but discuss them in an adult manner without letting the discussion get heated. Discussing topics of sex and sexuality is likewise allowed, but explicit sexual content is not allowed as this site is open to under-18s.

I'd suggest that this rule is too strict, especially if this CoC is going to be used across a network of Q&A sites. There are several contexts in which you might want to post something that plausibly or definitely counts as "explicit sexual content", like:

• On a writing site, discussing an explicit excerpt from some erotica.
• On a biology site, discussing the biology of the penis or vagina by way of annotated images, or discussing mating behaviours of animals with accompanying video
• On a machine learning site, constructing and posting an adversarial example of a pornographic image that tricks an AI porn filter into thinking it is benign

I'm also unsure why under-18s in particular are relevant to that rule. Are you trying to match some jurisdiction's age of consent, or film rating rule's? Why?

I'd suggest something much more permissive and which doesn't mention any particular age, like:

Don't post explicit sexual content except in posts where it is directly relevant to the question being asked.

There are situations where that will be overly permissive, of course, but that seems like the right direction to err in if this will be a network-wide CoC. Presumably, individual sites will have leeway in interpretation and freedom to impose tighter rules, but won't be able to do away with rules explicitly listed in this CoC - so any explicit rules should cover only the most clearly unacceptable behaviour and leave the edge cases and nuances to be hashed out later.

posted over 4 years ago

CC BY-SA 4.0

Mark Amery‭

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